Arthur pressed his forehead to mine. His lips grazed along mine. “No.”
I grasped his wrists and embraced the warmth his hands brought to my face. “I’m …” I pulled back so I could see his face. “I think I’m broken,” I confessed, feeling the truth of those words ache in my heart. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get over this, over losing them.” Arthur’s hands flexed on my cheeks, and I knew that was his way of telling me he knew how it felt. Of course he did. He had watched those he loved die around him too. “Can you love a broken queen?” I asked, smiling though my face felt numb.
Arthur searched my eyes. “Can you love a broken king?”
I stopped breathing. As he stared at me, I realised he was waiting for my answer. No, he needed my answer. Because Arthur, my Arthur, had just let me in a fraction more.
He was broken too. This man, this unshakeable and unreadable titan of a man, was broken too.
“I already do,” I said, my confessional whisper wrapping around us in the empty room.
Arthur sighed. “Then don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”
His gruff response stopped my heart. Arthur’s eyes flitted away from mine, only to fix on them again as his veiled admission sank into my soul. He loved me too. It was the closest he’d got to admitting the words aloud.
This broken king loved his broken queen.
I kissed him. Lips sore and cheeks flamed, I kissed him and tried to pour all the love I had inside me into that kiss. I pulled back and looked at the target. Bullet holes riddled the paper. Arthur picked up the gun and handed it to me. “Yours,” he said. As I took the gun from him, he wrenched me forward so hard I hit his chest. Eyes burning, he said, “I need you to learn how to use it. You need to master it. Then use it if you ever need to. No hesitation.” Arthur’s breathing quickened, betraying just how much he needed this from me.
“I promise,” I said and was rewarded with a deep kiss.
“Let’s go home.”
I followed Arthur out of the pits and into his car. He held my hand the entire way home. I sank into the heated seat and watched the early-morning mist rise over London. Market sellers were rousing from their sleep, readying for the morning of trade. I loved this time of morning. The calm before the storm. When it was quiet and still. The deep breath before the exhale of day.
I felt dead on my feet as we entered the church. Emotionally and physically exhausted.
As we passed the living room, Arthur changed track and pulled me inside. Vinnie sat before the fire, staring into the flames. Arthur nodded at his brother and poured me a large whisky. As I took the drink from Arthur and downed half the glass in one, feeling the hot liquid coat my throat, I felt someone watching me.
It was Vinnie. His head tilted to the side as he examined my face, as if he was listening to someone speaking into his ear. I smiled at him, always feeling such sorrow for this man and the demons that plagued him. A man clearly lost in life’s intricate maze. I raised the glass to my lips, needing the numbing effects of the alcohol, when Vinnie said, “They don’t blame you.”
My hand froze around the glass. He nodded at what I presumed was his hallucination of Pearl. Vinnie took a deep breath. “They don’t blame you at all.”
“Who?” I asked, feeling Arthur move behind me. He curled his arm around my waist and pulled me back into his chest, as if he knew I needed his steady frame to keep me from falling.
“Your mates,” he said with as much ease as he talked about anything else. My heart thundered in my chest.
“My mates.” Numbness tried to smother me, to protect me from more pain. But I pushed it back. I wanted to hear this. I needed to.
“They know it’s not your fault,” he said. “They just wanted you to know.” Vinnie stared back into the fire as if he hadn’t just carved my chest open and offered me something I thought I could never receive—forgiveness from my deceased friends.
A lifeline.
“And my dad?” I asked, knowing Vinnie never really saw the dead but taking the rope he offered anyway. I knew it was his illness, the hallucinations. Yet I so desperately wanted to believe it to be true that I pushed for more. “Hugo?” Arthur gripped me harder at the mention of Hugo. But he didn’t need to be jealous. I hadn’t loved Hugo in the romantic sense. But I’d loved him as a friend, as my family. I’d never wished him any harm.
Vinnie cocked his head, then looked at me blankly. “I don’t hear them.” My stomach sank.
“Come on,” Arthur said, clearly seeing exhaustion pulling me down to despair. He guided me to our room and took the whisky from my hand and placed it on the bedside table.
He undressed me, but my thoughts were elsewhere. As he removed my clothes and slipped his t-shirt over my head in place of my nightgown, I asked, “Do you ever believe him?” I let my attention drift to the door, and the living room beyond where Vinnie was no doubt still sitting. “That he talks to the dead?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “That he just spoke to Freya and Arabella? That they …” I inhaled deeply. “That they don’t blame me. That they wanted me to know.”
Arthur stripped off his clothes. When he remained in only his boxers, he stepped closer to me. He put his hands through my hair. “I gave up a bloody long time ago trying to figure out what Vinnie was all about. So I say believe whatever the fuck you want, princess.”
“But do you believe him?” I treaded carefully when I asked, “About Pearl. Do you believe he truly sees her, or is it really just a hallucination born out of mental illness and the stress of loss?”
Arthur’s teeth gritted together, and I knew that the deaths of his sister and mum was one demon he had yet to confront. I knew from Betsy that it was the one part of his life he never talked about. Ever. Couldn’t talk about. Refused to—always had.
“I think Vinnie believes she’s real, and that’s all that matters to him. Keeps him from going postal. I know he has an illness—it’s been verified by a truckload of doctors.” Arthur shrugged. “But Eric’s always believed Vin sees something else, sees what most people can’t. Sees something more.”
“He didn’t see my dad and Hugo.”
“It’s not a foolproof gift, if it even is a gift.” Arthur handed me the whisky again. I drained the glass, then let him lift me into his bed. He wrapped me in his arms and I shut my eyes, letting the grief I had pushed away for so long try to drown me again.
I had to face it.
But as the waves of grief and guilt crashed over me, I held on tightly to Arthur, trusting him to keep me safe. I held on as I replayed my loved ones’ deaths so vividly in my mind. Then I thought of Vinnie’s words: They know it’s not your fault … They just wanted you to know …
Freya and Arabella didn’t blame me. I felt that truth in the depths of my heart. I’d felt the truth of it when Vinnie had met my eyes with unwavering faith and told me so, a message to my guilt-ridden soul from their mouths.
Vinnie hadn’t known of my breakdown at the warehouse. He hadn’t known that I had broken my heart to Arthur and let the pain I’d been fighting for weeks finally consume me. He hadn’t known, yet his message was so timely it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.