Chapter Fifty-One
She’d received Damien’s note late on Saturday evening – inviting her to Mr Jane’s teahouse, and Ava’s bruised heart had leaped in her chest. Hope and hurt twisted together as she walked through the city the next day, one threading through the other until she couldn’t tell which was which.
For part of her hoped this would be an apology, an explanation – and the other part of her feared this would just be him, putting into words what his absence had already told her the other day.
She tried to remember what Oliver had said in the kitchen.
Tried to feel brave as she turned the corner of Brunswick Street and drew closer to the teashop.
After all, she was the one who’d tried to hold their family together.
The one who’d picked up all the pieces after her mother had passed, and carried on.
She was the woman who Miss Fairchild said she’d admired. The woman who’d leaped across the street when she’d seen Damien tumble out of that inn.
She was brave.
And she wouldn’t let fear dampen the spark that burned within her now, even though her fingers were shaking as she reached for the teashop’s door and swung it open.
Inside it smelled like woodsmoke, like warm sugar cakes, and dense fruit buns, and amidst the sea of yellow furniture sat Damien; his dark hair falling over his spectacles, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar.
He was looking at something upon the table, smoothing his hand back and forth across it, though when she neared, and he saw her, he folded it quickly and stuffed it into his pocket.
‘Ava.’
His voice was too loud against the dim chatter of the tearoom, and she felt the eyes of those at some of the tables around them turn as she took the seat opposite him.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’
There was a brittle kind of look in his eyes, and she saw the same wall between them that she’d seen grow between her and Jem. Except this time, she would shatter it.
This time, she would be brave.
‘Listen, Damien, I have something I want to tell you—’
‘I too,’ he said, his eyes not leaving hers. She couldn’t see a single speck of green in them today – instead they were dark, as dark as his hair, and the smudges beneath his eyes.
Love is a terrifying thing. That was what Oliver had said. Love is handing someone every sharp edge within you, every weakness – and trusting them not to hurt you with it.
She could feel the words gathering behind her ribs, tight and breathless.
That’s what makes it so awful. And extraordinary.
‘I love you,’ Ava said, at the very same moment as Damien said:
‘I’m leaving, Ava.’
She blinked, feeling his words slice at her, feeling the sting they left behind.
When she looked up, she found all the colour had drained from his face – and it was like watching someone lose their footing, watching someone fall; that moment when time seemed to slow, and everything happened in the space of a breath.
‘You—’ he began, and then broke off, as though stunned. ‘What?’
‘You’re leaving?’
His expression pinched. ‘I was always leaving, Ava,’ he said softly. ‘Even before I met you, I was leaving.’
‘And yet you kissed me anyway.’
The sharp edge whittled into Damien’s expression softened. ‘You kissed me, too.’
Her voice came out as a breath, cracked and raw. ‘Before I knew you would disappear.’
He leaned closer. ‘I should’ve told you sooner. I should’ve …’
‘It should’ve been the first thing you said,’ Ava replied – and she wished she could summon some fire into her voice, but it was nothing but a thin thread. ‘Nice to meet you, Miss Adams – by the by, I plan on only being here long enough to … to …’
To hurt you.
When he looked at her, his expression was like fractured glass. Cracking. Breaking.
‘Ava, I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t want you to be sorry, Damien. I want you to—’ stay, said the quiet voice in her mind.
And for a moment she thought she would swallow it – that word, and everything it held within it.
But she didn’t. She looked up at him – though his features had started to blur. ‘I want you to stay,’ she whispered.
She wanted to feel the way she had before – with his arms curled around hers – as though the two of them together could draw a curtain over themselves, and block out the whole world.
She wanted not to have made the same mistake, over and again.
‘Ava …’ Damien opened his mouth and closed it again, a knotted expression upon his face. ‘I can’t.’
‘I love you.’ This time, when she said it, the words came out a little steadier. ‘I love you, Damien Carter.’
‘Ava,’ he said – his voice firm, pleading. ‘Please. I’m not … I’m not the person you should be with. I’m not … I’m not good, or—’
She bit back the nervous laugh that rose in her throat, and looked at him for a long moment. Trying to see beneath his skin – trying to make sense of any of this.
‘Is that what this is? Are you … are you trying to prove it to yourself? That what your father told you, all those years ago, was true?’
Now the humour slid from his face – replaced with something else. Something trembling, and raw.
‘Ava—’
‘Does it make it better, or worse?’ Ava asked.
‘This self-fulfilling prophecy you’ve placed in front of yourself?
If you do bad things, then you are the bad person your father claimed you to be?
Is that it? Is that why you’re leaving? Because otherwise you’d have to face up to the truth – that you’re not some awful monster, and that your life is only a set of choices, choices you have made—’
He winced – and whatever warmth had been left in his gaze disappeared entirely. ‘Ava, please.’
