Belonging Read online

  "You must be tired," she tried again. "There are clean sheets in your room—I wasn't sure if you'd want to move into your parents' room or not, but they're all clean—"

  "What are you doing here?" he asked again in an outright insulting tone, as if he thought she might have been stealing or something equally odious.

  "I-I just wanted the house to be clean and comfortable for you when you got home." She wanted to tell him just how awful it had been for her, how it had felt like decades since she'd seen him, but she didn't want to blubber all over him. Especially not this version of him.

  And she hadn't really seen him now, either, even though he was standing not fifteen feet away from her.

  She took a step towards him, intent on remedying that, but he backed away from her, even further into the shadows.

  "No—don't come near me!" Fleur halted her advance after that single step. Lawson paused for a moment, then said, quite clearly and forcefully, "In fact, I don't want to see you here again. Our engagement is terminated. Please put my grandmother's ring on the kitchen counter as you leave. Don't come back. I neither need nor want you around, and I'll thank you not to ever come into this house again uninvited, or I won't be responsible for the consequences."

  Then he turned away from her, obviously heading for the stairs and his room, not caring in the least that he was leaving her standing there, stunned and appalled at what he'd just said so callously.

  "B-but, Lawson—what about…" Her throat was slowly closing, her world dissolving before her eyes at his words and attitude. He stopped at the bottom of the staircase, and she halted in her pursuit of him, suddenly a little frightened of him, as she never had been before.

  "What about us?" she couldn't help but ask, hearing her own plaintive question hanging in the air around them.

  "There is no 'us'!" he roared unexpectedly, nearly causing her to jump out of her skin as he turned back towards her, still shrouded in darkness. "I thought I made that crystal clear. But then, you've always been the bratty type, hanging around me when I never wanted you to, pushing yourself into my life and annoying the ever-loving crap out of me, twenty-four hours a day, from the time you were little."

  He advanced on her, catching her easily, even when she'd turned away from him to run. She never got more than that one step away, finding her front slammed up against the wall of the hallway, her arm pinned expertly up against her back as he shucked the skirt of the dress she was wearing—the one that had been his favorite before he'd left—up to her waist and even going so far as to lower the pretty panties she'd bought just for him.

  She was naked from the waist down and helpless within seconds, held fast as he began to scourge her backside with his relentless palm, spanking her much worse and with much more forceful intent than he ever had before, ignoring her cries of pain as he painted her delicate skin a fiery carmine red from top to bottom, kicking her ankles rudely apart at one point so that he could get at the untouched insides of her thighs, not allowing her to squirm away from even one of those angry smacks.

  And when he finally stopped, leaving her swollen and sorely singed, sobbing hard, he didn't stop there. He held her still, and she could feel him undressing himself behind her as she renewed her attempts to get away, but it was a lost cause. He was much too strong for her to ever win in a physical match against him.

  Then he pressed his bareness up against her own half-nakedness, making sure she could feel his desire for her. "Is this the kind of greeting you want from me, Fleur? Is this what you want from your fiancé?"

  "Lawson, please, don't do this! Please! What did I do? Why are you treating me this way? I love you!"

  He chuckled derisively when she confessed her love. "Am I handling you too roughly, Fleur? Would you prefer a little kiss and cuddle beforehand?" he asked in an almost kindly tone as he flipped her around, holding her hands above her in one of his, pressing her back to the wall and the rest of her against his nakedness, his hands roaming over her in a highly degrading fashion that she nonetheless found titillating.

  His hand in her hair, Lawson pulled her head back and kissed her. It started out angry and vengeful—nipping and biting at her tender lips and tongue, but he found—as much as he didn't want to—that he couldn't quite pull it off entirely, and it melded into a kiss that meant entirely too much to the both of him.

  But Lawson woke to the reality of the situation mid-kiss, his mouth still slanted across hers as he reached out with his other hand to hit the light switch for the hall, bathing the two of them in stark, white light, and revealing the truth of his current existence in the most shocking manner he could have managed besides stealing into her bedroom at night and being the living embodiment of the boogeyman.

  Fleur had closed her eyes when the kiss had become more gentle and loving, but she had opened them when he flipped on the light—and she screamed at what she saw.

  She couldn't help it. She didn't mean to, of course, but the sight of him—unprepared, as she was—was truly frightening.

  The flawless, handsome young man who had indulged her and spanked her and been deeply in love with her before he left was no more.

  In his place was a man who looked, in places, as if he was wearing a grotesque rubber mask, most of whose right cheek was a ruddy, uneven mix of untouched and badly damaged tissue that tugged the corner of his mouth down with it and into it, as if it had been badly burned in some areas and not in others. Another long, red groove was carved from the left top of his forehead—just beneath the full head of black hair—now much longer and more unkempt than she had ever seen it—that he had somehow managed to retain—down to his left eyebrow, picking up just below it, carving its way to the top of his lip and curling that up just a bit.

  He didn't seem insulted at her reaction—quite the contrary—he was smiling. "And this is just the beginning of the horror show, my dear," he said, as if he truly relished shocking her like this.

  He stepped away from her, and she was treated to a sight she'd never seen—every bit of him was on display, but he was far from what would have been his former glory. Despite that he still retained the Y shape he'd always had, his shoulders still incredibly broad as they always had been, she couldn't seem to force her eyes away from the small pink, odd shaped scars that were scattered across the plated muscles of his chest, to the round, puckered depressions on his stomach and hip that were obviously bullet wounds, which led her to the shriveled mass of what had once been solid muscle that made up his badly damaged right thigh—complete with large spots of missing chunks of flesh that had been sewn up by someone who apparently had little knowledge of or skill at doing such things.

  Lawson even turned around, so she could get a load of his bare back, hearing her exclaim in disgust as she took in the crisscross scars that decorated it, the larger, uglier bullet exit wounds, the divots in his buttocks that had nothing to do with dimples, and the small scars that flowed in a trail down the backs of his thighs and calves.

  Not even his feet had been spared.

  Then he turned back around suddenly.

  "Don't miss this, either!" he waved his left arm at her, and it looked much like his right thigh did—a withered mass of ugly red scar tissue, with pieces carved out of various parts of it, where it had once bulged with muscle, and mottled, discolored, uneven skin all the way down into his fingers. "This is as high as I'll ever be able to raise it again. I'll walk with a limp for the rest of my life, and I'll never look any more gorgeous than I do now. Aren't you just dying to marry me, my little Petal?" he asked, leering down at her, shoving his face near hers to deliberately scare her even more as he taunted her.

  But he let go of her as he did so, and she took the opportunity to run before he changed his mind, and she could hear him walking—limping heavily—behind her, calling after her, "Give us another kiss, Fleur! Remember, I'm your fiancé! Not so eager, now, are you? The love of your life has come back to haunt your nightmares, Fleur! Don't you want to marry Frankenstein's monst
er?" he fairly screamed after her.

  He followed her out onto the veranda, yelling at her as she ran away blindly into the night, telling her never to come back or he wouldn't stop at just spanking her, jeering at her and threatening her long after she was too far away to hear him but wanting to do it up right, so that she wouldn't even think of returning.

  When she was well and truly gone, he limped slowly back into the house, closing and locking the door behind him. He ignored the pot of stew that bubbled away on the stove and, instead, headed for the bottle of good Irish whiskey that he knew that his father had kept hidden in the bookcase from his tea totaling mother.

  The old man didn't fail him in his hour of need, and he toasted his parents on the first huge shot, toasted the men he'd lost on the second, cursing the doctors and nurses and fellow soldiers who had saved him on the third.

  And on the last, before he allowed sleep to finally claim him, he toasted her, the only women he had ever loved, whom he had successfully driven away from him tonight, for her own good. He was hideous and should never have been allowed to live. But they were doing wonderful things with modern medicine nowadays, and he was considered to be a miracle—a success, his surgeon had told him happily.

  He had decked the man with his good right hand.

