THE FRENCH KISSERS ― Thomas Shelby

21. lamb to the slaughter

"Whiskey?" He was staring at her still, a glass nestled in his hand as if born there. It was nine in the morning. She tilted her head and smiled.

"Why not?"

He poured them both Irish, and she sighed in relief. Maybe she was still Atlas, sustaining the world on her shoulders, but this time, Thomas was holding it with her.

"I was wondering... the Blinders in my apartment, will they stay there?"

"Yeah." Thomas slouched on the leather couch, lips of velour parting upon the molten flames. Her throat burned when he swallowed. "Unless you want somebody else there."

Her cherry-colored lips caught a fraction of a smile, fragments of a sun that sneaks up from behind the clouds after the rain.

"You'll never give up, will you?"

"Nope." He threw the cigarette case onto the table; his stare gave her back all the parts of her she'd forgotten she had. "You can change what you do, but you can't change what you want."

She gulped, glanced away from his eyes; they fell into silence, which felt like the prelude, perhaps the postlude, to the loudest feeling ever heard.

"What if what you want is just going to destroy you more than save you?" She looked down at the glass in her hands, as fragile as her heart, with less scratches still. "Would you want it still?"

He stirred the dark amber drink, and Rose was pulled back to the time when she'd learned to skate, to those first instants when she finally slid across the lake after too many falls. That moment when she didn't know if she was going to fly or fall harder.

When he spoke, she hit the ground, and then below.

"I'd want it even more."

"Is that what you are doing now?" She asked. There was a lethargy to the way he slumped against the couch, like the mere act of thinking – or feeling – exhausted him beyond life. But the energy was acute and clear when he looked at her, like he was demanding all of her into his stare. Like he wanted her; even her broken parts. Most of all those. Like her heart wasn't glass and shattered pieces but blazing fire and steel. Like even if it was made of glass he wouldn't mind getting cut in the pieces. "Moving fast in life so you'll catch up to all the minutes you lost in the war?"

He shook his head. He was staring into nothing now; staring at the war, or the absence of it. The armistice might have been signed in 1918, but Thomas scarcely ever felt it. When he was with her, he almost felt it too much.

"Those minutes are gone."

Rose nodded, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat to grow some resistance against the gnawing cold. She frowned when her fingers grazed a piece of paper; she took it out, and the ice cracked under her feet. She was drowning when she read the note. She'd be drowning ever since.

"When the lamb is taken to the slaughter..."

Her hands trembled; his brows came together over his eyes.

"Who's the lamb?"

Rose got up abruptly. "Maybe all of us."

His frown deepened. Last night he had told her about the soldier's minute, and then the telephone rang, and the minute started.

"Frances?" Hard lines unfolded on his forehead when fast words and ragged breaths greeted him on the other side. "Frances, oi, Frances! Where's me son? Is he hurt?"

Rose dashed to him, placed a hand on his shoulder. Thomas' serene posture had morphed, from Michelangelo's David to Edvard Munch's Scream. He slammed the telephone down and yanked open the drawer of his desk. When he looked up, there were cracks amidst his ice too.