Chapter 16: Finding Forever: Chapter 15

“I know. I know… I-I bought too much,” Fern stumbled over her words a couple of hours later when Cade’s brow settled into a familiar glower as he scanned the bags and boxes surrounding her when she returned home from her shopping trip a few hours later. “But I needed a bit of everything.”

His inscrutable gaze came up to meet hers and he shook his head, before saying, “Stop trying to guess my every thought. You’re inevitably wrong and it irritates the hell out of me.”

“I’m—”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he warned, cutting her off and her lips twitched in amusement.

“As I was trying to say—I’m not sure how else to interpret your clear glare of disapproval. Don’t glower and I won’t automatically assume you’re pissed off.”

His glare deepened.

“This is just how I look.”

“Aah the resting brood face strikes again,” she muttered and this time that dark frown took on a hint of confusion.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she dismissed, with a wave of her hand. “What has you looking so aggravated then?”

“I’m not aggravated,” he snapped. Then paused and acknowledged. “But—thanks to this pointless conversation—I’m getting there fast.”

His broody, disapproving gaze dropped to the packages at her feet again.

“This doesn’t look like enough stuff,” he said, his hand making an abrupt, irritated gesture in the general direction of her new purchases.

“Oh,” she said, looking down at what—to her—had been an exorbitant expense. She wasn’t accustomed to spending money, and buying designer brands from outrageously pricey stores had seemed like a huge extravagance. “This is all worth thousands.”

“From what I’ve seen of your wardrobe, it needs a complete overhaul,” Cade said with a shrug, before tugging a hand through his dark, wavy hair. “Buying enough should’ve run into the tens of thousands.”

She tried not the blanch and instead swallowed queasily at the thought of spending that much money in just a day.

“This is a good start. I’ll buy more as I go along. Beth reminded me that I’ll be needing maternity clothes soon as well—” This time there was no mistaking the dark glower that descended over his features as anything other than disapproval.

“You told her?”

Disapproval and dismay as evidenced by the alarmed rise in his voice.

“What?” she stalled, uncertain of his frame of mind.

“About the pregnancy? You told Beth?”

“It just came out. But she won’t tell Gideon. We both agreed that you should be the one to tell your siblings.”

“I’m not comfortable with you telling her in the first place.”

“I’m not going to keep my pregnancy a secret, Cade. I’m not ashamed of it. And I’ll start showing at some point, it’ll be hard to hide it then.”

“I should be the one to decide when and where my family hears this news,” he snapped, and Fern flinched before she nodded, acknowledging his point.

“I know. I’m—” The sorry hovered at the tip of her tongue and she swallowed it back, knowing it would probably only worsen his mood. “I shouldn’t have said anything, but we were chatting and I just—it was so nice to feel like I had a real friend. Someone in my corner. It just came out.”

He heaved an exhausted sigh, before once again dragging a hand through his hair, leaving it a chaotic mess of peaks and waves. Her fingers itched to smooth it, to tame it back into some semblance of order and she curled her hands into tight fists as she fought the impulse.

“Did you enjoy your afternoon?”

The change in subject surprised her, and she blinked uncomprehendingly for a few seconds, before offering him a tentative smile.

“I did. Beth is lovely and I was thinking… maybe we could invite her and Gideon to dinner sometime? I’ll cook something amazing. As you know, I’m a great cook.” In this she was confident.

His lips twitched at her boast, but he schooled them into a straight line and kept his features unreadable.

“Why are you so afraid to smile?” The words were out before she could think them through and his impassive expression morphed into yet another frown.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said, in a ridiculously stilted voice.

“And I’m sure you do. You were about to smile just then. Before you policed your lips into that tight line.”

He looked uncomfortable with her observation and tugged at his cuffs, keeping his eyes carefully averted from hers.

“Cade?” She should drop it. Fern was aware of that and she wasn’t certain why she was pressing him on this. She had no clue where this newfound audacity stemmed from. But she knew she’d regret it if she pushed him further.

“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” he said. His voice was gruff, the words reluctantly conceded.

“The wrong idea?” She was confused, not sure what—if anything—to read into those words.

