Page 33 of We Are the Match
“Where did you go?” Tommy sits down on a chair near the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking at me carefully. “Were you out walking the cliffs?”
It was my place, when I was a child. Wandering as close to the edge as I could without falling.
I shake my head. “I went to see Paris.”
Tommy closes his eyes, pinching his fingers over the bridge of his nose as if staving off an oncoming headache. “Kid.”
“I wanted—”
“Is it a fling?” Tommy asks when I can’t manage to finish my sentence. “It’s all right if it is. Everyone has them, and I can help you keep this one discreet.”
I blush scarlet. “Tommy.I’m not having an affair!”
He shrugs, unbothered. “You know the way it goes in this house. You want to have an affair before you marry for an alliance, you’re allowed. But that little fixer will die when this is done either way.”
I want to deny the truth in his words, that just by being tangled up with me the woman who has saved me once and may save me again will die when this is done. But I know who my father is, and I know how the game is played.
My chest is suddenly tight at the thought that Tommy, who knows me better than anyone, who is maybe the only person whoreallyknows me, cannot know what I am planning and cannot come with me.
“I just want to find the person responsible for trying to kill me,” I tell him with a huff. “And you know my father will never allow me close to the investigation.”
He nods slowly. “And you know I will protect you,” he says. “No matter what. So I hope you tell me enough truth to make that possible.”
I duck my head. “I—I am telling you the truth. Paris is tough. And Thea says she’s good. She’ll help me sort out this case. Will you send for her, Tommy?”
“Your father might have already sent for her.” Tommy pushes back his chair and stands. “But there’s no need to fuss. It will be all right, kid. It will.”
“Promise?” It is childish, this need for reassurance, but I ask for it all the same.
“Promise,” he tells me.
It has been our tradition since I can remember—any problem the rest of the world could not solve, Tommy could. The first promise he gave me was one awful, impulsive day when I had taken some of Mama’s bomb-making supplies and laid charges out on the cliffs at the edge of our property. I had timed it poorly, leaving me stuck on the wrong side of my own trip wire with a timed explosive ticking down.
The guard that found me ran when he saw it, and I remember it in a strange, disembodied vividness: the first time I left my body. I was frozen, unable to feel the cold ground beneath my feet.
Tommy found me crouched there, so far back he couldn’t reach me. He had crouched down low so we were eye to eye. I stared at him,pressing my back against the wall, wondering why I could not feel the bite of my fingernails digging into my palms.
“Put your hand on the ground,” he told me. “Press down hard, and then breathe. That will help.”
I did what he told me, and I could feel the ground just faintly. I could feel myself returning to my body.
“It’ll be okay, kid,” he said.
Promise?I had asked him.
He helped me slowly, carefully, across the poorly laid trip wires, away from the danger.
Promise,he told me, over and over again.
“You with me, kid?” Tommy asks now, and I am drawn inexorably back to the reality I am living in, the one where the girl and the guard died last night, where the boy and more will die today, and eventually Paris, or maybe even me, if I do not escape.
“I’m with you,” I say.
“Then we should talk about your next move,” Tommy says. “I can’t say that I care for strategy and countermoves—except where it keeps you safe.”
“I suppose I have to talk to Milos today,” I groan, and flop back onto my bed. “Can you make him leave?”
Tommy chuckles. “No,” he says firmly. “If you want this engagement to end, you have to be the one to end it. You know that.”
