Page 45 of Finding the One (River Rain #7)

“Not feeling pleasant, Dad,” Dair replied. “And I’ve had the opportunity to reread the NDA. You’re right. Signe’s prohibited from sharing private photos. I also looked at her TikTok. She seems determined to paint us as star-crossed lovers with Blake keeping us apart. And it’s pissing me off.”

“I’m glad ye think so.” Balfour was also filling his plate. “Because the solicitors believe she needs something stronger than a cease and desist.”

“That would be?” Dair asked before he shoved a roast beef sandwich triangle with horseradish sauce in his mouth.

“An all-expense paid trip to Edinburgh for a meeting whereupon we’ll share things will become very uncomfortable if she doesn’t stop fucking ye about.”

“That seems overkill,” Dair remarked.

“Then I’ll fly to Denmark and threaten her personally.”

At this offer, Dair froze with a samosa halfway to his mouth.

“No one fucks with my son,” Balfour declared.

He felt something tighten in his chest even as he said, “That’s unnecessary, Dad.”

“We disagree on that, and when you have children, you’ll see why.”

Dair sat back in his chair. “Ye dinnae have to go this extra mile because of what ye did to mum and how that affected our family.”

Bally leveled his eyes on his son. “This isn’t about an extra mile.

This is about someone fucking with my son.

Something I fully intend to put a stop to.

But just to say, ye can advise me on how to make amends for doing something weak and stupid, causing pain to the ones ye love most in your life if you should ever do anything as utterly weak and stupid as I’ve done.

” He took a breath into his nose. “I dinnae ken what I was thinking. I look back at it, the years of it, and question my sanity. Though, I’ll say, as long as it went on, I questioned the state of my mental health through the entirety of it. ”

Dair had no response.

“These are words for your mother, if she’ll ever speak to me again,” Bally continued. “But you should hear them too.”

“Allow her to guide that and leave me and Davi out of it,” Dair stated.

“Ye ken I almost married Helena.”

At this surprising declaration, Dair sat stunned and still, staring at his dad.

“We were both very young, but that didnae mean we didnae know our hearts. But I wasn’t good enough for her, according to her father,” he went on.

“Bloody hell,” Dair muttered.

“I loved her,” Bally announced. “Deeply. Besotted with it. This meant I was pissed off she tossed me aside because I was hurt when she did it. I was then pissed off when she married Ned. I obsessed about it.” He shook his head.

“I ken this seems nonsensical with what I just said and the timing of it, but make no mistake, I fell in love with your mother. She was no consolation prize. She was everything Helena wasn’t, everything I truly needed, everything I actually wanted.

She made me very happy. So ye can see, knowing all of that, how I questioned my mental health. ”

Oh, aye.

Dair could see that.

Bally continued talking.

“It didnae make it any better, when I realized what kind of woman Helena was, that I did it, and I continued to do it. But these last weeks, you’ll find it no surprise, I’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on my actions, and I realized I did it mostly as a fuck you to her father, who eventually was no longer even breathing.

It does not paint me as a decent man, but I’m speaking in truths here.

I not only made Helena my whore, I got off on it. ”

Dair remained silent.

“And the worst of it was, it made me feel the big man. Beautiful, loving wife at home, beautiful, stylish mistress on the side. Maybe I had something to prove with that, to her father, to myself. Though, as difficult as it is to admit this, really, it was just a fault in my personality to fall into the trap of the stereotype of being that kind of man.”

Although Dair was shocked his father had this deep of an insight into himself, and could speak the words out loud, Dair had no response.

“Say something, Alasdair,” Bally ordered harshly.

“Were there others?”

Bally shook his head.

Dair watched closely but his father never broke eye contact.

So it was just Helena.

He was shocked by that too.

“Ye loved her? I mean, before Mum?”

“Very much so,” Balfour admitted. “And to this day, as much as Helena could feel this emotion, I think she loved me too, in the way she could. This isn’t an excuse, though I would tell myself it was as I continued doing what I was doing, but I convinced myself she needed me.

I was the only happiness she had. But the truth is, I think I was. ”

Fuck.

Dair examined his father’s face and saw he sincerely thought that, so he didn’t want to say what he had to say.

But they were speaking in truths here.

“Then I hate to tell ye this, and I truly do, but she has so many clothes, even Blake thinks they’re too much, and she had a twenty-something boy toy she kept at Treverton.

He’s been there for years. Blake had to confront him and deal with a blackmail threat to get him gone.

” As Bally sat, openly staggered, Dair finished, “Dad, what I’m saying is, Helena enjoyed her life to the fullest, with or without you. ”

Balfour stared at him for long moments before his attention drifted to the window.

Christ.

He’d had to say it, he couldn’t not.

However…

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“It was a paltry excuse anyway,” Bally said to the window.

Shit happened in relationships.

Dair had heard stories from his mates—women who were stressed by having careers and still being expected to do everything at home, or being cast as a mom when they have children, their partners losing hold on the fact they’re still women, and on the flipside men whose partners lost interest in their sex lives and weren’t willing to work on regaining their intimacy, or the partner got so lost in the family life, they forgot they had a relationship to nurture—where he couldn’t condone, but he could understand why they strayed in search of the kind of connection they weren’t getting at home.

