I shook myself free from such runaway, unanswerable questions. “Nothing.”
“It was something.”
“Nothing important.”
“Your face looked as if you were trying to solve the world’s hunger issues.”
I shrugged, self-conscious that my mind had twisted into a tangent. “Nothing as important as that.”
He paused, his gaze searching mine, doing his best to pry apart my secrets. Slowly, his jaw clenched, and he placed his hand over mine on the balustrade. Licking his bottom lip, he whispered, “Are you happy?”
The question wasn’t something I expected. My eyes shot to his, wary, guarded, but beseeching him to let me steal his secrets. What had made him so uncertain that he had to ask? I was the happiest I’d ever been, and it was all thanks to him. My voice matched his in decibel. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I need to know.”
I should’ve put him out of his misery, but I answered his question with another. “What about what I need to know? What of that?”
His teeth ground together, understanding instantly what I hinted at. “Your theory?”
“Yes.”
Removing his hand from mine, he wrapped his fingers tight on the banister as if wishing it was my neck he wrung. He looked back at the port. His tall height gave him the advantage, blocking me from his eyes and deciphering his blustery moods.
He came across so forceful and unmovable—a true disaster in human form waiting to wreak havoc on anything and everyone, but now that I’d started looking...truly looking, I saw bone-deep pain beneath that rage. I tasted the soul-crushing hurt beneath his temper. And I felt the burning lust, not for bodily pleasure, but for the beauty of letting go entirely and falling.
Falling in love.
Falling in lust.
I understood more than he knew.
Perhaps that was what made me perfect for Elder where any other woman would pale? I’d been through my own trauma. I’d learned the darkest facets of myself and the lowest of lows. I knew what sort of human I was when faced with the purest of poison, and I knew how much I fought to survive.
Not many people knew the answers to those lessons—through luck of an easy life or lack of broadening horizons—but I knew.
I understood who I was in the worst of times.
I only needed to know who I was in the best of them.
Elder was like me. He knew how wrong he could be. How his flaws turned him from perfect to dangerous and just what happened when he let go.
He could never be normal, but unlike me, he didn’t catalogue everything he knew of himself as a strength. He looked at them as downfalls. He didn’t understand himself; therefore, he could never know how he could be in the best of times.
I want to show him.
I wanted a life where I grew into someone well-rounded and sexual and able to laugh at a stranger and not cower in the shadows. I wanted a dream where I held the hand of a man who others might call broken and kiss him without fear of his mind snapping or our trust breaking.
“I won’t push you, Elder. But I will know those answers...soon.”
“Not if I leave you here.”
My heart coughed. “Do you want to leave me here?”
My question was a pit full of sharp spikes ready to impale him. If he answered truthfully, he would be skewered with the knowledge I wouldn’t let him keep the walls up between us. And if he lied, he’d be lanced because I already knew he didn’t want to leave me.
He knew as well as I did the pain of being apart and the overwhelming feeling of wrongness when we weren’t by each other’s sides. Anything was better than that. Including being pushed by the one you didn’t want to push away.
He swallowed hard, glaring at the grey horizon. “You know I don’t want that.”’
The resounding agony in his tone restarted my heart into a rhythm entirely orchestrated by him. He might play the cello, but in that moment, he strummed my soul and sent the chords vibrating through me.
Pressing against him, I placed my hand over his, once again taking the initiative to touch and interact and speak. So long I’d been silent, and now I was a natural at conversing with him.
Him.
This man I wanted to be mine more than anything. “You know I won’t stop. If that makes me selfish and cruel...so be it. I’m doing it for other reasons than my own.”
His head hung. “I know.”
“And you know I’m strong enough.”
He squeezed his eyes closed. “That’s the part that terrifies me.”
“All things worth having are terrifying.”
He snorted under his breath, glancing at me with blue-black hair dancing over his forehead. “Then you must be the greatest thing on earth, Pimlico, because you fucking petrify me.”
My belly danced, clawing at me to release the fluttering of moths and winged things and take flight. To soar up his tall body and claim his mouth. To whisper against his lips all manner of promises—some I had the strength to keep and others I was still too fragile to grant.
But I couldn’t do any of those things as Jolfer stepped into our passion, popping it as surely as a pin would a bubble. “Sir, we’ll be docked in fifteen minutes. The car is serviced and ready to go. Selix already has your itinerary, and the appointments you asked the staff to make are all arranged.”
Elder jerked back, returning me from the midnight depths of his eyes to the dreary English drizzle. “Thank you, Jolfer.”
Jolfer, with his kind, weathered face, nodded politely, tapped his temple at me in respect, and then carried about his duties to bring the Phantom home for her well-earned rest.
Unable to return to the deeply raw place we’d been before, I asked, “Appointments?”
Elder rolled his neck as if doing his best to shed what’d happened and realign himself in the now. “Dress fitting for you. Tux fitting for me. Then hair and makeup before the masquerade at Hawksridge.”
