52
Two black lengths of steel divide my view of the custody yard. Beyond them lies a stretch of sun-bleached concrete boxed in by high fencing, security lights and windowless brick.
Heat shimmers above the service road while cameras angle down from every corner like modern gargoyles looking for something to pounce on.
The thought of seeing Elias after this ordeal makes a hollow pressure settle beneath my breastbone. I have rehearsed this moment through every hour he remained behind those walls, but none of those imagined versions could carry the weight of what he wrote in the letter.
My fingers crumple it inside my pocket.
And now…
He is about to walk through that gate alive, and I have no idea whether to strike him, forgive him or hold on until the world ends.
The hot metal of my Ford bites into my palms where I’ve braced them against the bonnet.
Behind me, red paint gathers sunlight and every speck of dust collected between London and this place.
Anna nearly lost it when she saw me – especially because I had to leave immediately after retrieving the car.
I eye my camera that lies on the passenger seat.
For once, I don’t need it in my hands.
I have taken enough photographs of cages. Enough pictures of things contained by force. When Elias walks through that gate, I do not want glass or metal between us.
Beside my heel, Brute shifts against the tarmac with a low scrape of claws as he looks towards the gate.
‘He’ll be here soon,’ I tell him. He settles at that.
Conall’s call still resounds in my ears: the Crown Prosecution Service has discontinued the proceedings against Elias.
After yesterday’s hearing ended, Elias was remanded in custody overnight while everything around Cromwell began coming apart.
I turn my phone once between my hands, the silicone case already warm from how often I’ve checked it. I shove it into my jeans pocket with a weak smile.
Sindre and Skeever had worked together to preserve records Cromwell believed were buried, giving investigators enough to find the originals. Once they did, altered timestamps surfaced, witness statements failed to match recorded interviews, and one witness denied ever signing the amended version.
Cromwell’s people had built a trail around Elias’ history and trusted everyone to follow it without looking too closely.
But they finally did.
By morning, the prosecution no longer had a case it was willing to place before the judge, the majority of Cromwell’s associates were brought in, and the man himself had been charged before the sun had properly stretched over the sky.
A car passes beyond the outer wall, tyres whispering over the hot surface before the sound dissolves into the afternoon. I check the time on my phone again. My reflection stares back, the crease between my brows deep enough to cast its own shadow.
The Irishman had warned me release procedures could take hours, but I couldn’t wait.
Brute repositions deeper into the Ford’s shadow beside a half-empty bowl of water, while I continue cooking in the British summer afternoon. I chuck the phone through the window and watch it land on the seat at the same time as the inner gate releases with a metallic scream.
I straighten as my thoughts explode and rebound.
A uniformed officer steps into the yard carrying a clipboard as he speaks to someone still hidden behind him.
He moves aside.
And Elias walks out.
My gaze falls to his bare wrists. No cuffs. No strip of steel connects him to fear and misery any more.
The absence of chains feels like a weight lifting straight off my own shoulders.
He carries a transparent property bag in one hand and release papers in the other, neatly tucked into a very familiar book cover. Our Mary Shelley.
He is wearing the same dark clothes I saw him in yesterday.
The sunlight tangles in his hair, making it shimmer brighter than that day in the yard when I came to see him for his birthday.
My heart reaches straight out of my ribs, beats in the rhythm of the sparrows whose gossiping seems to have risen higher into the sky, as if carrying the news somewhere beyond me that Frida’s boy is finally free.
He pauses just beyond the gate and scans the car park with the attention of someone who has never trusted what waits for him outside a locked door.
Then he notices the Ford. His gaze moves from it to me.
He stops so abruptly that the officer has to speak louder to regain his attention.
Elias nods, frowns, tries to make himself seem calm and ready for whatever is required of him.
But his shoulders square. His jaw sets. And he aims his eyes towards me again.
And he becomes something made entirely of the north – Arctic blue eyes, winter-white skin, dark hair like the roots of the mountain we could see from our cabin, and all the stubbornness of the mountain range.
The camera on the passenger seat tugs at me. But the urge to grab it evaporates when he turns fully towards me and lifts his chin.
He starts walking. His step lengthens until the distance between us is swallowed by his footfalls.
I remain against the bonnet, though every nerve in me has curled until I can feel them knotting in my toes.
What if I misunderstood his letter? What if it were just my wishful thinking again? What if the ring had been a goodbye rather than a question?
What if he is looking at me now and seeing another person he can’t get rid of?
His knuckles are turning white as his fingers dig into Mary’s covers, and every remaining metre between us appears to have become an offence he intends to correct.
He finally halts, his eyes moving over my face, searching so intently it feels almost like being touched.
‘You are supposed to be in Norway.’ His voice is rough. Tired.
And the moment it breaches the vacuum of my thoughts, my heart nearly gives out.
‘So are you,’ I counter quietly.
His gaze hooks into my left hand resting against the warm metal of the car. More precisely – it finds the absence of a silver band on it.
Mary gives a soft complaint against his grip.
‘So… you can’t forgive me.’
The words emerge too quietly to be a simple accusation.
His attention remains on my hand for another moment as though the lack of the ring means I’ve returned only to close the final door.
When my silence draws too long, his attention travels to my eyes.
‘I haven’t yet forgiven you for leaving the way you did,’ I say.
My voice comes out too soft, made hollow by the effort of keeping everything else inside.
