“I can. Just trust me. I’ll stop him, and this will all be over.”
If only he’d left it there, I might have spoken only the truth that night. But my Sherlock was a lifter of stones. He couldn’t resist peering beneath them, and so he asked, “How?”
“Money.” It was a lie, but it was a beautiful lie. Even I, as resolved as I’d become to take the bastard’s life, believed it could work. “It’s all he cares about. And it turns out I’ve got loads. But he won’t see a cent of it if he kills one more person. I’ll send him away with money and Alice will come—”
“—to care for you and the boys,” he said, stepping from the corner until he was right in front of me.
“Yes. She’ll come to care for us after he’s gone—”
“—and we’ll all be here, together.” Sherlock was perfectly still, except for the fingers of his left hand, which seemed to tick with the forms of chords against the strings of his violin. He was thinking. He was following the contingencies, making sure my solution had a chance at working. But his expression made him seem less than assured.
“It’s the only way.” I pushed as much sincerity into the words as I could, but I didn’t meet his eyes, because I knew there was another way—the one way to forever remove the stain of my father’s existence from our lives, from the world.
I stood, forcing myself away from the window, and suddenly Lock’s room felt too small. We were too close. And every time I looked up at him, he would stare into my eyes, searching for something I could never let him find, forcing me to turn away. I needed to distract him.
“What did you play just now?” I walked to his bed, kicked off my shoes, and shrugged my jacket off my shoulders to pool in my hands.
He set down his violin and followed me, his fingers drifting up the bared skin of my arms to trace the straps of my top. “Offenbach.”
“Is it a lullaby?”
He kissed my shoulder and turned me toward him. I couldn’t stand his eyes just then, so I focused on his lips. “It’s a barcarolle, a boat song, like the gondoliers sing in Venice.”
“I’ve never been to Venice.” Sadie always did want to go to Italy. I closed my eyes tight against the thought, leaned into Lock’s arms.
He pressed his lips to my forehead, and I held my breath as his lips brushed down my temple to press against the skin of my cheek. He whispered, “Me neither,” into my ear, then kissed his way up my jawline so that his lips found mine open and waiting. I needed this, needed him, but he wasn’t close enough, not even when I pulled him down on top of me. His kisses were too gentle, his hands too reverent.
I wrapped myself around him, kissing every part of him that I could reach and pulling at his clothes and hair until we were tangled in his bedding, breathing hard, clinging to each other, almost like he was as desperate to keep me there as I was to stay. And it hurt, the wanting, because I knew I had to leave, and I knew he might not want me back after.
Maybe it was that thought that set off the others, but it was as though someone had overturned a basin in my mind and all I could see was Sadie in every memory I had of her, all spliced together with the way I’d seen her last, slumped in the dirt. Dead, because she knew me. I clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, but I’d already let it go too far. It was true, though. She was only doing what I’d asked. The more I tried to stop the path of my thoughts, the more out of control I felt, until I fisted Lock’s T-shirt and buried my face in his chest and fell apart in a way I couldn’t have done before then.
Lock didn’t speak, he just held me as I shook and gasped and whispered that I’d sent her to her death, how stupid I’d been to bring her into that house, how she’d died for being my friend. He kissed my forehead and temples as I confessed and, when I calmed some, pulled his shirt off to dry my face. And, just when I felt the sadness shift to anger, just before I could promise aloud that my father would pay for taking her from me, Lock’s fingertips brushed against my lips, hushing the words back within.
His expression was almost relieved, but he was looking at me in this new way—perhaps like I was new, like he didn’t recognize me for just a moment. But then he kissed me and I kissed him, and I could almost believe that everything was back to normal. Only, I couldn’t seem to lose myself to the moment. There was too much to hold inside. Too much I couldn’t let him see.
Lock was different too. He moved slowly, lingered in his touches and kisses, stopped to stare at me, like he was trying to take in every detail. I couldn’t stand the way he stared. There was too much in his eyes. I turned in his arms, pulling them around me so that he surrounded me like a blanket, and I could feel his warm breath filtering through my hair to my neck.
“Don’t leave,” he whispered when his breathing started to get deeper, more regular.