The Divorced Military Queen Awakens (by Sadie Baxter) novel Chapter 440

Chapter 440 Splinters Of Broken Sleep

Quinn hesitated, making sure every last bead of sweat had been dabbed away before she finished the thought. “You still haven’t answered me. Do those nightmares come often? Do you relive the moment we split every single time?”

Julius‘ expression flickered, as though some private curtain had been jerked aside. “When I woke a moment ago, did I

say anything?”

A few minutes earlier, he had been caught between sleeping and waking, adrift in a daze so thick that when he saw Quinn, he had believed the dream still held him.

In that fog, he had spoken, but even he could not recall the words, each syllable sinking before it formed.

“You kept saying you were sorry, and you begged me not to leave you,” Quinn answered quietly.

Color drained from Julius‘ face. “Whatever you heard, pretend you didn’t,” he said, voice brittle as thin glass.

Quinn bit her lip hard. There was no way she could pretend.

“What exactly do you see in those nightmares? Is it the day we broke up? Has that moment kept you prisoner ever since?” she demanded, the plea hidden beneath her urgency.

He turned his head away with a short, derisive snort.

“So what if it is?” he shot back. “And it isn’t only the breakup. I dream of the moment I failed to save your brother as well!”

Those scenes had become his newest terror, eclipsing even the childhood recollections of his father’s cruelty and of witnessing his mother end her own life–memories that had once filled his nights.

Julius tugged his hand from Quinn’s and rose to his feet. “Now you know what stalks me in the dark. Do you feel any remorse? You were so unyielding. I begged you to stay, yet you insisted on leaving. Admit it—you regret nothing!”

His bright gaze pinned her, and within it lay nothing but raw self–mockery.

“I asked you once before, and your answer was you had no regrets,” he added. “Your love for

me ran so shallow that a single mistake was enough for you to cut the cord without a tremor.”

2

1/3

That one concealment had hurled him headlong into hell.

Quinn’s nose tingled with the sting of tears.

Yes, that had indeed been the answer she gave him back then.

Yet she had never realized those words would seed his nightmares.

Watching him now–thrashing, apologizing, pleading–thrust her back to the brutal day they parted.

Does he relive that day, again and again, each time the nightmare drags him under?

She had gone through life with very few regrets.

Tonight, however, regret seeped through her veins like ink in water, spreading until she could feel it in her bones.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

Julius let out a brittle, joyless laugh. “Sorry? You feel sorry because you learned I wake up screaming, so now I must look pathetic to you? Quinn, if you never once regretted breaking up with me, then there’s no need for you to apologize.”

Julius turned on his heel, intent on reaching the bathroom, splashing cold water across his face, and drowning the rage that threatened to erupt inside his chest.

However, he had taken only two steps when Quinn’s arms wrapped around his torso from behind, sudden and trembling. “Then, if I do regret it now, does that finally give me the right to say I’m sorry?”

“What?”

“Back then, I felt no regret,” she whispered, her lips close to the fabric of his shirt. “But the woman standing here now does.”

After all, it was only now that she understood how fiercely Julius had loved her.

Only now did she grasp how their breakup had carved open wounds he still carried.

If she had known her ruthless farewell would mutate into the stuff of his nightmares, she would never have been so merciless.

2

She could have chosen a softer exit, anything but the blade she’d used.

2/3

Her cold severance had merely dumped her own hurt–the lies, the concealment, her anger that he had not saved Rowan–onto his shoulders and walked away.

“W–What did you just say?” Julius murmured, utterly astonished.

In every nightmare, she had been unmovable–her decision hammered in iron, impervious even as he knelt and begged.

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify