No Strings Attached

Chapter Five

Tears blurred her eyes as she looked away, over into the dark night, the breeze picking up in the dusk, whipping her hair into her face, and she heard his deep inhale of annoyance, pulling it back quickly so that it couldn’t touch him again.

 Something flashed in his eyes as he watched her movements, something old and primal, and so familiar to what she was used to seeing from him that a twinge of hope entered into the crevices and cracks of her broken heart, but it was broken down with the ice cold resolve and anger that shot out across his gaze, and she felt the agonizing pain of her heart shattering all over again so intensely that she physically winced under his stare.

“I can’t be with you, Shannon, it’s just ... we’ve ran our course. Guys like me don’t fall in love with girls like you,” his voice was steady, and low, and he didn’t look into her eyes for a single second of it. When she sneaked a look at his face from under a fall of dark hair that hid her from his view, she saw his clenched jaw, and his head high.

She didn’t see any more or any less, but it was all she needed.

She’d expected him to realise one day that he was beyond her; that he could have someone ... whole - somebody who didn’t whisper in small voices because she was afraid to be heard, who didn’t flinch away when you caught her by surprise.

She wouldn’t fight him when he told her it wasn’t real, she didn’t have the strength. In fact, she had nothing to offer him, nothing but her heart, and who knew if that could ever be the same once it had been damaged just like the rest of her?

She choked on a sob, fuelled by her own thoughts, by his words.

And she let the tears fall over her cheeks, streaking the make up that she’d carefully applied.

She let her manicured fingernails bite crescents into the fleshy palm of her hand.

But she didn’t say a word.

“It’s been fun, it was a great fuck,” he stood up stiffly, eyes still averted, his own voice unsteady – he must have been concerned that she would fight him, argue tooth and nail, but she wouldn’t. She would give him the freedom that he needed, he wasn’t hers after all - she couldn’t keep him. He dragged a deep, unsteady breath into his lungs, “But we’re done here. You’re just too damaged for me.”

It took ten seconds for him to walk away. Ten seconds of deep, uncomfortable silence – the soft waves in the sea air the only sound between them, and it masked only the trek of tears.

She couldn’t let him know that her heart was broken; she couldn’t burden him further with that.

                        ******************************************

Looking back, Shannon could see the lies in his speech; she could hear the rehearsals of the words that she’d never even thought on before now.

But she could also still feel an echo of every second of pain that had followed his words.

She’d gone straight to Rory’s after that, cried on his shoulder and told him everything – about her father, Nate, the baby. He’d offered to marry her, raise the child as his own, but she couldn’t bear the thought of staying in town, of watching Nate grow old with another woman – of another woman bearing a child and his ring in exactly the same way that she’d dreamt of.

So she left.

She borrowed £5,000 off Rory’s parents, assuring them that they would have it back the second that her inheritance was processed, and arranged to move to London once the funeral was over, telling Tori that she was following a life-long dream of becoming a model.

She started her very first design as soon as she moved over, a Christening gown made of fine-spun ivory silk for her baby daughter, embroidered with the same design that was inked onto her inner thigh – her initials and Nate’s intertwined into a small, circular symbol.

It had symbolised their love, she’d thought, when she had the tattoo on the same day that he’d had his dragon, and he’d kissed it better once it stung. Each time they’d made love, he would run his fingertips over it, as though it were a brand of possession and undying devotion.

Despite her heartbreak, she wanted Nate to be there – in some form – on the day that their daughter was baptised, and she’d laboured over each tiny stitch of silver thread with excitement – for the moment that she would see the product of them brought into the world.

Even after she hated him, cursed him even, for each and every thing he’d done wrong – for each fracture in her heart – she still loved him for giving her Molly.

Even when she’d seen their tiny daughter lying in a plain white, tiny coffin, and mourned for her – alone at the crematorium – after she was born sleeping, she still loved him for that.

“Do you ... um,” Shannon cleared her throat discreetly in the bright sunshine, cluttered as it was with unshed tears, and the burden of long moments of silence, “Do you have anything in mind for Ava to wear?”

Tori looked over slowly, shaken from her own quiet reverie, and turned onto her side with a shrug, “I don’t know where my christening outfit is, I don’t think Mum kept it, and Jayden was never christened at all, so there’s nothing special I don’t think, why do you ask?”

“I have something I’d like her to wear ... if that would be okay?”

Shannon’s voice was broken, her demeanour shed, with just her heartbreak in her eyes, and Tori closed her own violet gaze, before looking down at her sleeping daughter. She couldn’t imagine Shannon’s pain, she didn’t even want to think about it. Reaching out her hand, she took Shannon’s palm in hers.

“You sure?” she choked out, tears blurring her vision for everything that this brave, strong girl had been through in her life.

Nodding her head resolutely, Shannon looked down at the peaceful, sleeping baby in the Moses Basket. It felt right that Ava should wear it ... as though Molly would be there too ... somehow. “Yeah, I’m sure,” she whispered, “Just give me a few days to make a few alterations.”