by Ella Fields
“Huh?”
“Off,” I said, patting her back. “I need to piss, love.”
“Ew, god,” she whined, standing. “You’re still gross.”
“And you’re still not Fern,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?”
I ran away before she could pummel me with those tiny fists, my drink knocked from my hand in my haste. Staring back at it, I decided to leave it be and raced down the porch steps to the garden around the side of the house.
“Fuck me,” I said to the moon. “What a fucking night.”
“I’ll say,” Fern’s velvet voice slithered inside my ears.
I gave myself a shake and tucked my dick away, zipping my fly as I turned to find my scowling beauty. “Red, ditched your loser yet?”
“He’s got a boyfriend, Jude. He’s in my calculus class.” Chewing her lip, she stared at me with shimmering eyes. “How’s Marnie?”
They weren’t shimmering. They were tears.
Oh.
Fucking shit.
“Great, yeah,” I said, clearing my throat. “But she’s not you.”
Fern huffed out a weird-sounding laugh, then marched down the driveway.
Stumbling after her, I tried to think of something useful to say in my addled state. “She kissed me, Red, so don’t get all pissy with me.”
“Pissy?” she said, stopping beside her car. “She kissed you? So for the entire six point five seconds, you didn’t think once to push her away a little sooner?”
“Six point five seconds,” I repeated to myself, frowning, and then I grinned. “You counted.”
She opened her car door.
“Wait, wait, wait.” I grabbed the door. “Shit, I’m drunk, okay? The messy it’s-going-to-take-me-forty-eight-hours-and-a-rapid-detox-to-get-over kind of drunk.”
“That’s your excuse?”
“It’s true, and you’re one to talk about excuses.” I flung my arms out. “Tell me why you’ve been avoiding me.”
She winced at the volume of my voice, then sighed. “I haven’t.”
“You fucking have, and you know it, Red.”
She looked around, then said just above a whisper, “I found letters I wrote to my dad, okay? Every single one.”
“Wait, so… wait.” Swaying, I closed my eyes for a second. “I’m a little too intoxicated to figure out what that means right now, but what’s it got to do with me?”
Her brows rose. “Wow, okay.” Waving her hand between us, she said, “Look, this is… whatever, Jude. You’ll always do what you want, and I’m an idiot for forgetting that this whole thing is actually fake.”
“It’s not fake,” I snapped, offended as fuck. “Not fucking fake at all. That’s why I got mad when I thought you were hooking up with that guy.” I took her waist, squeezing her to me. “This feeling,” I whispered, probably way too loud, but I didn’t care. “The stupid addictive shit you make me feel? I know you feel it, too.”
When she tried to push away, I reminded her, “You counted. You have a bloody shrine of me, Fern Delouxe.” I smiled then because she totally did have one but also because hearing her new surname made me feel a little giddy.
“Had,” she said, killing my vibe. “And it wasn’t a fucking shrine.” Unprepared and embarrassingly unbalanced, I stumbled back when Fern shoved me off her, my arms pinwheeling as she climbed inside her car. “How can I trust you, trust this feeling, when you keep hurting me every time you feel threatened by what you feel?” I gripped the mailbox to steady myself, her voice growing more distant, lower. “I’m so sick of being tricked into believing I can.” The car door slammed, and she turned out onto the street.
I began to run, then realized that wasn’t going to work out. Not when she was heading home, all the way across the fucking bridge. The party wasn’t far from Dad’s, so I kept walking anyway. It sobered me a little, but not enough for father dearest’s liking.
My hands wrapped around the wrought-iron gates, and I accidentally banged my forehead on them, peering inside. Dad was out in the front yard with Henry, playing ball. “Yo, losers! Let a fellow inside.”
Dad said something to Henry, then trudged down the driveway in sweats. “You’re dressed wrong,” I informed him. “Where’re the slacks?”
“Can’t play soccer in a suit, dickhead. How drunk are you?”
“About five hundred, but that’s an improvement, believe me.”
He glared before finally opening the side gate.
“Henry,” I hollered, making a run for the rolling ball.
I missed, skidding to my ass on the damp grass just as the fireworks on the beach began to go off.
Henry busted a nut laughing, holding his tummy. “When did you get so bad at soccer, Jude?”
“When he decided to make himself stupid.”
“What do you mean?” Henry asked Dad.
“Never mind. Run down the back, and I’ll meet you there.”
Henry walked backward, smiling at me. “You coming, Jude? The fireworks have started!”
Groaning, I muttered, “Yeah, I can see that.” I waved him off. “I think my ass needs some ice. I’ll see you later, dude.”
Henry laughed. Dad scowled, walking over to offer his hand.
I took it, noticing his grip was a little tighter than necessary. “What? A guy can’t let loose once in a while?”
“You’re completely legless.”
I journeyed to the house. “Should try it sometime, old man. It’s good for our moth-eaten souls.”
The mention of moths and souls brought back the memory of Fern on the ground at school and of her dancing in my arms in our living room.
I cursed and went inside.
After putting Henry to bed, Dad found me sprawled on my old one and staring at the swirling ceiling. It’d lessened a little in the time he’d spent with Henry down at the beach, but I still didn’t want to get up.
