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The Blackbell family’s New Year’s Eve party is beautiful. The garden is lit by illumination, the halls of the mansion are decorated in white and gold, and a string quartet fills the air with tasteful music. Everyone in attendance are the who’s who of Berlint, wearing their best silk and jewels and smiles. Her father is at the center of it all, welcoming guests and playing the perfect host slash king slash friend.
In other words: it’s so boring.
Becky knows she’s being unfair. She’s old enough to understand that this party, too, is part of the work. The business. It’s networking and staying on top of the rumor mill and keeping up appearances. It’s not anyone’s fault that she’s sick of it. It’s just that she’s too old to be dazzled by the glitz and glam and endless supply of cookies, yet too young to properly enjoy refined, old people party drinks.
Honestly, she should be at the club. She’s twenty-one and that means she wants to be like other girls, and other girls aren’t poised to take over their parents’ weapons industry in the next ten to fifteen years. Other girls are drinking tap beer and shitty rum at the local watering hole, dancing drunkenly to disco music, maybe stumbling outside to have a cigarette or ten and making out sloppily with a stranger. Other girls are making bad life decisions and Becky wants in.
“Your dad’s going to pop a vein if you ever tell him that,” Anya says, sidling up next to Becky. She’s wearing the dress they’d bought together at their last shopping trip, a sleek gold one that matches her new, pointy earrings. It suits her—Anya is always pretty, after all—but the overall look is ruined by the breadcrumbs around her mouth.
“When did you get here?” Becky asks.
“Oh, shut up,” Anya shoots back, daintily patting her mouth with a handkerchief. “Just now, and your staff knows I like my snacks, okay? One of them pretty much welcomed me at the door with a tray.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Becky replies, which is true and always funny to say to her best friend who just happens to be able to read minds.
“You never have to,” Anya replies, as always.
Snickering over their old joke, Becky picks two flutes of champagne off a passing tray, giving Anya one; they clink the rims together before taking generous gulps, both of them eager to get buzzed already.
“Nice,” Anya says.
Primly, Becky puts on her best impression of her father and intones, “Only the best for the best of the Blackbells.” She wishes she’d taken something from the family bar to spike it, though.
“Don’t bother,” Anya says. “Guy with the bad toupee has a flask.”
“Anya Forger!” Becky exclaims, ecstatic despite her faux-scandalized tone. “Are you really suggesting we steal from a poor man? Under my own roof?!”
“No one in this party is poor. Besides, his wife hates it when he’s drunk and he’s halfway there already,” Anya says, perfectly reasonably. “It’s basically community service.”
“Fiiine,” Becky says. She could’ve just sent one of the staff to get her some hard liquor, of course, but this is much more interesting. Not that she would admit it to Anya.
“Come on, this is why you keep me around,” Anya says. “Okay, you go first, distract him and his wife. I’ll handle the lift.”
“You’re my worst friend.”
Becky peels herself off the wall, making her way toward the man, side-stepping at the exact moment required for her to bump into him. She exclaims, “Oh!” and apologizes, and asks him if he’s alright, and if he’s enjoying the party. The man just looks annoyed, clearly not knowing who she is, but Becky then goes to chat up his wife and the woman’s eyes light up at the attention. She also starts evaluating Becky in that up-down look of a prospective mother-in-law, and so it doesn’t surprise her in the least when the woman starts talking about how she has a son about her age who had also gone to Eden. Matty Mendelsohn. Becky doesn’t remember the boy, but she remembers the Mendelsohns being something like a minor political dynasty, producing at least one MP in every generation. Matty, however, wants to be a painter rather than a politician, and it is when both parents are lamenting their son’s lack of true ambition that Anya lifts a silver flask from behind Mr. Mendelsohn’s back.
“How positively awful for you,” Becky says, cutting the parents’ rambling short. “Though I do think it’s more ambitious to try a new thing instead of just following the family formula, don’t you think? Oh, you must excuse me, I just saw someone I know and I haven’t greeted them.”
And before either of the Mendelsohns can say anything, Becky walks past them and straight towards Anya, who is violently trying to stow the flask in her too-small handbag as her parents approach her.
“Give it here,” Becky hisses, grabbing the flask and shoving it into the massive pocket on the side of her voluminous gown. This is why she gets her dresses big and custom-ordered, thank you very much. “Mr. and Mrs. Forger! It’s so good to see you!”
“Hello, Becky,” Mr. Forger says warmly, followed by Mrs. Forger saying, “Thank you for inviting us, this is such a lovely party!” They then look at each other, wide-eyed as if amazed at each other despite having been married for around fifteen or so years now.
It’s so gross, Becky. They’re starting to finish each other’s sentences, and then make googly eyes right after, Anya told her over the phone the other day. Becky didn’t get it then. She thinks she does, now, though unlike Anya, she finds it sweet. Mr. and Mrs. Forger have the kind of love story Becky usually finds in books and movies, the kind that shouldn’t have stayed hidden—yet paradoxically is even more romantic precisely because it is a secret.