“About us. I’d prefer it if we remained distant, polite acquaintances.”

“For three years?” She couldn’t quite keep the incredulity from her voice. “Why can’t we at least try to be friends?”

“To what end? I don’t need another friend, Fern.”

“I do,” she whispered, embarrassed by the throb of loneliness in her voice, but unable to disguise it in anyway.

“That’s not—” He hesitated, clearly wondering how blunt to be, but after that moment’s pause he shook his head and let her have it with both barrels. “That’s not my problem. It’s yours. I refuse to be your crutch. I don’t want to be your friend. Or your confidante. I don’t want to hear about your past, or your future aspirations. I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is getting through this marriage with as little emotional investment—from the both of us—as possible.”

She shouldn’t have asked. She should have listened to her gut and just left it alone. But she had to push him and now there was this line in the sand. One which had always been there, but which she’d kind of hoped they could overcome. But that line had become a fifty-foot wall and there was no scaling it. No tearing it down.

“I don’t need a crutch,” she denied. “Unlike you, I just happen to believe that the easiest, most adult way for us to get through this marriage—as you so quaintly put it—is to at least be on amicable terms.”

“I prefer impersonal to amicable.”

“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear.” Fern dipped her chin in a curt nod, pinching her lips together as she gathered up a few of her shopping bags. “So be it. No smiles and no friendship and no meaningful conversations. Got it.”

Cade reached for her remaining purchases and she leveled a frigid glare on him that—unbelievably—managed to freeze him in place.

“I’ll get them myself. You wouldn’t want me mistaking your helpful overture as a friendly gesture now, would you? God forbid I should misread any of your signs.”

“Perhaps I merely find it expedient to help you,” he elaborated, shaking off the ice in her voice and picking up the bags regardless of her command not to.

“Yes, of course,” she said, her tone acerbic. “The sooner my stuff is moved out of the foyer, the sooner I’ll be out of your hair. Got it.”

“My home is your home for now,” he said, exasperation once again lacing the edges of his words. “You don’t have to get out of my hair, Fern. You live here too. We just need to respect each other’s space and privacy.”

“Like I haven’t been doing that all along,” she couldn’t help but reply, weariness tugging at every word as the emotional and physical exertion of the day abruptly caught up with her.

“What’s wrong?”

Was he serious with that ridiculous question? The man had the emotional intelligence of a socially awkward gnat. And to think, Fern had once believed she was bad. Compared to her husband, she had the emotional and social aptitude of a promiscuous butterfly.

“Are you ill?” he asked and she rolled her eyes.

“I’m tired. And nauseous. I just want to get these to my room, have a hot shower, and take a nap.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Stop, please,” she said, her voice so dry it cracked. “These frantic questions are going to delude me into thinking you care. And we wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

“I care about you possibly passing out in the living room, yes. I care about potentially having to call an ambulance or doctor to our home and alerting the public that all is not as it should be with our marriage.”

“Oh please, if they should ever find out about my pregnancy, they’ll believe that all is exactly as it should be in our marriage,” she dismissed, quite proud of the scathing note in her voice. She turned her back on him and made her way to her room, acutely aware of him following closely behind her.

He didn’t step more than a foot into her bedroom, leaving her packages right inside the door.

“If you’re sure you’re alright, I’ll leave you to it,” he said, looking keen to beat a hasty retreat.

“Thank you.”

When he didn’t immediately flee, she canted her head and stared up at him inquiringly. She wished he would leave, she was sick of putting up this tough, unconcerned front. She wanted to sink onto her bed and just process the last few minutes. Maybe have a little bit of a sulk and a cry.

So why was he hovering? Why didn’t he just leave?

“I think it’s a good idea to invite Beth and Gideon over for dinner.”

God, so much had changed in the short amount of time since she’d made that suggestion that she now regretted even considering it. Having the other couple here as witnesses to the debacle that was this marriage, just felt sad and depressing now.

Her heart sank at the prospect of getting closer to Beth and Gideon, of befriending them when she knew full well that Cade would be the one to “keep” them in the divorce. It didn’t seem worth the heartache.

