by Shen, L. J.
Perfect.
“Then it is voluntary.” I stood, heading for the door.
“No,” the doctor hesitated. “For you to stop the tics, you’ll have to stop feeling. I don’t think you understand—”
“I understand everything.” I curled my fist, knocking on the door three times, signaling the nurse I wanted to get out.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick—”
I didn’t answer.
I got what I came here for.
A solution.
Now all I needed was practice.
Operation Cancel Feelings did not get off to a smooth start when I came back to England.
To begin with, I wasn’t big on feelings. That was not to say I hadn’t felt any. I was capable of being sad, happy, hungry, amused, and jealous. I hated a lot of people—certainly more than a boy my age should—and even loved a little.
Mainly my baby brother, who had the advantage of not being able to talk back, hence not being able to piss me off. But I also loved other things. Polo and Christmas and sticking my tongue out when it rained. The alluring taste of winter.
I also liked my friendship with Andrew Arrowsmith. A lot.
Not in the same way I liked girls. The way they moved and smelled and existed, which I found both magical and confusing. I knew I was one hundred percent straight. I liked Andy because he got me. Because we were the two kids with the Boston accents who did everything together. We studied and hung out and watched movies and shows and played the same sports. We pulled dangerous pranks together. We farted and blamed it on his dogs during dinnertime. We watched our first porno together, and fought over football, and ran away from the cops that one time when we accidentally set a trash can in the country club on fire…
We were being kids and shared whatever childhood our parents allowed us to have together.
He was the closest thing to family I’d had. Which was why I was furious with Andrew Senior for stealing money from Royal Pipelines, and with my own father for finding out, and also with Athair for acting on the betrayal.
Yes, Andy’s dad stole from our company, but Andy was my lifeline. Couldn’t Athair let this shit go?
After weeks of not hearing or seeing Andy at Evon, I finally ran into him at the main chapel. My relief was mixed with dread.
I waved at him from across the chapel. There was a swarm of students between us, and all of us were wearing the same uniform. Andrew noticed me and looked away.
The tinge of pain in my chest alarmed me. I couldn’t afford to feel. Feelings would inspire more nerve attacks, and nerve attacks would make Athair disown me. While I truly liked baby Hunter, I didn’t want to see him snagging the eldest son’s title as the heir to Royal Pipelines.
Not to mention, Athair, Mother, and Hunter were the only family I had left, now that Andy probably hated my guts.
I strode across the lawn after Sunday Mass, hands clasped behind my back, frowning at the lush grass. I didn’t even care much that I had Tourette’s. It was inconvenient, for sure, but after gulping down a few medical journals and a couple of books about the syndrome, I’d decided I would overcome it before graduating and moving on to college.
And when I decided something, I never failed, no matter the means it took to achieve it.
The back of my neck seared with sudden pain. I stopped, bringing my hand to rub at it. It felt warm and sleek. I withdrew my palm, glancing at it. It was full of blood. I turned around. Andrew strode toward me with some of his friends, tossing a rock in his hand.
He grinned.
“What the fuck, Arrowsmith?”
“The fuck is your father is a jealous asshole, and my mates here told me that you’re a freak. I heard about the library accident.”
I figured he would. I straightened my posture, reminding myself that there was no need to waste any feelings over this nonsense. He wasn’t the first person to leave. He wasn’t going to be the last, either.
“Yeah? Well, I h-h-heard your da-da-dad stole money to pay your way through Evon. Short on money, Arrowsmith?” I punched my own face out of nowhere.
What the fuck?
Andrew’s eyes gleamed as he advanced toward me, picking up speed. His friends followed suit.
“Oh, man, you’re stuttering now!”
“I’m not stuttering.” I let out a low growl, slapping my own face again.
No. No. No.
I wasn’t in an empty library this time. I had an audience, and they were watching, laughing, getting a glimpse of the freak show. I had to stop.
Stop feeling.
Stop wanting.
Stop hurting right now.
“The good thing”—Andrew stopped only when he was next to me—“is that I’m not a Fitzpatrick. An Arrowsmith always comes to his friend’s rescue. And you need to be rescued, don’t you, Kill?”
His friends laughed, hands tucked inside their pockets, glaring at me, waiting for the word go.
I looked behind me, slapping my own face again. I could probably run, but there was no point. The tics were going to slow me down, and anyway, I’d always been faster on a horse than with my feet.
I looked back at them. Now was as good a time as any to check the pain box on my list and make sure I couldn’t feel it.
Andrew cracked his knuckles loudly.
I did the same thing.
Note to self: cracking one’s knuckles is very soothing.
“I’m about to fuck your ugly face up even worse than you did, Fitzy.”
I smiled, feeling blissfully numb. “Give it your best shot, Oliver Twist.”
Andrew ended up filming some of his abuse, probably to stash it and remind himself it happened.
But he wasn’t an idiot and was careful to never show his face.
