Chapter 6

“Please. We ran this place before you got here. One person short is nothing. Go home, rest, and I’ll bring you something when I close.”

She pulled Lily’s backpack out from under the register and handed it over. “Go.”

Lily nodded her thanks and left.

She did need it. The work alone was flattening her, and after this afternoon she hadn’t come all the way back — her whole body had that scraped-out, weightless feeling.

She and Jenny lived together.

The restaurant didn’t provide housing. Thomas Wright, the owner, had floated the idea of Lily sleeping in the storeroom at night, and Jenny had heard it and offered her the spare half of her apartment instead.

Jenny had been in the country five years.

The restaurant didn’t pay much, but she had other income — she picked up money elsewhere — which was why she didn’t live in Thomas’s house like some of them did. She rented her own place.

It was a walk from work, on a commercial street that stayed busy.

Jenny said she’d taken the place because it was convenient. For the other work.

Lily had never established what the other work was. She’d asked once, been given something that answered nothing, and never raised it again.

Normally she found the street too loud. Today the noise of it — the traffic, the people — was the most comforting thing she’d encountered all day.

She went up the stairs beside a bakery to the second floor and let herself in.

It was a studio. One room, and you could see all of it from the door.

She dropped her bag, washed up, and lay down on the bed to sleep.

Normally she was gone the moment she was horizontal. Not today.

Every time she shut her eyes the voice started up again.

Eventually she gave up, sat straight up, and decided to go out.

She’d come home in the afternoon. It was dusk now.

The last of the sun had put a warm gold over the buildings, and it made the city look, briefly, like somewhere that might be kind to a person.

The street below was the old part of Wexford. Most of the buildings still had their turn-of-the-century faces, and the road was too narrow for the traffic it got, which somehow only added to it. Tourists came from everywhere to walk it and photograph it.

Lily moved through the crowd without standing out at all.

She walked a loop, got tired, and turned back.

At the foot of her building she stopped at the bakery window, thinking she’d buy something sweet and see if it helped.

She was working her way along the case, deciding, when the light in front of her dimmed.

She looked up, and in the glass she saw someone standing behind her.

The shop front was narrow. There was room for one person at the window.

She’d been in the way. She turned around, apologizing. “Sorry — go ahead.”

And then she got a look at him and something in her stalled.

Handsome wasn’t going to do it. She turned the problem over for a second and landed on beautiful, which was closer.

The face was fine-boned and exact. Deep-set eyes, a straight nose, a jawline drawn with a ruler. Classical and clean at once.

The skin was white — not fair, white, the cold kind that belongs to someone who hasn’t been outdoors in years, so pale it looked lit from inside.

And with it, pale gold hair, which under the shop lights looked like something molten.

The two together — that arctic white against that gold — hit hard enough to feel unreal, and produced an atmosphere around him that she couldn’t quite breathe in.

And then the eyes. Clean, deep, saturated green. Top-grade emerald.

He looked like something that had walked out of a painting.

Lily made a note of it, privately, then dropped her eyes and stepped aside to let him past.

He inclined his head — a small thank-you for the space.

Lily turned her face toward the street and the traffic, uncomfortable.

He was too much. The face plus the height meant there was no way to not notice him, and she was working hard at it.

She was still deciding whether to buy anything when a paper bag appeared in front of her, already wrapped.

She looked up, confused, and went straight into those green eyes.

He tipped it toward her. Take it.

Because she’d let him go first?

Lily put her hands up. “Oh — no, thank you.”

He gave her a small smile, said nothing, put the bag in her hands, turned, and left.

Lily stood there holding a paper bag with something still faintly warm inside it, and no idea what had happened.

By the time she looked up he was already getting into a car at the curb, and the door was closing.

“What a strange man,” she muttered, and took the bread upstairs.

Inside, she set the bag down on the table and looked at it for a while, and couldn’t decide what to do with it.

Throwing it away felt wasteful. Eating something a stranger had put into her hands on the street felt stupid.

Although — he’d just bought it. It was still sealed in the shop’s own bag.

Even if he’d wanted to do something to it, when exactly would he have had the chance?

She thought about it, then wiped the outside of the packaging down with a disinfectant wipe, thoroughly, before opening it.

It smelled good. It tasted better.

Nothing happened afterward, and she found herself wondering whether she was becoming the kind of person who reads a threat into ordinary kindness.

He’d probably just been saying thank you.

Or being polite. That was all.

Whatever it had been, the man outside the bakery had taken a good deal of the fear out of her evening, and she was grateful to him for it without knowing his name.

She got back into bed and went under before long.

She slept hard.

Maybe she’d just been that tired. She’d expected the evening to follow her into her dreams, and instead there was nothing at all, straight through to morning.

Jenny was still out when she woke. Lily got her up and they got ready.

“How are you doing today?” Jenny asked around a toothbrush.

Lily dried her face. “Better. I slept.”

Jenny spat. “Good. Honestly, that kind of thing can happen anywhere. You’re on your own out here. You just have to be careful.”

“You get used to it.” She dropped the toothbrush in the cup and walked out.

Lily stayed at the sink, watching the brush rock in the cup, and something sour and shapeless moved through her.

She let out a breath and followed her out.