Chapter 106: Bringing Bruce back to life
The villa slept. Or seemed to. Outside, the jungle pulsed with the rhythmic drone of insects and the distant, mournful sigh of the ocean. Inside the vast master bedroom, the air hung thick and still, heavy with the aftermath of shared grief. Seven bodies lay intertwined in the massive bed, a fortress of warmth and desperate comfort around Bruce’s central, shattered form. Lena’s cheek throbbed dully beneath the cool compress Ketut had reapplied before sleep, her head resting on Bruce’s shoulder, her leg hooked possessively over his thigh. Camille’s hand remained splayed over his heart, Mystique’s fingers laced with hers across his chest. The others were tangled close, breaths synchronized in uneasy slumber.
Lena jerked awake. Not slowly, but violently, as if shocked. The space beside her felt vast and cold. Bruce was gone. His pillow held only the indentation of his head, already cooling. Fear, sharp and acidic, flooded her veins. She was out of the bed in seconds, heart hammering against her ribs, ignoring the protest from her bruised face. The white silk robe Camille had draped over her slipped off the bed as she moved. She didn’t bother picking it up. Dressed only in the thin camisole and shorts she’d slept in, she padded silently across the cool marble floor.
The villa felt cavernous, echoing. Moonlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, painting silver pathways on the stone. She checked the adjacent sitting room – empty. The ensuite bathroom – dark and silent. The balcony overlooking the pool and the moonlit valley – deserted. Her breaths came faster, shallower. Panic tightened its grip. Images flashed: Bruce’s dead-eyed stare in the surf, the terrifying emptiness, the raw, animal sounds of his weeping. Where would he go? Where could he possibly run inside this gilded cage?
Then it hit her. With the force of a gut-punch. Jasmine’s room.
Lena moved faster, almost running now, bare feet slapping softly down the long, dim hallway leading to the wing Jasmine had occupied. The door was ajar. A sliver of pale light spilled out onto the polished teak floor. Lena pushed it open slowly, her hand trembling against the wood.
The scent hit her first. Jasmine’s signature perfume – a heady, complex blend of night-blooming jasmine, vanilla, and something deeply sensual – hung thickly in the air, cloying, suffocating. It mingled with the sharp, acrid tang of spilled bourbon. The room was pristine, untouched since Jasmine’s abrupt departure hours earlier. Cushions perfectly plumped on the chaise lounge. Dresses hanging neatly in the open wardrobe. Makeup meticulously arranged on the vanity. It was a ghost room.
Bruce sat slumped on the edge of the massive, unmade bed. Not sitting.Collapsed. His back was to the door, shoulders hunched forward, a picture of utter desolation. Moonlight washed over him, highlighting the stark angles of his profile, the wet tracks glistening on his cheeks. Beside him on the rumpled silk duvet lay an empty bottle of expensive bourbon, its amber glass reflecting the weak light. His massive hand, shaking violently, clutched Jasmine’s perfume bottle. He held it pressed hard against his nose, his eyes squeezed shut, his entire body wracked by silent, convulsive tremors. Then the sound came. Low at first, a guttural moan torn from deep within his chest, escalating rapidly into harsh, wrenching sobs that shook his frame. He gasped for air between them, the sound ragged and desperate, like a drowning man.
"Not enough... fuck... never enough... Jaz... why...?" The words were choked, fragmented, barely audible over his own weeping. "My fault... all my fault... ruined... ruined everything..."
Lena stood frozen in the doorway, her own breath catching in her throat. The sight was worse than the beach. Here, surrounded by Jasmine’s essence, Bruce wasn’t just broken; he was annihilated. The mighty pillar of their world reduced to a trembling, weeping wreck on the bed of the wife he’d cast out. The perfume bottle was like a lifeline to a ghost, a cruel reminder of what he’d lost, what he believed he’d destroyed.
