Chapter 38 #2
“Explain what, exactly?” she asks, her voice dangerously neutral. “That you’re chit-chatting with my family’s worst enemy?”
“Jesus, baby, Furys aren’t your enemy. We just want—”
“We?”
The silence that follows is the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.
The warmth that filled this cabin five minutes ago drains away like the tide pulling back from shore.
The heater humming, the water lapping against the hull, the faint creak of the dock outside—it’s all magnified against the devastation building on her face.
“You’re a Fury,” she whispers softly, every syllable a punch to the gut because I was stupid enough to fall for the false peace I tricked her with.
“Shit.” I scrub a hand down my face. “Okay, look I—”
My hand falls to reveal her unlocking my phone with facial recognition, and she’s swiping through it before I can register what she’s doing.
“Lucy, no.”
But she’s not listening anymore, already scrambling out of the bed and away from my touch. Before I can reach her she’s pressed the button and Orion’s voice fills the tiny cabin.
“Jesus, answer my calls, dude. Or at least my texts.” My older brother curses. “Wander Isle is fucked. Get her outta there. Take her underground. Shit just got worse.”
He sighs, and the heaviness there weighs in my own chest. “You shouldn’t hear it from me. He’ll contact you about it today. It’s… it’s bad, Hatch. Worst case scenario. Get your girl and come home.”
I watch the moment it hits her, the exact second every piece clicks. Her shoulders draw back like she’s taken a bullet.
“Hatch.” My name comes out like poison. “You’re Hatton Fury.”
“Lucy, I can explain—”
“Oh my God.” She presses the heel of her hand against her forehead and a hollow laugh cracks from her chest. “I’m such an idiot.”
Her knuckles whiten as she grips the doorjamb, and her body curls inward. I swing my legs out of bed but don’t stand, the boat is too small and I’d crowd her. After everything she told me last night—everything she’s survived—the last thing I want is to make her feel trapped.
And yet you were planning to, weren’t you?
I close my eyes against how fucked this situation is, and exhale before opening them again. “Please, Lucy. Give me my phone. I have to make sure we’re safe.”
She pushes herself farther back into the kitchenette, eyes burning bright with unshed tears. “How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long have you been stalking me?” The word vibrates with rage and hurt in equal measure, and makes me wince.
“That’s not… fuck, that wasn’t—”
“No. Say what it is, Hatton.” She spits my name like venom. “You’ve been stalking me. Why are you here?”
“You ran, Lu—”
“So you stalked me.”
“I had to make sure you were safe.”
She lets out a short, broken laugh. “Safe from what? You?”
My jaw tics. She watches the muscle jump, and something that might be guilt crosses her face before she stamps it out. Smug rage replaces it so fast, I get whiplash as she laughs.
“You know what? Good luck. Because when my dad finds out, he’ll kill—”
“Your dad knows.” I hate the words even as they leave my mouth.
“What?” She stares at me. “Then why… why didn’t he come for me?”
I hesitate.
“He isn’t happy about it,” I admit. “But… we had a deal.”
She scoffs. “What deal?”
I sigh, then jut my chin toward my sweatpants hanging over the heater. “Check the pocket.”
Where I always keep the only thing that would ever convince her I’m on her side. Thank fuck, I didn’t take it out last night.
She narrows her eyes at me, but backs away and digs into a pocket, retrieving the Queen of Hearts card, the one she’d been clutching on the beach last night.
Its heart-shaped skeletal face stares back at me as she holds it up, her strawberry-blond hair underneath her crown of bones purposefully identical to the woman holding her.
Lucy’s jaw tightens. “I gave you this.”
“Yeah. But you didn’t give me the other one.”
She frowns, and her hand goes to the other pocket to pull out the second card.
For the second time, she goes completely still as The Joker stares up from her palm.
The McKennon deck itself is the nicest in the world—sturdy, waterproof, and vivid—so the skull in a top hat and the unmistakable McKennon logo on the back are still perfectly intact.
In an instant, she draws both cards to her chest with a possessiveness that’s almost feral, fingers curling around them like she’s shielding something sacred.
“Only people we trust are allowed to have these,” she accuses.
“You’re right.” I let the words hang a bit before I continue, “That’s why your father gave it to me, to prove you can trust me.”
“That’s bull—”
“It’s true. The deal was that whoever found you first got the right to protect you his way.” I swallow. “I found you, so you’re mine to protect.”
Her face hardens into something I don’t recognize. “I’m not anyone’s.”