“Why does it have to be a masque?”
I hated not being able to see people’s faces...to see their plotting.
“I’m of the same opinion. If it wasn’t for work, I’d cancel.”
Far off memories of paper mache masks and faceless men bidding on me at auction trickled like tar. I clamped down on such things. Tonight would be different. Tonight, I would be with Elder and safe.
Forcing myself into brightness, I nudged his shoulder with mine. “I’m getting a new dress?” I smiled as if I was superficial enough to only care about a wardrobe.
He didn’t buy it. “Next time you feign excitement, try to do it over something I know you don’t hate.”
I laughed softly. “I didn’t hate it when you made me wear that lingerie.” I blushed and flushed and glanced at the polished deck beneath our feet. “The way you looked at me...it made the claustrophobia worth it.”
Elder sucked in a breath, tattered and heavy and so full of regret—it pierced my heart like countless arrows, their feathered shafts quivering painfully.
“I...” He squeezed the back of his neck as his shoulders slouched. “Goddammit, Pim.”
For some reason, tears prickled my eyes. It wasn’t tears of sadness but more of frustration. I had the power to relieve him of his stress, if only he trusted me as I trusted him.
Instinct told me to pull away, but I fought it and swayed into him instead.
He froze as I wrapped my arms around him, wriggling between him and the banister to lay my head against his chest. I stiffened as his heartbeat filled my ears. It wasn’t the steady thunder I expected but a lightning storm. Fast and fleeting as if being touched by me made his heart work triple time to keep him standing.
He rested his chin on my hair as his arms hesitatingly came around me.
We stood there like that for I didn’t know how long. Breathing each other in. Listening to the havoc we played on each other’s bodies. Unable to say what we truly wanted but knowing anyway.
Finally, he kissed my hair, murmuring,
“There is one appointment that isn’t so superficial. It doesn’t include clothes or makeup or glitzy ridiculous balls. Will you go with me?”
“I’d go anywhere with you.”
“In that case...let’s go.”
* * * * *
I stood outside a nondescript entrance overshadowed by turrets and towers. Barbwire and soaring chain-link glittered in the clearing rain, surrounded by brick walls and whitewashed window frames.
It could’ve been any number of corporate buildings: a hospital, a no-frills university—somewhere where wire and spikes were required to keep its inhabitants safe, not for locking them in.
I preferred to think of it that way: a school. A school where my mother taught and studied her favourite criminal patients, diving into the minds of psychopaths before walking from such a depressing place and going home to a warm apartment filled with comfy familiarity.
But it wasn’t a school, and this wasn’t a fantasy.
I’d never understood my mother’s love of delving deep into what made a criminal tick, and now...she is one.
I baulked as Selix slammed the car door behind me and Elder held out his arm. I didn’t know the name of the prison or even what suburb we’d driven to.
All Elder had told me was it was important and to trust him.
Most of the drive through congested English motorways and then quaint village roads, I’d pondered on the hypocrisy of such a request.
When I’d given him my trust the night the coastguard came, he’d shut down on me and refused to sleep with me. He acted as if giving him my trust was an abomination.
Yet here he was asking for the very same gift he’d thrown in my face.
“Pim?” His gentle voice interrupted my thoughts.
I blinked, bringing him into focus, standing with his arm empty and requesting my hand, his gaze imploring me to trust.
I shivered as an icy gale whipped around the harsh corners of the jail. My mother was in there. She was in there because of something she’d done for me. I was so close to seeing her, yet the vinegary guilt made me step back. “I...why did you bring me here?”
He didn’t need to tell me who we were here to see or how he’d arranged this. I’d known the moment I’d set eyes on this place. This place housing my murderess mother.
I didn’t need to know how. I needed to know why.
Why?
Especially as he’d read my notes to No One. He saw how much I blamed her for what’d happened to me. He would’ve witnessed the misplaced hate I’d carried for her in the way my pencil scribbled harder whenever I wrote her name.
I’d thrown around the fantasy of visiting her but in reality...I wasn’t ready.
I doubted I would ever be ready.
“Because she asked to see you,” Elder murmured. “And more importantly, you need to see her.”
“She asked about me?” I shook my head, my hair coiling around my cheeks as if protecting me from the breach of his tampering in my life. “When? How?”
He winced, dropping his arm uncomfortably. “I called her. I left a message telling her who I was and that you were safe. I didn’t think she’d call me back.”
“But she did?”
“She did.”
“And?” I snapped. “What did you tell her?”
Oh, God...imagine if he told her everything? How he’d found me at Alrik’s days away from committing suicide. How my tongue was half severed. How my panic attacks made me so weak.
She was in prison. She didn’t need such terrible thoughts when she already lived in a terrible place.
Elder stepped slowly toward me, remorse painting his handsome face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I know now how that must feel.” He shook his head with a harsh cough. “If anyone spoke to my mother on my behalf...I’d be fucking livid.” Rage burned in his gaze, directed at himself. “I’m truly sorry, Pimlico, but you have my word, not once did I tell her how we met, where you came from, or what we’ve done since finding each other.”
