Page 3 of This Haunted Heart

Lochlan Finley

I visited Rynn’s chambers again overnight while she slumbered. Snooping around like a sneak thief, I found a wall safe behind the painting of a pirate ship being tossed in a stormy sea. It hung against the paneling across from her bed.

I tried a variety of combinations: her birthday, important holidays, her favorite number, over and over again, then her second favorite number over and over. I assigned a letter code to the name she’d given to all of the chickens she’d raised, but Daisy wasn’t the answer either. I attempted a variety of patterns until I was exhausted, but I couldn’t crack it. The lock was high-end and made of heavy iron. She’d spent a pretty penny on the equipment.

Whatever was concealed inside, it likely contained the leverage I’d need to break my nightingale and see her put in the cage I had prepared for her.

Rynn’s dreams weren’t restful. She thrashed about the bed, mumbling incoherently, and I wondered if my sudden presence in her room had caused her nightmares.

I hoped it did.

Having seen her, laughed with her, I was more troubled than ever before. In my imagination, meeting her again had gone very differently. She should have behaved like the villain she was, not like the vibrant sweetheart of our youth. Her mind always turned to teasing and mischief. It was impossible not to get sucked in by her.

She was a delightful vortex. That’s how she’d fooled me before, and here I was getting swept up all over again.

With a flustered grunt, I gave up on the code. I couldn’t crack it, and I needed to get some rest before I returned. I readied another cigarette for her. It was the exact kind we used to sneak when we were young. She’d served as a kitchen maid to the family who had adopted me. Most of the time, my father had treated me just like another domestic rather than a son—sometimes less than that.

When he was particularly unkind to me, she’d steal from him, usually a cigarette or a coin. Theft was a very bad habit of hers—her favorite form of retribution, but I’d admired her for her boldness then. We’d smoke it together after the house had fallen still. In memory of that time, I lit the cigarette and took one long drag, blowing the smoke toward her bed, letting it pass over her like a moving spirit.

Sometimes in my dreams Rynn would come to me as a ghost to ravish me in my sleep. She’d hold me after and sing to me. It was a favorite of mine, one that I often revisited when I was awake, despite how it put a bittersweet ache in my chest.

I snuffed the cigarette out on the window ledge and dropped it there by the lantern for her to find in the morning.

I hoped it brought her terrible visions. Even worse than the ones she’d inspired in me every night for twenty years. In my nightmares she was murdered in the mire again and again. I tried to save her but couldn’t get to her. I tried to reach her slain body, but a fog settled between the trees and I couldn’t find any trace of her.

I wandered the marshes, searching for her lost ghost, desperate for whatever remained of her. I’d take any token. A bone, a lock of hair, a piece of clothing. I wanted her. I needed her. I begged her ghost to please come to me.

But it had all been a lie. My nightingale was never dead. I’d been tricked. Rynn had made a mockery of my grief.

* * *

When I came to call the next evening, I brought a bouquet of purple hyacinth and sweet briar roses, and I hid a wrapped present in the double-breasted lapel of my summer sack coat. I was prepared to pay another entry fee, but the madam of the Lark saw the flowers, knew who I was, and told me to head around back.

A gaunt attendant introduced himself as Matthew as he waved me in. After removing my hat, I hung it on a rack by the door. I took a moment to brush fingers through my hair, fixing what my brim had mushed.

“The ladies upstairs are a sure thing as long as you’ve got cash in your pocket,” Matthew muttered. “There’s no need to make a fuss. ”

I disliked him immediately. I made no response as I headed up the narrow stairs. Locating Rynn’s door, I knocked once before entering.

“Oh no, oh no, you’re not supposed to be here yet!” I caught a flash of her dashing into her bedroom, skirts whipping around her legs.

Chuckling, I balanced her flowers in one arm and checked my pocket watch. “It’s three past seven. You said seven sharp. If anything, I’m a little late. The crowd at the door slowed me.”

Her head popped back out of her boudoir. “Do you know nothing about women? Has no one told you how we keep time differently?” She shot me a smirk that sent a dart through my heart, then she vanished again.

I moved so that I could watch her ready through the archway. She studied herself in a standing mirror, smoothing her indigo dress down her thighs, fingering her raven curls.

“Four after seven,” I told her playfully.

