Chapter 17: Étienne - Crushing His Mountain Flower

I was back for forgiveness. I was back for a second chance. I was back on the Savatier land and my brother Hugo had his gun aimed at my throat.

The light was blinding, burning as I stared up into the sun.

“How the fuck are you getting on to this property?”

I couldn’t even watch the man with the gun pointed at me, because my eyes were anxiously scanning the yard for Léonie’s beautiful pregnant shape.

“You must help me plead my case to her,” I rasped. “I know you can’t be seriously trying to steal my nine-months-pregnant wife from me.”

“Why would I do favors for a man who has keep me jailed in the lodge for years?” Hugo asked in a darkly amused tone.

That was another bitter pill.

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

“What the hell do you have to bargain with, brother?” he snorted, waving me toward the gate with his gun. “I’m free because of Léonie. Not you.”

“I made a mistake agreeing to lock you up.”

Hugo’s lips were twisted, and how the hell could I blame him for hating me? I’d feel the same way.

“Let me guess, Mme told you I was a liability to the family?” Hugo asked. “That no one would respect us if they knew you had a brother with a cane? Funny, how much healthier I feel now that I’m not under her control.”

“I want to make that right,” I said. “I want to fix what I fucked up.”

“There is no way you can fix everything she took from me. In fact, you’re only living because the Savatier don’t like a mess. Now get out of here.”

“Not without seeing my wife!”

And then I did see her—to my horror there was a frown on her face as she walked outside, one hand on her lower back, the other on her massively swollen beautiful belly.

“Léonie. How are you?”

I didn’t say anything about what was on my forehead, but I knew she saw it.

Her eyes were cool, assessing, then flicking impersonally past me like I was just a part of the scenery.

This wasn’t the same girl who had followed me trustingly, the same girl who would have stepped out into the sky because I said I’d catch her.

“Ooh, oh! Hugo!”

Her eyes closed tight as she stopped to catch her breath.

“I think I’m going into labor. The contractions—they’re coming faster now. The last one was less than five minutes ago.”

“Let’s go inside,” Hugo said instantly. “I’ll call the doctor. He’ll bring everything we need.”

He hurried her inside, then down the hall to a room that had been clearly prepared for this—a big ball for her to gently bounce on, different chairs and beds and even a large bathtub.

Léonie gripped the side of the bed and groaned. There were beads of sweat on her forehead as Hugo rushed a cup of ice over to her.

“Eyes on me,” I said, not sure if I should rub her back or what to give her. “You’ve got this.”

“No—Léonie—eyes on me,” Hugo ordered firmly, and she popped her blue eyes open and fixed them on him. “You’ve got this. Your body is strong and powerful. You can do it. Just like we said. Breathe, girl. Breathe. In and out, just like we practiced.”

“Léonie, no, I’m here for you—breathe—” I tried to say.

And I realized as my knees gave way and I barely missed hitting the bottom of the bed.

That I hadn’t been the one practicing breathing with her.

I didn’t have the first fucking suggestion for her.

That it wasn’t me at all. It had been my brother to support her through one of the most vulnerable times in her life.

If I thought every moment leading up to this was my lowest, it was still nothing to the feeling of watching my wife in labor and have her not look at me once.

I wasn’t her rock—my brother was.

Her eyes never wavered from his, only breaking their eye contact when she closed hers in pain.

The doctor came. Nurses came. They set up a bewildering amount of equipment.

And I didn’t recognize them. Didn’t recognize any of them. Didn’t know anything.

Even though this was my wife. My baby.

I waited in an agony, my voice unheeded, unremembered, unneeded.

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Hour after hour her labor progressed, Hugo encouraging her to go into different positions, bounce on the ball, then she ended up on all fours on the bed.

And I wasn’t needed at all. She didn’t care that I was here for her.

The last thing I remembered was the sight of a dark, jet-black head of hair emerging as my wife pushed, clutching Hugo’s hand so tightly that the veins stood out under her pale white skin.

My child, my son.

“Léonie—“ I gasped, but there was an arm around my throat and I felt Mano choking me.

“What do you want me to do with him—” was the last thing I heard before all was darkness.

I woke on the forest floor again, staggering to my knees on the other side of the gate.

Locked away from my wife and child.

Mano was sitting on a tree stump smoking.

“I could have fucking killed you while you were out,” he said. “No one could have blamed me for killing a man with léger written on his forehead. Fucking lunatic.”

“Why didn’t you, then?” I asked savagely, grabbing the cigarette and taking a long, painful drag.

My head was throbbing and my lungs burned.

“Our fucking weak brother Hugo had to tell me some story about when we were kids—how I fell into some ravine and everyone was looking for me—you were the one to find me and pull me out.”

I looked away.

“Hugo is soft,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mano said.

But I remembered it. Later I’d acted like it hadn’t mattered—like plucking your little brother out of a deep ravine didn’t affect me at all.

But at the time—tears had sprung to my eyes and when I wiped them away with the back of my hand Mme had frowned at me. I couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5, but I still remembered it clearly.

“No tears,” she’d told me. “Those aren’t for Bastides.”

“You are welcome for dragging you out of that ravine, though,” I said, shaking away the memories. “Idiot.”

I heard the low snort of his laughter.

“What’s your plan?”

“I don’t know.”

What could I bring the woman who needs nothing from me?

I turned to face the house.

And—through the bars I saw her.

It was like the inverse of what I had done—now I was barred from her, me in the prison of my own making.

The curtains of her room were drawn back, and she was facing the other direction, pulling her long curly hair up into a loose bun. I would kill to get my hands on her, to be able to bury my face in her curls, take her in my arms so she melted against me.

“Léonie,” I whispered.

She couldn’t hear me, but I wondered if somehow she could feel my presence, with the way she suddenly turned, scanning the treeline.

At first I was too busy looking at her beautiful profile, the elegance of her long neck, to notice.

And when I did, my gut dropped and it didn’t stop.

Her belly—her swollen, bursting belly—was gone. Gone! I would never be able to get that time back.

Then she bent down and picked up our baby. Tiny, perfect, swaddled in a soft blue blanket, with so much thick, midnight-dark hair that it was practically a mohawk.

And as I looked at my wife holding our baby my heart began to shatter, and I let out an unearthly, inhuman howl as I clutched the gates so hard my bones began to crack. . .