Chapter 274: ~ 273
Chapter 273
~Franklin~
The click of the nursery door sealing shut behind Flynn did nothing to lower the boiling pressure inside my chest. I turned around, my boots heavy against the floorboards, and strode toward Octavia and I’s bedroom. My jaw was clenched so tightly that my teeth ached.
Before I could even turn around to face the room, the doors of the master suite were slammed shut behind me. Bang. The wood rattled in its frame, a sharp, violent sound that signaled the immediate explosion of the storm I had been trying to avoid.
I turned slowly. Octavia stood there, her breathing shallow and fast, her cheeks flushed with a volatile mix of absolute exhaustion and pure, unadulterated fury. The gentle, peaceful mother from this afternoon was gone; in her place was a woman pushed entirely to her absolute limit.
"What is wrong with you, Franklin?" Octavia fiercely demanded, her voice a sharp, trembling blade in the quiet room. She took a step toward me, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. "Seriously, what the hell was that downstairs?"
"Octavia, you don’t understand what you were looking at," I rumbled, my voice low, trying desperately to keep my tone level even though my heart was hammering against my ribs.
"No, you don’t understand!" she snapped, cutting me off without a second thought. She threw her hands up in the air, her eyes wide with frustration. "At this point, you are doing entirely too much. It is exhausting, Franklin. It is completely exhausting to watch you act like a savage beast every single time!"
I stood solid, anchoring my feet to the floor, forcing my arms to remain locked across my broad chest. If I moved, if I let the iron grip on my control slip even a fraction of an inch, I was going to shout. And I couldn’t shout at her. Not when she was like this.
I was not supposed to match her level of fury.
"My paranoia is not a game, Octavia," I tried to explain, the words grating past my throat like sandpaper. "I am protecting this family. I am protecting you. I am protecting Lael."
"From what?" Octavia shouted, her voice cracking with emotional strain. "From a cousin who has done absolutely nothing but help us since the moment he arrived? From a man who respects our space, who sits in the garden and makes your grandfather laugh until he cries? He has been trying so hard to mend these ancient, toxic family wounds, Franklin! He is trying to be a good uncle to our daughter!"
Hearing her defend the very man who was sharpening a knife behind our backs felt like a physical blow to me. The sheer, sickening irony of it almost made me laugh out loud, a dark, bitter sound that stayed trapped in my throat.
"You are blind to him," I muttered, my gaze darkening as I stared at her. "You only see what he wants you to see."
"Oh, so now I’m stupid?" Octavia hissed, taking another step forward, her eyes blazing. "You don’t even know why I was with Flynn in the first place! You didn’t ask. You didn’t bother to find out what happened with Victoria, or why Flynn was practically falling apart in the middle of the nursery. You just burst through those doors, saw a simple, innocent hug of consolation, and decided to play the big, terrifying dictator!"
She shook her head, a tear of pure, frustrated exhaustion finally spilling over her lashes. She looked at me as if I were a complete stranger, a man consumed by ghosts that didn’t exist.
"Not everyone is your enemy, Franklin," she said, her voice dropping into a quiet, devastatingly sharp whisper that cut deeper than any shout. "But if you keep treating everyone like a monster, you’re going to end up completely alone in your little fortress. I can’t do this with you right now."
Without waiting for me to speak, without giving me a single second to defend myself, Octavia turned on her heel. She yanked the doors open, stepped out into the corridor, and walked away.
I didn’t need to follow her to know where she was going. The soft, rhythmic direction of her footsteps was heading straight back to Lael’s room, the only place in this entire house that still felt safe to her.
The doors drifted shut, leaving me standing in the center of the massive, empty bedroom.
My chest was heaving, my lungs burning as I stared at the blank wood of the door. A terrifying, overwhelming urge built up in my throat. I desperately wanted to run after her. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders, look into her eyes, and scream the absolute truth.
I wanted to tell her about the office fire, how it wasn’t an unforeseen circumstance, but a calculated distraction to draw me away. I wanted to rip the mask off the cousin she was so fiercely defending. I wanted to tell her about the secret phone call I had overheard through the cracked door of my study, the chilling, mocking words Flynn had whispered to his mother: Don’t worry, Mum... I’ve gotten on his good side.
The truth was right there, balanced on the tip of my tongue, ready to shatter her illusion of peace.
But as I took a step toward the door, my boots froze.
The image of Octavia’s tear-stained face, her pale skin, and the heavy dark circles of her exhaustion flashed vividly through my mind. She was barely sleeping. She was pouring every single ounce of her physical and mental strength into keeping our daughter fed, healthy, and safe. Her body was still healing. If I blew hot right now, if we stood in this room screaming and blowing heat at each other, it would be utterly unreasonable. It would destroy her fragile peace.
If I told her the truth, she wouldn’t just be angry at me, she would be plunged into a state of permanent, suffocating terror inside her own home. She would look at Flynn and see a threat to our baby, and the stress would break her. Or worse, she might not believe me.
So, I stopped.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing the violent tide of rage and words back down into the darkest depths of my stomach. I swallowed my pride, letting the bitter taste of it burn my throat. I stayed silent.
I chose to let her think I was the bad guy. I chose to let her believe I was just a paranoid, controlling husband, because carrying her anger was infinitely better than forcing her to carry my terror.
I walked over to the edge of the bed, dropping my head into my hands as a painful, freezing emotional wall began to rise between us in the quiet dark. I was the shield. And a shield had to take the hits, even when they came from the inside.