“All right, all right.” She jogged back out of her bedroom and presented herself to me with a spirited curtsy. Her curls were pinned up in an elegant coiffure that accentuated the column of her throat. She was unchanged from when I’d seen her a moment ago, but she was right: I had in fact met women before and knew that some of their clocks ran on a different time.

Either way, her presentation was well worth waiting on. Already I was falling into her maelstrom of delightfulness, losing sight of my goal.

Smudges shadowed her deep brown eyes, evidence of her tortured sleep. The midnight blue of her dress brought out the sunshine undertones in her fawn skin. She was dressed like a woman who did very well for herself. Her sling matched the silver ribbing that trimmed her long sleeves and low neckline.

“For you,” I said, holding out the bouquet of dark red roses and purple hyacinth.

“Rosa rubiginosa and hyacinthus orientalis.” She whispered their scientific names fondly, cradling the delicate blooms in her uninjured arm. Rynn carried them to the sofa with her and sat. She pressed the bouquet under her nose, smelling them.

“Careful. That sounded an awful lot like botany.” I followed behind her and lowered myself onto the nearest cushion.

“These are grief blooms,” she said, chuckling. “They’re for mourning.”

“Death flowers? But that won’t do.” I plucked them out of her fingers. She grabbed for the bouquet, mouth agape, but I was too quick. I tossed them behind the sofa.

Her head went back, and she laughed at the ceiling, clutching at her stomach. “Those poor flowers! I cannot believe you did that to them.”

It was too easy to forget myself around her, too easy to play with her. No one brought this side out in me—no one but Rynn. The fresh wine and citrus scent of the now mashed petals sweetened the air between us.

The smile she inspired stretched my cheeks, tugging at the numb, scarred skin on my face. “I thought they were pretty like you are. I didn’t know they were death flowers.”

“They are pretty. I still like them—I want them.” Coming up on her knees, she bent behind the sofa to retrieve them, reaching with her functioning arm.

She hadn’t presented her backside to me on purpose, but I appreciated the view all the same.

“No, no,” I said, coaxing her into returning to her cushion. “ Let the death flowers go. I’ll do better next time.”

“There’s going to be a next time?” She bounced eagerly on her seat. “Are you sure? Even though I’ve already spouted off boring botany facts at you?”

“You’ll never be able to get rid of me,” I said lightly, but I meant my words. Every single syllable. I had plans for her, and no matter how lovely she still was, I wouldn’t be deterred from my path. “I have something else for you. I think I did all right with this one. I’ll let you be the judge, though.”

I removed the present concealed inside my sack coat.

She grabbed it up eagerly. The present was wrapped tightly in brown paper. She placed it in her lap, buzzing with glee. Her pleased expression sent a jolt through me that I immediately felt behind the buttoned seam of my trousers.

She peeled back the paper one-handed, gasping as the book was uncovered. The sound of her contentment warmed me just as pointedly as her pleasure, and I sunk even further down into her whirlpool of delight. Her gift was thick and leather-bound. The paper was fine. It had an excellent smell, like vellum and beeswax and “new book”.

She brought it immediately to her nose and breathed it in the same way she had the flowers.

This time I didn’t take it from her to fling behind the sofa, but I wanted to. My teeth ground together. Her happiness was so overpowering it grated. My heart should have been completely closed to her after all the grief she’d caused me, but once again the organ refused to be reasoned with.

“The Sea Adventures of Captain Van Draak,” she read, cracking open the book and flipping through the pages. “This is perfect.”

“Full of voyages and swashbucklers, and there’s a maid stowaway turned sailor,” I told her. “It kept me up most of the night reading.”

“What a treasure you’ve brought me!” Squeezing the book to her chest, she raised a single brow at me archly. “But is there any kissing?”

“There is one excellent kiss,” I reassured her.

She hugged it tight. “Thank you! I really do love it . . . I don’t think I’ve ever been presented with such a thoughtful gift before. Not from anyone.”

Rynn fell contemplative, torturing her bottom lip between her pearly teeth. I reached over and tugged on her chin, freeing it.

“You’ll hurt yourself doing that,” I said gently.

She’d left it glossy and slightly swollen like she’d been roughly kissed. Heaven above, she looked lovely gently ravaged.

“I apologize,” she said teasingly to her own mouth. Then her eyes flickered up to me. “I confess, I’ve never done any of this before. Never spouted off about botany, never nearly chewed my own lip off, and never been gifted presents without an immediate request for reciprocation . . . I’m not exactly sure what to do with you. You make me a bit nervous.”

