The silence stretches between us for a few moments as I weigh my options.
“What will you do?” Samuel asks.
“I’m going to leave. Just for a couple days,” I add, “to see if it affects me in the way he says it will.”
“And if it doesn’t? Will you come back?”
Silence.
Somehow, I hadn’t thought about that next step with all the chaos in my mind.
“I’m not sure,” I answer in a voice devoid of any emotion before turning and walking out the church.
The trees encroaching on either side of the path seem to close in on me as I hustle forward. My mind is reeling, but I focus just long enough to conjure up an excuse for leaving should I run into Ambrose inside.
Sure enough, he’s in the kitchen chopping vegetables for whatever dinner he’s preparing to make tonight—the one we’re supposed to make together—and his eyes flick up to meet mine as soon as the door shuts behind me.
“How was your walk?” He asks with a gentle smile.
That tiny, insignificant tilt of his lips is almost enough to fracture my heart. One side of my brain screams,It’s all a trick! While the other side whispers,There’s no way he could fake this affection. The conflict makes me want to scream, tear my hair out, hit something,anythingto make it go away.
But nothing will be able to help this besides proving one side wrong or right.
“It was good,” I say. “It’s getting cold.” It’s the most obvious statement I could make, but he doesn’t seem to think twice about it.
“It is. We should go out and get you a better coat soon. It’ll start snowing any day now.”
I nod, but a familiar emptiness is already consuming my body. The pain of knowing I may never come back, may never see him again, is too strong, and my brain is fighting back the only way it knows how—by shutting down until I’m a shell of myself. The emotion will fester wherever it’s hiding until it explodes without warning, but that’s a problem for future me.
I just can’t allow him to see me breaking. Not again.
So, I fake it. I cook and eat dinner with him while pretending like nothing’s wrong. I had thought that hiding my pain was an act I’d mastered, but Ambrose casts curious looks in my direction, his brows pinched together in concern.
“Is everything okay?” He finally asks me as we’re cleaning up the kitchen after dinner.
“Yeah, I’m just tired. Didn’t sleep very well last night. I’ve also just been thinking about tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
I feign surprise. “Oh, I didn’t tell you? I found another person to kill.” I say it so casually, it surprises even me. “As usual, one less terrible person in the world, and one more fragment of a lifetime closer to fulfilling my end of our deal.”
The hopefully convincing smile I cast his way goes unreturned, and the beat of silence between my quip and his answer is unnerving. What if he somehow figured out what happened and that I don’t plan to return?
When he speaks, though, he doesn’t give any indication that he’s aware of my plans. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, that’s okay. I’d like to do this one on my own.”
His brow furrows. “Who is it?”
“It’s a surprise,” I say with another false smile, though I attempt to make this one more conspiratorial.
Again, he raises his eyebrows but doesn’t smile back.
“Areyouokay?” I can’t help but ask. He had asked me the same question earlier, but it’s clear there’s something going on in his mind that he’s not letting on.
“Yes, but I’d like to talk to you about some things.”
My heart rate quickens. “When?”