  Luckily, he wasn't technically in the Army any longer when that happened, or he might have gotten his wish for striking a fellow officer.

  Unfortunately, he wasn't that lucky.

  Instead, he was forced to come home to live out what remained of his life alone, on a meager Army pension, hidden away from everyone, lest he frighten women and small children with his appearance.

  And he intended to make sure it was a short one.

  For that, he realized, as her shocked and horrified face floated before him hauntingly, he was going to need more—and cheaper—booze.

  IT WAS STILL EARLY when she burst through the door, closing it tightly behind her and locking it, as if she did think that the boogeyman was chasing her, which was something—when she came to her senses—she was thoroughly ashamed to have done—the running and the locking and the thinking of him as some sort of monster.

  "What's up, lass?" her father asked, turning on the kitchen light. "I'm surprised to see you home so early. But is he not feeling well? Did he head to bed?"

  At the sight of his daughter's ashen, shocked face, Patrick crossed the room and pulled her into a bear hug. "Are you all right, my flower?"

  She was shaking as if she'd seen a ghost.

  "Frannie! Come in here and help me see to your child! She's trembling fit to fall apart in front o' me eyes!"

  Her mother appeared seconds later, fussing about her, sitting her down at the kitchen table and brewing a pot of tea, which she firmly believed cured all ills.

  When she'd had most of a cup of the wonderfully hot, sweet stuff, her mother asked, in a tone that didn't seem surprised, "Did it not go quite as you'd planned, child?"

  At that, their youngest and dearest dissolved into tears. "Did he hurt you, Fleur?" was the only question either of them asked, and it was her father asking it.

  She lied—not without a certain amount of guilt—and said, "No, Poppa."

  "Do you want to talk about it?" her mother asked wisely.

  Fleur shook her head slowly, her eyes on the hands that she was wringing in her lap. "I'd rather not, right now, if you don't mind."

  Her mother cupped her cheek as the tears began again. "Of course not, darlin'. Why don't you go upstairs and climb into bed? I'll bring you a wee draught to help you sleep in a few minutes."

  "Thank you, Mama," she said with a watery smile, rising to head towards the stairs and the comfort of her room.

  "It was bound to happen," she heard her father say. "She built that reunion up in her mind, and no man comes back from war unscathed."

  "She's still wearing his ring."

  "That doesn't mean anything. She's here, instead of there, with him."

  "Devon did mention that one time—when Fleur was out of the room—that he'd had a letter from Law that he found—how did he put it? Disturbing, I think he said. I wonder if that was what it was about—that he was no longer interested in our girl?"

  What letter? Fleur wondered, shimmying out of her dress and letting it lie there in a pool of pretty fabric, wondering if she should just burn it. It was his favorite, after all, and that didn't mean anything to her anymore.

  This was the first time she was hearing anything about a letter. And why, if he was going to write one, would he send it to Devon and not to her?

  After her evening ablutions, she sat in front of the mirror of her vanity and brushed her hair, the diamond that was still on her left hand catching the light and sparkling, as if mocking her. She stopped and looked at it, never having imagined ever taking it off again once she'd let him put it on her.

  But since he so clearly no longer wanted her to have it, she'd get it back to him somehow—although she certainly wasn't going to deliver it herself.

  No, she'd get Devon to do that—once she'd made him tell her what that letter had said, the one he'd obviously kept from her, but told her parents at least a little about.

  For now, though, she took it off. She couldn't bear wearing a symbol of the love between them that apparently no longer existed, at least on his part. She tucked it into the ring box he'd given it to her in and put it in the top drawer of her vanity.

  A soft knock on her door saw her mother delivering the small tipple glass of the whiskey she'd promised, and of course, the first thing she noticed was that she was no longer wearing her ring.

  Frannie O'Meara caught her daughter's hand and kissed the now bare finger. "There'll be other loves, my dear. I promise you that."

  She didn't mean to, but Fleur dissolved into tears upon hearing that sentiment, even though she knew it was meant to comfort her. It just struck her wrong at the moment.