I nodded my head sympathetically. “I understand. It’s my pirate-like appearance.”

Her next laugh was breathy and short-lived. “It’s all this calling on me business. I’d feel better if this was a proper transaction. It’s all I know, I suppose.”

“You never spend time with someone just for the pleasure of it?”

“Not really. No,” she said, clenching her teeth in a scowl of regret. “You see, I’m a woman in the rare position of knowing exactly what her time is worth to others. Down to the last dollar.”

The prices of the ladies were listed out by name in the book I’d signed during my first visit, but hers hadn’t been amongst them. “Out of curiosity—”

“Thirty-five dollars,” she interjected, her grin coy.

I whistled sharply. “That’s more than some men make in a month, and you get it all in one night.”

Her smile widened into something villainous and beguiling. “It’s $35 for one hour .”

“Good lord, woman,” I said, awe in my voice. Then I fell silent for a moment, contemplating that.

She nudged my arm. “Do you doubt me? You can ask downstairs if you do.”

“I wouldn’t dare doubt you. I’m just rethinking all of my career choices now. Apparently, I went into the wrong business.”

She chuckled at me as I’d meant for her to. Her voice had grown huskier since our youth, but it still wrang with all the radiant mischief I’d fallen hard for. She was an irresistible siren when taken over by mirth.

My chest hurt.

Regaining her composure, she dragged her gaze over me. “What business is it exactly that you’re in?”

“This and that,” I said.

“Come on now.” She nudged my knee. “You know my business. It can’t be more scandalous than what I used to do here.”

“What is it you used to do here?” I asked, feigning innocence. “You’re a librarian, aren’t you?”

She knocked my knee, a gentle admonishment, only this time she left her hand there to linger on my leg, the weight of her palm warm and light. “I used to tell men exactly what they wanted to hear. My hand to God, I did that more often than any other sort of debauchery you’re probably imagining.”

“I don’t know. I can imagine a great deal. What’s the most—”

“Ah!” She said, lifting a finger to my lips to silence me. “That’s a question I’ve learned never to answer when asked by a man. You’re a dangerously competitive lot, and as the most scandalous thing I’ve ever done involved two veteran acrobats and a much, much nimbler version of myself, any attempts to replicate it would injure us both. It is for your own good that I never answer that question, I assure you.”

She pulled yet another belly laugh out of me, the vixen. I chortled until my cheeks were hot.

“Now, help me with the mystery of you the way I helped you with my books,” she insisted. “It’s only fair. I won’t even make you show me your stockings or drawers unless you want to.”

“I’m a mystery, am I?” The corner of my mouth lifted.

Her fingers spread across my thigh coaxingly. “Why do you wear a costume like you belong out in a field somewhere? But your boots are too clean, and the leather is fine. You can buy expensive flowers and throw them away without a care. A rancher would never do such a thing. Why, he’d have eaten those flowers before he dared toss them. You’re very well-groomed—too well-groomed. And then there’s your collar. That was the biggest clue.”

“My collar?” I rubbed at the starched linen.

“It’s not the sort a working man bothers with. It’s too tall and perfect and not made of paper. It’d just get mucked up outside in the fields. Especially if the farmer is a bachelor and has to handle the ironing and starching on his own. You’re not young enough to live at home with a mother. Are you married, then? I should warn you now: I won’t be some mistress to a married man. Or do you just really love spending your time ironing and grooming yourself?”

“Clever woman. No, I’m not a farm hand, and I’m not married,” I confessed. I had to choose my words carefully here. I couldn’t exactly tell her that I wore a costume so that I could skulk about the brothel and sneak in and out of her room without drawing extra attention. “I don’t mind grooming myself, but that’s not how I prefer to spend all of my time. I do have help. Most of what I have I inherited, and I don’t like to make a spectacle of myself. Especially if I have far to travel.”

“You’re old money, then,” she said, eyes rounding. “I admit that surprises me. You don’t seem like the sort.”

“I choose to take that as a compliment.” I didn’t fit the bill because I was raised like a whipping boy, not a privileged aristocrat.

She trapped her battered bottom lip between her teeth, studying her hand resting on my leg, a faraway look in her eyes.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I prompted. When she didn’t answer me right away, I laid my hand over hers and squeezed.