Ava didn’t know why hearing her name on his lips suddenly felt like a pinch to her stomach, but she set her jaw.
‘I think I saw you, you know. The first night I arrived home in Liverpool. I saw you standing in the rain, your arms opened wide, head tilted up as though you would drink the rain from the sky.’ Her mouth twitched at the memory.
‘And I envied you. For it looked like freedom. It looked like being carefree. It looked the opposite to how I felt, waiting for my brother to collect me, and drag me back to a life I had been trying to run away from.’
She leaned forwards. ‘But then I got to know you. And I realized we were both trapped – just in different ways.’
Damien’s flint-like gaze softened, brows pinching together. ‘You are not trapped,’ he said.
‘Neither are you,’ she countered. ‘And whatever reason you think you need to leave Liverpool—’
‘You,’ Damien corrected. ‘I have to leave you. Because I care about you. Because—’ Something flashed across his face, and he frowned, the muscle in his jaw twitching. He wasn’t looking at her now, he was turning the teacup around and around upon its saucer, the porcelain clinking gently.
She shook her head, wishing her throat did not feel so awfully tight, wishing that the lump forming within it would disappear, but it didn’t.
It simply grew, the buttercups upon the tablecloth blurring into streaks of white and yellow as she said: ‘Jem didn’t care enough to stay with me.
That is why he broke off the engagement.
He said that he couldn’t love me in the way that I loved him, and that was why we could not be together.
’ She swallowed, watching two dark circles drip onto the cloth, sinking into the threads of white.
‘But you say you care too much to stay, and I do not know which of the two is worse.’ She wished she could look at him, wished she could lift her chin and watch him as she spoke, but she couldn’t.
She just watched the wet spots gather, more rapidly now.
‘They both feel rotten. But I think this is worse. Because at least with Jem, I could tell myself I had made a mistake. I had misread some sign, some signal. With you—’ She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘Ava—’ His voice creaked, like ice about to break.
‘No,’ she said, sucking a deep breath into her lungs and looking up, hating the pitying slant to his eyebrows, the shine to his dark eyes. ‘Don’t say any more. You’ve said enough.’
And then she stood up, trying desperately to hold her chin high as she walked past the tables of people, and out through the door.
‘Ava, wait.’
He followed her out into the street – the dusk pulling in above them like a tide, the wind cool.
‘I always thought I was invisible, Ava,’ he said, breathlessly. ‘And then I met you.’
There was something in his tone that made her heart ache all over again – but not like it had with Jem. This was different. Sweeter, almost – a gentle thrum that started in her chest and worked its way down into the pit of her stomach.
She closed her eyes. ‘You’ve never been invisible to me, Damien Carter.’
‘No,’ he whispered, coming to stand beside her, his breath warm and uneven against her cheek. ‘But this cannot work between us, Ava. It can’t. No matter how much I wish it could.’
The words stung, sinking into the cracks upon her heart, the ones she had tried so desperately to knit back together.
‘You belong here,’ he said, one hand reaching to cup her chin as though she were something fragile. Something that could break. ‘And I belong—’
With me, sang the voice in her mind.
‘Nowhere,’ he finished.
‘That’s not true,’ she said, knowing even as she said it that it was hopeless, for he was already stepping away – the air around her suddenly too cold, too empty. ‘It’s a choice, Damien. And you’re choosing to leave. To run. All because you believe you did something awful—’
‘I did do something awful.’ Damien turned away from her. ‘I must have. Why else would he be so relentless? Why else would he have followed me all the way here?’
She hesitated. ‘Your father is … here?’
Damien looked down at his feet. ‘His man is here,’ he said. ‘I saw him. That’s why I missed our session.’
She let the words sink in. Let them settle. ‘Have you ever considered that he is trying to find you because he regretted his actions, Damien? Regretted how he treated you?’
‘That is not the kind of man my father is,’ he said roughly. ‘He does not forgive. And he certainly does not forget.’
‘But so much time has passed since you last saw one another. He might have changed—’
‘People don’t change, Ava,’ said Damien – his gaze skittering away. ‘Bad things beget bad things. That is the way of the world.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘But you are wrong in one, crucial thing. You are not a bad thing, Damien Carter. No matter what your father has told you.’
‘Yes. I am.’ He looked at her then, his green eyes soft, and sad. ‘I hurt you, Ava. I’m hurting you still.’
‘Then stay.’
For a moment, they stood frozen. His eyes searched hers, and she knew he saw everything, then. Her fear, her grief, her love. She knew because she saw it in him, too.
‘Ava …’
She watched the way his forehead creased, the way his lips trembled. ‘I want us to have one last session,’ she said. ‘Before you go. I want you to know the truth, Damien.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘Please, Damien.’
He swallowed, his throat tight – and then, slowly, he nodded.