Chapter Four #2
Her brow furrows, and she shakes her head. “Never mind. For a moment, I thought you looked familiar. The mind plays tricks.”
The mind knows, I want to tell her. The mind remembers what the heart refuses to forget.
I am a breath away from revealing our past and filling in the lost time that lies between us, but before I can, she continues, “My carriage has lost a wheel. My fiancé sent me to arrange the repair.”
Fiancé.
The word cleaves through me. Not swiftly or cleanly, but like a dull blade sawing through flesh.
My hammer suddenly feels too heavy. My fingers tighten around the handle until the wood bites into my palm. The air in the forge thickens, smoke and heat pressing against my lungs. I force myself to breathe. It feels like swallowing glass.
Fiancé.
Of course she has a fiancé. Of course she does. Did I think she would wait? That she would somehow remain untouched by time, by circumstance, by the bloody life she had been born into?
I was a fool. I am a fool.
The boy who loved her would have raged. Would have demanded to know his name, his worth, whether this man was truly deserving of her. But that boy is no more, and the man I’ve become simply nods before turning my attention toward the wheel propped near the door.
“That’s the one?” I ask, my voice rougher than I intended.
She glances at it, then back at me. “Your powers of deduction astound.”
Her lips twitch like she’s trying not to smile. The heat of the forge flushes her skin, a faint color rising along her delicate throat. I look away before I forget myself and do something stupid, like ask her if she’s happy. Or if he makes her laugh the way I used to.
“Just as your powers of derision astonish,” I say, hearing the East End thickening my consonants—an aural reminder of the chasm between us. “Quite a forked tongue for such a delicate creature.”
“You’ll do well to keep my tongue out of your mouth.” Her eyes flash, and for a moment—just a moment—I see the girl who used to argue with me beneath the apple tree, who never let me win an argument unless I truly earned it. “My fiancé—”
“Should have handled this repair himself. Shame on him for putting you to this task.”
She eyes me suspiciously, and I wonder briefly if I’ve overstepped the bounds of decorum. A blacksmith does not lecture a lady about her betrothed. A blacksmith keeps his head down and his bloody mouth shut.
A small smile tugs at her lips, and I ignore the tug it has on my chest.
“On that, we are in agreement, Smithy.”
Smithy. Not Tommy. Not Asher. Not even sir. Just the role I play, the work I do. It shouldn’t sting, but it does.
Wiping my hands with the rag sticking out from my pocket, I walk toward the broken wheel, grateful for the excuse to turn away from her and compose myself.
“How long will it take?” she asks at my back, but the lyrical sound of her voice is like a siren’s song and I immediately turn back around.
“It’ll be ready tomorrow,” I tell her, my eyes catching on the way the light from the door illuminates her golden hair and how one strand escapes her perfectly pinned updo and floats gently in the breeze.
“Tomorrow?”
“Good to know your ears aren’t as broken as this wheel is.”
She folds her gloved hands, then laughs under her breath, more at herself than me. “How efficient. I’ll inform my fiancé that the blacksmith commands the schedule now.”
There it is again. Fiancé. The word has razor-sharp edges falling from her tongue.
She thanks me, voice low, and turns to leave. The light from the doorway hits her hair, causing it to shimmer.
“I’ll work with as much expediency as my muscles allow, my dove.
” The endearment rolls off my tongue with the ease of a word that never went far from my lips.
And perhaps it did not. The nickname had been born ages ago and came, phoenix-like, burning back to life in this instant.
I watch her response, wondering if she’ll chalk it up to a coincidence or a callback.
She gives nothing away, though I swear she slows her exit ever so slightly.
Her hand pauses on the doorframe. And then she’s gone.
I am rendered immobile longer than I should be, watching the space where she stood as if she might reappear. As if these past years might unravel and we might be children again, before the world taught us our places.
I pick up my hammer again. The iron has cooled. I’ll need to reheat it and start over. The thought feels fitting.
Memories heat my heart as the metal heats in the forge, and I wonder—not for the first time and likely not for the last—if she ever thinks of me.
The OtherWorld
I blink, and my awareness slams back into the present.
I am standing, once again, in the alleyway in the OtherWorld.
Visions of Madeleine walking into my shop after so many years away keep replaying in my mind.
Each vivid fragment of the past feels like it distorts something in the present.
My eyes dart around as I try to refocus on my surroundings and remember where I am. When I am.
The stranger is gone; I am alone. Maybe I imagined that exchange. Maybe I’ve imagined all of this.
Wake the fuck up, Asher, and move your fucking feet!
My internal voice tries to snap me out of this fractured state, but my body won’t cooperate. I bring my hand to my forehead; my head is pounding.
How can I be feeling pain?
Before my hand reaches my head, I notice the coin still lodged firmly in my palm. I rub its raised surface and rippled edges, then flip it in my hand, staring at the repeated image.
Who was that man?
How long have I been standing here?
And why are these memories of a past that can never be rewritten flooding my mind with such vivid intensity? I can still smell the forge and feel the heat on my skin.
If I don’t pull myself together, I’ll find myself squarely in the boss’s crosshairs.
Maddy’s last words in the shop echo in my mind again, and I groan audibly, trying to shake the memory away.
I pocket the coin and bring my hand to my head.
I know how this ends. If I can’t control these thoughts, my future in the OtherWorld is as doomed as mine and Maddy’s was.
What terrible twist of fate has brought that woman back into my sad, miserable life?
How can I quiet the voices from my past that keep growing louder?
How can I stop myself from spiralling out of control?
Maddy is dead. So am I. We never were and never could be.
Even her name feels more real every time I silently think it.
And that’s dangerous.
I feel like I’m on a carousel, moving at an achingly slow pace, listening to the same song over and over. I want to get off, but somehow, I’m strapped to the seat.
I know where this ride ends—misery. It has been too long, and I’ve learned the hard way too many times.
Dreams are for fools, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is an even bigger fool. I don’t have time for any of that. What I need is to forget.
I know a place where I can lean into my hopelessness and clear my head of all these useless feelings. A place in the OtherWorld where memory has no power. I know exactly what to do to help me forget.
My feet begin to move before my mind can convince me what a terrible idea this is.