‘I wasn’t talking about that,’ Damien said. ‘I meantyou. When people look at me, they don’t see what you see. They only see whatever collection of clues I’ve given them. But you see underneath all of that. You’ve seen underneath it from the first, I think, and –more than that– you see the good in it. In … in me. You—’
He frowned, shaking his head, unsure of how to put it into words. Because when he was with her, he knew he did not wish to leave, which was a dangerous thing for a man like Damien. Almost as dangerous as the way he’d felt the first time he’d sat for her, with her fingertips pressed to his wrist, wondering if her pulse thudded in time with his.
It was dangerous because he couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t stay anywhere, and telling himself otherwise was a cruel lie that he would only pay for later. And yet standinghere with her, now – on these docks, with the salt wind in his hair – he found he could imagine it.
He could imagine being the kind of person who came here with her, just to take in the view. He could imagine reaching over and entwining his hand with hers.
Kissing her.
‘Yes?’ she pressed, her voice a whisper.
And all of this was madness. He couldn’t stay in Liverpool. And what was the point of extending a thousand pretty words if he only had to snatch them up again when he left?
‘And that is surely what makes you so good at what you do. Why you can help other people find their memories – their stories, Ava. It’s … it’s because of who you are.’
He’d wanted to sever the thread that had grown taut between them, but instead the air between them tightened – electric, weightless – like the moment before a storm breaks.
‘You are part of the problem too,’ she said softly – her eyes not leaving his. ‘For you muddle me as well.’
‘Imuddleyou?’ Damien’s eyebrows arched in good humour. ‘How so?’
‘There is a reason I quit all of it,’ she said softly, looking back out towards the docks. ‘Part of it was … what happened on that stage. But it was also because I stopped trusting myself. Stopped believing in myself. And then I thought perhaps if I could somehow … I don’t know. Block all of that from my mind … if I could turn away from it, then somehow life would be easier. Life wouldfeeleasier.’
His frown remained firmly in place. ‘Because he hurt you? That man in the shop?’
The heat in his voice surprised him, and from the way she was looking at him now, it’d surprised her, too.
‘Because I made a fool of myself,’ she said. ‘Because I got muddled.’
‘Becausehemuddled you,’ said Damien, feeling how his heart had begun to beat irregularly in his chest. ‘He muddled you, and you fear it happening again. And I understand that, because I told myself the same thing, once.’ He looked at her for a long moment. ‘I convinced myself I did not want to be a part of things – that I didn’t need friendships, or …’ He hesitated. ‘Or anyone. I told myself it so often that I began to believe it – that I was better off alone. Because it waseasierthat way. Easier when it wasmy choice, rather than someone else’s.’
‘Rather than your father’s?’
He nodded, though a lump had formed in his throat. ‘I made it one of my rules, in fact. “Create no ripples”.’
Ava’s brow furrowed. ‘You used that word before. What is a ripple?’
Damien swallowed, his eyes not leaving hers.
You break the rules around her, said the voice in his mind. His voice – not his father’s.
Walk away,Damien.
‘This is a ripple,’ he said, in a voice threaded with something that sounded like defeat, as he stepped ever closer. ‘You are a ripple, Ava.’
And then he bent his head, and he kissed her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It didn’t feel the way it had with Jem.
When Jem had kissed her, it had felt like a calculation. A courtesy. A chaste brush of his lips that’d left Ava feeling as though she were standing in a slant of winter sunshine, wishing for warmth. But back then, she’d not had anything to compare it to. Jem was the first man – theonlyman – who’d ever kissed her, and so she could tell herself that love wasn’t fire. That it wasn’t supposed to burn, and as long as you stood in its light, that was good enough.
Now she knew she was wrong.
Each movement of Damien’s lips against hers gripped her like a fever, hot and prickly andfast. There was nothing careful in his kiss, nothing calculated in the way his thumb brushed her cheek.
And then she remembered what had come afterwards. The way Jem had looked at her, when he’d stood on her doorstep. How he’d flinched from her, and the fluttering in her stomach had turned to twisting prickles. How her shame had grown thorns and lodged itself deep in her gut as he’d walked away.