His hand crept out, touching mine with a barely there coax. “She doesn’t know anything more than you’re alive. The rest is up to you to tell her...if and when you’re ready.”
I snatched my fingers back from his. “But the things I thought about her...the hate I held while those things were done to—”
Elder lurched forward, stealing my hand and squeezing it hard. “Stop. You didn’t know. You were alone. You were abandoned to that bastard’s whims. You didn’t know you were loved and searched for. Just like she didn’t know how much she loved you until you were gone. She didn’t show it, and it made you doubt.” He cupped my cheek, beseeching me to understand. His face harsh and wind-bitten but still just as lovely. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I swallowed the ball in my throat. “I did. I blamed her...for all of it.”
I still do even when I shouldn’t.
“Blame is good. You needed someone to blame.”
“I blamed him, too.”
“He deserved it. He deserves to rot on his kitchen floor for eternity.”
“But how can I look at her knowing what she did for me, all while I harboured suspicions that she might’ve been the one to set it up? That I concocted ideas that I was merely an experiment for her to see how her child would react with the same monsters she studied?”
Elder gathered me close, tucking me against his warm moleskin jacket. “Fuck, Pim.”
I trembled, spilling my darkest confessions—even the ones I daren’t write in my notes to No One. “I hated her for not hugging me like other mothers. I despised her for making it feel wrong that I wanted to be a little girl playing with dolls. I told myself I was lucky to be treated as an equal and an adult even when I was young enough to be afraid of the dark. Instead of rocking me back to sleep, she’d give me textbooks to read about the psychology of why children fixate on things that can’t hurt them. That phobias for irrational things can be over-come if one just grows up and faces what they’re truly afraid of.”
Elder’s jacket was warm and heady like the incense flavour he carried on his skin. Its rich scent siphoned up my nose, doing its best to soothe me when I didn’t deserve to be soothed.
My voice turned small. “All I wanted was some small sign she loved me, and a lot of those childish insecurities would’ve gone away.”
“We all love in our own ways, Pim.” His voice was deep and rich, entirely mollifying while, at the same time, not doing anything to mollify my nerves. “You need to forgive yourself for thinking such things, just like you need to forgive her for making you feel that way.”
Pushing me out of his embrace, he nudged my chin with his knuckles. “I’ll come with you. If you want me.”
My eyes trailed to the squat, bristling-in-barbwire building behind him. How was I supposed to go in there? How was I supposed to speak to her after so much had happened to both of us?
“Pim...”
Forcing myself to look at him, I waited for whatever he wanted to say.
His eyes tightened, the stress lines around his mouth deepening. “When she called me back, and I told her about you...” He trailed off, tucking wind-whipped hair behind my ear and smiling with love born from being denied his own mother’s affection. “She broke. I’ve never heard someone’s voice turn from guarded to distraught so quickly. All she wanted to know was if you were okay. She didn’t ask anything else. Just were you okay. And then she begged me to bring you to her. I couldn’t refuse.”
I wanted so much to believe this would be easy. That she would forgive me and I’d forgive her, and we’d somehow fall into a relationship we’d never had, but all I could visualize was her lack of cuddles and abundance of coldness, and once again, I was flooded with fear that I was broken. That I was only capable of hating her when all I’d ever wanted was to love and be loved by her.
I’m a horrible, horrible person.
Even now, even knowing what she’d done, I still couldn’t let go of the pain of my childhood.
“That’s true. You’ve been made to do enough bad things.” His commiseration turned to scolding. “But could you be that person? After everything you know? Now you know the truth about how she searched and killed for you?” He shook his head proudly and sadly. “I still have so much to learn about you, Pimlico, but I already know you aren’t capable of doing that. You’re too pure.”
I shot him a sharp look.
In one moment, he made me sound like an angel and the next, an ungrateful brat—something my mother had called me many times in my past. If anything, that reminder helped me stand taller; to shoulder my responsibility while figuring out hers.
If I didn’t visit, I would be proving her right by calling me an ungrateful brat. If I didn’t see her, I would forever hate myself for being so weak and heartless.
I was eternally grateful to her even though we’d never been mother and daughter. Her love had come from a complicated place and landed her in hell.
Even though it tangled me up inside, Elder was right.
I couldn’t refuse because I wasn’t that person.
I wasn’t selfish.
I wasn’t cruel.
I’m better than this.
My mother was my mother.
I was her daughter.
For better or for worse.
I was a Blythe.
Chapter Twenty-Five
______________________________
Elder
IF SOMEONE HAD asked me what my ultimate dream was, I would’ve said a reunion.
A forgiveness.
A ceremony turning me from No One into someone again and being welcomed back into my family.
I knew that would never happen for me, but to be lucky enough to witness such a reunion and not have it be my own was bittersweet. But then again, it was somehow even better as it was for someone I loved more than myself.
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