by Tillie Cole
“Arthur.” Cheska kissed me. Those fucking soft lips took mine, and the ache faded more and more, and so did the tar in my veins, the throbbing of my head as it replayed the video over and over again, the memory of Cheska on the ground, in my arms, unmoving …
I grabbed her waist, pulling her closer. I needed her closer. Her hands threaded into my hair.
“Let me in,” she said and kissed my neck. “Don’t push me away anymore. Please, just let me in. Fully. No turning back.”
“I can’t,” I said, instinctively trying to rebuild my walls. Close up the crack in my chest. “I fucking can’t.”
Cheska pulled back, then meeting my gaze head-on, said, “I love you, Arthur Adley. More than any woman has ever loved a man before.” The half-built walls fucking crumbled as those words tumbled from her mouth. The crack morphed into a fuck-off black abyss. “I love you, and I know you love me, even if you can’t say the words aloud.”
I groaned and clutched my head, needing the fucking pounding to stop. Eyes glazed, I looked up. “They killed them. The branded bastards who tried to take you. They killed my mum and sister. Burned them alive.”
“I know,” she said, and tears spilled over my eyes and down my fucking cheeks. She wiped at my face, and my head fell against her shoulder. I breathed her in. I fucking breathed her in and felt her fill my lungs. Felt her run through my body like a damn remedy to the poison that had been lying thick in my flesh and blood for far too long.
“I’m here for you. Let me be here for you.” Holding my head close to her, embracing me and fucking keeping me breathing, she said, “Let me love you.”
“I don’t know how,” I hushed out. “I have no fucking idea how the fuck to let you in.”
“This is a start.” She lifted my head. Her hand fell over my heart. “Don’t shut this off anymore. If you feel sad, feel sad. If you feel pain, let your body accept that pain. Joy, sadness, grief, guilt, happiness … love.” She smiled, and it just about fucking crushed me.
“No one can push them out forever. Eventually, something or someone,” she said, with a kiss, “will break through, and so will every emotion you’ve forced back into a box where it doesn’t belong.” Cheska kissed my cheeks, then pressed her forehead to mine. “I want to know you, Arthur. All of you. Every bit of darkness, every bit of sadness, all of it. The good and the bad, the hard and the soulful.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, the words feeling foreign on my tongue. “For earlier.” I gritted my teeth, not fucking knowing how to do it, how to let her in, apologise, have her truly by my side. “The video …” I shook my head. “I didn’t know how to deal with it. I still don’t …” My voice broke and I dropped my head to Cheska’s shoulder. She sat back, arse on the floor, and pulled my head down to her lap. I went. I wrapped my arms around her waist and fucking kept the rubble of the walls pinned down around my heart, kept her there, in my mind and fucking blood, kept her in the marrow of my bones.
Cheska held my head. Dropped kiss after kiss on my face, my hair, anywhere she could reach. For ages we lay there, the flames from the fireplace dancing in my eyes. But in them I saw the cottage burn, my mum and sister inside, unable to escape. I saw Cheska in my arms in the yard.
“I can’t lose you,” I said, and Cheska stopped breathing. “I can’t fucking lose you too.”
Cheska exhaled. She held me tighter. “I can’t lose you either, baby.”
Bit by bit, the ache in my chest crawled out of me, leaving only numbness behind. But it wasn’t a bad kind of numbness. It was like a junkie after a comedown, like the heat that filled your veins when the alcohol started to take effect. Cheska kept stroking my hair, and I felt my eyelids pulling down in sleep. I was so fucking tired.
The fight drained from my body, and I didn’t push Cheska out. She stayed by my side, stroking my hair. My breathing grew deep, and I exhaled. But just before I drifted off, I opened my eyes and looked right into Cheska’s. “You wrecked me, too,” I said, then let myself find comfort in the darkness. “When I met you, princess … you fucking wrecked me too.”
Cheska was asleep on the floor. The fire had died down, and only embers were left. The whisky and vodka were still rolling around inside me, but the fucking aftereffects were staring to kick in. I felt rough as fuck, but I took it. I deserved the hangover from hell I knew was coming.
