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I should have savoured my time with her, and I should have shared Richard Thornton’s destruction with her instead of gifting it to her. None of my mistakes ever felt like mistakes when I was making them, but now I can hardly bear to think of everything I did wrong.
The worst of which was telling Willow Lynch I loved her.
Later, after the swim,once we’ve walked back to the house and showered and changed, after Iakov’s ordered in a tower of pizza boxes, I sit and watch him eat. He bites into the big greasy slices, pulling on the cheese, with the appetite of fivemen. Just like he was back in Spearcrest, he’s content to sit in silence.
“Why are you here?” I ask him again.
“What do you think? Fucking idiot. Because I thought you might need a mate right now.” He kicks me under the table, grinning at me. “A real mate, I mean. Your butler doesn’t count.”
“He’s not my butler.”
He grabs one of the pizza boxes and half throws it in front of me. “Eat. You look like shit.”
“And you think this is going to help? Do you know how bad this stuff is for you?” I lift a slice using the corner of a napkin, showing him the grease dripping from the melted cheese. “It’s clogging my arteries just looking at it.”
“Killjoy boring bastard.” Iakov stands, grabs his pizza box and heads to the living room. “No wonder your girl left you!” he calls over his shoulder.
I flip him the middle finger, but I still take my own pizza and follow him, and I watch the stupid superhero film he puts on, and I don’t kick him out that night, not even when he starts loudly reading out the dialogue from one of Willow’s disgusting monster porn comics.
Iakov stays with mefor three days. On the third, he suggests making a road trip to Oxford to visit Zach and Theo, and that’s when I kick him out.
If I wanted to have someone’s romantic bliss shoved into my face, I would actually have preferred the needy antics of Séverin Montcroix and his fiancée than the saccharine display of Zach and Theo’s perfect fairy tale love.
I let Iakov pet the dogs goodbye and send him on his way, glaring at him all the way out into the drive and as he climbs onto his bike. Before he puts on his helmet, he says, “What are you going to do now? Go back to reading your depressing book and rotting away in your fortress?”
“What else am I to do? She’s fucking gone, Kav. She’s not coming back.”
“Nadezhda umiraet posledney.” Iakov puts his helmet on, hiding his face behind the smooth black visor.
I know he can still see me, though. I roll my eyes at him. “I’m not interested in whatever lesson you want to teach me.”
“No lesson. Just a saying.” His engine roars to life, and he raises his voice to speak over it. “Hope dies last.”
Wrong. Hope died first. Hope died when Mitchell told me Willow had left the country, when I realised she was well and truly gone. Hope has died every day since, every day that’s passed without a text or a call, without an outrageous message or a provocative selfie. Hope dies every day Willow Lynch doesn’t come back to me to tell me I’ve been punished enough for what I did.
I give Iakov a grimace instead of a smile. “Drive safe, Kav. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure. Let’s not do this again soon.”
Iakov laughs. “Hah.Dasvidaniya, fuckface.”
And then he’s gone, leaving a cloud of dust behind him, and silence falls once more in his wake.
Two days later, whenI’m out walking the dogs, my phone rings. There are two numbers I’ve not blocked from making calls: Willow’s and Woodrow’s. Despite my hopelessness, myheart still holds its beating when I pull my phone out of my pocket.
It sinks as soon as I look at the screen. I answer with reticence.
“What is it, Ned?”
“Ah, sir, I’m glad you’ve answered. I so happen to have just received a call from your lawyers, they—”
“I’ve told you I don’t care about the settlements. The lawyers can negotiate what they think is reasonable—I pay them to worry about this so I don’t have to.”
“No, sir. This isn’t about the settlement. They have those handled. They’ve been contacted about something else—a, um, personal matter. The contract, sir.”
“What contract?”
There’s a careful pause on the other side. “The Willow Lynch contract.”
My chest becomes a black cavity, my heart the small, hard pit of a cherry.
