new sportscar, but Thames was in love with the past, when a car was simpler and made with more care than today’s desire to just push out car after car. Nowadays, it was how many bells and whistles you could cram into these moving beasts. Its beauty had long gone forgotten. Today, a car was usually marked as a sign of wealth and not a declaration of personal taste and style.
Doing this, babying the vehicle, watching it transform into a work of art was where it was at for Thames. He felt that familiar passion, and it put him at ease.
He might be okay. He told himself. He was good at this. He didn’t need to be out in the real world. He could work for himself and provide like he used to. The opportunities were endless, and the future seemed brighter than it was just this morning.
“My sexy, greasy man,” Charlotte murmured from behind him.
He turned, smiling broadly at the sight of her coming out to join him. The little minx was back in her silk nightgown. Dear God, that fucking nightgown. He could smell her fresh bodywash from here and her creams too. They always made her skin so fucking soft. She took a seat on the chair, hands in her lap, tired eyes studying him.
“I feel good, babe,” he said, unable to hold back as the excitement flooded out of him. “I feel…revived.”
She smiled warmly at him. “Of course you do, you’re doing what you love.”
He grabbed a work cloth and wiped his hands. “I need to stop now, or else I’ll be out here all night.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
He slammed the hood of the car shut and looked it over. It was almost down to a shell of what it was. “You think I can do this again?”
“I do, but we’re going to need a bigger space eventually.”
He nodded, reflecting on his old work shed. “We need some land.”
“You have land,” she responded, tilting her head to the side as she watched him. “That shed wasn’t messed with, you know.”
He considered that, feeling pleased. “We’d have to rebuild the house.”
“We can do that.”
He looked at her now, hesitating. “It means sticking around Blackwater.”
She continued looking peacefully at him. “Do I look like I’m running away?”
“No, but…” he paused, mulling it over. “I want you to be happy.”
“Like you said with Jem, it doesn’t matter where we are. You’re my home, Conor. We can be living out of a dumpster, as long as I have you, I’m okay.”
He nodded, looking wistfully down at the cloth in his hands. “I fantasized about this moment for years. Getting it now tastes better than I could have ever imagined.”
Now his eyes paused at the number on his wrist, and his heart tugged painfully. He looked up at Charlotte, eyeing her warm smile.
“I was going to ask you to marry me the day I killed Billy,” he declared just then, softly. “I didn’t have a ring picked out. I’d gone to three jewellery stores that day, and I felt in over my head staring at the rings, not knowing what to do. I…wound up putting a deposit down to have one crafted from scratch from a jeweller. A gold band because I know you’re the simple type, and then I picked out a stunning opal, something unique like you, but I started second guessing myself. I spent the whole day driving around, wondering if I ought to ask you to marry me without a ring in my pocket. I talked myself in and out of it. Never got to decide when I finally got your text about your water breaking.”
Charlotte looked emotional. Her smile was gone and her eyes were watery. Sniffing, she said, “I’d have said yes, ring or not.”
He smiled at her, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He felt the weight return, felt his eyes drag back to the number on his wrist.
“Would you still say yes if you knew what I had to do to get here?” he wondered just then, unable to look at her. “If you knew that to have this number on my wrist I needed to take a few lives? I had to suffer because that’s what the crew believe a man needs to do to know himself. He needs to know misery and loneliness and… pain. So much pain.”
He felt her just then. Her arms wrapped around him, her face pressed into his shoulder, breathing his sorrow in.
“I’d still say yes,” she