“It’s only that I’ve had this price tag hanging over me for a long time.” Her fingers dug gently at my woolen trousers. “I’m always aware of it and immediately uneasy if one or the other isn’t getting their due . . . And now you’ve given me presents and have asked for absolutely nothing in return. And you’re apparently some secret, wealthy aristocrat doing God only knows what here calling on me . . .”

“Hm.” This was a problem. She was suspicious, but I didn’t want her to feel uneasy. Not yet. My plan was still formulating and unfolding slowly, and I knew this woman well. Rynn was a runner. If I spooked her too much before I had the right cage in place, she’d flee. “If I sat you on my lap right now, like a paying client, would that make you feel better?”

Her doe eyes widened briefly. Then her head cocked to the side and her roughened ‘well-kissed’ lips turned in a droll twist. “Oddly . . . yes, it would help. Thank you.”

I patted my knee, and she slid onto my lap with careful grace. Rynn hooked her arm behind my neck. The other she kept cradled in her sling, against the satin of her evening dress. She was warm. I liked her weight against my chest—too much. Her skirts hiked up over her ankles, revealing dainty feet tucked inside matching silk slippers. The slippers were beaded.

Furies! I was even admiring her goddamn feet.

I’d made an error in judgment. I shouldn’t entertain this connection between us, not a moment longer—but then her fingers pushed through my hair and my reason went right behind the sofa with the death flowers.

“Are you all right?” She brushed more strands behind my ear.

I cleared my throat and forced a smile. “’Course I am. I’ve got you on my lap now, right where I want you.”

“You went somewhere else there,” she said soothingly, still toying with my hair.

My eyes slid shut. Against my orders, my body leaned into her caresses. I swallowed, feeling powerless against the might of her touch as she raked her fingers tenderly across my scalp.

It was heavenly. And horrible—Dante entering the eighth circle of hell horrible.

I wanted to hold her close and dump her behind the sofa. The conflicting urges canceled each other out in the end. I just froze there, letting her touch me, trying not to feel .

She was careful with her arm in its sling. Seeing it up close, it made me angry all over again. I’d told myself not to bother with it. If she didn’t want to discuss her injury, pushing too hard risked my purpose here.

Rynn caught me staring at the sling, and her eyes dropped. I so rarely saw timidity from this woman that it knocked me off my path. My brain seized on the distraction, and I dropped out of character.

“Tell me what happened to your arm,” I said, voice gone to gravel, leaving no room for her impish avoidance.

She waved my words away, but her attempt at casual reluctance fell short. Fear had smothered the cheerful glint in her dark eyes. “I sprained my elbow, is all. It’s practically good as new now. It only twinges a bit.”

“Utrecht sprained it.”

She turned swiftly away from me, staring instead at her beaded shoes. “You’ve been listening to the gossip down in the—”

I captured her chin and forced her gaze to mine. My grip was hard. Too hard. Her hickory-colored eyes brightened, startled, and then she surprised me. Her hand came around my wrist, but she didn’t try to pull me off. Her thumb ran down my pulse, the caress feather-light, and her brow softened. She leaned into me until my hand dropped from her chin to her throat.

“He hurts you,” I snapped.

“The matter is . . . complicated,” she whispered.

“What’s complicated about it?”

Her lashes lowered. “I like it when he hurts me.”

Gently, I tightened my grip around her throat, the way her body seemed to crave, digging the pads of my fingers into her soft skin. My growing erection pressed against her hip. “Did you like it when he put your arm in a sling?”

“No,” she panted. “He has a habit of taking things too far. Our working relationship has expired as a result. I ended it. Twice. But he feels differently about the matter.”

“He scares you.”

She scoffed. “My feelings about fear are as complex as my feelings about pain, Mr. Dante. It’s best you don’t try to understand me. I hardly understand myself. But yes, he worries me. I’d be a fool if he didn’t. I was hoping he’d tire of me, as men like him are prone to do. Unfortunately, my unwillingness to see him again reinspired his interest. I plan to be gone before he returns, and I’ve taken precautions to make sure no one gives him a clue about where I’m headed.”

“What precautions?” I dragged her in closer until her nervous breaths puffed against my lips.

She clung to my arm but didn’t try to free herself. “I gave the ladies here expensive gifts and made them vow not to tell Utrecht, should he come asking, that I’m retiring to Texas with family.”

“ Are you retiring to Texas?”

Her lips quirked. “No.”

“Attagirl.” I brushed my thumb along her jaw, a gentle reward for her cleverness.

