by Alys Murray
The reality of her life was that she was going to have to give him up. And that reality haunted her no matter where she went.
Daniel had called her a cynic more than once, always jokingly and always with the firm resolve he would change her mind. He was right. On both counts. She was a cynic. A cynic whose heart was softening every time he doused her in the sunshine of his stupid, crooked smile, every time he complained about her refusal to wear socks, every time he opened his mouth to sing or asked her about the past she kept so tightly hidden away.
For every cynical blood cell powering her body, shoving her toward bad decisions and worse attitudes, he had an antidote of optimism. For every time she said, “It looks like rain,” he said, “But look at the sun shining through the clouds. Isn’t it beautiful?”
Today, it wasn’t the quiet, empty halls of her house, the silence of her father and the disappointed frown of her brother she had to contend with. It was more than the poisoning loneliness burning up her insides whenever her father passed her in the hall without looking in her direction. It wasn’t lying awake thinking about his love of “Danny Boy” or giggling her way through their backlog of texts.
Leaving Daniel tonight meant one less night with him. One day of pure, unbridled living was gone, bringing her one step closer to losing it forever, only to be replaced by a life with men like Captain. They were one day closer to her betrayal and his heartbreak. Back to slamming the vault door on her real self. Back to friendlessness. Full-time loneliness. Endless days of heartlessness.
So when Daniel went to kiss her good night, she turned her cheek and threw herself into his arms instead.
“Hey! Where’s the fire? I’m not going off to war or anything.”
Sam didn’t respond. She clung to him, tightening her arms around him until she lost all feeling in them. He held her just as tight.
“You don’t have to hold on so tight,” he said, without loosening his own grip on her. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With her face nestled in the folds of his overcoat, Sam breathed him deep and imagined a million impossible futures. Spearmint toothpaste mornings and bookshop afternoons and dancehall nights. Oh, God, and how they would laugh. Not laughing like the men in blue she spent her drinking hours with. Laughter that left no one out, laughter so contagious and genuine passersby would be compelled to join in. The only thing missing from her visions was her family. Her father and Thomas were absent in every single one of them, and she didn’t want to live a life without a family.
So, she stepped back, regretfully reaching for the front doorknob.
“Yeah.” She chuckled, the sound brittle as the cold British air. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Please kiss me.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. Ducking down, he found her lips with his own, exploring her and welcoming her into his embrace as though she’d always belonged there. She melted into his softness, threading her fingers through his hair. She tried not to kiss him like she was memorizing the taste of him, the fireplace roar of his hands on her waist, because she wanted to conceal the truth. She’d spent the night with him trying to fight injustice, all while knowing she would be dealing out the biggest injustice of all. And then, she’d lose him.
“Do you want me to come upstairs?”
His voice was a breath against her lips, little louder than a faint, distant wind. The question was benign enough, but the implications were clear, written in the grip of his fingers at her back and the heat in his eyes.
“What?”
“I just…” Pulling away from her, clearly startled by her lack of enthusiastic agreement, he ran a nervous hand through his hair, suddenly looking anywhere but her. “I’m sorry, I just thought—”
God, this was awkward. Not because she didn’t want to say yes. She did. She just knew she couldn’t. Not when she was lying to him, not when he would end all of this with a broken heart.
“No, it’s fine. I would. It’s just…”
“Don’t worry about it.” Daniel slapped on that self-deprecating smile of his and waved her apologies away, cracking a joke to lighten the mood. “Never imagined losing my virginity in a mansion, anyway.”
“You’re a virgin?” she choked out before she could keep the question at bay.
“Yep.” Even in the damp light, she could see the pink stretching against his stubbled cheeks. “Secret’s out now, I guess.”
“Why haven’t you—”
“I haven’t ever asked anybody to have sex and no one’s ever asked me to, either.” He shrugged. “I just wanted it to be special. To mean something, you know?”
Yeah, she did know. Which was exactly why she couldn’t bring him upstairs tonight. Or any other night, for that matter. No matter how much her stomach tightened or how her blood rushed at the prospect.
“Well, when it does happen, I’m sure it will be everything you ever dreamed of.”
“Yeah.” His look was purposeful, warm, and full of hope. Hope she couldn’t answer. “I think so, too.”
With another kiss and a brief goodbye, she opened the door and entered her home. Dark, as usual. The lights had probably been out since she left for university this morning. She flicked them on, moving through slats of light and across creaking floorboards toward her room. Her mind was too tired tonight for anything but a long, hot shower and some sleep. Between the looming threat of the Mud Duck Ball, Captain’s continued pursuit, and the growing riot inside of her traitorous heart, the sweet oblivion of sleep looked more and more appealing with every step she took.
“Samantha.”
She paused in the doorway of the smoking room, where her brother sat at the window. He took a long drag off of a cigarette. As often as he’d told her to be careful of her relationship with Daniel, she’d warned him of cigarettes. Apparently, they were both bad listeners.
