Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Archie
“So, let me get this straight,” Vaughn says, reading the information board outside the Bloody Tower. “Two young princes were locked up in here by their uncle, who probably had them killed so he could take the throne.”
“Richard III. Allegedly. There’s still debate. Family dynamics were complicated in the fifteenth century.”
“Apparently.” Vaughn looks up at the stone walls, then at me. “Makes our family look functional by comparison.”
“That’s a low bar, and you know it.”
He laughs. It still catches me off guard to hear it. For too long, my memory of Vaughn’s voice has been frozen at its coldest point, his clipped, dismissive tone. Hearing the warm version again is like finding a song you thought had been deleted from every playlist.
Vaughn’s been here for two weeks now.
He’s staying in a hotel close enough to my apartment that we’ve fallen into an easy rhythm.
Coffee in the morning at the place on the corner.
Walking the dogs together—Vaughn has a complicated relationship with Muffin, who sensed his wariness immediately and has been punishing him for it by peeing on his shoes at every opportunity.
Pub lunches. Evenings on my sofa, arguing about what to watch.
It started out tentative. Those first few days, we circled each other like people relearning a language they were once fluent in. Our conversations skirted around anything real, sticking to safe territory like his job, the dogs, and whether British weather is a form of psychological warfare.
But slowly, gradually, like a door being eased open inch by inch, we started to find our way back.
Vaughn made a joke about Dr. Nutsworth, and I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my coffee.
I did an impression of our mother at a school fundraiser, and Vaughn snorted beer through his nose, which was disgusting and also the funniest thing I’d witnessed in weeks.
It’s not the same as it was when we were kids. It can’t be. We’re not those people anymore. But it’s something.
It’s the only sunshine in my life right now.
Because I continue to miss Leo.
I don’t think I’d realized how far down the Leo rabbit hole I’d fallen until I tried to extract myself from it.
I always thought there was a trade-off. Someone who provided me with security would bore me long-term, but someone who challenged me would be exhausting to live with.
But Leo somehow managed to do both.
He made me feel more secure than I’ve ever felt in my life, but also kept me on my toes.
And there it is. The thought I’ve been circling for weeks, approaching from every angle, running every diagnostic, looking for an alternative explanation.
There isn’t one.
I’m in love with Leo Brennan.
And it’s an all-encompassing, terrifying, no-safety-net kind of love.
I’m in love with him, yet he walked away from me.
And I get that I withdrew when he wanted to talk about our relationship. I constantly replay that moment in the apartment, the night after the most intimate sex I’ve ever had, when he told me he wanted to talk. And I shut him down.
I should have been more open with him. I should have told him how I felt about him.
But isn’t the fact that he left an indication that he obviously doesn’t feel the same way about me as I feel about him?
Because I could have never left him. I know that now.
I try to push Leo out of my mind as Vaughn and I move across the grounds of the Tower of London.
We’re here because Vaughn has never been, and I told him it was mandatory.
You can’t visit London and not see the place where half the monarchy tried to murder the other half.
It’s basically a family reunion with worse outcomes.
We climb the stairs to the next tower at my pace, which is still slower than normal because my left foot is adjusting to life free of a walking boot.
“The Beauchamp Tower is my favorite part,” I say as we duck through a low doorway into a circular stone room.
“What’s special about this one?”
“Look at the walls.”
Vaughn looks. They are covered in carvings. Names, dates, coats of arms, prayers, elaborate inscriptions that were all scratched into the stone by prisoners who’d been held here, some of them for years.
“Were these done by the prisoners?” Vaughn traces a finger near one of the carvings without touching it. It’s an intricate family crest surrounded by Latin text, the kind of thing that would have taken weeks of painstaking work with a nail or a belt buckle.
“Yeah, some of the prisoners knew they were going to be executed. They spent their last days carving their names into the walls so someone would know they’d existed.
” I point to one near the corner. “That one’s the Dudley family crest. Four Dudley brothers were all imprisoned here together, locked up in the same tower. One of them carved this.”
“Brothers,” Vaughn says.
“Brothers.”
We stand there for a moment, looking at the name of a man who carved his family’s identity into stone five hundred years ago because it was the only thing he had left.
“You know a lot about Tudor prisoners,” Vaughn observes.
“I know a lot about everything. It’s my curse.”
