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Thomas Walsh was none of those things. He was scarcely older than her, with a friendly face and a short crop of sandy blond hair and a left cheek that dimpled atrociously when he smiled. Pretty was the word that came to mind, which was the worst possible thing she could think of.
It was a ridiculous thing to do. She couldn’t will the malfeasance away. It was inside her. She’d been four years old when it happened—when she’d toppled headlong into a gorge like Alice down the rabbit hole and come face-to-face with something sinister waiting at the bottom. When it gave her comfort, she’d taken it. When it offered to help, she’d accepted. She hadn’t known there’d be a cost. How could she have? She’d been a child, lost and afraid, the night closing in. She would have trusted a wolf had it promised her deliverance. She didn’t know she’d carried it home. Didn’t know that it
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It started with her voice, turning even the faintest whisper to a poison. The first time she killed someone, she’d still been in braces. Philip came upon her in the entryway, standing in horror over their driver, her hands around her own throat. The nightmare hadn’t stopped there. Insatiable as a weed, it continued to consume her. Year after year. Little by little. It bound itself to her bones, the way green bittersweet could swallow a tree entire. This morning, she’d woken on a tile floor. One day, she might not wake up at all.
It was ridiculous of her to have ever entertained the idea. Ridiculous to spend years harboring secret hopes of playing women cursed, only to become one herself. Only, in her tale of woe, there was no breathtaking pas de deux. No roses at her feet. No thunderous applause. Only silence, unbearable and unending.
“My mom always tells me you catch more flies with honey.” And I’m a fly? He fell back a step and sized her up. “No, I don’t think so, actually. I think if you were a bug, you’d be a praying mantis.”
“Hear me out,” he said, holding up a finger. “It’s a badass bug. The female praying mantis kills and eats the male after mating.” The words rang between them like a struck bell. She watched him play them back and then wince. “Now that I’ve heard myself say it out loud, I’ll admit I could have picked something better.”
LMAO
“Hey, would it hurt your feelings if someone compared you to a praying mantis?” There was a pause. He heard the sound of Tessa munching on popcorn. Then, “You told someone they remind you of a praying mantis?” “That’s not what I said.” “Literally, why else would you ask such a stupid question? You’re a terrible liar, Tommy. And a terrible flirt. If that’s your best pickup line, you’re going to die alone.”
LMAO
Crybaby. He flattened his outrage into a quiet “Excuse me?” That’s the name of the polish. She stuck out her arm and wiggled her fingers just underneath his nose. Her nails were the same glossy pink as her toes. I think maybe it looks better on you than me.
Oh shes too good at this
What he was was broke. Directionless. Desperate. She thought she’d shame him? He didn’t have any shame.
I thought you might be illiterate. In the miasma of her panic, she couldn’t recall the correct sign, and so she settled for finger spelling. I-l-l-i-t-e-r-a-t-e. In any case, Thomas seemed entertained, not offended. Wry amusement flinted his eyes. “Did you,” he said, glancing down at the book under his arm. “Well, you’ll be impressed—I’ve memorized at least half a dozen words.”
For a half second, she let herself wonder—permitted herself to imagine what honesty looked like. What would he do if she told him everything, right here, right now? If she told him there was something living inside her, taking up space, poisoning anyone unlucky enough to hear it speak? If she told him it was getting worse—that some days she was the girl in the glass, and it was the thing in her skin. What would he say if she told him she’d found a way to carve it out of her? If he knew that he’d been hired to make sure she didn’t succeed? Thomas Walsh wasn’t an interpreter. He was a saboteur.
Wait so the stepdad knows and is trying to keep her like that???
“Three,” he whispered. He was being an idiot, baiting her this way. “Two.” But something had to give, and it wouldn’t be him. “One.” A door slammed upstairs. The subsequent gut punch he felt wasn’t entirely due to anger, and that infuriated him the most.
“Please don’t ask me to leave,” he said, before she could say otherwise. “Because I’ll go if you tell me to, but I won’t feel good about it.”
It wasn’t that she wanted him to stay; it was only that she didn’t want to be alone. She was always alone, and she was tired of it.
Was that your girlfriend? she signed, index fingers hooking one over the other. He set the scissors onto a barren shelf. “Who?” On the phone. “Sure.” He surveyed the damage at their feet. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”
LMAO not him lyingggg
They’d drawn closer as she lectured him. The space between them sparked like lit kindling. This, he knew, was also wrong. The right thing to do would be to send her away. If her mother stumbled on the two of them cloistered in the dark, he’d be thrown out so fast his head would spin.