I felt her swallow, soft muscles shifting under my palm. She peered into my gaze, her eyes so dark they seemed bottomless. I wondered what she saw in mine. Were the wounds she caused to my soul as plain as the scars on my face?

For a moment, I thought I caught a flicker of recognition there. Then it was my turn to worry, but my anxiety cooled almost immediately. If she had realized who I was, she would have already sprinted from the room. Then her eyes, big and round and hopeful, begged me to kiss her.

But I didn’t dare. I slid my thumb across that begging bottom lip of hers.

“Sometimes I want to ask you your name, Mr. Dante,” she said tentatively. “Your true one. You make me so curious, I’d take either of them. But then I remember it’s a good thing what we’re doing here, keeping things between us simple. I’ll be going somewhere you’re not soon enough. It’s better this way, isn’t it?”

I bit back a grimace. Rynn wouldn’t be going anywhere I wasn’t. Sensing my unease, she snuggled in closer. Then she lowered her nose to my neck and breathed me in.

Her nuzzling tickled, and silent laughter rumbled in my chest. “What’s this about?”

“Just testing a theory,” she said, inhaling me once more. “You smell exquisite.”

“Thank you.” My hand came to rest on her lower back. Her spine went taut as a bowstring briefly, before relaxing again.

“Do you smoke?” she asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Cigarettes?”

“Usually.”

She stiffened in my arms. Sitting up straight, her tired eyes searched mine. “What sort of cigarettes?”

I feigned a casual shrug. “Whatever’s around. I don’t smoke very often.”

The little taunting presents I’d left on her windowsill had gotten to her. Serves you right, Rynn . Twenty more years of torment, and I’ll consider letting up a little .

She sagged in my lap. “You don’t smell like tobacco at all. I thought I smelled some on you yesterday . . .”

“You might have,” I said breezily. “I do have some with me now, if you’d like to share?”

“Please.” She moved off my lap, allowing me to pull my wallet from my pocket so I could unroll it, her expression hawk-like. When I removed a homemade pipe from my sack coat and the tobacco from its pouch, she frowned.

It wasn’t what she had been expecting. Her angular brows pinched together as she examined the spiral shank and horn stem like I’d pulled a goblin from my pocket, not a pipe.

“The tobacco is called Ambrozijn,” I told her, holding the pouch open for her to investigate. “It’s excellent for the nerves. The locals where I’m from mix it with weaver-wood to soothe away bad dreams and ugly memories.”

Her gaze snapped to mine. “Does it really work?”

She seemed younger there, hunched over the dark tobacco, breathing deeply of the woodsy scent, desperate for comfort. Rynn was so eager to give me her trust that a pinch of guilt scratched at me, but I shoved it down and readied the pipe. When it was lit, I pretended to smoke while she breathed in long drags. Snuggled close, we took turns reading from her new book as a gray fog gathered above our heads.

Prior to moving in to serve my adoptive family, Rynn had received a poor home school education from her nearly illiterate parents. When we were twelve, she’d begged me to teach her to read properly. Father had insisted an education would do a serving girl like Rynn no good. I loved stories and didn’t believe him, but then Mother claimed reading too much could turn a woman’s mind. Not knowing better, I’d worried for her .

Rynn had eventually persuaded me to teach her with kisses. She was quick and had a horse sense for people and for words. She’d spoken easily with the Dutch workers Father employed. With little direction, she’d picked up their language just by listening to them communicate around the house. Teaching her letters had been simple.

As she read to me now from The Adventures of Captain Van Draak , the sitting room disappeared from around us in my mind’s eye. The gaslight dimmed to a weak candle flame in the creaky old attic room where she had been forced to sleep despite the house having plenty of other beds. Rynn was twelve—not thirty-eight. Her raven curls were messy and falling in her face, not pinned up tight.

I was prone on my stomach because Father had taken a riding crop to my back and thighs. Standing was most tolerable but wasn’t an option with the way the roof gabled above us. Even the weight of my nightshirt was too much against the sting of torn flesh. The dusty smell of old things crowded us. Rynn’s head bobbed, too exhausted to read more.

I begged her to please carry on a little bit longer— just one more chapter —and she did.

I’d hurt all over, but my nightingale’s voice was lovely, and the story made our troubles seem far away.

“I’m sorry I’m so tired,” Rynn said, jerking me from my memories. She yawned. “Don’t know what’s come over me. I’m being a dreadful bore . . .”

