Page 81 of The Worst of Them

And what she had thought was an unwavering loyalty to his father had been small defiances all along. For her.

She loved him. The feeling wasn’t even new—no, she had fallen for him before they left the Fortuna Royale, and no matter how hard she’d tried to avoid the truth and mistake it for hate, no matter how eager she had been to quash the feelings inside her, they were inevitable.

She loved him as surely as if he’d been branded onto her heart. She knew it now, and she accepted it for what it was.

“We came to be friends,” he said, “and I’d hoped to start over with you after I gave you that knife. I wanted to know you, to truly befriend this beautiful, formidable girl who was so much more beyond the misfortunes you’d endured. But then I lost you. I made a mistake by lying to my father, and you hated me for it. I yelled at you and made it worse, and you made it worse, and everything was worse.” He ran his hand over his hair again, then dropped it to his side. “I told my father I lied, that I had defied him by giving you the knife and that I would gladly do it again. He didn’t care, and I didn’t think you would either because you had other reasons to resent me. I thought my silence could fix things between us, but it’s only been insufferable to see you look so happy and beautiful and have no part of it.”

He spoke with such confidence, his eyes dark with longing she’d seen before but had never recognized for what it was. Those eyes that betrayed his want for her had been the first to see her weaknesses.

Cecily could feel herself about to fall apart, and she wished she could remember how to hide. She backed away, increasing the distance between them, only to be stopped by a tree five paces from him.

“You’ve been happy,” she said on a breath, thinking of his cool gaze and easy smiles, his laughter with his friends. “Happy without me.”

The edges of his mouth pulled down. “Then you’re terribly gullible.”

Sensation bubbled up from her middle, forming into what might be a scream or a curse or any number of horrible things. When she opened her mouth, she wasn’t sure what would come out, but all the longing and hurt that had festered in her heart for three weeks surfaced as a watery whisper. “But you said I wasn’t good enough.”

His eyes squeezed, bewilderment overtaking the desire in his gaze. He took one step toward her, then paused when she began to speak in a rush, eager to beat him to his denial.

“Your father said I wasn’t suitable for you.” Her voice shook, trembling with the rest of her body. “And you agreed with him.”

Understanding dawned on him, followed quickly by dread. “No… No, Cecily, I— Shit. I never believed that. Copson does, but he knows I’ve made up my mind about you. What you heard as agreement was my refusal to argue a point he’s decided not to understand.” He stepped forward, and she would have retreated were it not for the tree at her back. “You witnessed only one conversation of many. I’ve told you he’s difficult to convince—he’s prejudiced and complicated, and making him see you differently isn’t something I can achieve in one night.”

Tears flowed down Cecily’s cheeks, but not from happiness. It sounded too good to be true, that she might be wanted so much that Jack would willingly defy his father in so many ways and defend her repeatedly against his objections. Her hopes had been dashed so many times that any hope of this turned to dread in her stomach.

She hadn’t been worthy of death, let alone love, and her deepest fear and worst belief ripped from her as a simple, heart-wrenching question. “But what about when you realize he’s right?”

Jack’s face slackened. “Cecily⁠—”

“I was never supposed to be like this,” she cried, the confession bursting from her with the force of how desperately and how long she’d ached so say it. For ages, it had festered inside her, an excuse she was never willing to give because it would never forgive what had been done. But she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I was never supposed to be this awful girl I’ve become. Every day, I’m horrified by who I am, but I don’t know how else I can be because I’m only trying to survive this life I never asked for.”

Admitting it felt like pulling a splinter out, if a splinter could ever be so large to impale a person through the heart. When she let herself face the truth of who she’d once been against who she was now, she yearned for her innocence in a way that was acutely painful. Knowing she would never get herself back was like grieving a death nearly as shattering as her father’s.

There was no undoing the sins that had brought her here—both her own and others’—and she had been left hollow and gutted, soulless in a way that had kept her from any kind of hope, even when love lingered at her fingertips.

He had to know why. She loved him enough to warn him.

“Everyone told me death was too good for me, like I was a devil for doing everything I could to keep what little good I had left and—and—” She gripped her shoulders, her fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “I started to believe them because maybe I was being punished for not saving my father. Maybe there was something I could’ve done⁠—”

“No,” Jack implored.

She swallowed her pain, refusing to look at him as she barreled on before she lost her nerve. “But even if I didn’t kill my father, I killed six others. I became a monster on my own to save myself because no one else would. No one saved me from those men, or prison, or piracy.” She gasped each word, like her body was rejecting every weapon she’d forged for herself, only to lay them at Jack’s feet in supplication. “I only had myself, and now I have descended so far that I don’t know how anyone could want me. I don’t understand how you could want me after all I’ve done to make you hate me⁠—”

“I don’t hate you.” His voice came low and broken. He was only three paces away now, not close enough to touch her, but near enough to make her feel warmer, like his heat was a living thing that reached for her for the sake of its master.

“But I do,” she wailed. “And I thought running to a new life somewhere else might make any of this bearable, all while trying to ignore how you make me feel—like I could be soft and wanted, and it feels like I’m breaking, and if the wrong person sees, if they know, they’ll only break what little is left of me…” She scrubbed away her tears. “I’m terrified, Jack, and I’m scared of how much I want you—so much that I would kill you to make it stop. But after everything you’ve seen of me, everything I’ve done to you⁠—”

He took another step, only two paces away now. “I like what you’ve done to me.”

“You can’t mean that,” she whimpered.

“I do.”

“But I cut you.”

“I don’t mind that you cut me.”

“I’m ruined.”