Chapter 7: Finding Forever: Chapter 6

Despite feeling like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, Fern fell asleep fairly quickly and managed to get a few hours’ rest before the smell of coffee tantalized her into wakefulness.

She opened her eyes to a bright, unfamiliar room, delightfully decorated in fresh whites and greens. She sat up in the queen-sized bed, yawned—God, why’d she still feel utterly knackered?—and stretched, allowing herself a moment to get oriented before pushing the comforter down and sliding out of bed.

She stood quietly for a second, waiting for signs of nausea or dizziness. Her morning sickness could—contrary to the name—strike without warning at any time of day. For her it was usually worse in the afternoons leading into early evenings.

She’d had a hell of a time hiding it, first from the faculty at the catholic school where she worked for a pittance of a salary—Granger’s reasoning being that she did not need money when she already earned food and board—and then from her stepsisters, after she’d been recalled home a week ago to remain on standby in case the Hawthornes finally accepted Granger’s invitation to spend the weekend. Her stepfather had wanted her around to present a “united front” to the Hawthornes.

Fern stifled a gleeful chuckle as she considered how badly that decision had backfired on him. She still couldn’t believe that bizarre stroke of luck. She’d been desperately looking for a way to contact Cade Hawthorne and then Granger had simply offered him up to her on a silver platter.

Happy that her stomach was somewhat stable this morning, she threw back her shoulders and padded to the window to open the shutters and then gasped at the sight that met her eyes. It was gray and misty outside, but she could still see enough to recognize that this apartment was pretty high up on the mountain, with ocean views that would undoubtedly be spectacular once the mist lifted. She hadn’t really spent a lot of time in Clifton, but her stepsisters loved it and would often come here to see and be seen.

She was excited at the prospect of taking a walk down on the beach later. For a second she wondered how she would convince Granger to let her roam around unaccompanied, when she remembered that she no longer had to answer to Granger. That she could simply go. She felt a curl of excitement in the pit of her stomach and gave a disbelieving little huff of laughter.

She checked the time on her phone—which had been on do not disturb mode since she’d run off with the Hawthornes—and groaned when she realized that it wasn’t even eight am yet. She’d barely slept five hours. No wonder she still felt exhausted. But she was up and awake, and unlikely to fall back asleep again now even if she tried.

She left her bedroom to walk into the open living and kitchen area. The space was dominated by the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors which offered an uninterrupted panoramic view of the ocean. Well, it would on a clear day, today all she saw was mist and that was okay too. It was atmospheric and beautiful in its own way.

Cade was in the kitchen, standing beside a gleaming state of the art coffee machine. One of those intimidating things with all the bells and whistles that could make anything from your bog-standard black coffee to lattes, cappuccinos, and hot chocolates. He was fully dressed in yet another three-piece suit—this one navy blue with a pale blue tie—freshly shaved and recently showered if his damp, neatly combed hair was any indication.

For someone who must have got even less sleep than her—what with him having showered, dressed, and made the coffee already—he looked disgustingly alert.

He was casually propped up against the kitchen counter, legs crossed, while he sipped from his mug of steaming coffee. He was staring out into the grayness, seemingly lost in thought, but Fern’s presence startled him into meeting her gaze.

She froze beneath that intense regard. Not sure what to say to him. The rings on her left hand felt like a heavy burden this morning, weighing her down.

“Good morning,” she croaked, uncertain of his mood.

He nodded, not speaking, staring at her over the rim of his mug as he took another long sip from his brew. Fern became abruptly aware that she was barefoot and in her sleep T-shirt. It wasn’t very revealing, a simple, mid-thigh, white cotton, men’s T-shirt—a hand-me-down from her former friend’s ex-boyfriend. It was actually one of the more boring tees in the collection.

Fern still felt exposed in the garment though and crossed her arms over her chest and curled her toes self-consciously against the hardwood floor.

“You want some coffee?” he finally broke his silence to ask.

“I’d love some, but I haven’t seen a doctor yet. About the baby?” His eyes frosted over and she felt his emotional and mental retreat. She continued doggedly, her voice trailing off at the end as she said, “So I’m not sure I can have any… uhm, y’know, caffeine?”

“How’d you get that scan if you haven’t seen a doctor yet?”

“After a missed period, nausea, mood swings, swollen and tender breasts—” She blushed when his eyes fleetingly dipped toward her breasts, before he dragged them determinedly back up to her face. “And two positive home pregnancy tests. Which—let me tell you—were not easy to obtain in a place where my every move was watched like a hawk, I snuck out to a walk-in clinic for confirmation. That’s when I got the scan. They confirmed the pregnancy, handed over some pamphlets about prenatal care as well as options on whom to reach out to if I couldn’t keep or have the baby. They also referred me to several OBGYNs and advised me to have some other tests to rule out, y’know…” She flushed and shifted her shoulders uncomfortably. “To rule out STDs and stuff.”