It was one of the very things we’d been taught. Never film anything incriminating. The infamous Bullingdon Club had cost Oxford University enough embarrassment, and nobody at fine British institutions wanted their reputation to be stained by a bunch of teenage dirtbags.
The abuse wasn’t one-sided.
In fact, during our first fight, I’d noticed when Andrew beat me up, I stopped feeling. The tics had stopped. And so, I sought Andrew out. Went to his room on a weekly basis. Goaded him into fighting, abusing, and messing with me.
Andrew took over. We crossed the lines many times.
Broken bones. Permanent scars. Cigarette burns.
I grew stronger and more indifferent each time.
And he? He cried when he did those things to me. Cried like a baby.
Going through the trials and tribulations of being bullied—burned, waterboarded, slapped across the face each time I stuttered or hit myself, each time I twitched—proved to be highly effective.
By fifteen, the year when I’d found out Andrew Arrowsmith wasn’t going to complete his education at Evon, I was free of symptoms.
Outwardly, anyway.
I still popped my knuckles.
Still breathed deep and slow to lower my heart rate.
Still resisted any type of feelings, smashing them whenever they tried to rise above the surface.
The more I controlled the tics, the worse they had become. Fortunately, I always unleashed them when I was in the privacy of my room.
I kicked, screamed, hit myself, broke walls, tore furniture, and devastated everything around me. But I did it on my terms, and only when I felt I was ready. That was how successfully I managed to suppress my emotions.
Until one day, the tics stopped completely.
Feelings were so far away from my realm of existence that I didn’t have to worry anymore.
But the tapes were still out there, and Andrew had them.
Like the one of me lying in a puddle of my own vomit.
Or the one where I sat at the bottom of the pool for a minute at a time until I was blue. Every time I miscalculated the time and rose to the surface too quickly, he’d strike me.
One thing was for sure: Andrew wanted revenge, I wanted complete control,
and we both got what we wanted.
By the time we parted ways, his job was done, and so was mine.
I thought we were even.
I thought we both got what we deserved.
I thought I was immune to feelings ever again.
Turned out, every single one of those assumptions was wrong.
The third time I ran to the bathroom to throw up, I threw in the towel and shut my laptop, stashing it under my bed, like the videos could haunt me. I had enough of seeing my husband—then a teenager—abused.
Beaten.
Smashed.
Broken.
Stuttering.
Crying.
Laughing.
Losing it.
Finding it.
I wanted to kill Andrew Arrowsmith with my own hands.
And knew with a confidence that frightened me that I was capable of doing that, too, given the opportunity.
Andrew’s face wasn’t on the tapes. But his voice was there. So were his motives to do what he did.
At six thirty in the morning, I rose to my feet and walked over to the shower. My eyes were puffy from crying all night.
There were two things I knew without a shadow of a doubt:
One—I was going to make sure Arrowsmith was ruined, even if it was the last thing I did in my life.
Two—Cillian was truly incapable of feeling anything after everything he’d been through. But even the unloving deserved to be loved. Even he deserved peace, belonging, and a home.
From now on, I was going to let him have me on his terms.
Even if it slayed my bleeding heart.
“Sir, you have a visitor.”
I didn’t look up from the screen, still typing out a message to my legal team regarding Green Living.
“Do you have eyes, Serena?”
“Sophia,” she corrected mildly as though the mistake was her fault. “I do, sir.”
“Then I suggest you make use of them and look at my planner. It is wide open for a reason. I do not accept visitors at this time.”
She was still standing on my threshold, wondering how to approach her new boss. At times, I was certain the definition of hell was new personal assistants going through orientation. Sophia needed to be spoon-fed everything, and her only saving grace was that, unlike Ms. Brandt, she wasn’t a world-class bitch who looked like a half-melted Barbie
“It’s your wife.” She physically cringed, bracing herself for a verbal whipping.
I resisted the urge to look up from my laptop and steal a glance at Flower Girl through the glass wall.
To tell Sophia to let her in.
Nothing good was going to come out of this.
She was probably here to give me the third degree about threatening her ex-husband at gunpoint. Or maybe she finally realized how much of a fuckup I am and decided to help Andrew with his lawsuit. To testify.
My wife knew my secret.
Sam had told me about her little stint at Andrew Arrowsmith’s place as soon as he walked out my enemy’s door. I knew Persephone had seen the videos.
She had no right.
No right to butt into my business. No right to uncover what I wanted to keep a secret. No right to peel off the layers I’d refused to shed when she tried the nice way.
“Turn her away,” I ordered, my eyes still on my monitor.
“I’m afraid she can’t and won’t do that. Also, don’t take that tone with her. She is your assistant, not your servant.” I heard a throaty, sweet voice from the doorway. This time, I did look up.
Flower Girl stood at the doorway. She wore a sunny dress and a stern look. I wanted to take both of them off her.
“You’ve fired Ms. Brandt.” She closed the door on Sophia, stepping into my office. “Why?”
“That’s not any of your business.” I closed the laptop.