She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t speak. Words felt useless, like pebbles thrown into a chasm. Moving silently, Lena crossed the room. The plush carpet swallowed her footsteps. She climbed onto the bed behind him, the silk cool against her legs. Carefully, slowly, she lay down, molding her body against his broad, trembling back. She slid one arm underneath him, wrapping it around his waist, feeling the hard muscles clenched tight with anguish. Her other arm went over him, her hand splaying flat against his heaving chest, right over his pounding heart. She pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades, inhaling the mingled scents of bourbon, salt, sweat, and Jasmine’s haunting perfume.
She simply held him. Tightly. Anchoring him. Her own silent tears wet the thin fabric of his discarded t-shirt. She felt every shudder, every gasping intake of breath, every ragged sob that tore through him. His hand, still clutching the perfume bottle, trembled violently against her forearm wrapped around his waist. The room was filled with the sounds of his grief – raw, unfiltered, echoing off the glass and stone.
Minutes stretched, marked only by the rhythm of his suffering. Lena tightened her hold, pressing herself even closer, offering the only comfort she could: her presence, her warmth, her unwavering hold. She felt the dampness of his tears soaking through her camisole where her cheek pressed against his back. She nuzzled gently, a soft counterpoint to his violent tremors. Slowly, very slowly, she moved her hand from his chest upwards, her fingers gently tracing the tense cords of his neck, then sliding into his damp hair, cradling the back of his head. Her lips brushed the skin just below his ear.
"You will always be enough for me," she whispered, her voice thick with tears but fiercely clear in the suffocating silence of the perfumed room. "Always, my love. Always."
Bruce’s violent shuddering hitched. For a split second, his ragged breathing paused. His hand gripping the perfume bottle loosened slightly. Lena felt a subtle shift in the muscles beneath her, a tiny lessening of the agonized tension. He turned his head just a fraction, his tear-streaked, haunted profile visible in the moonlight. His eyes, those swirling hazel depths that had been terrifyingly empty, flickered. A spark ignited deep within the grey ash – a fleeting, desperate glimmer of green-gold, like the first hint of dawn on a ravaged landscape. It was there, burning with a fragile, desperate intensity, reflecting the raw devotion in Lena’s whispered vow.
Then, as quickly as it flared, the spark vanished, swallowed once more by the overwhelming tide of grief and bourbon-fueled despair. His eyes squeezed shut again, fresh tears welling. A low, broken groan escaped him, and his body slumped further back against hers, seeking her solidity as the sobs began anew, quieter now, but no less devastating. He brought the perfume bottle back to his nose, inhaling deeply, desperately, as if trying to breathe Jasmine back into existence. But Lena held on, her arms locked around him, her lips pressed against his shoulder, a silent sentinel against the void, her whispered promise hanging in the heavy, perfumed air like the only truth left in his shattered world.
Lena held Bruce through the shuddering aftershocks until the grey light of pre-dawn bled into Jasmine’s room, the sickly sweet perfume now fused with the stale stink of grief and bourbon. He hadn’t slept, just cycled through numb silence and silent weeping, the perfume bottle eventually slipping from his lax fingers onto the silk. She guided him, stumbling and hollow-eyed, back to their bed just before the others stirred, the facade of rest impossible to maintain.
The next morning dawned violently bright, sunlight stabbing through the villa's glass walls, cruelly illuminating the ruin. Bruce moved like an automaton. He showered, dressed in crisp linen, poured coffee – black, scalding – his motions precise, devoid of life. He sat at the breakfast table overlooking the infinity pool and the valley beyond, a crystal tumbler already half-full of amber liquid beside his untouched fruit. His eyes, fixed on some point beyond the horizon, held no green, no blue, no gold. Just flat, dead grey ash.
"Bruce, mi amor, try some mango?" Camille offered, her voice carefully light, pushing a plate towards him. He didn’t blink. Didn’t turn. Just lifted the tumbler, swallowed a large mouthful of whiskey, the burn seemingly unfelt. Ketut, watching his profile, gave a tiny, desperate shake of her head; the colors were simply gone. Sophia exchanged a panicked glance with Erika. Mystique’s knuckles whitened on her coffee cup.
