Chapter 9 - The Storm on the Terrace
The rain hammered against the slate flagstones of the Kendall estate with violent fury. Lightning fractured the charcoal sky, illuminating the sprawling lawn and the manicured gardens that Laura had tended for seven years.
Ben walked up the stone steps of the back terrace, drenched from head to toe, his teeth chattering uncontrollably from the biting cold.
The French doors opened.
Laura stepped out onto the sheltered terrace, wrapped in a thick, cream-colored wool sweater. She didn't invite him inside. She stood beneath the warm glow of the copper porch light, watching him stand out in the deluge, soaking wet, shivering, looking like the beaten boy she had saved in a front yard fourteen years ago.
For a long time, neither of them spoke. The only sound was the roar of the downpour and the rhythmic drumming of rain against the glass awning.
“You’ve lost weight,” Laura said finally, her voice carrying over the storm.
“Ten pounds,” Ben croaked, his voice raw, his hands trembling at his sides. “I don’t have much of an appetite these days.”
“You solved Harbor Point. The union signed the new contract this morning.”
“It was my mess,” he whispered. “I had to fix it.”
Laura leaned against the stone doorframe, her gaze traveling over his soaked, ruined clothes. “Why didn't you take the company when Arthur offered to drop the lawsuit? You could have fought me. You could have dragged the divorce through court for three years and kept half the assets.”
Ben took a step forward, the rain pouring off the brim of his brow, his hazel eyes completely stripped of pride, ego, or defense.
“Because none of it means anything without you, Laura,” he said, his voice breaking into a ragged sob. “I spent years thinking I was building an empire for us, but the truth is, I was just a terrified, traumatized kid trying to build walls so high that nothing could ever hurt me again. And when those walls were finished, I looked at you—the woman who built them with me—and I blamed you for making the world safe and quiet. I called you predictable because you were constant. I called you boring because you gave me peace, and my sick, damaged brain thought peace was death.”
He fell to his knees directly on the rain-slicked stones of the terrace, not caring about the icy water soaking through his jeans, not caring about his dignity.
“I am so sorry,” Ben wept, bowing his head toward the ground, his shoulders shaking with uncontainable grief. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness. I don’t deserve to sleep in that house. But please... please don’t erase me from your life. Don’t make me a stranger to Miles and Sadie. If you want a divorce, I will sign it. If you want me to leave New York, I will go. But please know that every second of every day for the rest of my life, I will love you. Only you.”
Laura stood motionless beneath the warm porch light. The wind whipped strands of hair across her face.
She remembered the sixteen-year-old boy in the clinic holding her hand, crying because she had taken a beating for him. She remembered the twenty-four-year-old man who had stood at an altar in a modest church, promising before God that he would spend every breath honoring her sacrifice.
He had wandered. He had looked at an illusion and nearly burned their castle to the ground.
Slowly, deliberately, Laura walked out from beneath the shelter of the glass awning. She stepped straight into the freezing, torrential rain. Her slippers were instantly ruined. Her thick wool sweater was soaked in seconds.
She stopped right in front of him.
May you like
Ben looked up through the curtain of rain, his face streaked with tears and water, looking at her with an agony so profound it looked like death.
Laura reached down with both hands, grabbed the collar of his soaked gray fleece, and pulled him up to his feet.