A bottle of water thumped to the nightstand. “Drink.”
“Vodka?”
“Not funny.” The bed dipped. “What’s brought this on?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve been drunk before, come on.”
“Not like this,” he said curtly. “I know you, and if there’s one thing you cannot stand, especially after initiating, it’s lack of control.”
He had me there. “Sometimes, it’s warranted.” Like when it seemed your heart was being squeezed right before your fucking eyes.
Dad hummed. “Once.” He swallowed so hard, I heard it. “I needed to do that once.”
“When?” I asked, the question tasting like another bad decision.
“I never met your mother in England,” he started, and I felt every violent piece of me suddenly grow quiet. “She was stolen from a drug runner who owed one of our members an extreme sum of money. My father flew us here, where most of the heinous shit is done”—he paused—“was done, and told me my test had arrived.”
I’d met my grandfather exactly twice when I was a kid, and both times, he’d been an insufferable royal prick. He died from an accidental overdose when I was seven.
Dad shifted, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “I was petrified, damn near pissed my pants.” He exhaled a humorous breath. “I snorted two lines of my father’s coke on the plane and emptied the minibar in the limousine on the way to The Ribbon. I was…”
He cleared his throat, and I could no longer feel the blood in my lips due to biting them too hard.
“They, ah, they filmed it so people could watch without being in the room. She was already there, half-drugged but aware of what was about to happen. They told her she’d be free to go after, and her boyfriend’s debt would be wiped. Still, she shook so hard her teeth clacked. She cried, yet I still…”
He didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t need to.
“I tried to find her after, to apologize. Hell, I even handed myself into our local police station back home. But they were already informed the event had been consensual.” He said the word as though it w
ere a joke.
And it was.
“I’d thought I knew how far our influence ran, but it was that afternoon, face-to-face with the law, that I realized just how little I really knew. That we were, that we are, the law. I was sent home with a pat on the fucking back,” he spat the words. “As though I’d told a good old joke.”
“Dad,” I tried to interrupt, my vision so very clear when I so desperately wished the ceiling was still dancing.
He didn’t let me. “Four months later, I was brought to a meeting. She was pregnant. She was now a liability. So I said I’d take care of it, and I married her. But Lizzie, even after being plucked from the dregs of London and thrown into wealth, she wasn’t happy. I tried to change that, and in doing so, I grew to love her, and she grew to like me. She forgave me, she’d said. But I knew she couldn’t love me when she could never shake the fear of Nightingale and what they’d had me do to her. Of what they could do to anyone.”
Quiet swept in on a freezing mist.
I wasn’t sure what to say. He’d raped my mother. I was a product of an initiation.
A thing she should despise, yet she never had.
The blank stares, the forced serene smiles, and the flinching every time my father so much as hinted at the organization… it all became irreparably obvious.
People were right to fear what they did not know.
But those who’d experienced the horrors of the unknown for themselves and still could not look it in the eye were never going to find the balance between night and day.
Fern did that.
Fern did what I never thought anyone or anything else could do.
She chased shadows to dance in the sun, and she dragged me with her, exposing me to a balance I never thought imaginable.
Love.
Dad was watching me as I choked on the silent acknowledgment. “I know you might think me a monster, and that’s okay. For the rest of my life, I will carry the shame of what I did to her.”
“As do we all,” I reminded him.
“Since then, I fought to ensure anything like that was consensual. That there could be no disputing it. Since then, everything is kept within Nightingale, no outsiders, and everyone is tested, every precaution taken.”
Swallowing, I nodded. “You’re no monster.” I grinned when his expression laxed into surprise. “But you’re an obnoxious prick, and I’m sorry she didn’t love you back.”
Laughter, rough and unused, burst out of him. “You had to have gotten it from somewhere.”
“Let’s hope Henry takes after Mom.”
It felt weird to say that, to call her that, but kind of good, too. The type of foreign that meant you missed something.
“When are they releasing her?”
“She doesn’t want to leave,” Dad said, sounding resigned. “She’s made friends, and I guess she… well, she feels safe there, Jude.” He sighed. “And after years of being afraid, even in her own home, I have no fucking idea how to take her away from that.”
“So you don’t,” I said, unsure and guilt-wracked, but knowing it was right. “So we leave her there.” I licked my lips. “I’ll go see her. I’ll make more of an effort, and hopefully, with time, she’ll find herself ready.”
Dad frowned at me. “You’ll see her?”
“Well, not tomorrow.” Or the next day. “I’ll be busy with some asshole named hangover.”
He huffed, rising from the bed. “Drink the water, and don’t go anywhere else tonight.”
I wanted to see Fern, but I knew going home like this and trying to reason with her wasn’t a sound idea.
“Dad?” I called, and he turned back in the doorway, half shrouded in shadows. “I need a favor.”
Dad drove me home the next day.
The car ride had been silent as I rummaged through every dark place inside my mind, trying to organize it all into some type of order so I could explain.
I stood before our front door, not sure I was ready. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready, but for her, I’d suit up and do it anyway.
Florence Welch blared from the Bluetooth speakers in the living room. Fern was in the kitchen, standing at the sink, and…
Setting shit on fire.
