Page 58 of Fighting Shadows

I already feel guilty enough, and if he gets rid of his knife because of me, I don’t think I could forgive myself.

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself, Cupcake, and I don’t want it to ever be with my knife,” he says, his bright blue eyes still duller than before. Like the shadows that now fill them are unmovable, “I’ve nearly lost you twice now. I told you the first time that I wouldn’t survive it, and I nearly didn’t. Do you know that there was no light in me anymore? That I considered burning this city to the ground if it meant you would come home. I earned the nickname Angel of Death from the others, and I hunted downevery single oneof the men who thought they could hurt you. I killed them horribly, and I didn’t feel a thing afterward. I scared myself, Autumn. You have become my light, the only link to my humanity. I can’t do it again; I can’t.”

“Please keep it. You can leave it here in Dad’s safe until then.”

“Okay. We’ll keep it here, but the rest go in the lake.”

“Deal,” I say, smiling up at him with a wide smile.

He kisses me slowly, his tongue invading my mouth as he pulls me closer to him.

“I miss having you between me and one of the others, Cupcake,” he growls into my ear, loud enough that, if the sharp intake of breath is anything to go by, poor Noah can hear every word.

Pulling back, I mock glare at Dominic and shoo him away. He blows me a kiss and shouts' Bye, bestie’ to Noah, who is bright red.

“I’m sorry about him,” I say, trying to lighten the conversation before I ruin it with what I’m about to tell him.

“Don’t be. He’s grown on me,” he laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

Dominic sings as he rows out to the middle of the lake, making us both look towards him and laugh, “He is pretty great,” I say, “Come on, I need to show you something.”

“What is this?” Noah asks, staring down at the small plaque that rests near the tree.

“Did Charlie ever tell you that he had a daughter?” I ask him, sitting down on the grass. I need to be close to her for this conversation. Even though she’s no longer here, being near her makes me feel stronger.

“No. He only ever told me about you, and that story was filled with lies,” he grumbles.

“You’re still salty about being tricked, huh?” I laugh, twirling a blade of grass around my finger.

“Oh, if I’m salty about it, I’m the freaking Dead Sea.”

“Isn’t the Red Sea saltier?” I ask. Sure, I saw it in a documentary that I watched with Sebastian once.

“Yeah, it is, but I’m not that salty. If I had never been tricked, I would never have met you or made a new ‘best friend’ who’s a little bit crazy,” he says.

“Oi! I saw those finger quotes!” Dominic shouts from the middle of the lake, loud enough for us to hear him, “I’m your bestie. No finger quotes allowed!”

“Can he hear us?” Noah leans closer to me to whisper.

“No. He’s just observant and likes to butt in when he’s not supposed to,” I say, just as a loud splash from the lake sounds and the rowboat Dominic is on wobbles.

“I’m ok!” he calls out, “Carry on talking!”

Taking a deep breath, I focus all of my attention back on Noah, desperate to get through this conversation with him before I chicken out and never look him in the eye again from the guilt.

“Well, he had a daughter, and her name was Chloe,” I blurt out, my hand hovering over the plaque.

“Had? I had a sister?” Noah says, sounding utterly heartbroken.

“We did. She was perfect and so funny and sassy. Sort of like how you can be sometimes,” I tease, desperate to alleviate some of the tension between us.

Noah sits there in silence for a moment, staring at the name on the plaque in front of us.

“What happened?” he grits out, almost as if sitting here pains him as much as it does me. And I’m sure it does. I feel his pain, and we both have lost her, but there’s a small part of me that wishes I had been selfish with this. To keep her to myself as I had for years, but that wouldn’t be fair to him or her memory.

She deserved to experience that love, and now she’ll never get to meet her brother, whose hair is the same color as hers.

I take a deep breath and spill everything to him: how I raised her and why Charlie abandoned her. I tell him how amazing she was, that she was the only thing that held me together on the days I wanted to die because of my life with Jane.

---