Page 74 of Holly & Hemlock
Larkin looks at me as if seeing a ghost, or a miracle. “You did it,” he says, reverent.
Lane just holds me closer, as if I might still blow away.
I close my eyes, and when I open them again, I see only light, and the faces of the men I have saved, and the house—my house—waiting to be filled with the kind of love that does not chain, but release.
22
Departure
The sun draws lines across Hemlock’s floors, slicing the gloom into neat slabs of pale gold and blue shadow. In the front hall, the radiator ticks with a noise like a wristwatch, reminding the house of how little time remains before everything is different.
Larkin stands by the vestibule mirror, coat folded over one arm, his back to the house as he fits a leather satchel with what little he’s chosen to take. The bag is small, almost indecently so, as if he has trained his whole life for the escape act of shedding every object not essential to his continued existence.
The collar of his shirt is crisp, the cuffs buttoned, but his shoes are the wrong pair—a battered set of boots instead of the loafers that would complement his outfit. It’s the sort of oversight that would have gutted him a month ago. Today, he doesn't seem to notice.
I linger at the landing, unwilling to make the first sound. The light here is colder, more surgical—it finds the fine stubble along Larkin’s jaw, the cut of his cheek, the veinsvisible at his wrist as he cinches the satchel closed with more force than necessary.
I watch the knuckles go white, then fade back to color. I watch the shudder that passes through his spine, so brief and fine that a lesser observer would have missed it.
He looks up, meets my eyes in the warped glass. “You don’t have to supervise,” he says, a smile that is not really a smile at all.
I cross the last few steps, hands jammed into the pockets of my robe. “You’re not supposed to just vanish. There are protocols.”
“Ah,” he says, tilting his chin to catch the light. “Which protocol is this? The exodus, or the execution?”
His voice is even, but the tremor is there if you know to listen for it. I want to touch him, but the distance feels both trivial and unbridgeable, a moat of etiquette and old wounds. “Neither,” I say. “Anyway, how could I not see you off?”
The bag is full, and yet his hands refuse to let it go. He smooths the leather, then the lapel of his coat, then runs both palms along his thighs as if dusting off a residue that will not lift.
“Have you decided where you’re going?” I ask.
He shrugs, a movement so precise it could have been practiced in front of a jury. “First the city. After that, who knows.” He glances at the door, then at me, then back to the seam where the light creeps under the frame. “I want to see who I am when I’m not attached to a ruin. If I can be anything at all.”
“You’ll be something,” I say. “Youaresomething, Larkin.” It is not encouragement, just fact.
He laughs. “You sound like Whitby.”
“I’m more emotional,” I say, and we both know it is true.
The air is thick with all the things that have not been saidand will not be. Larkin breathes in, then out, each exhalation a visible cloud in the freezing hall.
“I’ve been a prisoner here my whole life,” he says. “Not just the house, but the script. Who I’m supposed to be. Who I’m supposed to hate, who I’m supposed to want.”
His eyes catch mine, and I see that the clarity is real. He means to do this, and the only thing heavier than the leaving is the staying. “If I don’t go now, I never will. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my years orbiting a ghost.”
It is the closest he will come to an apology. I nod, once, then step into his space. For a second, we both just stand there—his hand on the satchel, mine on the archway, neither willing to reach or withdraw. The tension builds, then crests, then collapses.
He sets the bag on the floor, takes my hand, and brings it to his chest. His heart is hammering, the pulse wild as a trapped bird. He doesn’t flinch, even as the skin under my palm goes damp. “Thank you,” he says, and for the first time, it is not performative.
“You always have a home here,” I say, and regret it instantly—it is too sentimental, and not at all the kind of thing I am good at.
But he doesn’t mock me. He closes his eyes, bows his head, and lets the words soak into him. When he opens them again, the old composure is gone, stripped back to the raw bone of want.
He rests his hands on my cheeks, holding my face tenderly, and kisses me. The kiss isn’t tentative, but it isn’t passionate, either. It’s a kiss of knowing. I kiss him back, pouring all the words I cannot say into it.
After a minute, he pulls back, eyes raking over his face one more time, then he drops his hands.
“Tell Lane—” he starts, then stops. “No. Never mind.”