She watched, irritation cutting into her, as the hostess jotted something onto a cocktail napkin and handed it to Thomas. When he looked up, it was right at her, as though he’d known all along she’d been watching him. His self-satisfied smirk turned her frustration to a whipsaw.
She tore the cocktail napkin out of his hands and peered down at it. A phone number scrawled across the front in neat bubble numbers. Something white-hot and indefinable sparkled through her blood. “Tough to interpret from over here,” noted Thomas mildly. Vivienne ripped the napkin in half one way. She ripped it the other. He leaned back with the patience of a saint, reaching for his drink. Before he could so much as raise it to his lips, she’d shoved the napkin neatly inside the glass. Seltzer water sopped into the paper, leaving a pale, pulpy skin on the ice. For several seconds, the two of
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Shes so jealoussss
Their hands hung flush between them. Thomas’s throat corded in a swallow. He seemed to have forgotten the lesson entirely. Slowly, Vivienne fit her hand to his. The sudden contact jarred him into looking right at her. That hunted look was back in his eyes. The one he’d given her that first morning by the fountain. She felt the heat of it in her toes. He pushed his fingers into hers, guiding her off the wall with a tug. She teetered on her own two feet before him, their hands threaded tight, the floor beneath her solid as rock. In that moment, she realized she wanted very badly for him to kiss
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Wait i love them
Maybe that was all he was—a broken compass, doomed to wobble in place. Maybe he didn’t know how to find due north. Maybe he’d wander, directionless, until he was old and bitter and angry at the world, just like his father.
The contact flickered across his screen: Princess. He slid it open, his stomach tying itself into a knot. Princess Don’t make me late. Thomas Wouldn’t dream of it.
NOT HIM CHANGING HER CONTACT TO THAT
As lightning forked across the sky, he felt the faintest brush of her pinkie against his knuckle. He thought maybe he was going just a little bit insane.
Every night after the Farrows finished their dinner, he slumped onto the living room couch to watch TV. Every night, Vivienne appeared like clockwork—drowning in a sweatshirt four sizes too big, her hair in damp braids. She’d curl onto the adjacent cushion, tailed by the dogs. Thomas spent the next hour pretending to watch a show, hyperaware of every shift and sigh. Most nights, Vivienne fell asleep. He’d shut off the television and drape her in a blanket, then leave as quietly as he could.
Wait thats so cute tho
He came to slowly and then all at once, becoming aware of two horrible things in immediate succession. First, Vivienne was draped across him, her head on his chest, his arm around her waist. Second—and worse—Amelia Farrow was standing over them.
OH SHIT
He set down his bowl and reached for the paper, pausing as his eyes caught on the leading headline. Business Mogul’s Son Suffers Cardiac Arrest at Sea
OH SHIT
He froze on the threshold, the dogs skidding to ungainly stops against his calves. The commotion drew her gaze to his. She was freshly showered, her hair in braids and her face scrubbed clean. Even so, he could tell she’d been weeping. “Vivienne?” She was up immediately. He hardly had time to drop his bag to the floor before she slammed into him hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. His arms went around her, folding her into an embrace. Her fingers tightened in his shirt and he felt her take a great, shuddering breath.
Oh my godddddd
Her eyes were molten in the afternoon light, her cheeks wet with tears. He thumbed them away without thinking. Instantly, something hardened in her stare—a decisiveness he’d come to recognize over the past several weeks. “I already know what you’re going to say,” he assured her. “Your business is none of my business, I can kick rocks, etcetera. I memorized it all the last time, so you can spare me the—” She surged onto the tips of her toes and swallowed the rest of his sentence in a kiss. It tasted reckless and impulsive and like coconut lip balm. Every last coherent thought inside his head
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OH MY GODDD
“The less time I have to spend in Walsh’s presence the better.” The object of his ire sat outside on a bench, nursing a coffee of his own. The mere mention of Thomas sent a frothy wave of mortification tumbling through her. She’d kissed him. She’d kissed him, and he’d rejected her.
Oh Vivi
She didn’t make it far. A half step, at best. That’s all it took for him to reconsider. He caught her by the crook of her arm, tugging her into a pirouette. She managed to cut him a single, questioning look before he bent down and closed the remaining space between them. This time around, he did it right.
WHAT IS HE DOINGGGGG
Vivienne cast a glance back at Thomas as he ascended the steps behind her, his hands in his pockets, the pony beads pinching his skin beneath his shirt cuff. Her dress was the color of a cherry blossom, and she wore her hair pulled back in a matching bow. Gilded in the lamplight, the sky flickering white at her back, she looked like a painting. Color swam into her cheeks, as though he’d told her so right out loud. He felt the heat of her gaze deep in his solar plexus. Suddenly, all he could think about was getting her alone.
