Whispers in the rain | charles leclerc *ੈ✩

Part 2 🩵 : Chapter 25 : Tell me why

Charles
As soon as Bella walked out of the room with Kelly and Lev, the door closed behind them with a soft click.

The room felt impossibly small all of a sudden, the air too thick to breathe.

My legs gave out, and I sank to my knees, completely overwhelmed.

My vision blurred, tears welling up faster than I could control.

It all hit me at once—everything I had missed, all the moments I could have been there for.

The first time she spoke, the first time she walked, every birthday, every scraped knee.

All of it.

She was my daughter.

I tried to take in a breath, but it felt like I was drowning, the emotions too powerful, too raw.

I felt broken. Completely broken.

Jules
I had never seen Charles cry. Not once, even when we were together.

He was always so composed, so controlled—never letting anything shake him, not even in the hardest moments.

But now, seeing him fall to his knees, crumbling like this, was something I never thought I'd witness.

It broke something inside me too.

He looked like a man who had just lost everything, even though, in a strange way, he had just found something he never knew he had.

No matter how much I hated him, no matter how much I resented him for walking out of my life and abandoning what we had, I couldn't stand to see him like this.

It wasn't right.

He was a lot of things—a coward, maybe, for leaving—but he wasn't heartless.

And seeing him now, so vulnerable, so shattered, made that crystal clear.

I didn't owe him anything. Not after what he did.

But still I did what I thought I'd never do: I reached out.

My hand hesitated for just a second, then I grasped his arm and helped him to his feet.

He didn't resist, didn't pull away—he just let me.

His breathing was shallow, like he was still struggling to comprehend everything.

Together, we moved toward the couch in the corner of my office.

We sat down, the silence stretching out between us, thick with years of unresolved pain.

I could feel him watching me, waiting—his eyes burning with questions he couldn't yet bring himself to ask.

I stared at the floor, trying to collect my thoughts, knowing that this conversation, the one I had avoided for so long, was finally here.

"So... I guess the conversation I've played in my head a thousand times is finally going to happen, huh?" I said softly.

He didn't respond. He didn't need to.

His silence said everything.

"I didn't find out I was pregnant until a week after our wedding day—or what was supposed to be our wedding day," I began, my voice barely above a whisper.

The memory of that day—the chaos, the heartbreak, the sheer weight of what had happened between us—came flooding back, but I pushed it down, focused on the moment, on Bella.

"I tried to reach you," I continued, "I called. Over and over again. I left messages, I texted, I emailed—everything. I tried everything." My hands were trembling now, and I clasped them together, pressing them into my lap to stop the shaking.