She has a few minutes of pleasant chitchat with the Forgers—how they’re doing since the last time they met, how Becky’s family is doing, a little bit of back-and-forth on politics where Mr. Forger’s pleasant mask slips a little and makes him somehow hotter in Becky’s eyes—but then the song changes, a rendition of a hit from ten years ago. Mrs. Forger turns to look at Mr. Forger. He offers her his hand and they step into the dance floor, leaving Becky with their daughter.
They even look picture perfect, Becky thinks. Mr. Forger’s tie is the exact same shade of burgundy as Mrs. Forger’s dress, just as his lapel pin is the same gold as her earrings, as Anya’s earrings. The pair step right in time with the tempo, turning and twirling in a complicated way that draws the attention of the party. Not that they’re paying attention to anyone else but each other, their gazes locked and their lips quirked in perfect symmetrical smiles. It makes Becky a little bit heartsick just looking at them. It has been many years since her own family picture is incomplete, and despite their multiple disagreements, Becky and her father are united by their mutual understanding that there should not be a new Mrs. Blackbell. It is the right choice, and yet.
If only she’s a little bit less of a silly romantic, really.
She drinks her champagne some more, then digs the flask out of her pocket to tip a splash of mystery liquor into her flute. Tonight is not the time to be melancholic. Especially not with Anya around.
“It’s okay,” Anya says quietly. “You can say it.”
Becky absolutely can not, but it’s not like she can stop Anya from overhearing her thoughts, either. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Get it out of your system.”
Becky looks down on the champagne flute in her hand, then back at the dance floor. Mrs. Forger seems to have said something funny, because Mr. Forger is laughing as he twirls her. “Okay,” Becky says. She takes a sip of the champagne, which is now awful but at least fortifying. “Anya—”
“Mmhm?”
Becky tries to figure out the best way to word her feelings, and fails. So, she says the next true thing, the one she always thinks of whenever she meets Anya’s parents anyway. “Anya, despite his age, your dad is still sex on legs.”
Anya makes a despairing, dismayed sound. As apology, Becky refills Anya’s flute with whatever is in the flask, which she downs in one go. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, smudging her lipstick a little. “Okay. Is that it?”
“No,” Becky admits. “Your mom. She can also totally get it.”
Another horrified noise, followed with a surprisingly steady, “Well, it’s not like the rest of the room isn’t thinking about it too.”
“Oh, ew.” Becky doesn’t envy Anya, on that front. If she had to hear about how hot her father is for hours on end every day, she thinks she’ll go mad.
“By the way,” Anya says, clearly desperate to change the topic, “is Damian coming?”
“I told you he RSVPed.”
“Yeah, but he’s not here yet,” Anya says, frowning in that particular way Becky knows to be her mind-reading frown. Then, she makes a sound. “Nope. He’s here. Aaaaand he saw us.”
Becky sees him, too, tall and pretty as he parts the floor with every step closer to them. Next to her, Anya shrinks smaller and smaller as if she wants to fit into Becky’s pocket.
Becky elbows her best friend. “Anya?”
“Yeah?”
“Did something happen the last time you two went on a date?”
“Maybe?”
“Do I want to know?”
Anya grimaces. “You always want to know, Becky.”
“Correct. You should’ve told me. But there’s no time, so.” Grabbing Anya by the shoulders, Becky wrestles the smaller girl and shoves her into Damian’s horribly fit chest. “You’re welcome, Desmond. Don’t make her cry.”
Damian snorts. “I’ll have you know, this time she’s the one who ma—almost made me cry.”
Oh, damn. Damian’s eyes are a little puffy. What the hell happened? Becky stares at Anya, pointing two fingers toward her own eyes before turning her hand and brandishing it at her best friend. “We’ll talk later.”
“Cheers, Blackbell,” Damian says, tipping an invisible hat at Becky as he puts an arm around Anya’s waist.
Anya grumbles something about how she’s hungry and how no one is ever on her side, but then Damian takes out a beaten-up paper package out of his suit jacket, which turns out to be full of little peanut butter sandwiches. Anya quickly shoves two of them into her mouth, though she comments on how dumb it is to bring a lunch bag to a party. Her boyfriend, to his credit, just looks absolutely, hopelessly besotted as he leads her away and to a hopefully more private location to talk.
There’s another love story for the ages. Becky seems to be surrounded by a plague of them—or maybe the Forgers are just magnets for fairy tale romances.
Well, at least this liquor is keeping her warm tonight.
Alone with nothing but the flask and her own lonesomeness, Becky dips out of the main ballroom. A bit of bracing fresh air would probably help. Aimlessly, she walks through hallways and past the rooms currently open to the guests, into the little greenhouse her father had constructed for her mother back then. She flips the switch for the sun lamps, and it isn’t long before it’s properly warm in there.