His jaw sets, but I see the fractures beneath the ice.
One broken heartbeat passes before he speaks again. ‘Yet?’
I square my shoulders.
Exhaling, he tries to collect himself. ‘I left you a—’
‘—a fucking letter,’ I cut in, trying to reel myself back together before every part of me spills across the hot car park.
I pull the damn page out of my pocket, crumple it in both hands and throw it at him. He catches it, squeezing it further in his hand that slowly lowers to his side.
But as the glacial blue holds me, my outrage begins to ease. I can’t keep it. Not when my demon is standing in front of me.
Within reach.
Again.
No glass or chains between us, no locked doors, uniforms or ghosts of the past to drag him away.
It takes the last of my strength not to throw myself into his arms and clutch him until our bodies melt into one.
‘I didn’t think I was coming back, Leah,’ he whispers.
The words strip something from him no sealed room ever managed to reach.
They almost make him look small, even if his frame could blot out half the sun if he shifted another step towards me.
But his shoulders draw in, his fingers close around the clear bag until the plastic complains.
The sound travels.
Anger punches through the grief in the last wave of desperation, but I push it back down.
I pull the ring from my pocket. His eyes follow it as he stuffs the balled letter into his own and holds out his hand. I drop the silver band into his palm, and his fingers close around it once, trapping it as though someone might snatch it away from us.
I distribute my weight evenly between both feet as if feeling more ground beneath me might help steady me.
‘If you want me to wear it, you’ll ask me properly, and put it on me by your damn self, Elias Crane. Jakob Halvorsen… Scruffy Bear.’
His pupils spread. Immediately after, his posture loosens, as though some unseen restraint has finally come undone.
The ring gleams like the promise of a maybe as his hand reopens.
A promise with tall trees, silvered winter paths and crowded family gatherings – when the snow allows.
A promise with animals, traps, laughter beside a fire, and moans in the dark, followed by the soft, decadent snap of a camera shutter.
He searches my face, hunting through every line for an explanation I haven’t given him. Waiting has never come easily to him without the worst creeping in to fill the silence, and the thought draws my ribs tight.
When I don’t raise my hand for him to fit the ring, the light catches the doubt on his brow before he can break it into small pieces and hide them.
My camera cries out indignantly to catch the exact instant hope begins to die.
‘You can do it properly when we’re home,’ I say.
He holds his breath.
‘At the cabin,’ I add, softer. ‘Where we belong.’
The tension first leaves his fingers – just enough to make the ring shift in his palm.
Then his chest expands beneath the grey T-shirt, but the breath that caught inside him never makes it out.
His throat moves. For the first time ever, nothing in his face retreats behind the ice.
There’s just a man looking at something he never thought he’d have. Never thought he’d see again: me. Waiting for him. Choosing him.
His mouth lifts a fraction. ‘“In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.”’
I blink at him in an attempt to prevent my blood from boiling straight out of my ears.
‘Nietzsche was a miserable little moustache attached to an even more miserable opinion, and if you intend to quote him every time we establish a—’
His arm hooks around my waist. The rest of the sentence dissolves in his mouth.
The first impact of his kiss is hard enough to splinter our breaths.
He takes, and takes, then slows – as though some last wounded part of him still expects me to pull away. I rise into him until the hesitation breaks and he consumes what remains between us.
The first time I ever kissed him, it had been between concrete walls and steel bars. The first time he claimed a kiss from me without using it as a threat, the scent of snow and firewood clung to us.
Now I drown in him. In the scent of sun-warmed cotton, pine and the everlasting bite of winter that lives in his skin.
Separating from him feels like parting from a piece of my soul.
I look up into his eyes, the black lashes stubbornly curling to conceal the gleam in the ice that promises absolutely nothing good.
‘The hotel’s beyond booked and Brute hates the fluffy carpet there,’ I murmur, letting my heart prepare for the next beat and the words that follow. ‘I’ve never taken a boy home before, you know.’
‘Mm…’ he rumbles. ‘I’m more of a scruffy bear, anyway.’
To punctuate it, he taps the top of my hip where his brand lives.
The smile that takes over my lips is brief. And my bear catches on. Both his arms slither around my waist, the plastic bag hanging behind me, Mary grazing my spine. He pulls me closer.
And it feels like home.
‘We still have a long way to go,’ I tell him. His gaze remains on mine. ‘Nothing can excuse the things you did. I did. We did—’
‘What things?’ He tilts his head sideways, a twitch of his mouth announcing the mischief before it fully blooms in his eyes.
I cock a brow at him. ‘You know what things.’
‘The Nielsens’ shower?’ he purrs.
‘Elias…’ I push softly against his chest, but he holds me firmly. ‘Focus.’
‘I’m focusing, just not on the things you want me to focus on. You know…’ He shakes his head as he looks left, then right and finally dips his mouth closer to mine. ‘I think you get grumpy when you’re hungry. Perhaps some jam is in order?’
My mouth parts with disbelief as I look past him at the two guards stationed by the entrance. Heat scorches my face.
I seize him by the front of his collar and drag him towards the Ford before we educate the uniforms further on the possible uses of preserves.
An unguarded laugh spills from him. It follows me around the bonnet until he dips into the passenger seat.
Behind us, the release gate groans shut, the metal screeching its final goodbye to the ghosts of his past.
And to some extent, my own too.