It was still pitch black outside and fucking baltic. I’d only been asleep about two hours, but I’d woken up and knew I had to see it. I hadn’t been back there in twelve years. I had to go back … and I wanted Cheska to be with me.
I crouched down and stared at her face as she slept. I fucking hated myself for what I’d done to her tonight. She’d been hurt, she’d been put through the wringer at the yard, and then I’d shredded her fucking heart, pushed her away in front of my family. Embarrassed her. Made her feel like I didn’t want her.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I breathed deep. My go-to was to block it all out. Put up the walls again and just go back to how it was. But I wouldn’t do it. I’d lose her if I did. And I wasn’t fucking losing her again.
“Princess.” I ran my finger down her face. Cheska stirred but immediately fell back to sleep. I felt a smirk pull on my lips and thought how fucking strange it felt. I never smiled unless it was before a kill. But with her, like this, refusing to wake, it was a different kind of smile. “Princess,” I said again, and Cheska’s eyes opened and she quickly sat up.
“What?” she said, panicked, wiping the sleep from her eyes. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” Her eyes adjusted to the low light in the windowless room and she ran them over me. “Are you okay, baby? Are you hurt?”
I took hold of her jaw and pulled her close to me. I kissed her mouth, sliding my tongue against hers. I wanted to sink inside her. Fuck her in front of the dying fire until she screamed my name.
Something had changed in me. When I’d woken up only twenty minutes ago, Cheska wrapped in my arms and walls fucking down, everything had shifted.
Nothing scared me. Death didn’t faze me. But Chelsea Girl, Cheska Harlow-Wright? She fucking terrified me. Because she’d got in. She’d hooked in her claws, and if she wanted to leave—or if she was taken away—there’d be no going back. I’d be fucking done. Destroyed.
Ruined.
I’d showered and brushed my teeth, trying to get the heaviness of the night from my body, the alcohol out of my system. But from the minute my eyes had opened, I’d needed to fucking leave. My gut twisted, telling me where I needed to go. The car was waiting and a van of soldiers were ready to follow us.
I pulled away from Cheska’s mouth. She searched my face. “I need you to come with me.”
“Where?” she asked but got to her feet. One hundred percent trust. She trusted me without fail. Heat spread through me at the realisation.
I picked up the blanket that I’d put over Cheska when I’d got up. Gripping her hand, I pulled her to my chest, needing her mouth again. I was fucking addicted. Always had been. But now, after tonight, it felt different. It felt like … more.
“You can sleep in the car,” I said, and she followed me from the room, still half asleep, her hand clutching mine. I had her trainers waiting for her at the door and wrapped the blanket around her as we stepped into the freezing night air. She pressed closer to my side as we ducked out of the rain and into the Bentley.
We pulled out onto the streets, practically deserted at this hour, and Cheska curled up against me. I could feel her watching me as I scanned for anyone watching us outside, trailing us. My men in the van, and the few I had in other less obvious cars, subtly following behind, would make sure nothing would go wrong.
Finally, seeing everything was all clear, I met her eyes. “Princess,” I said and pushed her hair back from her face. I needed to see that fucking perfect face at all times, unobstructed.
“Are you okay?” She swallowed nervously. “Are we okay?”
I dropped my forehead to her
s, my chest tightening. Because I only had myself to blame. I’d fucked up. I’d been a selfish prick—had been for too many years. I’d been emotionless and cold for far too fucking long. But I was going to try with her. Chelsea Girl was the only one who could ever make me try lowering my guards. No one else. Just her. Always her.
Fucking forever her.
“We’re good,” I said against her mouth, hearing her exhale of relief. “More than.”
“We’re going to the Cotswolds?” she asked, reading my fucking mind. She knew me. She’d lost people. She knew what I was feeling right now. I nodded and kissed her head as she curled against me. I thought she’d sleep. But she stayed wide awake as we travelled the couple of hours it took to get to my mum’s favourite part of the English countryside.
