14. The Four #3
She had no doubt he wanted her to be frightened, solely for his own amusement. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, so she held her ground and remained silent.
He laughed—little more than a lazy, indolent puff of breath—and started moving again, confidently navigating the dark with only spots of moonlight to show the way. When they reached the inn, he moseyed up to the bar.
“One room,” Jack said to the barmaid. He gestured vaguely toward Cecily. “And one for her too, I guess.”
In the light, his eyes were tired, and there was no hint of the laughter she’d heard from him all afternoon. He didn’t bother to look at her, and she wished with all her being that she could be anywhere but with him.
“Can’t I go back to the ship?” she asked. It sounded too much like begging, so she took a breath and said, firmer this time, “I’d rather go back.”
“No.”
“Why?” she demanded. She didn’t want to be forced to spend her money here when all she had was intended for something other than patronizing a pirate city. The gold in her pack was her home, her life—everything beyond Jack Copson and the crackling, agonizing tension between them.
“Because I don’t want to go back. And if I’m not going, neither are you.”
Her knees trembled. Would he be too drunk to follow if she left the inn and started running? Somehow, she didn’t think his sobriety would matter much if he wanted to hunt her. And with his father’s threat hanging over his head, he’d be sure to find her quickly.
The woman at the bar traded Jack a key for a coin, then she looked at Cecily, a second key in hand.
Cecily glanced between them before admitting, “I’m saving my money.”
Jack hung his head in exasperation, then finally turned his gaze on her. “You’ve been free for barely two weeks,” he said tersely. “What could you possibly already need it for?”
Her hackles rose. “Hopes and dreams,” she said, coating the truth with sarcasm.
The barmaid set the key on the counter with a clink and waited.
“Just pay her,” Jack said. “You’ve got more than enough for a room and whatever else you want.”
Cecily’s hand tightened around the strap of her pack. “I’ll sleep outside.”
He cursed and slapped another coin on the counter. Cecily lurched, aiming to push Jack’s coin back at him, but the barmaid snatched it and started walking away.
“No,” Cecily said, scrambling for her money. She wouldn’t be in debt to him on top of everything else. “I can’t let you—”
“I don’t want your money,” he grumbled, pushing away from the counter and heading for a flight of stairs in the corner of the room. “I want you to stop being so damn difficult. It’s not my fault you’re stuck with me.”
Her face burned anew as she followed him up the steps. She wanted to snap back at him, but she was exhausted and heavy, and something in her had weakened. The walls she’d built around herself had crumbled more than she thought, and the hurt kept going and going and going—
It threatened to swallow her, and she didn’t know how to make it stop. It had only been a day since she’d overheard the Copsons talking about her unsuitability, and only half a day since Morgyn’s taunts, mere hours since she and Jack had torn into each other because of them.
She was no better off. She was worse now, and condemned to be so indefinitely.
Jack halted in front of a door, and Cecily moved past—only to discover her room was next to his.
She stared at the door, wondering again if she might run. Meanwhile, Jack’s gaze seared into the side of her face, heavy and close enough to make her sweat.
They stood like that for a long time, him watching her while she attempted to shore her defenses. It was as effective as reaching for a brick and finding handfuls of bone-dry sand.
What would it have been like if she had never let him earn her trust? Or if she’d simply never known she was a game to him? If he’d never called her a viper or wished her dead for all the ways she’d used her words as weapons.
Jack lifted the bottle, extending it to her. She shook her head.
“Ah,” he said in a low voice. “Too pious?”
She huffed an angry breath. It came with tears, and this time, she could not force them down. They pooled in the corners of her eyes, and she swallowed in a vain attempt to somehow pull them back in.
Tears, when she hadn’t cried in so long. How had Jack deserved them?
“Say something,” he murmured.
I can’t stand you.
I don’t want to fight.
You break my heart.
She grabbed the bottle, careful not to touch or look at him, and lifted it to her mouth.
The liquor washed over her tongue, bitter and biting, and she lowered the drink to cough against the burn in her throat.
Jack reached for it, but she turned away and drank again until the ache in her chest had dulled.
With another ragged cough, she thrust the bottle back at him, went into her room, and shut the door.
Inside, there was a small table with a bowl, a pitcher of clean water, and a bar of soap.
Cecily hadn’t cried—truly cried—in a long time. But at the sight of a few small comforts after so many months of hell, she sank to the floor and wept.