“Hey, Thomas,” she greeted without any particular excitement.
“Do you know how to play snooker?”
“I know how to play pool.”
“The rules are close enough. C’mon. Let’s play a game.”
They walked into the snooker hall, one of Ashbrooke Manor’s many quirks. Her brother roughly tossed her a stick.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” he said, setting up the table.
Everything about Thomas’s demeanor told her she was in for a thorough lecture. Her fight or flight instincts kicked in, but she tightened her grip on the stick in her hands, hoping it would ground her to the spot.
“What’s this about?” she asked.
Before she started dating Daniel and running wild around Oxfordshire, she and Thomas ate dinner together almost every evening and spent plenty of time at each other’s side. This little invitation was too sudden to be innocent.
“The ball’s on Friday, isn’t it?”
The hairs on Sam’s neck bristled.
“Uh-huh,” she said, the notes of the syllables too high to be a casual reply.
The truth was, she hadn’t even asked Daniel yet. She knew she had to. She knew it was in the cards and inevitable. She hadn’t found the right moment, the correct mixture of courage and invincible self-interest, to ask him.
“How are you feeling about it?” Thomas asked.
“I’m not.” She bent down to take her first shot, secretly reveling in the way the balls knocked together, so harsh and haphazard. “I’m not thinking about it.”
“But you’re going through with it?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But…” Though she took her shot, Thomas made no move from his place near the richly papered wall. Samantha leaned against her stick. “You love him. You’re starting to, at least.”
“Nope.”
“You can’t tell me you don’t,” he snapped.
Pointing at the table with the end of her cue, she finally leveled her gaze at her brother.
“Are we going to play or what?”
He advanced on her the
n, gripping the cue so tightly his knuckles stained white. The chill from her walls seeped into her skin.
“You know what they’re going to do to him,” he implored.
“I’m not thinking about it.”
“Once you take him there, it’s over. You won’t have Daniel anymore. You’re going to lose him.”
Did Thomas think she didn’t know she would lose Daniel? Did he think she was some stupid, dreamy girl who thought she’d get to hold onto him after this was over? He thought she was delusional enough to talk her way out of this horrible mess she’d gotten herself into? Of course not. But there were bigger things at stake than some nice guy who made her laugh. And wrote her songs. And taught her how to dance. And filled the cracks in her taped-up heart. Much, much bigger things.
But at least she could say she had him for a while. A moment of happiness would have to be enough.
“I still have him for a few more days.”
“Just quit, Sam.”
Here we go again. If she had to hear one more lecture about the evils of the Animos Society and why she should forget all about it, she’d have to scream.
“I can’t quit,” she clipped.
“If you quit, you can be with him. You can have what you want.”
“I can’t quit. You know I can’t quit. You know what they’ve put me through and I didn’t come all this way to lose it now.”
“Then break up with him and take someone else. We’ll hire someone to replace him, someone who knows what’s going on, someone who will play along and win you the night and will go home with a nice check and no hurt feelings. Don’t you care about Daniel’s feelings at all?”
His feelings? Yes, she thought about his feelings constantly. But if she told Thomas that, there would be no going back.
Instead, she turned her argument inward. When was the last time anyone cared about her feelings? She’d been kicked around and pushed aside and trampled on and ignored and forgotten and put into foster care for years because no one cared about her or her feelings.
And besides, if she lived with utter and complete disregard for the feelings of the people who loved her, maybe she would finally fit in. Everyone else—her father, her mother, her father’s friends, the Animos Society—got to look out for themselves. Maybe she’d finally get some goddamn respect if she acted like she belonged.
“Thomas,” she ground his name out, leaning against the snooker table for support. “You don’t know what it’s like to be lonely. So lonely you cry yourself to sleep at night and wonder if you’re ever going to feel like you aren’t drowning in it.”
“Don’t start with the melodrama.”
“I’m happy,” she said, returning to her natural state, wielding the ice around her heart like a saber. It was a lie, but close enough to the truth that she didn’t feel bad saying it. “Probably for the first time in my life. And I’m going to enjoy the next five days. I’m going to memorize them and look back on them until the day I die as the happiest I’ve ever been. I’m not giving him up. And when it’s all over, I’ll have the Animos Society. I’ll have Dad. We’ll be a real family. And that’ll be enough.”
She was convincing herself. She’d run around this argument enough times that she could recite her reasoning by rote even as her gut begged to do exactly what Thomas suggested. Leave the Animos Society forever. Forget about Dad. Live happily with Daniel.
The only problem was the happily part. She knew love didn’t last. This thing she felt for him, what he felt for her, it would disappear, and she’d be left with nothing. The only logical solution was to choose family and community over this desperate thrumming in her chest.
“You’re pathetic. You’re going to break his heart and yours so you can prove something? Because you think the asshole upstairs is gonna suddenly open his eyes and see what an awesome daughter he has? Do you not see anything wrong with this? With how selfish you’re being?”