Cade tugged at his collar, sharing her discomfort with the subject matter. He felt like a dumb teenager. He’d used a condom for God’s sake, this was not a conversation they should even be having.

Yet here they were.

“You weren’t a student,” he said choosing not to address—or think of—anything else just yet. “Why were they still watching you like a hawk?”

He was immediately annoyed with himself for asking. He didn’t want to know more about her than absolutely necessary.

Fern moved toward the kitchen counter and climbed onto one of the high barstools, coming dangerously close to giving him a panty flash. He quickly averted his eyes and when he looked back at her after a moment, she’d placed her elbows on the marble countertop and propped her chin in her hands.

“Because my stepfather paid them to,” she informed with a shrug. “They were nothing more than glorified babysitters, and I was their unwilling hostage.”

His jaw tightened but he chose not probe any further.

Fern knew she must seem like an absolute doormat to him. It embarrassed her, how completely under Granger’s control she’d been.

She lowered a hand to trace a pale green vein on the white marble countertop, ashamed now by how very little power she’d had in her life. And she now—for the first time since making this arrangement—wondered how much more of it she’d ceded to Cade.

“I borrowed the money,” she admitted, her voice soft and self-conscious. “From a student. For the train fare to the clinic. I didn’t want to go to the clinic in town, everybody would know. I had to find a way to get to Bern and have it done there.”

His eyebrows lowered into a formidable frown.

“Why borrow money? You were working for the school, right?”

She laughed, the sound devoid of any humor. “They let me to stay because it was convenient to my stepfather. He paid them to keep me there. My job? Purely made up. I was allowed to stand in the classroom, hand out assignments, write notes on the whiteboard. I worked for room and board and earned a small weekly salary for personal items. Honestly? I don’t think the arrangement was even legal. The salary was barely enough for even a return train ticket from Rapperswil to Bern.”

She covered her face with her hands and heaved a sigh into her palms.

“I must seem like such a loser to you.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I’m beginning to comprehend just how much courage it must have taken for you to come to me the other night.”

The words were delivered in such a carefully neutral, unemotional tone that it took Fern a second to recognize that he’d paid her a compliment.

“Yeah, it takes a lot of guts to sneak out of your room and slide a letter under somebody’s door,” she said dismissively and his eyes narrowed.

“Don’t do that.” This time there was censure in his voice and in the thinning of his lips. “Don’t trivialize what you did. It was a huge step, and it altered the course of your life.”

“Cade, I swapped masters. That’s all.”

His eyes snapped dangerously, and he jerked upright at her words. She’d offended him. She could tell. She wasn’t even sure why she’d said it. Except that she really felt like she’d exchanged one man dictating her life for another.

“How the fuck can you say that?” he asked, his voice tight, his back and shoulders rigid with tension. “I have no interest in controlling your every move, Fern. You’re so used to being managed that you’ve failed to recognize that you’re now the mistress of your own fate. I have your mother’s company and that’s all I’ll ever want from you. You will soon have a hundred and fifty million pounds in your bank account, to do with whatever the fuck you want. You also own several properties in about eight different countries on three separate continents, including this one.”

She blinked at him, the reality of her situation finally starting to sink in, and she felt the beginnings of a soft, hesitant smile tug at her lips.

“You’re free, Fern… if you chose to, you could walk out of that door in just a few short weeks, and all of that will be out there waiting for you. But if we continue with this charade for a while longer, if you leave no fucking doubt in anyone’s mind that this marriage is real—nobody will ever take what’s yours again.”

“Why would you do this for me?” she asked on a broken, uncertain whisper and he signed impatiently.

“Come on, Fern. You know that I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me, for HC&E, because if there’s no doubt about our marriage, there’s also no doubt about my claim to Lambecrete, and that’s all I’m really after.”

“Right.”

Cade was having a hard time looking at Fern in that too-short T-shirt. At the same time, he was also having a very hard time looking away from her… because the garment wasn’t as modest as she likely believed it to be.

The fabric was thin from continual use, almost threadbare in spots. It left little to the imagination the way it lovingly cupped the shape of her small, braless breasts, outlining her hard little nipples in sharp relief every time she inhaled and it was distracting as all hell.

