Toy Soldiers (Helford #1)

(28) Drowning

There are so many words spoken about Paris of its beauty and grace. It was the City of Light, and people who had never been here envisioned a night of twinkling lights and stars up above while veterans of the city reminisce of nighttime debauchery and the Eiffel Tower, lit up like a beacon in the sky.

I rarely was taken aback by the beauty of something—I was surrounded by beautiful people and this mockery of a job I held put me in beautiful cities with beautiful places—but there was something about Paris that had captivated me from the moment I had seen it, and to this day I couldn’t explain it. But I did know that Rian’s hand in mine, tugging me through streets filled with tourists murmuring reverently in their native tongue. I didn’t know where I was going and I didn’t know if being out in the open without a disguise in the middle of the city was a good idea or not, but I just followed him, and he guided me.

Paris had never been a city I could explain in many words. I could call it lively but that wouldn’t seem like enough, and I could explain the ancient feel of it mixed with the modern but there were no words to convey that. The world was constantly moving around Paris and Paris was the center, the sun, radiating light and splendor and its own heartbeat, the city coming to life around me.

We couldn’t see the stars, but the city sparkled on its own, and I didn’t need a star to wish on if I just looked around at the flashing light, at the world of romance and firelight.

I was suddenly conscious of Rian’s hand in mine and I wondered to myself when I would stop asking myself so many questions I couldn’t answer.

“Where are we going?” I demanded, glancing around. Rian smirked widely but didn’t respond as he pulled me through the crowd, his hand so much bigger and rougher than Jonathon’s, unlike anything I was ever used to—I was used to the hands of men who had never worked a hard day once in their life, had never gotten scars that wouldn’t disappear or calluses from anything other than playing the guitar throughout their teenage years. Rian had the hands that could throw a punch, hands that were meant for wringing necks and not for dealing money when the police looked the other way.

Jonathon’s hands were soft and hesitant, large enough to capture both of mine in one of his, but they weren’t filled with scars, scars of killing and fire and punches and blood, bleeding. Rian had the kind of hands someone could rely on.

I looked down at my hand in his, his fingers wrapped around mine, and I wondered when I had gotten so small. Wondered when I would ever be big again.

I followed the hand up the arm, tanned and thick, also scarred, to the shoulder, and then up the neck to the face behind it all. With a sharp start that pained my heart, made it hurt, I realized that I had never seen Rian Blackwell so happy before.

He was grinning when we got to our destination, but I was confused.

“A park?” I asked him, and my stomach flipped. He couldn’t have been able to know—he shouldn’t have been able to know the story about my mother uttered to Jonathon in that small café. I watched him, alarmed and jarred, but he was the picture of ease with a broad smile and a shine in his eyes that put the city lights to shame.

“A park,” he replied, nodding once. I stared at him, unsure of the punch line.

He caught my gaze and smirked.

Rian held my gaze for a long moment before he took off into a sprint into the collection of trees and paths, bushes and flowers, and I watched as he blended into a piece of the night. I laughed, suddenly understanding the game he was playing.

I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and chased him into the shadows, leaving the light behind.

When we were at Helford Academy, we learned a lot of things about the night. They were the ones that taught me that anyone wearing any color could blend into the nighttime air, and that it all depended on their silence and their stamina. If I kept silent enough and I convinced myself that the dark was where I belonged, I became the darkness. I convinced myself that the darkness was me, and there was nothing to fear in the dark by myself, lingering on the edges.