"Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic." Anais Nin
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XXII.
Perrie had assured her mother that she would return in mere moments after seeking some air outside. She did not need accompanying for such a brief interlude.
It was then, as Joe held Perrie in his arms and kissed her as though she was his source of life in that moment, that Perrie thought that God was on her side.
How she managed to think about God at a time like this was a dilemma for another day, but she was quite certain that God had made it so that they were not seen as Perrie was quite unprepared for a scandal that would follow such a compromising position.
Perrie was far too stunned to know what to do. She didn't know what to do anyway, but she certainly had no idea of how to respond to Joe Parish, of all people, kissing her. Her head and her heart were a mess with conflict. Shock at the suddenness of his actions, but sympathy at the scene that she had witnessed between him and his father that had led to her following him outside.
She hated Joe, and Joe hated her. Every thought in her head protested this. It did not make any sense and she couldn't understand it. Perrie's body responded in the way her mind was going. To Joe, it must have felt like holding onto a stiff plank of wood.
Joe broke the kiss and pulled away slowly, his eyes as wide as midnight-coloured saucers as they bore down into Perrie's. Perrie was suddenly acutely aware that her feet were dangling slightly beneath her, and that Joe had lifted her into his arms in order to make their differences in height more forgiving.
Joe gently set Perrie down on the ground, and they both stared at one another. Despite the darkness, Perrie could see the desperate searching upon Joe's face. Perrie's lips parted to speak, and Joe stiffened in anticipation, but no words came out. Perrie's tongue was swollen, and her racing mind was anything but coherent.
What had just happened between them?
"Do you hate me?" Joe whispered, his voice barely audible above a breath of wind.
"Y-yes," Perrie stammered.
Perrie hated Joe in the way that he hated her. It was their sport, their competition, and they both loathed each other in a mutually beneficial way. But she did not think that Joe understood her in that moment as he took several large steps away from her.
"I'm sorry," he uttered. "I don't know what came over me. That was unforgivable." His voice was blunt and emotionless, and Perrie was watching him shut down before her eyes.
It sparked a panic in her. "Joe!" she protested, stumbling towards him over the tufts of lawn underfoot. "I saw your conversation with your father. I wanted to ask after you. I wanted to ensure that you were well –"
"You were eavesdropping?" Joe snapped sharply.
"No, I –"
"Was inserting yourself into business which does not involve you," Joe interjected. He moved away from her again, though he had backed himself into a large hedgerow.
He was wounded. Perrie knew him well enough to know his face, she could also tell when he was hurting.
"When did you know that I wasn't Ed?" he suddenly asked, though gone was the nervous, disbelieving relief that had flooded his voice moments earlier when he had discovered that Perrie had known it was him. His tone was accusatory now. "Did you always know? Were you mocking me? Were you planning on using this to your advantage and punishing me for it?"
Perrie was far too overwhelmed by what had just transpired to think of any proper reassuring lines of conversation. And she was certain that her lack of an ability to form a thought in that moment was only contributing to Joe's downward spiral.
"No, I ... I would never –"
Joe interrupted Perrie's clumsy response with a facetious laugh. "You would never punish me? You and I both know we have a decade of history proving that to be a falsehood, Perrie Beresford."
He was wounded severely. Perrie didn't know what men felt in this type of situation. Perrie had certainly never been kissed before and she was still far too surprised to properly comprehend what had happened between them.
"I wanted to ... your father ..." Perrie was still entirely incapable of stringing a proper sentence together.
"My father is none of your concern," Joe spat back angrily. "You know nothing. You could never understand."
"Why ... why did you kiss me?" It was the first thing that Perrie had been able to utter that made any sort of sense. And it was also the most vulnerable question she had posed, and possibly had ever posed.
But Joe had not stowed his weapons. His longbow was positioned exactly, and he was not going to miss his target. He'd practised for a decade in exactly how to hit Perrie Beresford. He would leave no prisoners.
"Because ... because you were there. I would have kissed anyone in that moment," Joe rebuffed coldly. "Go inside. If we are spotted out here and I am obligated to marry you then I will go and drown myself in that pond you once tried to kill me with."
Perrie returned to her family in a daze. She felt wounded, and she couldn't understand why. Perhaps she would fully understand the gravity of that kiss in the morning. Perhaps she would then understand Joe's anger and why he felt so desperate to punish her without cause.
***
Perrie hardly slept a wink, which was incredible seeing as the previous night had been the latest that she had ever remained awake. The sun was beginning to rise by the time the final guests departed. Her brain was far too stimulated to seek any sort of rest.