  Her mother tucked her into bed like she had when she was little, sitting on the bed and holding her until she'd cried herself to sleep—in her mind, laying inventive curses on Lawson Fields' head the entire time for hurting her little girl like this.

  CHAPTER 3

  P atsy McClaren's beau had died in Cambrai, one of the earliest battles of the war. Unlike many women who took to their beds to mourn their losses, Patsy—who had trained as a nurse's aide—up and went to France to see if she could be of any assistance, ending up as a military nurse. As soon as the war was over, she was sent home—even quicker than most men.

  Patsy was one of Fleur's best friends, and she arrived on her doorstep the very next day, expecting to find a house aflutter with the excitement of wedding preparations. What she'd stepped into couldn't possibly have been any further from that.

  Her friend was upstairs, in bed, at eleven in the morning, where she never was unless she was practically at death's door. There was a pall over the house, as if Lawson had died instead of just returned. Although her parents treated her as one of their own, as they always had, they were little help with the situation, unwilling to discuss Fleur's private life, even with her best friend.

  So, she'd taken off her hat and coat, handed them both to Mr. O'Meara and ventured upstairs, half expecting that they would stop her, but they didn't, and she was then emboldened to complete her journey. Perhaps a friend's ear—and shoulder—would be exactly what Fleur needed.

  She knocked softly at the door and, without waiting for an invitation, opened it.

  Fleur wasn't asleep, as Patsy had worried she might be. Instead, she was sitting at her vanity, sobbing softly, hunched in on herself, a small, sad ball of complete and utter misery.

  Despite the questions that she was dying to ask, Patsy swept in like a vengeful angel and gathered her friend into her arms, whispering, "You cry as long as you'd like, sweetie, and then we'll have a long talk, like we always do."

  They ended up on her bed, surrounded by pillows, as if they were having a sleepover. Patsy reached over and took Fleur'
s hand, noting that she was still weeping, if more quietly. "So, suppose you tell me what happened? I know you were going to surprise him with a clean house and a warm meal. Was he not happy that you'd done that?"

  Fleur chuckled softly, humorlessly. "If only it was that simple."

  "Well, then, what is it that's complicated? Maybe I can help?"

  "I doubt it."

  But Patsy wasn't having any of her reluctance. "At the very least, won't it help to talk about it? I bet it's something you don't want to tell your ma about."

  "You got that right."

  "So?" she prompted impatiently.

  It turned out that she could not have been talking to a better person about what had transpired last night. Having been a nurse who was practically on the front lines, Patsy had seen all sorts of horrendous injuries during her stint in the military, and absolutely nothing her friend related to her seemed to shock her in the least. Instead, she merely nodded and asked pertinent questions but mostly just let Fleur get it all out with relatively few interruptions.

  When Fleur was done, Patsy gave her friend a hard hug. "Well, then, he's obviously decided that he's not pretty enough for you anymore." She gave her friend an assessing look. "Is that how you feel about it, too? It's understandable if you do—looks are important, and he was one gorgeous hunk of man."

  Fleur had been too shocked by the sight of him like that—and devastated by what he'd done and said to her—to consider the question before.

  So, she answered truthfully, "I-I don't know."

  "Well, that's the first thing to decide, because if you can't stand to look at what is now his ugly mug for the rest of your life, then he probably did you a favor by driving you away last night."

  Fleur desperately wanted to say what she knew she should say—that it wouldn't bother her in the least, that she was just happy that he had come home in one piece, but, in truth, she knew she would have to see him and spend more time with him in order to determine whether or not that was true for her. She didn't like to think of herself as a shallow person who was only concerned with someone's outward appearance, but her friend was right—whether or not anyone wanted to admit it, looks were important. And he wasn't just plain old ugly. He was frighteningly so—granted, Patsy had pointed out that he had probably been deliberate about scaring her, using his scars to his advantage to get her to run screaming from him, believing that his behavior would ensure that she wouldn't come back, but she wanted to be honest with herself—and thus him—about whether or not she'd be able to handle the reality of how he looked now.