I’d added an excessive amount of weaver-wood to the tobacco mixture. It turned the smoke sweet and dark. When ingested, it made the body weary.

Curled up in my lap, listening to me take my turn reading, she fell into a deep slumber. When I was certain she was unconscious, I held the pipe between my teeth, balanced the book on the arm of the sofa, and laid her out across the cushions, careful of her injured arm. I needed to make use of heavier tools if I was going to crack the safe in her bedroom, and I didn’t want her waking during the process.

I opened the window and allowed the smoke to waft out on the breeze to prevent it from putting me in a stupor alongside her. Sitting so close, I’d gotten enough in my system that my limbs felt heavy, but the cool spring air renewed me.

I turned out the pipe and sat against the sill a moment, gathering myself. Unable to resist, I watched her sleep. Her chest rose and fell, her breathing deep and slow. Moonlight gave her skin a serene glow. I’d thought about this moment, this piece of my revenge, so often that it was hard to believe that the girl I loved to loathe was finally really right here, within my reach.

A curiosity overtook me then. Instead of leaving to retrieve my tools, I slipped through the archway to her bedroom and removed the painting of the ship at sea, setting it on the floor. The thought trapped in my head was the most ridiculous romantic notion. A fool’s errand.

I shouldn’t even bother.

Fingers trembling, I used my own birthdate as the combination. The heavy lock clicked as I spun the large dial to the final number, the year of my birth. I brought the handle down, and it turned easily, metal scraping against metal as the big door swung open.

My birthdate.

Rynn was a wealthy woman now. She kept a sizable fortune in her safe. I searched its contents for the precious thing she had stolen from me, but it wasn’t there. It didn’t surprise me that she hadn’t kept it after all this time. Had she done so, that would have meant something I couldn’t ignore. That would have knocked me off my path and forced me to change course.

But it was my birthdate.

Pulse thundering in my ears, I went lightheaded. It felt like I was trying to swallow around my own heart. My vision blurred at the edges. I leaned against the wall, hands balling into fists. It was several long minutes before I’d regained my composure enough to stand on steady legs.

I stalked back into the sitting room. Towering behind the sofa, I bent over the vexing woman’s sleeping form.

“When did our love stop being real to you, Rynn?” I demanded, knowing she could not answer me, my voice gone hoarse. My eyes stung. I blinked rapidly to clear them. “When did I become another mark to you instead of the man you wanted to marry?”

I was desperate to know the answer to that question. Here lay the girl who’d sung to me when life was cruel. The girl I’d cared for when she was sick. The girl who’d endured the hell at home by my side.

The girl who’d snuck into my bed every night for a week and cried because she’d read Romeo and Juliet , even though I’d warned her not to. My instruction had only made her more determined. She’d been so devastated by the tragic ending that I’d wondered if her sorrow wasn’t a symptom of a turned mind. Holding her while she shook with tears, I’d made a silent commitment to care for her when she no longer could. It was my burden to bear because I’d been the one to teach her to read.

She’d recovered, but my love for her had not. At eighteen, I asked her to marry me . . . and then it had all gone to hell. I could dwell on it no longer.

My throat burned. The threat of tears turned my next breath into a wheeze. It had been my birthday that she used to seal away everything that she now cherished. To some degree, I haunted her, too.

Cradling her shoulders and the back of her knees, I lifted her into my arms. Her head lolled. With intent, I could wake her. I could shake her and shout the truth at her, tell her who I was, make her look at the scars she’d created, remove my shirt and force her to count all of my wounds. I could demand answers from her.

She’d loved me once. I knew that to be true, had felt it in a way no falsehood could make a mockery of.

Why did she stop? Why had she betrayed me so?

If there was anything other than pain and darkness left inside my flesh, I’d have woken her right then. I would have let go of my vengeance and started down a new road. But my soul was a dry and shriveled husk of a thing. Too much had happened to rip the pieces of me apart like kindling.

Ruthlessly, she’d burned me to ash.

Thinking of the girl who’d cried over Shakespeare, I carried her toward her bed and laid her out over the top of the covers. I crossed her arms gently over her chest like I was prepping her for her funeral pyre. My withered heart ached at the sight of her there.

“With this kiss, I die,” I said in my darkest impression of Romeo.

Then I pressed my lips harshly to hers, and I cleaned out her safe.