She closed her eyes and Fiona saw the tears drop silently down her cheeks.
Then she opened them and her fists and Fiona saw she held her breath.
Prentice stared at her hands.
Then his jaw got tight and he closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he ran his thumbs gently along the white marks and muttered tenderly, “Baby.”
Bella’s head dropped forward in a sad expression of humiliation and defeat.
Prentice’s mouth went to her ear.
“You didn’t have these before,” he whispered but she didn’t reply. “Elle, answer me. You didn’t have these twenty years ago. Please, tell me I didn’t f**king miss this.”
“I didn’t have them,” she replied to the sink. “I started to…” she stopped. “Later. After you,” she drew in a breath and whispered, “it started when I lost you.”
Fiona didn’t know if that was what he wanted to hear or not and she couldn’t tell because he shoved his face in her neck and, taking her hands with his still at her wrists, he wrapped his arms tightly around her middle.
Bella’s head came up and Fiona could see she was still crying.
“They’re mine,” Prentice said to her neck.
Bella’s body twitched and her face went blank.
“What?” she breathed.
His mouth went back to her ear and his voice was tortured when he said, “They’re mine. My responsibility.”
Fiona felt a heavy weight hit her ghostly chest.
Bella felt the same. Fiona could see it with a look.
“What do you mean?” Bella whispered.
“You’d no’ have these marks, you’d no’ carry this pain if I’d no’ walked out of that f**king room.”
“Prentice, you can’t –”
She stopped speaking when he shook her with his hands at her wrists.
“You’d no’,” he growled fiercely.
“Pren,” she whispered softly.
“No.”
“I can’t have you thinking –”
“No.”
“Pren, please.”
“No. There would be no dreams, I’d have seen to that. Your father would no’ be in our lives. And you’d have had your f**king family, I would see to that too. I don’t give a f**k if we adopted or I had to buy you a family. I would have done it, whatever you wanted, to make you happy. Whatever you wanted, Elle. Anything. I’d have done whatever it took in order to give it to you. That’s how much I loved you.”
“Stop talking.”
“But I didn’t, I walked out of that room.”