Cade was right, it was best to keep things impersonal. And that meant keeping his family at a distance as well. Since she was going to lose them all anyway.

She made a noncommittal noise, not wanting to get into it right now when she was so low on energy.

His piercing eyes narrowed on her face.

“What’s that sound supposed to mean?” he asked and she blinked up at him owlishly.

“It means we’ll see.”

He looked set to challenge her on that but she smothered a yawn and his eyes softened.

“You’re tired. Get some sleep, okay?”

“Soon as you leave,” she said pointedly, her words slurring slightly. She could barely keep her eyes open and she even swayed on her feet as she fought back another yawn.

God, she’d never before tired this easily. The pregnancy was certainly doing a number on her energy levels.

“Right. Shout if you need anything.”

She refrained from responding and after another uncharacteristic hesitation, Cade swiveled on his heel and strode from the room. Fern happily indulged her petty side by slamming the door behind him and then—exhaustion weighing her down—eyed her pile of shopping before shaking her head, and tugging her clothes off.

She needed sleep more urgently than anything else and—feeling half comatose already—she tugged on a Silent Hill T-shirt before crawling beneath the covers of her still unmade bed. She curled up beneath them with an exhausted sigh and tugged the comforter over her head.

She was asleep in seconds.

Cade watched in concern as Fern listlessly poked her way through her salad, picking out croutons and pineapple, which she washed down with thirsty gulps of water, while leaving everything else uneaten.

The past three days, since her shopping trip with Beth, had been strained to say the least. He barely saw her around the apartment as she did her best impression of a ghost once again. She didn’t speak to him unless she needed to and though he knew she was merely trying to respect his decree that they keep things impersonal, it was becoming harder and harder to rationalize that path of action in the face of her misery and obvious loneliness.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for them to have a more civil relationship. Anything was better than seeing her so… so fucking sad. They were out to dinner; at a restaurant she’d mentioned in passing that she’d always wanted to visit. In a desperate ploy to get some kind of reaction from her, he’d secured a booking and surprised her with this dinner tonight.

He’d informed the restaurant of Fern’s peanut allergy upfront, telephonically, by email, and by text, but he was still concerned. What if some incompetent arsehole hadn’t gotten the message and they added a peanut based ingredient?

The thought chilled his blood. But he’d deemed it worth the risk if it meant seeing her eyes light up in happy surprise.

Only, she’d barely reacted.

Now they sat in silence, still on the entrees, and Cade awkwardly cast about for something to say, while the rest of their meal stretched endlessly ahead of them.

“What did you do today?” He’d spent most of the day at their Cape Town branch troubleshooting an unforeseen emergency. It had been his first full day away from her.

“Caught an Uber to Camps Bay and walked on the beach a bit,” she intoned, in that awful lifeless voice she’d been using since Friday.

He didn’t like the thought of her roaming about in public alone, but decided to let that go for now. Best to pick his battles and he had bigger fish to fry tonight.

“Have you spoken to Beth?”

She shook her head, keeping her eyes on her plate.

“I told Gideon and the rest about your pregnancy,” he said. He’d sent the news in the group text just the day before. His siblings’ reactions had been pretty much on par with what he’d expected. Disbelief then relentless teasing. He’d asked them to keep it from their father for now.

Nox had gone quiet again since their lunch at Gideon’s place and had broken that silence only to offer a curt—and unwanted—congratulations in response to Cade’s.

Gideon and Kenny’s questions had been more probing. They’d mostly been curious about the when, with only Gideon asking—privately—how Cade felt about the development.

Cade’s reply to the question had been an honest I don’t know and Gideon had dropped the subject.

“Oh?” That brought her eyes up to his, but there was only the merest flicker of interest in her dull gaze.

He didn’t like seeing her like this. Not at all. And he blamed himself.

“Yes,” he said. “They congratulated us. Gideon told me in private afterward that Beth really enjoyed your day out last week. She was excited about possibly doing more stuff together. But apparently you haven’t been returning her calls and texts?”