Lena watched him, her own bruised cheekbone a dull throb. She slid into the chair directly beside him, her thigh pressed firmly against his. He didn’t acknowledge the contact, didn’t flinch. She picked up a slice of papaya and ate it slowly, deliberately, her presence a constant, silent pressure against his isolation.
Later, Camille found him standing alone on the western cliff edge, the one with the sheer drop to the churning turquoise sea hundreds of feet below. The wind whipped his shirt against his muscular frame. In one hand, the ever-present tumbler. In the other, a cigarette. He took a deep drag, the acrid smoke swirling around him before vanishing on the breeze. He hadn’t smoked since his early twenties. Camille’s heart clenched, a cold fist of dread. She’d weathered his tempers, his obsessions, his wild passions, but this… this hollowed-out shell terrified her. She retreated silently, leaving him to the void and the vertiginous drop.
Lena was his persistent shadow. When he retreated to his study, she settled on the deep leather sofa with a book, a quiet sentinel. When he walked the garden paths, she matched his pace half a step behind. She didn’t bombard him with questions or pleas. She simply was there, a solid warmth radiating beside the chilling emptiness. Once, as he stared blankly at a vibrant orchid, she reached out and gently brushed his hand with her fingertips. He flinched minutely, a ripple across still water, but his gaze didn’t waver from the flower. "You’re here," she murmured, needing to voice it, needing him to hear. He lifted the tumbler to his lips.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket later that afternoon as she followed him onto the lower terrace. Jasmine’s name flashed. Lena’s gaze snapped from Bruce’s slumped figure in a sun lounger to the screen. Fury, cold and sharp, cut through her concern. She answered, stepping away only far enough to keep her voice low but sharp. "What?"
"Lena? Oh god, Lena, I'm... I'm so sorry. About yesterday. About your face. It was... fuck, I lost it. I’m so fucking sorry." Jasmine’s voice was thick with tears, ragged with remorse.
Lena watched Bruce take another slow sip of whiskey, his dead eyes fixed on the horizon, a man already halfway to drowning. The apology meant nothing. "Jaz," Lena spat, her voice low and venomous, "I don’t even fucking care that you hit me." She saw Bruce’s hand tighten infinitesimally on the glass. "I hate you for what you did to him."
"Wha—?"
"Shut up!" Lena hissed. "Nothing he did was ever enough for you, was it? Not the villa, not the trips, not the way he worshipped the goddamn ground you walked on? You think he didn’t care? That you were just some convenient hole for him to fuck when you weren't throwing a tantrum?"
"Lena, that's not—"
"THE MAN IS FUCKING BROKEN, JAZ!" Lena’s control snapped, her voice rising, raw and ragged. Bruce’s head turned slowly, those grey, ash-filled eyes drifting towards the sound of her fury, registering nothing. "He’s drunk from the moment he opens his dead fucking eyes until he passes out! His eyes… they're fucking dead, Jaz! Grey like fucking ash! Whatever spark made him Bruce? You snuffed it out! What you did is killing him! All he fucking says, over and over, is ‘not enough.’ ‘Never enough.’ ‘Why’d I think I could be enough for seven wives?’ ‘Who’d I think I was?’" Lena’s voice cracked, tears of pure rage burning her own eyes. "The man I love… the man who built this whole fucking world for us… he isn’t in there anymore! And it’s all because of your petty fucking ego!"
Silence hissed on the line, broken only by Jasmine’s choked sob. Lena didn’t wait for a response. She ended the call, her hand shaking. She turned back to Bruce. He was still looking towards her, the tumbler empty in his hand. His lips moved, soundless. Then a low, hollow sound escaped him. Not a sob. Not a sigh.
It was laughter. Dry, toneless, utterly devoid of any humor or warmth. The sound of something irreparably fractured. He lifted the empty glass in a mock toast towards the empty sky, the grey in his eyes deepening, swallowing the light.