Cheska took my hand, holding me tighter when my body tensed as we drew close to the cottage, and familiar narrow, winding country lanes came into view. The trees created tunnels around us, their branches bare, ice sticking to the bark.
It was still dark as we arrived. I wanted to be back at the church by mid-morning. I wanted the fucking witch hunt to begin immediately. I wanted these cunts, these circle-branded cunts, to be found.
But I needed this moment of calm before the storm.
Cheska sat up and turned my head to her. “I’m with you.” I nodded, then let her kiss me. Let her clutch my hand as the driver drove up a private dirt road. I glanced out the window. The Tudor cottage with dormer windows should have been visible over the bushes. But there was nothing, just a mass of stars in the sky above the quiet village, and crows circling up ahead, like they knew murders had taken place here. Like they knew a fucking crime against my family had been carried out and I was here to see the ghost of the reaper who’d collected them.
The Bentley stopped, and Cheska searched outside the window. Wings beat in my stomach, great fucking wings that belonged to a condor or some shit. I saw my men flood the property, guns and knives drawn, checking it was clear. Jim, the head of this regiment, nodded at me as he came back from the shelter of trees.
All was clear.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t bloody move. I stared out the window at the ground, the previously torched ground where grass and weeds now grew. The fucking spot where my mum and sister must have screamed and clutched each other as the fire swallowed them whole.
“You ready, baby?” Cheska squeezed my hand. I locked up. My mouth sealed shut and I felt myself shutting the fuck down, drowning the feelings that were trying to suffocate me. They were forcing me into an iron lung, and I wasn’t going to do it. Wasn’t fucking going to rip open my chest and let the demons take control.
But then Cheska kneeled before me on the car floor and lifted my head to her. “You can do this. You can get out of the car if that’s what you want.” She kissed the back of my hand.
Staring at her stunning face, I forced my muscles to relax. I forced myself to let the fucking grief sink into me—grief that had been trying to live in me for years, to take its rightful place in my half-dead heart. To consume me until I couldn’t fucking breathe.
I closed my eyes. My head throbbed. It had fuck all to do with the hangover I was diving headfirst into. It had to do with the fact that my sister’s and mum’s screams were locked in the trees around us, their cries still flying in the fucking wind that blew in a gale-force speed around the clearing.
“I can’t,” I choked out, seeing the cottage so clearly in my mind. Seeing the front door open and Pearl run outside to the wooden swing on the tree. I saw my mum walk out behind her, tea and biscuits on a tray. Then walking to me as I sat on the bench under the window. Sitting beside me. Just fucking being there.
Just being my mum.
My fucking perfect mum, who those fuckers had barricaded inside and torched.
“I’ll be with you,” Cheska said, and I turned to face her, her green-brown eyes telling me how much she fucking loved me. Me. A fucked-up murderer. But this bird, this posh and stunning bird loved me.
Cheska smiled at me—it was soft and fucking stunning. “Show me the place you loved before the fire,” she said, and I turned my head as I heard the fucking phantom echo of Pearl screaming in laughter as I chased her with my water gun. Too young yet for Dad to have put a real one in my hand.
Artie! No! she screamed and dived through the front door so Mum would protect her.
I wanted to show Cheska that place. I wanted her to see that I hadn’t always been so fucked up. I hadn’t always been plagued with darkness and demons with fucking razors for teeth. I hadn’t always been the killer she knew me to be. I had been innocent once. My soul unbattered and clean. My heart not always black and surrounded by my personal Hadrian’s Wall.
I gripped Cheska’s hand so tight, I worried I’d hurt her. But I opened the door, the frigid wind slapping our faces, and led her from the car. Cheska wrapped the blanket around her to stave off the bitter cold, and I felt the familiar soil underneath my shoes and breathed in the fresh air. There was no smog and pollution in this air, not like in London.
“So peaceful.” Cheska leaned her cheek against my arm. “Show me,” she said. “Show me why you loved it so much. Why she loved it so much.” My mum.
This was Cheska fucking meeting my mum.
