Too Late For Regret: His Discarded Rose

Brianna POV The helicopter blades whirred louder as I climbed. When my feet cleared the rooftop, the ladder retracted, and the aircraft ascended sharply, leaving the glittering, cruel city far below. I collapsed onto the plush leather seat, my body heavy with exhaustion, and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep. I woke to soft murmurs and the scent of lavender. Sunlight streamed through a large window, illuminating an elegant room with high ceilings, antique furniture, fresh flowers. I was in a grand, antique bed. A new IV dripped steadily into my arm. "You're awake, thank goodness." Caryl's voice, crisp and clear, cut through the fog. She sat by the bedside, her piercing blue eyes filled with concern and a familiar, steely resolve. "Where am I?" I asked, my voice rough. "London. My private residence. You've been here for three days, mostly sedated. A complete collapse." She looked away, her jaw tight. "Those monsters. How dare they." She turned back to me, her expression softening. "But you're safe now. I've arranged for the best medical team. You'll heal here, far away from all of that." She reached for a bowl on the nightstand, picked up a perfectly peeled apple, and began to cut it into neat slices. She extended a piece to me. "Eat. You need your strength. And remember, Brianna, you are worthy of peace and happiness. May you always be well, my dear." I took the apple. The first bite was small, tentative—but it was something. A beginning. The weeks that followed were not easy. Night after night, I woke gasping, the phantom sensation of wine on my face, kicks on my ribs. Caryl never complained. She would appear in my doorway with a cup of tea, sit on the edge of my bed, and say nothing until my breathing slowed. Sometimes she would read aloud from a novel—something light, something with a happy ending. I clung to those stories like a lifeline. "You survived," she told me once. "That's not nothing. That's everything." Slowly, I began to believe her. One evening, about a month into my recovery, I found Caryl at her desk, scowling at her laptop. "What's wrong?" I asked. She hesitated, then turned the screen toward me. A headline: "Disgraced Financier Ashton Cole Places Full-Page Ad Apologizing to 'The One I Wronged' – Public Searches for Missing Ex-Fiancée." My stomach clenched. Below the headline was a scanned image of a newspaper ad—Ashton's signature, his elegant script. "Brianna, I was a coward. I let them destroy you. I don't expect forgiveness, but I need the world to know the truth: you did nothing wrong. Please, let me find you. Just to say I'm sorry." I stared at the screen. Then I looked away. "Close it," I said. Caryl did. "He's been doing this for weeks. Ads, interviews, even a private investigator. I've had my lawyers block him at every turn. He won't find you here." I nodded. "Thank you." "Do you want to see any of it? He's written letters too. Dozens. I burned them." I thought for a moment. The girl I had been would have been desperate for any sign of his remorse. That girl was gone. "No," I said. "I don't need to see them." She squeezed my hand. "Good. Because you're not his to find anymore." I started walking in the garden behind her house—a wild, beautiful mess of roses and lavender and climbing ivy. I started sketching again: small things at first—a leaf, a cloud, the way light fell across a stone wall. Then larger things: gardens I would one day build, spaces where people could feel safe. My mother had taught me to draw before everything fell apart. It felt like reclaiming a piece of her that wasn't stained by scandal. One afternoon, as I sat on a stone bench sketching a trellis, I heard footsteps. I looked up. A man was kneeling by the conservatory wall, measuring tape in hand, muttering to himself about load-bearing beams. He hadn't noticed me. "Excuse me," I said. He startled, dropping his tape. When he looked up, our eyes met. He had kind eyes—warm brown, crinkling at the corners, with none of the sharp calculation I had learned to recognize in men of business. He was handsome in an unassuming way, the kind of handsome that grew on you. "Oh, sorry," he said, scrambling to his feet. "I didn't know anyone was out here. You must be Brianna. I'm Jonas. Your aunt hired me to redesign this conservatory." "She didn't mention you'd be starting today." He rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish. "I like to get an early look at spaces. Measure twice, cut once, my da always said." An accent softened his words—Cornish, I later learned. "Are you the one who does the gardens? Your aunt showed me your sketches. They're—" He paused, searching for a word. "—alive. They feel like they're breathing." Something in my chest loosened. "Thank you." That was the beginning. Jonas was patient in a way I hadn't known men could be. He didn't push. He didn't pry. When he noticed I flinched at sudden loud noises, he started announcing his presence before entering a room. When he saw my nightmares had left me exhausted, he brought me chamomile tea without asking why. "Your aunt told me you've been through something," he said one evening, as we sat on the garden bench watching the sunset. "She didn't give details. And I don't need them. I just need you to know that you're safe here. With me, I mean. Not just in the garden." I looked at him—really looked. There was no agenda in his face. No hidden bargain. "Thank you," I said again. It felt insufficient. But he smiled as if it was enough. Weeks turned into months. Jonas finished the conservatory, but he kept finding reasons to come back. "The drainage needs adjusting." "The light in the morning is wrong—I should add a skylight." "I miss your aunt's biscuits." I didn't mind. I found myself looking forward to his visits. One night, a thunderstorm woke me from a nightmare. I stumbled downstairs to find Jonas sitting in the dark kitchen, a cup of cold coffee in his hands. He couldn't sleep either—he had told me once that his mother's death haunted him, that some nights he still heard her voice. "You're awake," I said. He looked up. "So are you." I sat across from him. The rain hammered the windows. For a long time, neither of us spoke. Then he reached across the table and placed his hand over mine. Not grabbing. Not demanding. Just… present. "I'm not hiding anymore," I whispered. "But I don't know how to be anything else." He squeezed my hand gently. "Then let's figure it out together." I kissed him that night. It wasn't dramatic or desperate. It was quiet, certain—like coming up for air after years underwater. In the months that followed, I learned that Jonas was not a fortress. He had his own cracks. One night, we were watching an old film—something about a mother and son—when he went quiet. Too quiet. I paused the movie and looked at him. