Epilogue
ALFIE.
I listened to her cry as she left my sight. Such small, pitiful sounds. Pain that I wouldn’t have caused her for anything, and yet I had. As a result of my own selfishness, I’d hurt her. All this time, and I still hadn’t changed.
I watched her go until the final swish of the blue dress I had so painstakingly chosen disappeared into the trees. I closed my eyes then, not wanting to look at a world that didn’t have her in it.
I could hear the moon laughing at me. The night had become so still around me that even the owls and the insects didn’t dare make a sound.
The night sat in respectful silence, allowing me this time to mourn, to die, to settle back into my old shell.
I eased into that skin, donning my hair shirt with new crimes added to my record.
You have been charged with committing most egregious acts and having an insidious nature. How do you plead? Guilty. Guilty as sin.
I forced my eyes open, no point in delaying the inevitable. The garden was dead without her. The lifeless pregnancy test lay on the table where she left it.
Negative.
Relief. That had been my immediate reaction, though fear had crawled up my throat soon after.
Fear at the inevitable end. Her shoes lay discarded by her chair and I knelt, scooping them up.
They were still warm inside and I knew I would keep them for the rest of my life.
I placed them with care on the table next to the small velvet box.
Stupid. I had been so stupid. Offering her that ring, like it would change anything.
Like I would ever get to keep her. ‘ Do you even want to marry me, Alfie? ’ More than I wanted air.
That’s what I’d wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out.
They’d gotten stuck, clogged up with my devious mistruths.
I placed the box in my pocket. I would keep that forever too.
I heard footsteps and for a pathetic second, a part of me thought it could be her.
That I would turn around to see her running at me, her firelight hair flying around her face, the blue dress whipping around her soft thighs.
She would leap into my arms and tell me she could forgive me, I could have another chance. Hope was a cruel bitch.
“Alfie?” My faithful servant approached, keeping a careful amount of distance in case I lashed out as I had done many times in the beginning. “What happened? I saw your girl leaving…Did she turn you down? Do you want me to go after her?”
“No. Let her go,” I said, wondering how I sounded so calm.
But that’s what the dead mask was for. This was why I lived in the grey.
“It’s not as if there is still a threat to protect her from.
” I sank into the seat she had vacated, her sweet scent emanating from the cushion.
I closed my eyes, breathing it in. I wanted to roll about in it like a dog, to imprint her onto my skin.
When I opened my eyes, Elliot was still there, concern etched into his ageing face.
“She knows about Adam. I’m not sure how but I don’t suppose it matters now. It’s over, Elliot.”
The lines in his forehead creased in confusion. “She blames you?”
“I told her I was responsible, yes. I might as well be.”
Elliot sighed and ran a hand over his jaw. “I’m sorry, Alfie. I’ll go after her, explain that I acted alone?—”
“You will do no such thing.” I cut him off. “You might have acted without my consent but I am glad you killed that worthless shit.”
“But I can get her back. If she knows what he was planning to do to her, if she knows?—”
“If she knows, she will be tempted to come back to me,” I said, my tone clear, commanding, every bit the CEO.
A tone that Elliot didn’t deserve. I pulled it back, returning to the grey.
“No, Elliot. She said that the way to keep her had been so simple and I think, finally, I understand. Finally, I care about her needs more than mine.”
It was her final lesson to me and I would treasure it.
Treasure that here, at the finish line, I had finally learned how to show love.
She hadn’t let me say those words, but I had shown they were true.
By easing her passage away from me, by calming her and telling her to go, I had finally gotten it right.
“Alfie…” His voice trailed off, tinged with pity. Pity I couldn’t stand. I searched quickly for another subject.
“She got into college.” I’d forgotten about it. How could I forget something so important to her? Selfishness, that’s how.
“That’s great news. It’s about time too,” he smiled.
“You remembered?”
“Of course. It was in the dossier you had me put together. She’s been applying for years. Please tell me you didn’t interfere. She’d be furious if she only got in because you pulled some strings.”
“No, I didn’t interfere.” I gave a short, choking laugh. That was the one thing I got right and I got it right by accident. Because I forgot about it, because getting her into college didn’t benefit me.
Elliot frowned at me, his fatherly gaze searching mine as he tried to find the right words to comfort me.
He always tried. He was rarely successful, but in all the years I had known him, he had never stopped trying.
I suppose he felt he had his own sins to make up for.
His gaze dropped to the table where he eyed the barren test.
“She thought she was pregnant?” I didn’t answer.
I stared at her shoes instead, admiring the small indents where her toes had pressed.
“What did you do, Alfie?” Instead of waiting for my answer, his sharp eyes scanned the scene.
He picked up her glass and sniffed it, then sipped, wincing.
“ You thought she might be pregnant? That’s why you gave her this non-alcoholic shit?
” He wiped his mouth, grimacing as he tried to escape the taste.
He didn’t understand how I could drink it.
I didn’t much like it either, but drinking it was easier than explaining why I didn’t drink at all.
“How could she be pregnant? I thought she was on the pill?” He stood over me but, unlike with my father, I didn’t fear Elliot’s anger. No, it was his disappointment I feared, disappointment I was about to get by the barrel. I looked up, facing him.