“It’s not a curse,” Vaughn says quietly.
I give him a sideways glance. He’s still staring at the Dudley family crest.
“Yeah, I know,” I say finally.
After we’ve exhausted ourselves by soaking in England’s bloody history, we stop for coffee at a café near the river. It’s one of those places with mismatched chairs that’s trying very hard to be charming and mostly succeeding. Vaughn grabs a table near the window while I order.
The guy behind the counter is around my age. Dark hair, nice eyes, the kind of forearms that suggest he either works out or carries a lot of milk crates. Probably both.
“Here you go.” He sets my coffee down with a smile that’s a few degrees warmer than customer service requires. “Have you just done the Tower?”
“How can you tell?”
“Everyone who comes in from that direction has the same slightly shell-shocked expression. It’s a lot of beheadings for one morning.”
“We paced ourselves.”
He laughs. “Did you know there used to be a zoo in the Tower? There were lions, bears, and an elephant. For about six hundred years, they kept exotic animals in there alongside the prisoners.”
“That feels like a health-and-safety issue.”
“Apparently, a lion mauled a soldier in the 1680s, and they just sort of carried on.” He shrugs. “Different times.”
“Very different times.”
He’s leaning on the counter now, and his body language has shifted from friendly to interested. I recognize it because I used to be fluent in this particular dialect.
“We do a live music night here on Fridays,” he says. “Jazz, a bit of folk. It’s actually really good. If you want to come back sometime?”
My shoulders stiffen.
He’s asking me out.
Three months ago, I’d have said yes. He’s attractive and friendly, and he apparently shares my enthusiasm for the darker corners of history.
But the thought of sitting across from someone who isn’t Leo, laughing at jokes that aren’t Leo’s, being seen by eyes that aren’t Leo’s dark ones, makes my chest do something painful.
“That’s really nice of you,” I say. “But I’m not… I’m not really in the right place for that at the moment.”
The barista takes it well. Easy smile, nice guy. Wrong time. Wrong person. Wrong everything.
I head over to the table, carrying coffee for Vaughn and me.
Vaughn greets me with an amused expression. “Was the barista hitting on you?”
“Ah…yeah.”
“Did you turn him down?”
“Yes.”
Vaughn studies me with a frown.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you turn down the good-looking barista who was clearly into you?”
“Because I’m just out of a walking boot and my dance moves are currently limited to ‘listing gently to the left.’ Not an ideal first date impression.”
Vaughn doesn’t smile. “Archie.”
I take a sip of coffee. If Vaughn and I are doing the brother thing, I should be honest.
I don’t need to tell him the Leo details, but I can give him the shape of it.
“There’s a guy I’m still hung up on,” I admit.
Vaughn’s staring at me, his jaw doing something tight.
“He kind of broke my heart,” I add.
“What happened?”
“I fell in love with him, but I don’t think he loved me back.
” I deliver this with a shrug, aiming for casual, landing somewhere around devastated.
I swallow hard and continue, “It’s my fault really.
We were getting close, and I pushed him away because I was in denial about how much I loved him.
But he’s stayed away…and I think that means he doesn’t quite feel the same way about me as I feel about him. ”
“Archie—”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll get over it. Eventually. I mean, a heart can’t stay broken forever, right? It’s anatomically impossible.” I’m trying the joke thing, but I’m fairly sure it’s undone by the complete misery coating every word.
“Fuck,” Vaughn says.
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I say miserably.
“No. Fuck.” Vaughn claws a hand through his hair. His face is doing something I don’t understand. It’s pale and tight and almost panicked. “Archie, Leo does love you back.”
I stare at him in shock.
I didn’t even mention Leo’s name. How the hell does Vaughn know I’m talking about him?
“What?”
“Leo loves you. He’s in love with you.”
My breath leaves me.
“You’re talking about Leo Brennan, right?”
He rolls his eyes. “Have you got a whole lot of other Leos who are in love with you?”
My face feels numb. Somehow, this conversation is taking a surreal turn I didn’t expect. The café carries on around us—the espresso machine hissing, someone’s spoon clinking against a saucer, the cute barista wiping down the counter—but none of it seems real.
“In fact,” Vaughn continues, “he loves you so much that he sacrificed himself so you would be happy.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Vaughn takes a breath. His hands are flat on the table and he’s pressing down like he’s trying to anchor himself.