“Try again.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Because you hated her,” I spat out, disgusted with myself.
She smiled.
I died a little inside.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
I stood, gathering the paperwork on my desk to keep my traitorous eyes from wandering her way. Watching my wife was akin to watching the sun. The euphoric, blinding notion you were both immortal and pathetically human grabbing you by the throat.
“I suppose you’re here because your ex-husband has dumped you again. Am I the consolation prize?” I stuffed my paperwork into my briefcase, itching to go somewhere—anywhere—that was far away from this woman.
The pressure signaling an impending attack pressed against my sternum. Every time she walked into the room, I had to regain my control.
“You knew he was in town?” Her peacock blue eyes followed me intently.
“Your security cameras,” I pointed out, in case she planned on accusing me of slapping her with more private investigators.
She stalked in my direction.
“I threw him out the night he showed up. You’d have known that if you’d bothered to answer any of my calls or actually go through the pain of giving me the time of the day when I tried to visit you at your house.”
Your house.
Of course it was my house.
Why would it be ours? I’d plucked her out of the clinical apartment I’d put her in, stuck her in one of the guest rooms, and expected her to…what? Form any sort of attachment to the place?
“Would you like a prize for remaining faithful?” I arched an eyebrow. She stopped right in front of me. Her scent was everywhere in the room, drowning my senses, and I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Kick her out, kiss her, fuck her, yell at her. All these possibilities exhibited both emotion and complete lack of control.
“Sam told you, didn’t he?” She tilted her head, examining me. She meant Andrew Arrowsmith’s laptop. The tapes she must have watched.
“He is on my payroll.”
“So is the rest of the city.”
“You included, so do yourself a favor and stop sniffing around my business before I cut you off.”
“We both know I’m not here for the money. Now, I want to talk about what I’ve learned.”
She treaded carefully into the conversation.
“No,” I said flatly. “You had no right.”
“Had no right?” She laughed sadly. “I’m your wife, Kill. Whether you accept it or not. I wanted to help you. That’s why I decided to work for Andrew in the first place. To extract information. To get a glimpse into his most intimate place. I knew there was too much riding on this operation, and that you’d try to stop me because you’re too righteous to accept you needed my help.”
“Your job is not to save me.”
“Why?” She parked a hand on her waist. “Why isn’t it my job to save you? I’ve lost count of the times you’ve saved me. You saved me from Byrne and Kaminski, from a horse, from a poisonous flower, from my ex-husband. The list goes on and on. Why is it okay for you to give up your entire existence for the world, to put your father’s needs before yours, to walk through fire for the people you care about, but I can’t do you this one solid?”
“Because you didn’t accomplish anything!” I boomed in her face, baring my teeth. “You pretty little idiot, the videos you found won’t hold up in court. They are not legal evidence. They’re stolen, and probably fuzzy, and don’t capture his face. You’ve worked for nothing.”
The frustration of knowing she’d seen me at my worst, and for no good reason at all, maddened me. I grabbed my wife’s arms. “Your little stunt did nothing more than put another ten-foot dent in our marriage, which, by the way, was the worst mistake of my life.”
The words flew out before I could stop them. I’d heard of people saying things they didn’t mean while angry but had never experienced it because, well, I was never angry. This was an unwelcome, humanizing first. My wife’s blue eyes glittered with rage. I wanted to apologize but knew that the entire floor was watching through my glass office walls, and th
at an apology would achieve nothing.
We were done.
I was faulty. Broken beyond repair, and she wasn’t going to stick around long enough to try to fix me.
“You don’t know what I found out,” she said quietly.
“I don’t fucking care!”
In my periphery, I could see Hunter marching from his office to mine. He waved away the curious audience forming outside my door, shooting me a pull it together look.
I’d officially hit rock bottom. Nothing said you were a world-class loser more than Hunter goddamn Fitzpatrick telling you to chill.
I turned my attention back to Persephone, lowering my voice but still feeling that undeniable shake. “Nothing you found on Andrew’s laptop can help me win this case. The only thing you did was give him more ammo on me. Now he is probably telling people I sent my wife to sniff around his work and made her perform two jobs to try to dig up some dirt about him. Not only did you not help me, but you also put yourself at risk, and I…”
That’s where I stopped. And what?
Persephone slanted one eyebrow up, studying me with eyes so hungry, if I had a heart, it would break for her. She clearly wanted me to care.
“And you what, hubs?” she asked softly. “What would have happened had Andrew done something to me?”
A violent shudder ran through me.
The waterboarding.
The burns.
The beatings.
Getting locked in the confession booth for hours at a time in a dark church with only my demons to keep me company.
Coming back to him, asking him for more. To atone for my father’s sins. To grieve our friendship. To numb my feelings.
And just like that, I remembered who I was.
Who Andrew Arrowsmith had made me.
Who my father—my whole family—expected me to be.
A grim smirk slashed my face like a wound. I leaned down, my lips brushing my wife’s ear, my hot breath fanning her pale hair.