“I’ve been having Mike steal her birth control.”
He blinked, danger flickering there. I saw the man that wanted to break my wrist the same way he had done to Adam. Were Adam and I so different? He had violated her, and so had I.
“I love you like you were my own son, Alfie. That is the only reason you’re still standing.” He turned away from me, running a hand over his jaw. “Christ, are you mad? Nevermind the damage to Lola, tampering with birth control is reproductive coercion. It’s illegal, Alfie.”
“Illegal? You murdered a man this week, Elliot.”
“Killing rapists shouldn’t be illegal.” He gave me a meaningful look that called to the secret I’d been carrying for ten years.
I ignored it, like I always did. “Lola wasn’t his first and she wouldn’t have been his last.” We had discussed this topic before and, for Elliot, it had always been black and white.
I knew what he said about Adam was true.
It was the only way I could square off his death with my conscience.
His death kept Lola safe. It was as simple as that.
I could feel Elliot’s eyes, hard with anger and disappointment at what I had done.
I soaked it in, letting it into my pores.
I deserved it. If a man who shrugged off murder was judging you, that was a surefire way to know you were crossing a line.
Mike, though, he’d been only too happy to do my dirty deeds for a pay bump.
“Alfie, you’re a bloody fool.” I smiled a wry smile. Elliot could always be counted on to say what was on his mind. He and my Lo both shared that quality. “What the hell were you thinking, lad?”
“I was thinking that I’d found the impossible and I was about to lose it. Earning her was my redemption, Elliot, and I’ve failed.”
“You earned her lad, you just tripped at the last hurdle. Don’t go backwards.
The life you’re living is no life.” He sighed, clearly caught between wanting to help me and wanting to slap me over the head for the shit I’d pulled.
I wondered how many times Lola had been caught between that rock and that hard place.
“Go after her, fix it. Promise her whatever you need to. Tell her about Charles, about your father. She’ll understand, I know she will. ”
“No.” That was not going to happen.
“You can’t carry their ghosts forever. What happened wasn’t your fault?—”
“I said no .” The vehemence in my voice echoed into the night and brought this trained killer to a silent standstill.
Rage threatened to explode out of me but I swallowed it down just as I had done a thousand times.
I slipped the fingers of my left hand under the cuff of my right shirt and stroked the blue ribbon tied there until the swirling rage pool in my belly began to slow.
“No, Elliot. I’m going to be selfless for once in my life. ”
She would survive without me, I had no doubt about that.
The only way out of this is in a body bag…
Nothing exists for you but me…
Remember the pain …
So many insidious things I’d said to bend her mind and keep her in this shadowed cage with me.
I could never get it right. I wanted to be in the light with her, and I had been so fucking close.
But she would survive without me. As for me, I could feel my soul withering, hardening back into the impenetrable stone it had been before I came to this tiny, unassuming town.
She had pried me open and found me dank and cold.
She had spent many arduous hours rubbing sticks together to spark a flame, then weeks and months stoking the fire with gentle breaths, using her body to shelter it from my storms, cutting off her own hair to use as kindling every time I threatened to blow it out.
It hurt. Ever since I met her, I could feel the heat of that flame inside me, warming me.
Now, I was cooling again, ice settling deep inside.
It was right that I let her go, but the thought of never seeing her face again…
and the world was so fucking dangerous out there…
I could kill if I couldn’t see her face every day.
Even if she wasn’t looking at me, even if her smiles were for someone else, I had to watch her brush her hair, turn her face up to the sky every time she stepped outside.
I had to watch her pick through a blueberry muffin, bite her lip as she sketched some new fantasy.
I had to see her hair in the sunlight. The sway of her hips, the curve of her lips, her bright, all-seeing eyes.
If I could keep seeing her, I could imagine her.
Her lips on mine, her fingertips trailing down my back, her scent on my skin—the scent of a hundred kinds of fruit, of the earth and outdoors.
I could imagine her laughter, light and breathy The way she said my name every morning, the first word out of her mouth…
Alfie . I could imagine her moans and gentle cries in my ears.
I could imagine her telling me she loved me, wearing a white dress and my ring on her finger, bearing my last name…
no…me bearing hers. Alfie O’Connell had a much better ring to it than Lola Tell.
I could imagine her carrying my child, a child that she had chosen. I could imagine her old in my arms as we saw each other out of this world.
As long as I could see her every day, I could still dream.
What harm could it do her if I was a ghost in her life? No harm at all if she didn’t know I was there and with someone always watching, she would always be safe.
I turned to the man at my side, the grey man who had infiltrated terrorist cells and taken out gangsters, the man who had turned down MI5.
“Elliot, there’s something I need you to do for me.
” The furrow in his brow deepened as I gave him his orders, but he knew better than to argue.
I would keep to my word. I would never bother her again.
I wouldn’t interfere as she moved on without me, but I would keep her safe, and in my dreams she would come to me.
In our Evergarden she would lie in my arms.
Ever mine.
My Lo.
Continue Alfie and Lola’s story in Never Tell Secrets, coming 2025 .