Beloved Murderer

Broken Beloved - Chapter 4

The smell of old books and lavender essence soothed my tense muscles as I stepped into the library the next day. I decided to go into work even though I felt like I was going to vomit at any second and my soul was dead inside but I needed some form of normality if I was going to get through this for my baby. I wasn't just living for myself anymore, I had to stay strong for my baby.

Belle was standing behind the front desk serving a customer when I arrived, she had allowed her black hair to grow longer in the last few months but she still had a front fringe and her ears stuck out from the sides of her hair. Her olive toned skin was a bit darker than usual as she had recently returned from a holiday to see her family in Japan. As soon as Belle saw me her back straightened and her eyebrows pinched together.

"Excuse me," she said to the customer, a tall man with a bald patch on the back of his head and ran over to me.

"What's wrong?" She gushed, enveloping me in a hug. I hugged her back, breathing in deeply to try to keep the tears from falling. But it was no use, as soon as her dark caring eyes looked at me the flood gates broke and tears fell from my eyes.

"Oh Elora. Let's go upstairs." Belle placed a sign at the front counter saying be back in 15 minutes. She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and led me upstairs to a secluded part of the library. Belle checked there was no one among the shelves and closed the door to the upstairs and placed the sign up, closed for cleaning.

We sat down on two armchairs with a coffee table between them. It was a cute nook I had sat in multiple times to have lunch and relax to read. I collapsed into the armchair and Belle perched apprehensively on the other, leaning forwards attentively, resting her chin on her entwined hands.

"What happened? Something bad happened, didn't it? What has Mason done?" She knew that there was only one thing in my life that could affect me this strongly. I chewed on my lip, I wanted to tell Belle the truth. She had become a best friend to me in the last few years. I couldn't tell her the whole truth but I could tell her the basics and none incriminating parts. I took a deep breath.

"I'm pregnant," I revealed on a choke, barely able to say it aloud. Belle's eyes widened and she clasped both of her hands over her mouth as she gasped. She dropped her hands again and she had a massive smile on her face. She flung herself into my arms in a massive hug.

"That's wonderful news, Elora. Congratulations," she gushed as she pulled back to smile with me, but I wasn't smiling and her happy expression dropped into concern. I looked to the floor, my lower lip quivering.

"This is amazing, but something else has happened? Is the baby, okay?" Her voice rose with trepidation and she fell back into her chair. I nodded, unable to talk, there was a huge lump that had formed in my throat.

"Mason?" She guessed. And that was all she needed to say to make my heart break again. I dropped my head into my hands as the tears fell.

"He left me." I looked up at her with tears in my eyes to see her jaw tense and she turned her head to the side as if hiding her anger.

"Shit," she swore. "Bloody idiot." She kept cursing Mason repeatedly and I didn't stop her. He was an idiot.

"Why?" she finally asked seriously. I took a deep breath to give me some time to think of how to explain my situation in a way that would make sense to her without alerting her about Mason's true nature.

"He thinks he isn't good enough to be in the baby's life. He thinks that he is too mentally broken and doesn't want his mental instability to affect their life. He blames his mental illness, that he needs to sort his mental health out before he can raise a child," I explained as best I could. Belle nodded thoughtfully and rested her chin in her hand as she thought. My tense shoulders relaxed at how normal that sounded.