Page 30 of Scythe & Sparrow
“It just … takes some getting used to, having someone else in my home. Not because of the … thing … that happened. I mean, just generally. I’ve become accustomed to being alone, I guess.” I shrug and I can feel her watching, the way she hunts through my expression like she can burrow right into my mind. And sometimes, I think she does. She gets inside and pulls every loose thread, unraveling sutures through old wounds, opening them up to look inside. It’s as though she’s tearing my thoughts apart, stitch by stitch, until I don’t recognize the pattern of who I’m supposed to be.
“What was she like?” Rose asks softly. My steps slow and she matches my pace. When I look down at her with a question tugging at my brows, she gives me a sad smile. “The woman who broke your heart. What was she like?”
My step falters on a crack in the pavement. How does she figure me out like this? I don’t have anything of Claire in my home, I left it all behind when I fled Boston. There’s nothing she could have found, no one here who even knows the story. But she seems so sure, and something about that confidence in her deductions makes me want to tell her the truth. On paper, Rose is dangerous.A murderer. And I’m an accessory to her crime. But she doesn’tfeellike someone to fear. She feels like someone to trust. And that scares me.
I let out a long breath, a thin stream of air between pursed lips. “She was …”
The opposite of you.
I shake my head. Try again. “She was someone I’d known for a long time. We met in college. She was the work hard, play hard type. She always wanted her life to look perfect. But she craved a bit of chaos underneath.”
“Can’t say I blame her there,” Rose says as she swings along on her crutches beside me. “I mean, I live in a literal circus for fucksakes. Not sure what’s more chaotic than traveling across the country and riding around in the Globe of Death for a living.”
“At least that’s chaos with a purpose. I think Claire’s chaos was purely to fuck shit up and watch everyone else scramble in the aftermath. At the time, I thought she was exciting. She had this pristine life with an unpredictable twist. I thought she was what I wanted.” I look across the street where kids are playing in a sprinkler on a lawn, their bikes discarded on the sidewalk. Farther down, neighbors chat across a hedge, sharing a midmorning beer. I know there is an underbelly of darkness in small towns just like in big cities. But something about Hartford feels comforting, even if it might be an illusion. “Looking back, I’m not sure I knew what I wanted at all. So I came here to clear my head. Guess I’m still figuring it all out.”
“And how’s that going for you?”
I laugh, hiking the straps of our bags up higher on my shoulder. “Up until a couple of weeks ago, it seemed to be going fine. And then the circus came to town, and nothing’s been the same since.”
Rose’s eyes dance, the color warming to a dark amber hue in the summer sun. “I’m sorry about that.”
“I’m not,” I reply. I catch the flicker of surprise across her face before she grins. “I mean, it was kind of boring until you came around. Although you could make it slightly less boring, and I’d be okay with that.”
“But you have a drug-addicted raccoon that haunts your office. How boring could it possibly be?”
“You’d be surprised.” We fall into a moment of silence, and though Rose usually fills those quiet chasms, this time she doesn’t. It’s as though she knows there’s more I want to say, but she doesn’t want to push me into it. “I proposed to her,” I finally admit, something I don’t usually share with anyone. “She said no.”
“The raccoon?” I guffaw a laugh and Rose’s eyes sparkle with delight. “Such a shame. I would have loved to come to the wedding.”
“You could have been the officiant.”
“Even better.”
“The only caveat is that it would have been circus themed, so you’d have needed a clown costume.”
“Sign me the fuck up.”
Our smiles slowly fade. Memories take hold in the silence. Pain dulls with time, but can still linger, waiting to be polished so it can shine once more. “I’m sorry that someone broke your heart,” Rose says, and her voice is so soft and melancholy that I look over at her.
“Thank you.” I don’t tell her I’m not sorry. That I spent a long time in mourning, not for losing Claire, but for how my whole reality seemed to shatter the moment I got down on one knee and she said no. I thought I loved her, and maybe I did love theideaof her. But more than that, I wanted the life I had envisioned for us. A safe and secure and straightforward marriage. A surgical career in one of the best hospitals in the country. What my brothers had fought so hard and so long for me to have. A perfect life. Atonement for the sin I had committed, a final twist of the key to lock my secret away. Proof that I am a good man, deserving of a good life. That moment I got down on one knee and Claire Peller said no, that she wanted a future with someone more exciting, darker, someone more … real … it tore me apart. Just not in the way everyone believes.
Maybe I was never deserving of all the things I thought I wanted. And that key? It just never turned.
And I’m starting to wonder what would happen if I just opened the door.
RENEGADE
Rose
Fionn’s sitting in the armchair, a bag of disgusting-looking dehydrated vegetable chips in his lap, his crochet project tucked at his side, his legs crossed at the ankles on the ottoman as a new reality-dating show plays on his TV. His shorts come just above the knee but they’ve ridden higher with the way he’s sitting. Since when have I been attracted to a guy’s legs? Since now, I guess. His are all tanned and muscly with just the right amount of hair that’s bleached from all his time running in the sun. I want to touch them. But of course, I don’t. I also want to tell him that it’s so fucking sexy that he’s sitting here with his yarn not even hiding the fact that he’s as intoSurviving Loveas I am. Why is that sexy? I have no fucking idea. But here we are.
“Val and Mitchell better win this thing, or I’m going to be pissed,” he says as his favorite couple appears on the screen.
I tamp down a grin, pretending to focus on my own crochet project, which I guess will be a sex swing after all because whynot? Sandra called the other day to let me know that her husband was making me a frame, even though it’s probably not going to see much use since I’m on the driest dry spell ever. “I think Dani and Renegade are going to win.”
Fionn snorts. “Renegade.What kind of a fucking douchebag name is that?”
“A made-up one.”