“What the fuck?” Every planned speech I’d fumbled around with vanished.
“Oh, hi,” she said, radiating nothing but calm as she plucked another piece of paper from the cardboard box on the counter and held the lighter to its corner.
It wasn’t just a piece of paper, though. It was a picture of me sleeping.
Leaning against the doorway, I slid my hands inside my pockets. I was still wearing the same jeans as the night before, but I’d showered and changed my shirt. I’d made sure to leave a couple behind, as well as briefs, when I’d moved out.
I’d make a mental note to take more clothes there for whenever I stayed over, but I didn’t want to have to.
This was our home. As new and tense and strange as it all was, it had become a home all the same, and Fern was the reason for that.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said, my heart swelling my throat. “Not just for last night, but for every cruel, moronic thing I’ve ever said and done.”
Fern watched the crumbling remains in the kitchen sink. “That’s nice.”
I stared. Her hair was up with rogue tendrils brushing over her neck and shoulders. She was wearing a tank that read, I’d rather be dreaming, and what I knew had to be tiny as hell sleep shorts, judging by the glimpses of her thighs.
She wasn’t going to hear me. Wherever she’d gone, it was no place that was ready for apologies.
So I stepped forward and slid the folded piece of paper housing an address over the counter and headed upstairs.
Five minutes later, the smoke alarm finally exploded, and I heard footsteps on the stairs.
She didn’t come find me for another twenty, and I was growing more and more anxious by the minute. When she did, it was in sweats and a faded pink T-shirt with matching Vans on her feet.
“I knew you didn’t burn it,” she said, standing in the doorway.
Lying on my bed, I crossed my ankles and turned the page. “As if I’d ever do such a thing. I kept it in my safe. It’s my favorite bedtime story.”
She said nothing, and I peered over to find her face beet red.
I grinned, patting the space beside me. “Come sit with me, darling Red.”
“I want it back.”
“Why?” I asked, admiring a rather piss-poor depiction of my face from a year or so ago. “So you can burn it, too?” I turned the page. “I don’t bloody think so.”
“Jude,” she growled.
It only made me smile bigger.
“Wait, are those sticky tags?” She finally stepped inside my room but stopped a safe distance away from my bed. Little did she know, wherever she went, whatever she did, she’d never be safe from me.
“Yup. In case you haven’t already figured it out, Wife, I never truly wanted Marnie. I wanted what she represented.”
She stuffed her arms over her chest, her expression one of furious beauty. “Wholesome and sweet and popular?”
“No. My innocence. The Jude from before.” Ogling her without one fleck of shame, I watched her lips, bare of lipstick, roll between her teeth. “The Jude who hadn’t yet screwed everything up. I thought if I could just get some semblance of what I’d deemed as normality back…”
She sat on the edge of my bed, curling a leg beneath her. “Then everything might feel a little better, less changed.”
“Right.”
Our eyes stayed locked, and hers gentled. She gestured for the diary, and I gave her a look that made her laugh before handing it over.
Flipping through the pages, Fern took her time, fingers reverent over her writing as she went to every page I’d tagged.
Pretty much all of them.
“Those are my favorites,” I said.
“You reread them?”
Fighting the urge to shift and squirm,
I admitted, “I do.”
“Present tense,” she whispered, probably without meaning to. “Holy shit.”
Emboldened, I said, “I miss it. I miss her. The girl with hearts for eyes whenever she looked at me. The girl who doodled wild imaginings in there every time she saw me. The girl ballsy enough to create a picture wall of me…”
“You killed her,” she said, so very quiet. “Repeatedly.”
I nodded even though she was still staring at her diary and felt my chest spasm. “I know. But I want to bring her back, somehow, and make her stay. If you’ll let me try.”
Her eyes swung to me, narrowed with suspicion. “Why?”
“Because I…” I blew out a huge breath and sat up. “I want her. I want her more than I’ve wanted anything, and that makes me feel so out of control.”
Fern waited while my heart squeezed itself into a ball, closed the door, and reinforced its every barrier.
“I know the feeling,” she eventually said, dropping her diary onto my bed when she stood. “And I need to go.”
I was on my feet before I could breathe. “Where?”
“I have a plane to catch.” She walked out.
“Fern,” I yelled, knowing this was most likely going to happen, but not like this and not yet.
The front door closed.
She’d been ready and waiting to go.
Fern
Sick was the only word fitting enough to describe the aftermath of the events from the night before.
Everything inside me had rotted into a muddied puddle of revulsion when I’d seen Jude with Marnie. In the past, watching them at school, I’d felt curious and somewhat fascinated—I just loved watching him.
I wasn’t sure when obsession had turned into something far more formidable, but it had.
I wanted to cut Jude’s eyes out and rage at him for this insidious feeling poisoning my veins, my chest, my every breath. I wanted to scream at Marnie for daring to touch something that no longer belonged to her.
When I’d started seeing him as something more than an object to covet, and a threat I despised, I couldn’t decide.
I’d tried for almost twenty-four hours, but even as the wheels of the plane hit the runway, I was left with more confusion than I was concrete convictions.
