Page 63 of Razors & Ruin

It has to be said, though—with every day that passes, Sweeney loses more and more of Currer Brook.

There’s so much he does not remember about Veronica; her likes and dislikes, her interests, who she was as a person. There are gaps, and in those spaces between memory and reality, he crams things he believes are true.

That he and Veronica should have been together. That she loved him.

That he never once hurt her.

I think about fate again. Maybe the tortured past refuses to stay there because I have not committed to a path. Is it Sweeney’s heart I seek to protect or my own?

He’s going through the motions, day by day. I feel his ambivalence toward me—love, but too much. Dependence, too, is a neediness that grows in his heart like weeds.

Yet today, he revealed a truth that has rocked me to my core—he doesn’t trust me. Or he wants me tobelievehe doesn’t, which is, arguably, worse.

I go to where the devotions are made and put a coin in the dish in return for a tiny candle. I light it on the already-burning one beside it and wonder who to devote myself to.

Easy. I choosehim.

I will not resist the unspooling of my fate; if my love demands the truth, I will not impede it, even if it costs me my life.

I bow my head.

“Lord, direct Mr. T on this day,” I mumble. “Keep his mind light and unburdened, that he might be spared truths that can onlyhurt him. Steer him away from pain. Move me as you must also, in Jesus’s name, He who consorted with the sinners even as the righteous bore down. Amen.”

Sweeney appears at my side. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here while we’re ahead. I can’t speak for God, but the Fates still have a few tricks left up their sleeves for us.”

“How so?”

He grips my hand tightly. “Beadle Higgins is coming for dinner and a shave. About fucking time.”

He lowers his voice. “I take it you’ll serve him, if you catch my drift? Only fair your hungry patrons should finally get their fill of our good friend.”

“You can’t kill him!” I hiss. “Someone will find out! And whynow, when you said you want to get alongside the fat cats again?”

He furrows his brow. “Did you really think I would calm down? Did you envisage me at the opera with our upper-class friends, meek as a rabbit in the company of people I despise?”

Oh shit. I should have known.

This is the problem when your most fanciful dream comes true; you have little use thereafter for restraint, even in imagination.

Sweeney’s body hums with the you’re-getting-fucked-hard energy I’ve come to recognize, and despite my trepidation, I’m shaking with a feverish thrill of my own, too caught up in him even now to save myself.

Hewillmurder the Beadle.

It doesn’t matter why, not anymore, but the twat will end the day in my oven, and Mr. Sweeney Todd will have the only satisfaction left to him.

But my man likes his little chats with his quarry. After the disappointment of losing the opportunity to slit the throat of Lord Wetherby, I have to wonder whether he will continue to wheedle and tease, trying to undo his child’s so-called death and rekindle his vengeance.

If the Beadle remembers Johanna, Sweeney will know the letter was a lie. And the paranoia I feel in him—tempered only by his belief that I love him too much to deceive him so catastrophically—will be laid bare.

The oppressive weight of my deceit is pulling me apart. I thought I could carry it forever, but Sweeney is right; Idolove him too much.

But only if Johanna really is lost to him. Without her, without the tiny spark of goodness that simplyrefusesto be snuffed out, he will have nothing but me for all eternity.

As it should be.

I am on this ride with him, careening out of control. I bought my ticket willingly, but it remains to be seen who punches it; fate, the law, or the man I love.

Sweeney’s voice is hot and savage in my ear. It’s the familiar sound of the base, elemental thing he is inside, and my knees weaken, knowing that so many have gone home to Jesus with him echoing in their dying minds.

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