“I’ll get to it,” she said, trying to suppress that enduring flicker of guilt that came up every time she thought of Beth.

“We should invite them to dinner. You wanted that, right? You can cook something spectacular.”

Her face was resolute as she met his eyes directly and said, “No, Cade. I don’t want that. Not anymore.”

“Why not?” She baffled him. What exactly did she want from him? Couldn’t she see that he was trying here? “I thought you enjoyed spending time with her.”

“I can’t…” She stopped, seeming to consider her words carefully, before continuing. “I’d rather not.”

“Fern, I know⁠—”

“Why did you bring me here?” she interrupted him abruptly and he suppressed the surge of frustration at the deliberate shift in topics.

“I thought you’d like it,” he said and she pressed her lips together in displeasure. “You talked about it, that day on the beach. Said you’d like to eat here. Tell me why you’d rather not spend time with Beth?”

He determinedly brought the subject back to the point and she slammed her fork back on the table with barely suppressed violence, causing the water in her glass to slosh a little and dampen the pristine white tablecloth.

“Because she’s married to your brother, Cade!” she snapped, abruptly losing patience. “She a real Hawthorne, not a pretender like me. She’s a loved and respected member of your family and after I leave, she will still be one of you and I’ll be alone again.” She shook her head slightly, her gaze turned inward, as she placed a palm over her abdomen and the smallest of smiles graced her lips. “No… not quite alone. I’ll have my baby. And he and I will form our own family. But my point is, allowing myself to get close to Beth will only result in heartache. For both of us. I’ve lost enough in my life. And I refuse to set myself up for even more disappointment and loss.”

Her admission troubled him, but it didn’t surprise him. He should’ve realized sooner that she felt this way. Of course, she felt this way. She struck him as someone who’d been yearning for acceptance and searching for a place to belong for most of her life.

“I didn’t mean for you to feel like you had no place here, Fern. Or to ruin the friendship you’re building with Beth. By now, I’m sure you’ve recognized that she’s not someone who toes the family line, so to speak. Whatever happens between us…”

“Separation and divorce resulting in a complete loss of contact, you mean?” she clarified succinctly and he paused for a moment as he considered her words.

“The baby…” he began, not sure why he was bringing it up. Not even entirely sure what he wanted to say after those two words.

“Won’t know you, of course,” she inserted smoothly and his lips tightened before he nodded curtly, ignoring the unfamiliar pang in the middle of his chest at that reminder.

“Right, uhm… what I meant to say is, that when the inevitable happens between you and me, Beth won’t simply write off her friendship with you. Especially not if by then, you’re close friends. That’s simply not the type of person she is. And none of us would expect her to do so either. So please, don’t let anything I said the other day, influence how you feel about her, or destroy the friendship you two were starting to build.”

“Don’t do this,” she whispered, her voice throbbing with misery and that pang in Cade’s chest intensified. He took a sip of water, wondering if it was heartburn. It didn’t feel like heartburn, it was too sharp, too acute for that.

“Fern…” He didn’t know what to say beyond that and his voice tapered off as he watched her clearly battling with her emotion.

“Please don’t be kind to me,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.” I’d prefer if you didn’t do things like this—this dinner, this conversation—it’s not impersonal. In fact, it’s downright friendly even nice… and I thought we weren’t doing friendly. Please, pick a lane and stick with it. Because this…” She flicked a hand toward the room at large, “it confuses the hell out of me.”

She lowered her gaze back to her salad, and Cade found himself utterly stymied by her words, because she was right. He was the one who’d demanded they keep things impersonal between them, yet here he was giving her friendship advice, trying to make her feel more at ease in his family. Actively contradicting himself, while Fern was trying to give him exactly what he’d demanded of her.

And just because he had discovered that what he wanted wasn’t necessarily what he liked or needed, didn’t mean he had the right to play fast and loose with her feelings.

“Get those papers off to Mike Stansfield at the Greenleaf Group before the end of business today, I want it back Monday first thing. Signed and sealed. No more delays,” Cade told Mitchell—his executive assistant—on Friday, four days after his godawful dinner with Fern.