She couldn’t think of anything but the way Thomas had kissed her. Like he meant it. Like he needed it. Like she’d wanted him to, that day he’d come home and found her waiting in his room. Vivienne had been kissed before, but never like that. She doubted anyone would ever kiss her that way again. Not if she lived to be a thousand. She felt as though she’d been flung clean outside of herself—forced to watch the evening unfold from somewhere apart from her body. Only this time, she wasn’t trapped on the other side of the glass.
Tonight means everything to Philip. Everything. His entire firm is at risk, and you’re off dallying with the help.” The accusation was like being doused in cold water. Whatever showed on her face must have been obvious, because her mother let out a laugh. It was high and thin, no humor in it at all. “Did you think you were being subtle? You’ve been pining after that boy for weeks.”
OH NO
It was a little bit funny. Even when she wasn’t the girl in the mirror, she was still in a cage.
She’d never been held like this before—like she was brittle primrose, and not deadly nightshade. Something worth tending, and not something you tore up out of the earth with gloves. Emboldened, she rose onto her toes and kissed him again.
It was remarkably simple, as far as kidnappings went. A dozen other pledges were waiting in the wings, paintball guns at the ready. When Reed gave the signal, they’d cut the power. They’d raid the dance floor. They’d raise hell. By the time the lights came back on, Vivienne would be gone.
Oh girl...
No matter how hard she played at being a girl, at the end of the day she was nothing more than a doll on a music box, forced to turn and turn by the hand that wound her spring.
The thin cord of Thomas’s patience snapped. “What are you, the police?” “Excuse me?” Shaw glanced over at him in surprise. “Why do I get the sense that wasn’t a direct translation?” “Because it wasn’t,” said Thomas. “It was all me.”
LMAO
“It’s pretty funny, actually,” he said. “I mean, Jesus, Vivienne. Pissing off some hack journalist is the least unethical thing I’ve done today.” Her breath caught as though he’d struck her. Pink flushed into her cheeks. He felt the heat of it reflected in his own face, and he immediately regretted saying anything at all. He braced himself and waited for her to hit him back. To make it hurt.
OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK
He had no right. No right. She hadn’t asked for his help. She didn’t need him to step in and take control—to make her feel ashamed of the ways in which she chose to rescue herself.
Thomas looked down. Inside the shoebox sat two glassy white orbs trailing woven filaments. His stomach pitted at the sight. Not because they were eyes, plucked clean, but because they were his.
EW
“You look nice,” he added. “A little murderous, maybe, but pretty.”
LMAO
“Jesus, look at the day we just had. What the hell does it matter who her father is?” “Because,” said Colton, as though Thomas was slow, “my father was Philip Farrow’s old managing partner.”
A tear slid unchecked down her cheek. Beneath her bones, her heart sat in tatters. Funny, she’d thought she’d left it behind.
Something hardened in his expression. “Don’t start that again.” Start what? “‘You’ve been so kind to me,’” he mocked, throwing her words from the churchyard back in her face. “This isn’t kindness, Vivienne. I’m not being nice to you.” Then what is it? “You really need me to say it?” His laugh came out short. She heard the click of his swallow. “Fine, I’ll say it. I like you, Vivienne.”
“Tommy,” she whispered into the dark. He tensed all over, pulling back just far enough to see her face. Reaching out a hand, she pressed a thumb to the crinkle in his brow. “I like you, too.” The admission came out in a whisper. “Well, yeah.” His mouth kicked up in a smile. “Who wouldn’t?” When they finally fell asleep, it was with their hands laced together between them. For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t afraid.
STOP IMMA CRY FR
Did you just hook up with a space alien? You weren’t very quiet.”
OH MY GODDDD
As though he’d run into Thomas outside a 7-Eleven, he asked, “What’s up, Walsh?” “Not too much,” said Thomas mildly, still wrestling with the knot at his wrist.
LMAO
He’d come after her. Over and over. Again and again. Just like he’d promised. She’d given him a hundred reasons to walk away. A thousand. Anyone else would have turned tail and run at the first gnash of her teeth. But not Thomas. He’d stayed. Until the end, and then beyond it. She hadn’t known it was possible to be loved like that. She hadn’t known it was possible to love like that.
Thomas glanced between them, frowning slightly. “You know,” he said, “now that I see the two of you sitting side by side like this, I’m finding it a little bit unsettling.” Colton’s mouth split into a grin. “It’s okay, Walsh. You can admit you think I’m pretty.”
