Chapter Forty-Nine
In that moment – the moment when she’d kissed him in her kitchen – Damien had seen it. Another path – a choice he could’ve made if everything had been different – golden, and shining before him. Sitting across from Ava at a restaurant, watching her laugh as she placed a napkin across her lap. Ava, walking beside him along the riverfront, the wind twisting her silver hair from its pins. Ava, tilting her head to press her lips against his, her fingers tangling in his hair.
He’d wanted to kiss her back. Wanted to pull her to him, to hold her – and exist only in that warm place in his mind.
But then he remembered what Lillian had said, remembered the agreement they had made.
Kissing her before had been foolish. But kissing her in that kitchen would be worse than a lie – it would’ve been playing into Lillian’s hands.
And he wouldn’t do it.
He couldn’t do it.
Now he walked back through Liverpool’s wide, clattering streets towards the docks – towards her house – and he felt his pace quicken. But at least he owed her an explanation as to why. He owed her the truth – all of it, perhaps, but at the very leastpart of it.
And yet, when he finally turned onto her road, and his gaze lifted towards her door, he froze.
For there was a man standing on the other side of the street, leaning against the lamppost.
Like last time, his cap was pulled down low, over his face.
Like last time, there was a pipe clenched between his teeth.
But unlike last time, Damien didn’t tell himself it was nothing. That it was no one. He knew it from the coiling sensation in the pit of his stomach, the rash of sweat that’d sprung – cold and sour – on the back of his neck. And so he turned on his heel, and walked back the way he had come.
He tried to keep his pace relaxed as he weaved through the foot traffic back towards the docks – back to where it would be crowded, and he could lose himself amidst the crush of people clambering onto great, iron ships, though his heart hammered so hard in his chest every breath felt pained.
When he passed a tree with deep, scarlet leaves – almost black in the low light of dusk – he reached out, as though the colour were too gorgeous not to pluck one from the branch, and turned his head just a little.
And his heart sped a little faster.
The man was following him. And not discreetly, either. Though Damien had stopped, the man was still walking – quick steps closing in on him – and Damien turned, hastening his own pace. He wouldn’t make it to the docks – and so instead he ducked down the first twisting alleyway he found, a winding maze of court housing.
And he ran.
Ava had been ready for Damien’s session by eight o’clock in the morning – for she hadn’t slept last night, kept awake by the untethered feeling in her chest, the worry gnawing ather mind. Not even pages and pages of half-finished sketches had silenced them, though she’d drawn him at the docks – sunlight catching the rims of his spectacles. She’d drawn him in her kitchen, his furrowed brow, the tense line of his jaw. She’d drawn the way he’d looked at her before he’d kissed her, eyes soft with longing, and the way he’d looked when he’d pulled away – the light in them dimmed.
By eleven, she’d found herself pacing up and down the hallway, until the landing had creaked, and her father had called down to ask who’d stationed the cavalry in their house. By twelve, she’d arrived at the apothecary, and stepped through the small doorway at the back, and felt the thudding ache in her stomach begin to grow.
Because Oliver was right. Love was giving someone else everything they needed to hurt you – and perhaps that was why Damien didn’t believe her. Didn’t believe that she wouldn’t walk away.
Because they hadn’t uncovered it yet. The memory that plagued him. And until they had, until she’d sat with him through it, he wouldn’t believe it.
And so she waited. And when she became sick of checking her pocketwatch, she rearranged some of the crates in the corner instead – stacking the full ones at the bottom, and the empty ones at the top, so they didn’t tilt so worryingly. It wasn’t until the church bells rang out for one o’clock that she stepped back into the shop – watching Jem speak with customers, watching each one of them walking out of the door, the chimes tinkling gently, wondering when Damien would step inside.
Jem pulled his pocketwatch out, and frowned at it. ‘I should probably go upstairs and eat. Do you want something?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll wait,’ she said.
And she did. Even as the clock ticked towards two, and Jem reappeared – and she felt the heaviness within her grow.
And then the clock ticked past three.
Ticked past four.
And she felt her heart stutter like a flame. Felt it fold, and extinguish – leaving nothing.
Chapter Fifty