They were at the tail end of an hour-long phone call and Cade was ready to call it a day. He’d been staring at screens for the last two hours without a break and was starting to develop a blinding headache.

He was prone to stress headaches and it generally made him irritable as all hell and if he didn’t get off this phone call soon, Mitch would bear the brunt of his bad mood. Not that the guy wasn’t used to it. But Cade tried not to be too much of an arsehole to the people who worked for and with him. That was more his dad and Nox’s style.

“That all sounds fine,” he told Mitch, after the man had double and triple checked the language of the contract. Cade just wanted to get out of this suit, take a shower, and relax on the patio with a drink. Technically, he was still on vacation but the Greenleaf contract was too important to hand off to anybody else. “Go ahead and send it. My phone will be on. Text me with any emergencies, but consider me off for the rest of the night.”

His assistant’s astonishment was palpable in the silence that followed and Cade grimaced, squeezing his nape tiredly. It wasn’t like him to explicitly state that he was unavailable. He was always available and on call. Ready to deal with whatever cropped up… day or night, twenty-four/seven. Even more so over the last couple of years since Nox had done a runner.

“Right,” Mitch said, his voice slightly raise. “Right. Of course. No problem. I’ll handle anything minor that crops up.”

Cade bloody well hoped so, else what the fuck was he paying the guy for? To be fair, Mitch wasn’t used to Cade not overseeing everything with a magnifying glass and a fine-tooth comb. He had a reputation for being exacting, a perfectionist, and not able to fully trust his team to get the job done to his standards. In that, he did take after his father.

For all intents and purposes Cade was on his honeymoon but none of his team had been at all surprised that he’d been working remotely most days since his so-called wedding.

But with things the way they were with Fern he was restless, out of sorts, unable to concentrate, and now he had this goddamn headache. He needed to switch off for just a few hours and he should be good to go again.

He disconnected the call without so much as a goodbye and powered down his devices, careful to save any work in progress. He couldn’t afford to be careless right now. Lambecrete was the vital cornerstone to the new approach Hawthorne Inc was taking in becoming an environmentally sustainable company, but there were plenty of other eggs in this basket. Greenleaf—renowned for their solar engineering solutions—was to be the latest of their acquisitions.

While his father considered this a niche product to offer future clients, Cade envisioned HC&E transitioning into a wholly green company in just a few short years. His father didn’t quite agree with that vision, but Cade knew that if they could make this work, the old man would see that it was the way forward. The positive PR alone would keep them in contracts for years.

Transforming HC&E into an environmentally sustainable company had been a long-time dream of Cade’s. He’d first introduced the concept to his father about eight years ago but the old man had dismissed it out of hand. Because Cade had been too young and inexperienced, and also as the old man had so succinctly put it, “what the hell does a lawyer know about growing a company? Stick to being the company shark. That’s what we’re paying you for.”

It had stung, but as the years had progressed, and Cade had become more involved in the operational side of things, his father had started listening to him more. He knew when to be tactful, knew how to manage the old man. How to be persuasive. When to push and when to back off.

Now it was finally all within his grasp. They had Lambecrete—no matter how Abernathy fucking bleated that they didn’t. They would soon have Greenleaf. There were others… a few more vital elements to acquire and everything Cade had worked so long for would finally come to fruition.

He couldn’t afford distractions.

Cade yanked at his tie, impatiently loosening the knot and tugging it off. He pushed up from his chair and did a few stretches before leaving his office.

It was nearly six. He hadn’t heard any movement from Fern in hours. She tended to retreat to her room in the later afternoons for a short nap, but she was usually up by now.

He groaned at the thought of Fern. Fuck, he was botching everything up with her. But he wasn’t sure how to be around her anymore. He’d felt that it was important to keep her at bay and for her to understand that he didn’t care about her anxieties, or her lack of friends, or her… her baby.

But then she’d retreated into her shell and now he wanted to pull her back out of it. Which he knew was very fucking unfair.

Especially when he liked to keep his own life clutter and chaos free. But all she had to do was be in the same room and it became all about her. About her sad past, her future ambitions, her pregnancy and her beautiful eyes, her strangely wonderful hair, her sweet, full, suckable upper lip.