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on the screen but not seeing it. "Jonas?" I said softly. He didn't answer for a long moment. Then: "My mum died when I was twenty-two. Cancer. She never saw me become an architect. Never saw any of it." I had known his mother was gone, but he had never spoken of her like this. I reached for his hand. "I used to call her every Sunday," he continued, his voice thick. "After she died, I kept picking up the phone. For months. Just to hear her voicemail. Then one day, her number was reassigned." He swallowed hard. "Some stranger answered. I hung up and never called again." I moved closer, resting my head on his shoulder. "Tell me about her." He looked at me, surprised. "You want to hear?" "I want to hear everything." So he told me. About his mother's garden, her terrible cooking, the way she hummed off-key while folding laundry. He talked until his voice grew hoarse, and I listened until the sky outside turned gray with dawn. When he finally fell silent, he turned to me. "Thank you." "For what?" "For not telling me to get over it." I squeezed his hand. "I would never." That night, I understood something new about us. We were not two halves of a whole. We were two whole people who had chosen to carry each other's weight. Not because we needed saving, but because we wanted to. We married a year later. Small ceremony, just family. Caryl cried. I didn't—I laughed. Jonas wore a suit that was slightly too loose in the shoulders, and he stepped on my foot during our first dance. It was perfect. Our first home was a small flat in Islington with a balcony just big enough for two chairs and a pot of rosemary. We talked about the future in fragments: maybe a garden, maybe a child, maybe a house with a studio for me. None of it seemed impossible anymore. When I learned I was pregnant with our daughter, I was terrified. What if the past followed her? What if the whispers reached her? Jonas found me crying in the bathroom, the pregnancy test in my trembling hand. "Brianna," he said softly, kneeling beside me. "Our children will know who you are. Not from tabloids or whispers. From you. From us. That's enough." I let him hold me. And I believed him. Our daughter arrived on a rainy Tuesday, screaming her fury at the world. Jonas held her for hours, his large hands cradling her tiny form with impossible gentleness. "You have your mother's strength," he whispered to her. "And her stubbornness. God help us both." Two years later, our son was born—a tornado of energy and endless questions. He took his first steps toward a rose bush. He spoke his first word—"no"—with impressive authority. Jonas built them a treehouse in the garden of the house we had bought, a Victorian fixer-upper with creaky floors and a fireplace that smoked. I designed the garden around it: roses, lavender, sage, things that smelled like peace. I became a successful landscape designer. My first big project was a public park in a forgotten corner of London. I designed a quiet corner there—a bench under a weeping willow, surrounded by white roses. A place to sit, to breathe, to remember that survival was its own kind of art. The day the park opened, Jonas came with the children. Our daughter, then six, ran to the bench and declared it her "reading spot." Our son used it as a launching pad for a game involving imaginary dragons. I watched them and felt something I had never dared to name before: contentment. Eighteen years passed like that—not in a blur, but in a slow accumulation of small, precious moments. Sunday mornings with Jonas reading the paper while I sketched. Dance parties in the kitchen. Arguments about homework and screen time. The quiet weight of a hand on my shoulder when I was tired. Jonas never once asked me to "get over" my past. He simply walked beside me. Caryl visited often, her tough exterior softening with each passing year. She doted on the children, bought them ridiculous gifts, and never once mentioned Ashton's name in my presence. I assumed he had given up. I had almost forgotten about him. Until one crisp autumn afternoon in London. The children were playing in a small park near our hotel—we were visiting for a week, showing them the sights. Jonas sat on a bench, watching them. I walked alone, savoring the cool air and the gentle rustle of leaves. A familiar scent drifted from a nearby cafe—damp earth and expensive coffee. Then I saw him. He was sitting on a park bench, hunched over, his once sharp features now gaunt and hollow. His expensive suits had been replaced by worn, stained clothes. His hair, once impeccably styled, was long and unkempt, streaked with gray. He looked like a ghost—a shadow of the man I had once loved and hated. I walked past him, hardly registering his presence beyond a fleeting sense of pity for a stranger's misfortune. But as I passed, a ragged voice, raspy and thin, called out a name I hadn't heard in two decades. "Brianna? Is that really you?" I stopped. My heart gave a strange, cold lurch. I turned slowly. His eyes, once so bright, were now dull and bloodshot, but they held an undeniable recognition. It was Ashton. "Ashton," I replied, my voice calm, devoid of any discernible emotion. It was a statement, not a question. He flinched, as if my calm tone was a physical blow. He slowly stood, a tremor running through his emaciated frame. His shoulders were slumped, his posture defeated. He looked at me with a desperate, almost pleading light in his eyes. "May I… may I speak with you?" he stammered, his gaze dropping to the ground, as if ashamed. His voice was barely a whisper, filled with a raw vulnerability I had never heard from him before. He was a broken man. I glanced toward the park. Jonas had seen him. He caught my eye, a silent question in his gaze. I gave a small, reassuring nod. He smiled back, his trust absolute, and turned to distract the children. I turned back to Ashton. "Very well," I said. "For a moment."