“This way.” I walked with my bird around the few acres we owned. Through the grove of trees and the kitchen garden that Pearl and Mum had planted long ago, now overgrown and wild, the planters rotting and faded in colour. Cheska never let go of my arm. And with every step, I felt the fucking loss of my sister and mum pierce deeper and deeper. Like it should have years ago.
We came back from the path that led to the garden, and I stopped dead at the place where the cottage once sat. My lungs squeezed like someone was crushing them in their fist. My heart thudded faster and faster, as if it would burst from my chest, and my stomach clenched so tight I thought my muscles might rip in two.
Kissing the back of Cheska’s hand, I let go of her fingers and took a step forward. My legs felt like lead as I forced them to make it to the centre of where the house once stood. I tipped my head to the night sky and could smell the smoke that would have engulfed the space. Thick, black smoke wiping out the heavy scent of the roses my sister and mum had planted around the borders.
Roses … Cheska always smelled of roses too.
I opened my eyes and blinked, every move of my eyelids dropping a tear to my cheeks. The wind took them away as quickly as they came. So I fucking shed more. I shed more and more, damn sinful Adley holy water cleansing the air for my mum and sister. Tributes to their lives. Lives taken by our dark underworld, by some branded fuckers who had been secretly tearing apart my family for too many years to count.
I dropped my head and bent down. My hand raked though the patch of mud under my feet. The earth fell through my fingers. Tears ran down from my cheeks and dripped onto the soil, joining the unseen ash of the family members I loved most of all.
Artie. I closed my eyes as I heard my mum calling my name like she was right behind me. I could feel her hand on my shoulder. Smell the strong, expensive perfume Dad used to buy her every Christmas. I love you, my boy, she whispered in my ear. My sweet, sweet boy. I’ve missed you.
“I’ve missed you too, Mum,” I whispered back.
And I fucking broke. My shoulders shook as the years and years of grief poured out of me onto the Cotswolds ground. My botched, stitched-up heart was ripping open and bleeding out beneath me, on the very ground that had held my mum and sister’s bodies as they burned, as they breathed their last breaths. My hands and knees planted onto the earth, and I shattered apart.
I fought to breathe as I saw that video in my mind. I mentally retraced the steps of the fucker on the screen pouring petrol on the house and trapping my family inside. He’d struck the match and tossed it onto the fuel with no fucking care at all that he was killing my mum. My fucking mum. My sister. My annoying little sister who I just wanted, so fucking badly, to annoy me for
just one more day.
Arms surrounded me, and I turned my head in to Cheska’s chest. “I’m here,” she said, her words wrapping the fuck around me and chasing away the smell of fire that I couldn’t get from my bastard nose, the smoke that was filling up my lungs and taking away any ability to take in fresh air.
“They died,” I said, voice cracking. “They fucking died and I didn’t save them.”
“Couldn’t save them,” Cheska amended. “You were a child.” A child who was busy taking his first life when it all went down.
I sat up and ran my hands down my face. Cheska sat beside me, hand on my back. “They were killed, princess.” She nodded, tears slipping down her pale cheeks. “They were fucking killed.”
“I know, baby.”
I sighed, then my stomach plummeted as I wondered if Mum could see me now. If, wherever she was, she could see me here, finally finding out the truth about her death.
But my fucking heart stopped at that thought.
“You think they’ve seen what I’ve become?” I asked. Cheska tried to read my face, and I thought it was because she didn’t know which way to take the question. I wasn’t sure which fucking interpretation of it I was asking myself.
Was she proud of me, or horrified at what I did for a living, who I was?
Cheska put her hands on my cheeks. “I think she sees you. I think she sees you and smiles and loves you and is so proud it makes her ache to see you again. To be able to touch you and kiss your cheek and tell you how proud she is that you take care of your family the way you do. How you sacrifice your own happiness time and time again so you don’t break, so you don’t fall.
“But I think it would break her heart to see those things too. To see the burden such heavy duties press down on you. How you push people away so you don’t buckle under the weight of loss.” Her bottom lip trembled. “How you have love, and have found love of the deepest kind but have fought it for so many years that it’s made you battle-worn and feeling unworthy of such a gift.”
