I nodded. “That’s a really sharp head you’ve got on those shoulders.”
She laughed. “I think that’s the first time anyone’s ever said that.”
I leaned in tighter for an actual hug, and knew we were friends. Actual friends from here on in.
Her voice was a whisper. Her words right in my ear.
“Please,” she said. “If you’re gonna listen to any of the crap that comes out of my big mouth, please make sure it’s this stuff.”
“I’ll listen,” I said.
“Forget him,” she continued. “Please, really do forget him. I don’t think he’s capable of really giving a shit for anyone, and if he is, it’ll be a long, long time before he’s capable of fucking showing it. You’re too good to hang around waiting for nothing. We both are. And so are our sisters.”
I nodded, my voice in my throat. Because she was right. How couldn’t she be?
The rawness under his cold surface I’d been so desperate to reach. The depth in his eyes I’d been so desperate to sink right into.
It wasn’t for me. None of it was for me.
“I’m going to try,” I told her, and I meant it. I really meant it.
“Good,” she said, and kissed my cheek. “Because you’re gonna fucking need to now your appointments are coming in. Believe me, you’ll fucking need to. Your sixty days haven’t even really started yet.”Chapter FourteenBrandonThe memories were biting at my heels at every step through my family home, desperate to tear me to the ground and devour me whole. I could have let them. Could have given in to the dark sadness of the past and let myself crumble.
I didn’t. I was long past showing that much of my soul in this life.
My jaw was gritted against the flashbacks all the while I paced through that house. I hid from nothing, reacquainting myself with every room I’d frequented while I was growing up and beyond.
The grand fireplace in the drawing room stood tall in the same sombre splendour as it had for all those years. It reeked with the same sombre splendour of the memories surrounding it too.
Stockings hung up at Christmas holidays. Warming hands after autumn walks through the fields. Dropped marshmallows in the embers from jostling with Eric.
Staring at the flames with the heat scorching my face in the aftermath of Amelia deserting me. Tears rolling. Jaw as gritted then as it was now.
Sitting staring into nothing in the aftermath of my father’s sudden death, knowing the future was bleak and futile.
My father had been in debt. Several business ventures had swallowed him up by all accounts.
They called it accidental, the way he fell into the river from up by the castle ruins. They claimed he was staggering after too many drinks. Drinking his woes away after a fresh bout of shares went to the shit pile.
They claimed he wasn’t suicidal when he lost his footing on one windy winter night and went plunging in to his death.
I’d never been so sure.
What I had been sure of was that Eric and I really were left high and dry without a paddle. I was still in one bout of mourning over the girl I’d pledged my life to. Eric was still young enough to be a wreck of tears at college.
I had no way out for either of us that I could see. Me, with cast aside studies and little else to my name. Eric capable of supporting himself through a decent university trail, so long as he ended up at graduation with his own heavy shackle of debt around his neck.
It was Henry Drake who’d given me the way out of the depths.
I ran my finger over the mantlepiece. Our boyhood sports trophies still stood there, polished and tall. Cricket, rugby, hockey. The housekeepers really were doing an excellent job of keeping this place in pristine condition. I’d barely given them a second thought in over a decade.
The fire grate was dark and empty, the dregs of the coals long cleared. I wondered how long it’d been since anyone had truly enjoyed the splendour of this place. How long it would be until this fireplace saw a new lease of life with people who cared for it.
And then I wondered how different life would have been if Drake hadn’t come up behind me as I crouched there that fateful night and slammed his hand hard on my shoulder.
“I’ve got a proposition for you, boy. A good one.”
I thought it would make my father proud, whatever proposition Drake had conjured for me. I soon realised that maybe my father hadn’t been quite the man I’d known him to be, for all those years.
Eventually I realised that there was no way in this lifetime I’d have made my father proud with my actions at all.
I turned my back on the fireplace along with the memories and headed on through to the kitchen. The layout was the same. The same glasses in the cabinet, the tap still firm in the same place as I turned the handle. It was like we were all still living here, the three of us.