Fern Lambert—no Hawthorne—was the exact type of distraction Cade was seeking to avoid.

And yet… as he passed by her door he stopped, leaning closer and straining to hear any movement or sound from the room. He wondered if she had she eaten enough today. Wondered if she’d taken her vitamins, sometimes she forgot. He wondered if he’d ever get to see her smile again, or if this emotionless, ghostlike little Fern haunting his apartment was the only version of her left to him.

Aah, fuck!

He needed to stick to his guns. If he went back on the things he’d said last week, he’d only confuse her, raise expectations, and hurt her in the long run.

He glowered at the door and his hand went up to his nape again, squeezing as he attempted to will his headache away.

He was about to move on when a muffled sound coming from inside the room gave him pause.

What was that?

He heard it again, a quiet, despairing moan and his hand was on the handle before he could think twice. Another moan, this time followed by a mumbled no had him twisting the knob and opening the door. He was in the room seconds later, stumbling over a pair of small pink and white sneakers that she’d presumably kicked off right in front of her door.

The curtains were drawn against the fading sunlight and the room was gloomy, but he could still make out the small lump beneath the covers on the bed.

Another frightened no and he was at her side in an instant. All that was visible of her was the bright fall of hair on her pillow, the rest of her was wrapped up in the thick comforter all the way up to her eyes.

She had her back to him, but then she writhed, turning enough so that he could see the agitation on her face. Her eyes were closed but she was clearly in the grips of a nightmare. A bad one.

Her breathing was coming in sharp gasps now, terrified little pants which resembled the sound someone would make if they were being hunted.

Shit.

Messy, complicated, fucking chaotic Fern… he couldn’t leave her like this. He smoothed a hand over her brow, finding it cold and clammy.

“Hey,” he whispered, hovering, not sure what to do, but hating to see her so agitated and clearly terrified. “Hey, Fern. It’s okay. You’re okay. It’s a nightmare. Wake up now.”

Cade went rigid when he heard the words Granger, please no, sprinkled in among the incoherent ramblings. It infuriated him to know that she still feared Abernathy even here.

She was supposed to feel safe in his home. Protected. Protected by Cade. Why the fuck was she still so afraid of Abernathy? Didn’t she trust Cade to keep her safe?

“He’s not here, you’re okay, Fern. Come on, wake up.”

She inhaled sharply, and for a second, he was certain he’d gotten through to her, but instead, her exhalation was a scream of pure terror that made his blood curdle and his hair stand on edge.

He impulsively toed off his shoes and lifted the comforter, to crawl in behind her. She was curled into a compact little ball and he wrapped an arm around her waist and dragged her back against his front, conforming his own lean, hard edges along the curve of her spine and tucking his knees in behind hers until he was spooning her tightly. His primary goal now to comfort her.

“Fern,” he said, his voice a harsh command directly into her ear. “Wake up.”

She jerked, and shuddered and he felt consciousness returning as the stiffness in her small body was replaced by a different kind of tension.

“Are you okay?”

She sobbed, clearly her dream still vivid in her mind.

“He took my baby. I couldn’t stop him,” she whimpered, her agitated hands plucking at his fingers on her waist. “I couldn’t stop him. I was so scared.”

“He can’t hurt you, Fern,” he promised, his voice fierce. “He has no power over you anymore. You’re safe here. He can’t hurt you and he sure as hell isn’t getting anywhere near our baby. I’ll fucking destroy him or anyone else who tries.”

She sobbed again, but some of the tension eased from her body, as her hand went to stroking the backs of his fingers.

“You trust me to keep you safe, right?” he asked, but she was going limp as sleep reclaimed her and he recognized that she’d barely been awake in the first place.

He tightened his hold around her slender body and buried his face in her silky, fragrant hair. Her soft warmth, and gentle breathing having a somnolent, relaxing effect on him. His eyes started to drift shut as his headache eased.

It wasn’t until the last vestiges of consciousness floated from his mind like smoke, that he recalled how he’d referred to her baby as ours.