Page 54 of Holly & Hemlock
I cross to the window and look out. The grounds are empty, the trees, ghostly shadows in the moonlight. But the air is clean, for once, and the frost on the glass glimmers like a thousand tiny chains, waiting to be shattered.
I close the window, and lock it.
I do not know what tomorrow will bring, but I know that whatever comes, I will meet it unbound.
16
Confession
The greenhouse is a world apart. Even in winter, it breathes a climate all its own—hot, damp, layered with the rot-sweet perfume of wet mulch and chlorophyll.
The glass panes are filmed-over with condensation, and every surface drips. Beads gather at the iron ribs overhead and droplets slide down the pocked cheeks of terra cotta and into the shallow trays beneath each table. The air is so thick I feel it on my teeth, a vapor cloyed with the hope of spring.
I stand at the threshold, letting the warmth lap at my ankles. Lane is here, exactly as I hoped and half-dreaded. He crouches at the furthest table, wrists braced on his knees, attention laser-fixed on a tray of impossibly green seedlings. The rest of him is slack, as if his whole frame hangs suspended by the tension in his hands.
I close the door behind me, soft but deliberate. The latch clicks, and the sound is enough to draw Lane’s attention. He does not look up right away; instead, he runs a thumb along a blade of new growth, pinching it gently, the movement ascareful as it is violent. His other hand, scarred and broad, fists itself around the edge of the table.
I pick my path through the rows of plants—tiny ferns, acid-pink coleus, something carnivorous with glass teeth. I take my time, letting the sweat bead along my scalp, letting the green light collect on my skin. I do not speak until I am close enough to see the fog of Lane’s breath catch and swirl above the leaves.
“You like hiding out here,” I say, but the words don’t sound like me. They sound rehearsed, brittle.
Lane grunts, a sound more exhalation than speech. He finally looks at me, eyes gone almost colorless in the slant of the sun through the glass. “Never said I liked it,” he says. “Just quiet.”
I nod, not trusting myself to reply. There is nothing quiet about my pulse, the way it riots in my throat. I study Lane instead. The way his t-shirt clings to the slabs of muscle beneath, the hair at his temples dark with sweat, the dirt packed in every line of his palms. He is at war with the tenderness of this place.
I lean against the next table, arms crossed. “You knew about the will.” It isn’t a question.
He hesitates. The muscle at the base of his jaw ticks once, twice, and then he sets the tray of seedlings aside, as if they might be contaminated by the truth. “I saw her sign it. Not all of it, but enough.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? That Larkin was supposed to get everything. That I wasn’t ever supposed to be here.” My voice is too loud in the glass box. I force it lower.
Lane stares at his hands, knuckles split and healing, every scar a different memory. He picks at a hangnail until it rips, then wipes the blood on his jeans. “Wasn’t my place.”
“It’s your place if you’re a witness,” I say. “That’s how it works. Even you know that.”
His head snaps up, eyes like flint. “Maeve made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“Maeve liked playing games. I never wanted any of it,” I say, and I’m shocked by how true it sounds. “Not really.”
“It doesn’t matter. You got it now.”
“She wrote that I need to break the chains. That I’m the only one that can.”
We let the warmth and the chlorophyll fill the space between us. Lane watches the floor, as if waiting for it to open and swallow him whole. When he finally speaks, his voice is stripped raw.
“She called me in,” he says. “Day before she died. Said she wanted me as witness, not Larkin or Whitby or the lawyers. She said—” He trails off, jaw flexing as if the words are thorns. “She said, ‘Sometimes we must hurt one to save another.’”
The quote is a stone dropped in a still pond. The ripple takes its time reaching me, and when it does, I feel the shock behind my teeth.
I want to rage at him, demand what that means, but Lane looks so broken—so utterly undone by the admission—that all I can do is stand there and listen. The man who has weathered everything with brute force and silence is now trembling, fingers splayed on his knees.
“I didn’t want to be here, either, not at first. But I’m stuck here, Nora,” Lane says, softer now. “And she made me promise I’d watch out for you. Even if it meant—” He stops, breath ragged. “Even if it meant you’d hate me for it.”
The confession lands hard. I sit on the opposite stool, bracing my hands on the table to keep them from shaking. Iam not used to this flavor of vulnerability, not from Lane, and certainly not from myself.
“So you watched her sign me up for a future of . . . of what?” I ask, more confused than ever.
His laugh is small and sickly. “You don’t get it, Nora. There’s no winning here. House eats everyone who comes through.” He gestures at the jungle of seedlings, the fogged windows, the sweating glass. “You think Whitby’s free? Larkin? Even me?”
