Chapter Twenty-Three #2
He placed a hand on my shoulder with unnecessary roughness, sending a shiver up my spine and into my scalp. “Pity. It’s such a lovely little thing.”
“Let me show you out,” I snarled, while I shrugged off Wexley’s hand and Finlay and Bri exchanged confused glances. As soon as I opened the door, I leaned toward him, no more doubt in my mind about what I had to do.
“I’ll fetch your treasure.”
“Smart girl. I knew you’d see things my way.
” He turned and waved at Finlay and Bri over my shoulder.
“I misjudged you,” he said through his grimace of a smile.
“For a while, I believed you must have some kind of power to make old Edward’s objects magical.
But the way you’re using that girl is utterly brilliant.
Come to my house on Monday for your instructions. The ship leaves Wednesday morning.”
I nodded curtly.
“Goodbye,” Wexley called over my head to Bri. “Very lovely to have made your acquaintance.”
After I’d locked the door and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED, I walked past Bri and Finlay, who continued to stare at me. I entered the storeroom because there was nowhere else to go in this blasted shoppe, and I needed a moment to catch my breath and decide on an explanation for my behavior.
“What the hell was that?” Bri asked, popping her head into the doorway like a gopher.
I heaved an exasperated groan. “I need a minute to think, Bri.”
“Yeah, well, we need to know what’s going on with you. There’s something you’re not telling us, isn’t there?”
I laughed bitterly. She had no idea.
“This doesn’t work if you can’t be honest with me, Willow. I’ve put my trust in you, more than once. Why can’t you do the same for me?”
“Or me?” Finlay asked, joining us. I knew, somewhere in my sorry excuse for a soul, that without trust, love simply couldn’t exist. To love someone meant jumping headlong off a cliff, believing that person was there to catch you.
I’d loved my father that way—recklessly and with abandon—and look where that got me.
Life had taught me the bitterest lesson: that I’d better learn to love myself the most, because I was the only one who was going to save me. At the end of the day, I was all I had.
Of course, vulnerability had never been my strong suit.
I reached into my emotional bag of tricks and pulled out ye olde classic, Turning Thy Tables.
“You both said you trusted me to handle this. If I say I don’t like that man, that should be enough for you.
” I was encouraged by the chastened look they shared.
“Besides, he made it clear he wasn’t here to buy anything. He came to gloat.”
“Mr. Wexley has always been kind to us,” Finlay said. “He helped support the print shoppe when business was bad.”
“He probably helps a lot of people,” I shot back. “Gives him leverage.”
“Not everyone is out to get you, Willow.” I could feel him reassessing me, probably wondering if he’d been wrong to give me another chance. I met his gaze, daring him to push me away.
He blinked first, as I’d known he would. “Well, if you don’t like him, we’ll take your word for it.”
I nodded smugly, afraid that if I gave even one inch, I’d end up conceding everything. “Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s my birthday. I think I deserve a little time to myself.”
I strode out the door, trusting Finlay or Bri would lock up after they left.
I didn’t have a plan, just a desire not to be in a small space with the only two people who gave me chance after chance, for reasons I still couldn’t deduce.
The sad thing was, I was genuinely trying to protect them for once.
I headed across the moor to the cliffs, finding a large rock overlooking the sea and perching there.
The wind was cold, whipping my hair around my face.
I gathered it at the back of my neck and tucked it into my plaid scarf, telling myself I wasn’t crying, that it was simply the wind stealing the tears from my eyes.
“Don’t be such a numpty, Willow. There’s no one else here.
” I sniffed and tucked my head into the scarf, breathing in the scent of wool and lavender.
The thought of sailing to the Sapphire Isles by myself only made me cry harder.
I’d never been on a ship before. I’d never been to another country.
Now I was being blackmailed into thieving, which had previously been a bar too low for me to stoop under, even at my most desperate.
It wasn’t the dishonesty of it that bothered me.
It was the weakness. Stealing meant I couldn’t make do, and I had been determined to do everything by myself after Da died.
I’d earned every penny I made; every stitch of clothing I wore or crumb of bread that crossed my lips had been bought and paid for.
I hadn’t even accepted handouts, which were offered in the early days, when people still felt sorry for me.
Jack Turner had said he had work in the print shoppe for me, should I want it.
But that would have meant abandoning the shoppe, and I would die before I let that happen.
And for what? I wondered now. If I failed in this mission and wound up in prison, the shoppe’s fate was sealed as much as my own.
Bri would have no choice but to return to Carterra, still cursed, if Mr. Wexley didn’t get to her first. Finlay would carry on, of course, marry some lovely, kind, honest girl.
Maybe that was for the best. They’d all mourn me, the martyr who selflessly gave her life for her friends.
Through my tears, I laughed and laughed the rest of the way home.