However, carrying on a decades-long affair was an entirely different thing.

Dair ate the samosa to give his father some time.

Balfour was still talking to the window when he said, “I dinnae think your mother will ever forgive me.”

“And I hate to say this as well, a bit less, but I still do. I think you’re right,” Dair told him.

Bally looked back at his son. “I’ll let her call the shots. I’ll text Davi to let her know I’m there whenever she’s ready to talk, but I’ll leave her alone in the meantime. And I’ll finish this in the way I didnae conduct myself the entirety of it. With some decency.”

“That would be appreciated.”

Balfour put some salmon in his mouth in a manner he was doing it by rote, not with any appetite, and when he swallowed, he said, “Now we need to talk about Blake.”

That ominous sensation came back to his throat at his father’s tone, and he asked, “Blake?”

“In dealing with Signe, some things have come to light about Blake I feel ye should know.”

It was hesitant when Dair asked, “What things?”

Balfour pulled his phone out, engaged it, found something on it, and turned it to Dair.

It was a photo of Blake at a party, one Dair remembered because he attended. It was the rooftop cocktail party Ned had thrown for her prior to her wedding to Chad.

She was wearing a daring dress, and he could very much see how daring it was not because he remembered seeing her in it, but because her breast was exposed all the way to the nipple.

She seemed to be meaning to give that show with how far forward she was leaning.

But the photograph appeared to be a candid, because it had done the impossible with a woman as beautiful as his.

It wasn’t very complimentary to Blake, considering how far open her mouth was.

Dair’s first instinct was to be pissed as all hell a photo of his woman exposed like that was a photo his father could get his hands on, which probably meant anyone could.

Dair’s next instinct would be vastly different.

“She sold that photo of herself to some gossip thing,” his father shared.

Dair’s throat closed, so he had to force through it, “What?”

Balfour tucked his phone back in his jacket. “It’s my understanding that was something she did. She had a go-between, but she frequently sold pictures of herself in order to remain a feature in that shite.”

“You investigated Blake?”

Bally shook his head. “Not in the way ye mean, no. It came to the fore as a matter of digging into Signe. Trying to assess what she might plan for the future. Which meant assessing where ye might be vulnerable, and since you’re with Blake, we had to assess her too.

We had to look into what Signe may be able to discover in order to harm ye.

” He waved his hand in front of him. “No worries. Money has exchanged hands and documents have been signed. No one will know Blake did that.”

Although Dair distractedly noted his father, yet again, made moves to protect Dair, this time doing it also protecting Blake.

But he didn’t have it in him in that moment to have a mind to it.

“Why would she do that?” he asked a question his dad couldn’t possibly answer.

However, he did.

“Why, for the same reasons Helena did it.”

Now Dair was finding it difficult to breathe.

Balfour kept talking. “To remain relevant. To fix her place in society. To make herself seem important. To compete with the women in her circle.” His father fixed him with a stare.

“I ken ye two are hot and heavy right now, Dair. She’s a beautiful girl.

I always thought she was a little lost, and Helena was no help guiding her in being found.

Seems from what I’ve witnessed recently, she figured that out for herself.

Even so, I’ll just suggest…be wary of her.

Although it appears she’s made her own way, I see a good deal of Helena in that girl, and I always did. ”

“Helena sold photos of herself too?”

Balfour gave a sharp nod. “Aye, all the time.”

After his father said that, if asked an hour, two or even ten days later, Dair could not say what else happened at that lunch.

It vaguely penetrated that his dad was giving him concerned looks by the time he left, and he texted him twice after Dair was gone, but in the days to come, outside that, his dad left him alone.

But the only thing Dair could think was how Blake had eviscerated Jeff (twice) without blinking. The lad had deserved it, but she hadn’t hesitated in doing it.

And he thought about how she’d blanked Chad. When she’d claimed Dair in front of him, it was like the man wasn’t even there. Again, he deserved it, but he wasn’t even a blip for Blake.

Not to mention, the things Rix said.

And the fact she’d sold pictures of herself, including one that exposed her own body, globally , in order to…

He didn’t know.

Chase fame?

And that was not good.

Chase notoriety?

That was worse.

To compete with her mates?

Also not good.

None of it was good.

There was no excuse for it.

And he had experience with this kind of shite.

He’d been very wrong.

He needed to talk to her about all of this.

He could not get into another mess like the one he made with Signe, one that he was still dealing with over a decade down the road.

He certainly couldn’t marry her and bring children into it. His father and mother’s marriage was over, and even with Dair and Davina fully grown and living their own lives, it was devastating their family.

His head was so full of this shite, he didn’t phone Blake on his way home from lunch with his dad.

He avoided her frequent texts and her call that evening.

As he did the ones the next day. Though, he did text to say he was busy, reiterating he’d collect her at the station on Saturday, two days away.

He did that because this chat needed to be had, face to face.

He got no communication after his text.

But he was at the station to pick her up.

And this was the first step he didn’t know he was taking in making the biggest mistake of his life.