“You know what? Fuck you.” Her cue broke in half when she hurled it at the floor. The steam of her self-righteous rage overflowed, rising too high and too hot for her to contain any longer. Her heart knew her brother was right. About everything. But her mind couldn’t let her accept it. Her eyes burned from the fire they shot into the room. “How’s the view from the sidelines, asshole? You don’t have a fucking clue what this feels like. Don’t you dare condescend to me about morality and—”
“I was in love with Iris.”
He wasn’t yelling anymore. Gone was the fervor, the need to make her see reason. In its place, he wore an invisible mantel of defeat. Even worse, his eyes rimmed with tears. Honest-to-God tears. Tears he made no attempt to conceal or blink away. Thomas wanted her to see, wanted to stab her with his unflinching honesty.
The truth was a weapon Sam had no shield against.
“Iris. My entry for the ball. I was in love with Iris and I lost her.” His voice broke and he finally looked away.
It all made sense. His cryptic mutterings about people getting hurt. His warnings about not getting too close.
“Excuse me for trying to save both of you from a lifetime of knowing you lost the most important thing you could ever want.”
There was nothing more to say, no more horrible barbs he could throw at her. At least, she thought there was nothing more to say when he slammed his way out of the room, leaving her behind with a shattered snooker cue and an empty soul.
“Happy fucking birthday, by the way.”
When he was gone, Samantha collapsed into the nearest chair. Her entire body, which only a moment ago hummed with anger and the harsh sting of conflict, now sank into the material with lifeless heft.
“Whatever,” she sniffed. “It’s not even until tomorrow, asshole.”
Chapter Seventeen
The next morning, Samantha rose to a quiet house. Usually, a still house wouldn’t have worried her. Ashbrooke was a quiet place populated by quiet people; silence reigned only to be interrupted by occasional parties or Thomas’s piano playing.
The problem was that last year on her birthday, Thomas woke her up at six thirty a.m. by bringing a full orchestra in her room to play the birthday song from The Simpsons. He’d brought a cake and bags of gifts and even her father came in to give her a firm handshake and an envelope of cash, which (according to Thomas) was the warmest birthday present he’d ever bestowed on someone.
This birthday? Silence.
A pit opened in the bottom of Samantha’s stomach as she wandered the too-quiet halls of Ashbrooke. She jumped at every groan and creak of the house, spinning around in the hopes this wasn’t some prank. They were going to jump out at any second and wish her happy birthday. They were going to celebrate her day. Or at least acknowledge it. But after several passes through the halls, she found herself listening at her father’s office door for any sign of life inside. Under normal circumstances, she would have gone straight to Thomas’s room and asked him what gives, but after their fight… Her father would have to do. Gathering her courage, she knocked at his door.
“Father?”
Calling him Dad felt wrong, no matter how much she wanted to.
“Come in,” he directed, and she obeyed.
“Good morning,” Sam said, warmer than she felt.
“Morning.”
Hovering behind one of the chairs—she hadn’t been invited to sit, after all—she waited for her father to say something. More than wait, though, she hoped. Hoped he would prove her wrong. Maybe he was waiting for the right moment to tell her happy birthday.
He was her father. Distant as he was, he had to remember her birthday… Right?
“I’m sorry.” After a moment of silence, he continued flipping through paperwork on his desk. “Did you want something?”
Shit. Sam tried another tactic, one a lot less subtle.
“I was wondering if there’s anything going on today.”
The paperwork on his desk must have been so damn interesting because never once did he bother to give his daughter
more than the minimally required attention to maintain a conversation. His vague blinks and anxious finger-tapping dug through her skin like the needles of a voodoo doll.
“I’m not sure. Thomas keeps the schedule. You know he does.”
“Right. I’ll…” Sam swallowed hard. Keep smiling. He’ll never like you if he thinks you’re weepy and unnecessary. “Go ask him, then.”
“Shut the door on your way out, will you?”
Samantha did as she always did. She did what she was told. They hadn’t forgotten her birthday. Thomas hadn’t, at least. He just wasn’t going to celebrate it. Punishment for her sins. She slumped against the doorframe, her knees weakening as she fought to beat her thundering heart into submission.
Her brother was the only person she had. And now, she’d lost him, too.
There was nothing for it. Samantha shook her head. She had plenty she could do to distract herself with. Shopping, for one thing. She needed a dress for the ball. Or she could study. Her dissertation was not going to research or write itself, no matter how much she wished it would. Besides, a birthday cake wouldn’t have made her feel better.
No matter. She pushed herself off the wall, shaking all remnants of this morning’s disappointments from her head. Or trying to. Because no matter how many times she blinked or swallowed, her heart didn’t quiet or still. She was halfway to her room when a knock on the front door shook her from the war waged somewhere between her skull and her rib cage.