His eyes drifted from her long, remarkable hair, which was loosely twisted into a thick braid and fell down her back to just above her pert round arse. Then his gaze helplessly trailed over the naked, silken expanse of her slender shapely legs and soft thighs. He took in all of these details with covert, stolen glances. Helplessly entranced by everything about her. Even her fucking perfect pink toes, with their neat little nails sweetly adorned with clear, shiny polish, were diverting and Cade hated that he’d noticed them. That he’d noticed any of it.

It reminded him of the night they’d met, when he’d found himself oddly fascinated by her, even attracted to her… but he should know better now. Should know that the attraction wasn’t real, that they weren’t compatible, that all it could ever lead to was disappointment.

And yet… he still felt himself tempted to touch her flawless, silken skin, to see if it was as velvety soft as he remembered. Her lush mouth still captivated him and he tried to recall what it felt like to kiss her, how those naturally plump lips had tasted. But he was drawing a blank and he knew it was because he hadn’t kissed her enough that night. Not enough and not properly.

He’d taken her virginity without even giving her a decent kiss and that was fucking egregious. Part of him—the dumb, prideful part that lacked common sense—wanted a do-over. Wanted to prove to her and him that they could work. That they could be spectacular together. But the other part of him—the sensible part—knew that he was fooling himself. That they didn’t have the chemistry required to be spectacular…

He deliberately diverted his gaze to the mug in his hand, idly considering refreshing his coffee, while he contemplated everything she’d just revealed to him about her personal life.

She didn’t see it. Didn’t grasp how brave she truly was. She hadn’t told him much, but it was enough for him to glean how completely that fucker had stripped her of her agency and independence. He’d believed her a doormat, but she’d been surviving the only way she could.

He recalled her saying she’d once tried to get away from Abernathy but it had ended badly. He now wondered exactly what had happened. But he could imagine. A sheltered woman like Fern trying to survive out in the world without any real-life experience and absolutely no money, was a recipe for disaster.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I could fix us some breakfast.”

He tilted his head, assessing her eager expression. “You can cook?”

She laughed quietly.

“Don’t look so skeptical, Cade.” He felt an unfamiliar, wrenching sensation in his chest whenever she used that name. It was unsettling, jarring… but not entirely unpleasant. “I spent my school holidays hiding in the kitchen and learning to cook from about three different master chefs over the years.”

“Hiding? Why?”

“You’ve met Toni and Allie, right?”

He shuddered as he remembered her awful stepsisters. “Yeah?”

She shrugged in a there you have it way and he studied her quiet contemplatively.

“That bad, huh?” he asked softly.

“They weren’t kind. Things went better for me when I stayed out of their way.”

Cade’s hand clenched around his mug and he forced himself to loosen his grip. The way she spoke about these things, like they were no big deal, just normalizing cruelty because to her it had been normal. It was disturbing, infuriating, and so fucking sad it made him want to punch something.

“So? Breakfast?”

“Sure,” he said, not certain why he agreed when he never ate breakfast. She just seemed so eager to do it and he didn’t want to see her face fall in disappointment when he refused.

“Bacon and eggs? I make decent French toast or flapjacks if you want something along those lines instead?”

“Surprise me,” he muttered. His phone chimed and he dug it out of his pocket, swiping to read the alert that had just appeared on his notification screen.

“The news of our marriage just went live,” he informed her and she tensed.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“You okay?”

“Sure,” she said, her voice filled with false bravado. “I mean we knew this was happening today, right? Do we have to do anything? Interviews and stuff, I mean?”

“Nah, we just got married, we don’t have to do a damned thing we don’t want to. We’re on our honeymoon.”

He was gratified when his words deepened her smile enough to produce the world’s cutest fucking dimple on her right cheek. What the fuck? How had he not known that was there? Where had it even come from? He stared at it for a moment—mystified by its charm—when it disappeared, just completely blinked out of existence as if it had never been.

He nearly snarled in resentment, feeling as if someone had snatched a hard-earned prize from him.

“What’s wrong?” The uncertainty in her soft voice snatched him back to reality and he clenched his jaw before shaking his head abruptly.

“Nothing I just—” He stopped, at a total loss. “I have to send a few emails. I’ll be on the patio. Let me know when breakfast is ready. Or if you need my help with anything.”

He shoved away from the kitchen counter, dropping his mug in the sink, before beating a hasty retreat through the patio doors.

It was a little after eight on a Saturday morning and the world still felt eerily quiet, probably thanks to the blanketing mist. He inhaled the damp air deeply, appreciating the tang of brine in the air. He could hear the muted sounds of traffic and the louder crash of waves from the restless ocean. It was a chilly, thanks to the mist, late spring morning in November, and he wasn’t appropriately dressed for the dampness, but—he darted a quick glance back through the windows—he didn’t relish the prospect of going inside again to face his brand new wife so soon.