“But you are, Lucy.” The words come from somewhere deeper than this conversation, an ache I refuse to name when she’s glaring at me with what can only be hatred. “And not just from the deal I made with your father. You’re mine by the Troisgarde-Fury marriage pact—”
“I agreed to no such thing.”
“I know.” I slide to the edge of the bed, close enough to reach her but keeping my hands on my knees. “Fuck, I know you didn’t. But our fathers did, and whether you like it or not, I’m here, and I’m going to keep you safe.”
She recoils. “I was safe.” But then real fear and understanding bleed through her anger, and her voice breaks. “I was safe.”
I sigh.
“You weren’t, though.”
The silence that follows is heavy enough to suffocate. I hate every second of it, hate myself for every lie of omission, every night I schemed and stole glances through screens, every night I watched her sleep from a desk chair a quarter-mile away and told myself it was protection.
“You’re an asshole, Hatton.” Rage rims her eyes red. “God, to think I let you touch me.”
She wraps her arms around herself like she’s trying to hold her own body together.
“I told you things I’ve never even told my own family. I… I trusted you with my name.” The word comes out raw, hurting my own throat. “I haven’t told anyone my real name in six months, and I trusted you after six days. How pathetic is that?”
After a moment, she scoffs. “Then again. You already knew it. Didn’t you?”
The accusation cuts deeper than any blade ever has.
I take it, because I deserve it, because there’s nothing else I can do, and because the look on her face isn’t just rage.
It’s the look of a girl who let someone past every wall she built to survive and found out he’d been standing on the other side the whole time.
I wonder if, in another life, maybe under different circumstances, traumas, fears—or maybe it’d take two different people entirely—I wonder if she might consider that romantic.
But after what Lucy’s been through, who and what she’s lost, knowing that I snuck past her illusion of safety right before her eyes is just another devastating blow to all the hard work she’s done to move past her hurt.
“I need you to know that everything we’ve been through together, our conversations, how… how I touch you.” I keep my voice level and strong, even though my chest is caving in. “Every moment of that has been real. Everything between us is re—”
“You aren’t real! You’re this… this liar. Hatter’s a fictional character. Hatton Fury is my real life enemy.”
“I’m not your enemy.” I growl, then huff. “Jesus Christ, don’t you get it? I care about you, Lucy. I have for a long fucking time, I think even before our dance the night of Luna’s graduation—”
“The blue-masked prince.” Her eyes widen and then she hangs her head in her hand. “God. Of course that was you too. That night was a nightmare. Of course you’d taint the last good part.”
I grimace, but keep going. “I know, fuck, I’m sorry about that too.
And—look, I know this explanation is shit, and it means nothing to you now, but I’ve never been good at restraint, and with you I have zero.
None. Hell, not knowing whether you were safe for six goddamn months was pure torture.
Then once you were within arm’s reach, it was unbearable not to be near you. ”
I lick my lips and make my decision to go as all in as she’ll let me.
“You see, there’s this thing in my family. We call it the Fury peace.”
Curiosity ignites in her features, and I rush everything out, hoping I can stoke that flame. “I didn’t believe it before, but it’s kinda like how Furys are all born with skull birthmarks? The Fury peace is a legend that claims we all have…”
I laugh. “Well, we all have soulmates, I guess is the best way to put them. When we meet the one we’re supposed to be with, you become our peace. The peace to our Fury.”
“Me? I… I became your… peace?” she asks, her voice tentative, and I nod, giving her a slight smile.
“Yeah, baby. This?” I slowly gesture to where we woke up this morning wrapped in each other, then between her and me.
“Damn, Lucy. If the way I feel with you isn’t peace, I don’t fucking want it.
But I know what I do want. I want… I want you, Lucy.
I—” the word that’s insane is on my tongue, but I swallow it because I’ve already spoken like a mad man, so I settle on what I hope she can hear. “I never meant to hurt you.”
Something flickers across her face, soft and the faintest crack in her armor. Hope begins to smolder then flares bright in my chest.
She swallows and takes a step forward. “Hatton—”
Her walls slam down behind her eyes as my real name leaves her lips, and everything warm is gone as she steps back one foot.
“You’re right, Hatton. That means nothing to me now. You mean nothing to me. I would’ve never let you so much as look at me if I’d known who you really were.”
“You didn’t know who I was last night, and you agreed to be mine,” I say, the words tearing out of me before I can soften them. “I told you, once I was inside you, there was no going back between us. You said you wanted me no matter what.”