All she could think about was the feeling of being held in Joe's arms so tightly. If she closed her eyes and thought hard enough, she could still sense his lips on hers, as though their kiss had been broken mere moments ago, and not hours.
Because of how quickly the events immediately afterward unfolded, Perrie was yet to actually decide if she'd enjoyed the experience.
Perrie didn't understand what had come over Joe in that moment. But she had decided that she did not believe his assessment that she was merely a vessel of convenience.
The drapes were still drawn in her bedroom, leaving it entirely dark, but the opening of her bedroom door let in a stream of light, indicative of the hour of the morning outside.
Perrie didn't raise her head to see who had entered. She was still much too lost in her own thoughts, but the scurrying of feet and the flapping of a nightgown across the floor told Perrie that it was one of her sisters.
"So! How was it all?" Lily launched upon Perrie's bed, her knee managing to catch Perrie in the ribs. Perrie groaned and Lily muffled an apology. "Did you dance? Did you fall in love? Are you engaged?"
Perrie knew that her sister's questions were asked with an edge of sarcasm, but she was quite certain that Lily would never guess just what had transpired during Perrie's first foray into society.
"I'm not engaged," Perrie murmured. Though her memory was triggered by Joe's sharp comment about being forced to marry had they been spotted. They hadn't been seen ... at least, not as far as Perrie knew. She would have thought that the alarm would have been raised had they been spotted. It was dark, and they had been well concealed by the hedgerow.
"What's wrong?" Lily's humour vanished, and Perrie felt her sister's hand on her shoulder, gripping her there.
Perrie turned her head and looked to her sister. Lily's dark hair was still tied in rags, and her blue eyes were wide with concerned curiosity. "Joe kissed me." The words came in a breath, and she was glad that she spoke them.
Lily immediately recoiled with shock, sitting bolt upright in the bed and gasping. "Joe?" she hissed.
"Yes."
"Your Joe?"
"He's not mine."
"Joe whom you've spent the majority of your life praying for him to fall into a well, that Joe?"
"Yes, that Joe," Perrie muttered, though she could feel a flush in her cheeks that was hopefully masked by the dim lighting.
Perrie watched with sudden irritation as an awfully amused expression replaced Lily's original look of shock. Her smile quickly turned into an uncontrollable set of giggles, and Perrie was quick to launch a pillow at her sister's face. This did nothing to muffle Lily's glee.
"This isn't funny!" Perrie cried.
"No, you're right, it isn't!" Lily agreed with a grin. "It's just all terribly romantic, isn't it? Who would have thought that after all that attempted homicide that you would end up as lovers?"
"Hush!" snapped Perrie. "I dread to think what would happen if someone overheard you saying something like that. We are not lovers, or anything like that. He kissed me and then he dismissed me."
Lily's lips pursed. "What made him do that?"
"Are you suggesting that I am at fault here? He kissed me!"
"Someone is sensitive this morning. One might even imagine that you had been kissed for the first time last night or something," Lily mused. "I am merely insinuating that you both have a rather bad habit of mortally offending the other without even trying."
Perrie huffed as she threw her head back into her pillow. She then pulled the bed linen over the top of her head and closed her eyes. Joe had asked her immediately afterward if she hated him. Perrie had said 'yes'. Had that been a mistake? Had he retreated so coldly because of that?
Perrie didn't hate Joe like that, just as she hoped that he didn't hate her like that. She would have hoped that he would know the difference. What she hated, Perrie now realised definitively, was Joe's ability to shut down completely when he faced vulnerability, and how he would deflect anything that was close to him with a sense of cruelty.
Lily uncovered Perrie's face and looked down upon her sympathetically. Perrie bit down on her bottom lip. "Do you care about Joe, Perrie?"
Perrie could taste blood on her lip by the time that she released it.
"Do you think that Joe loves you?" Lily pressed.
"I don't think that Joe can love anyone until he learns to love himself," Perrie realised, purposefully disregarding Lily's first question. Because the moment Lily had asked it, Perrie had realised that yes, she did care about Joe. She hated that man, but she cared for him immensely. She would not spend so much of her time and energy making him miserable if she did not.
----
I hope that was worth the wait.
Thanks for bearing with me. I've been suffering with a lot of burnout and anxiety and the exhaustive combination is crippling at times. I'll be okay, but I'm limping towards the school holidays in four weeks time.
I get it, Joe. It's hard to not let the negative get you.
Thanks for being here, and for coming back and hopefully enjoying this next part. I've been seeing your comments, itching for the next one, and I've done my absolute best to get this to you. But just know that on the other side of your screen is little old me who's a bit tired.
Vote and comment xxx