|13|
A PRAYER WONT FIX IT
IT WAS A doomed love story from the start, a pair set for tragedy, Tommy would be deceiving himself if he said he didn't expect it to end this way — it was a fitting end. Roses die too. Actually, not too long after they're cut.
This was how it was always going to be, no matter how he told her.
It was always going to end in betrayal.
"You're a liar!" Rose pushes Tommy, but it didn't seem to do much, he barely moved an inch.
He tries to come closer to her, to calm her down.
"A fucking liar!" She pushes him further away.
The one person she could've swore was on her side was planning to betray her father and her the whole time.
"Rosie, it's not what you think—"
She scoffs loudly, amused at his attempts to save himself. "It's exactly what I think! You want to knock my dad out the business, you lied to him just to throw him under the bus!"
"He was never your ally, he was always your competition."
Tommy couldn't even forge a decent argument.
"And for what? All in the name of money, status, fame?" Rose was looking at Tommy in a new light now. "It's been the plan all along hasn't it?"
Tommy holds his cigarette firmly. "Yes."
"Fuck you."
"Rosella—"
"No fuck you, and shame on me for thinking you weren't—" She pinches the bridge of her nose, pausing, she didn't want to break down. "You weren't like the lot of them. But you bloody are. You only care about getting to the top, that was your plan."
"Can you let me explain?" Tommy tried to keep his composure but he could feel himself getting agitated now.
"You've made yourself clear already ." Rose scolds back in his face, her nose brushing against his too.
He opens his mouth to speak but she beats him to it, "You were going to frame him with the guns weren't you!?"
In anger, she hits his shoulder. "Weren't you?"
No reply.
Rose hits him again in the same spot, harder. "He could fucking hang for that, you know that right?"
"I know."
She couldn't believe Tommy right now, she couldn't believe this was the same man she laid all her trust in. Her facial expression was somewhere in between mortified and absolutely furious.
"That's why you didn't tell me about her, your childhood sweetheart, eh?" Rose spits with disgust. "You still love her?"
"No." Tommy didn't break eye contact.
"Fucking lies! It's all just, fucking lies!" Rose yells, pushing him.
Tommy doesn't flinch or move his face, his hands against his side, taking all her anger. His eyes were still glued on her, he wouldn't take them off.
"Are you using me too?" Rose interrogates, pushing him again. "You're using me to get over her, aren't you? Did you fuck her?"
Tommy wipes his face, getting closer to Rose.
He holds her wrists down.
"I didn't fuck her." Tommy replies sternly in a low tone.
"You arsehole!" Rose hits his shoulder, tears were on the brink of escaping her eyes.
Tommy isn't phased, he walks back up to her again, his ultramarine blue eyes piercing into her soul like a sword. "I'm not lying. Everything I said, that was real."
Rose was breathing hard, glaring at him.
"I would be lying if I said I planned on feeling that way."
Rose didn't want to believe him.
"It's only you."
She smacks him against the chest. "Prick." She mutters through gritted teeth.
"Okay? It's only you." Nothing seemed to hurt Tommy, he was even closer to her now, his lips against hers.
"All this time she was here, Daisy was here and you didn't even say anything about her..." Rose breaks away from him.
"There's nothing to say."
"That's fucking bullshit Tommy!" Rose points her index finger at him confrontationally. "Because she had a lot to say about you in The Garrison. You only wanted me to make her jealous, to find out more about my dad. But you wanted her for her in the beginning."
Rose chuckles, a berating chuckle. "And the truth is, you still feel something for her but you needed someone from your new life to help you figure it out."
"That's not true Rose, that's not true..." Tommy looks at the concrete ground, shaking his head.
"No, that's not true— you don't get to do that!" He finally shouts.
"Do what!?" Rose shouts back, matching his tone.
"Put words in me fucking mouth!" He bangs his fist against the brick body of the bridge.
Rose watches Tommy get frustrated, "all I wanted to do was protect you from this."
His voice was less harsh now, much more calmer. "She might be the first girl but your the first one I've l—" Tommy catches his words. "Because of you, I understand, what people really mean to each other."
"And now you'll understand what it means to lose someone." Rose shrugs, her voice breaking slightly.
They stare at each other for a while.
Rose didn't look back when she walked away, there was no point. Tommy was now something of the past, and the past, is the past.
•••
Aunt Polly walks into Tommy's office, laying a warm cup of tea on his desk.
"It's better than the whiskey."
She observes her nephews facial expression, he was slummed back on his chair and there was an empty bottle of whiskey in front of him.
"Nothing is better than Whiskey, Pol."
Polly holds her cigarette to her mouth. "I'm guessing she found out?"
Tommy sighs.
"And you fell for her for real, did you?" There was a small smile on Polly's lips as white smoke left her mouth.
He already knew that Polly knew the answer.
"There's only one thing that can blind a man as smart as you, Tommy." Polly sits down in the chair in front of him. "Love."
"I don't like the way she looks at me sometimes." He admits, looking at the documents on his desk.
"You don't like the way she looks at you
because it makes you feel something—
and you probably thought you stopped feeling a long time ago."
Aunt Polly was never wrong when it came to issues of the heart, she was always right.
Tommy stands up, straightening his suit and regaining his composure. "Get ready Pol."
"For what?"
Tommy lights himself a cigarette. "We're going to finally take down Kimber and his men."
•••
A/N
thank you for all the support!
what did you think of this chapter?
auroras