Instead, he sank onto one of the massive, comfortable lounge chairs beside the glass-edged infinity pool. The cushion was wet, which was an annoyance, because that meant his arse was wet too. He gritted his teeth, cognizant of the fact that he’d probably ruined this suit, but still stubbornly—cravenly?—refused to head back inside.

His phone chimed again, and he dug it out of his pocket, keen for the distraction. He swiped at the screen and then fought down a surge of wild joy—wet arse instantly forgotten—when it opened up to his sibling group chat and he saw his brother Nox’s name on screen.

Cade stared at the message for a long moment, stupidly happy to see his brother’s irate question. Nox hadn’t interacted in the group in over a year. And none of them had spoken to him one-on-one for even longer than that.

Cade had called both Kenny and Gideon last night to inform them in person of his marriage, but knew that Nox wouldn’t answer his phone and so hadn’t even attempted to contact him.

Before he could respond though a message from Gideon popped onto the screen.

Cade sighed, Gideon still nursed a grudge about the time he’d learned about Nox’s engagement via Instagram.

Cade had never been great at interacting in the sibling group. As was the case when they were all in the same room, he rarely managed to get a word in edgewise, and when he did, it was always in attempt to deflect the inevitable tension between Gideon and Nox who got along like oil and water.

He started to type something when Gideon’s next inflammatory response flashed up.

Shit. Because Nox had left shortly after doing just that to Gideon and Beth’s relationship, the two men had never really had the opportunity to talk it out and resolve the hurt feelings between them.

Cade, his stomach roiling with tension—he’d always hated it when his siblings fought—lifted his phone and, as usual, typed the first dumb thing that came to mind.

Wow. That was ridiculous even for him. But he’d just wanted the fucking bickering to stop.

Cade’s lips lifted. Well, at least when they were mocking him, they weren’t fighting each other. He could deal with that.

Cade smiled at the screen.

An uncle twice over.

Cade’s heart stuttered as that reality abruptly hit him. God. Suddenly he wanted to tell his siblings about Fern’s pregnancy. They’d each come running to him so many times over the years to tell him their secret hopes and fears. But he’d never been one to confide in them. And now he felt himself desperately needing to speak to them about Fern and the baby.

Fern had made Cade feel like the pregnancy was something that was happening to her and that he was just incidental to the entire event. As a result, he wasn’t even sure if he was entitled to have feelings about it. Conflicted and ambivalent though those feelings may be.

He still had Fern’s ultrasound picture. He’d smoothed out the creases as best he could, before neatly folding it and slotting it into his credit card holder. She hadn’t asked for it back and he assumed she probably had a copy somewhere. An older cousin to Gideon and Beth’s future child. If things were normal, they’d grow up together, play together, probably be as close as siblings. But he wasn’t certain if they would ever have that opportunity.

He realized that the sibling chat had moved on without him and he felt like he’d missed his opportunity to bring up Fern’s pregnancy.

Gideon and Nox, after their prickly start, were having the semblance of a real conversation. Kenny was teasing them, happy to have her big brothers all talking again—for however long it lasted. Cade, even though his marriage had been the catalyst to Nox finally reaching out again, was once more relegated to the sidelines. But he was happy to merely watch them chat.

The question must have surprised his siblings as much as it did Cade because for a very long moment the screen remained blank. He blinked back moisture and swallowed down a surge of emotion at the thought of seeing Nox again after such a long absence—as soon as tomorrow. They’d known he was in the province, of course, but Cade hadn’t even considered that he could be just a short drive away, for God’s sake. Cade was about to reply when Gideon beat him to it.

None of them said anything after that—as if they were all as afraid as Cade that the fragile peace would shatter if they dared type another word—and the conversation ended on that note.

Cade pocketed his phone and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Cade?” The soft voice coming from behind him, startled him and he jumped a little before jerking his head around to meet his wife’s concerned gaze. She’d changed into another one of those unimaginative skirt and blouse combos, and he recalled her admitting that she hadn’t even been allowed to choose her own clothes.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her lovely eyes soft with concern.

“Uh… yes. I’m fine.”

“You should come in and change into some dry clothes, it’s freezing and damp out here. Breakfast will be done in about ten minutes.”

“Right.” He nodded curtly, impatient with himself for having retreated to the wet patio in the first place. He had a perfectly serviceable—dry and warm—study. It was only day one and it already felt like this damned marriage was starting to strip him of his common-sense.