A stern, polite voice interrupts her observation of the roses. “Excuse me, miss. You can’t be here—oh.” The man—a member of the family’s security staff, looking at the earpiece and the pin on his suit—gapes at her for a moment, as if losing the capacity to speak. Then, he stands up a little straighter, if that’s even possible, squaring his massive shoulders and staring resolutely at a spot over her head. The glare on his glasses conceals his eyes from her. “Miss Blackbell. I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s fine.” She takes a step closer to him, tilting her head. He looks somewhat familiar, yet she could swear she has never seen him among the security team before. “Are you new?”
“Yes, miss.”
Becky takes a good look at him as she approaches. He’s a specimen, not only tall but also broad and bulky. A rectangle of a man. Even his face is rectangular with a strong jaw, square glasses, and angular sharp eyebrows. His hair is all slicked back, showing an annoyingly even—and also rectangular—hairline. It’s hard to place his age. There are wisps of silver around his temple, though his face seems to be lineless enough. He’s most definitely older than her, though.
And, she observes, not entirely unattractive.
She stops half a step away from him. He’s so tall, he towers over her, but he doesn’t slouch or kneel or do those silly patronizing things. He doesn’t even look at her, keeping his eyes straight ahead—but she’s looking at him, and more specifically, at the name tag pinned over his left breast, perfectly eye level with her.
“William Watkins? Wait, it’s Bill, isn’t it? Bill Watkins.” She remembers him. They were never particularly close, as she was in Cecile and he was in Wald, but it’s hard to forget the boy who was three times as big as any other kid in his year. Their life had intersected in a couple of memorable ways: he knocked her out with a dodgeball one time, and they got a stella together from that horrible bus hijacking.
“Yes, miss.”
So not older than her. The same age as her even, though you wouldn’t know it looking at him. That’s what probably threw her earlier. In her mind, he was still the fifteen-year-old boy who looked like he was twenty-six, rather than the twenty-one-year-old man who now looks at least thirty, with some premature white hair to boot. He’d gone and attended a military academy when the rest of them stayed at Eden; the last time she’d seen him was ages ago.
She says, “Do you remember me? We were in the same year at Eden.”
A pause, and the smallest quirk of a smile. “Yes, miss.”
“Okay, are you just messing with me now? We were schoolmates, you can drop the miss.”
“Is that an order, miss?”
Becky throws her hands up. “Oh, for—”
“I work for your family,” he adds quietly. “It would be improper. Miss.”
“Why?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why do you work for my family? Last I heard, you went to the military academy. Shouldn’t you be a…” Becky trails away, doing math quickly in her head, “lieutenant? Right about now?”
He stiffens a little further; any more, and he’d be a veritable statue. It hadn’t occurred to her that it might’ve been too personal a question—too sensitive, even—to ask. Her cheeks burn with embarrassment. It’s quite obvious, the more she thinks about it. She knows his father is a general. Her work is so closely entwined with the military, after all, that it would be impossible to not know the top brass by name. He’s on tonight’s invite list, though she hadn’t seen him earlier when she was in the main hall, and yet his son is working security for the party. That alone should’ve told her that the situation with Bill’s employment is… fraught, to say the least.
“Sorry,” she says. “You don’t have to answer that, if you don’t want to.”
He smiles, that little lopsided quirk on the corner of his lips, and finally says, “I suppose I found military life unpalatable.”
She waits.
He doesn’t offer more.
“So!” Becky exclaims, more to break the silence than anything else. “Did they make you do this because you’re too new to ask for time off?”
“No,” Bill replies. “I volunteered.”
“Still so chivalrous, after all this time. I guess you didn’t change much, other than the disillusionment of the military.”
He hums in thought. “I got taller.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” He’s got to be over two meters now. Becky isn’t short—she’s taller than some men, even—and yet Bill positively dwarfs her. “What do they feed the Watkins?”
“Meat and potatoes, and usually under-seasoned.”
“You’re joking.”
“My father is of the opinion that food should be sustenance, not an indulgence.”
That’s the dumbest thing Becky has ever heard. “Well, that changes now. Did you have dinner already?”
“I’m on the clock, miss.”
“Again with the miss! Answer the question, Bill.”
He shifts his weight from one foot to another, just a little. “No,” he admits eventually. “I was going to eat after my shift.”
“Well, I also haven’t had dinner, and I’m very hungry, so I’m going to go to the kitchen now and get something to eat. You wouldn’t let me go there all alone with all these drunk strangers around the house, would you?” she says, batting her eyelashes at him in the most ridiculous way.
He doesn’t laugh. His jaw falls slack, he makes an uhhhh sound, and—after Becky grins even wider and bats her eyelashes even faster—he finally asks, “Has one of the guests been harassing you, miss?”
“Oh my god, you think I was being serious.” She giggles a little—it’s a horrible, girlish sound she’s trying to train herself out of—before clamping a hand over her mouth. “No, Bill, I’ll be fine going around my own house. I was inviting you to have dinner with me.”
He doesn’t answer her immediately, clearly hesitating.
“Look, if they stuck you in this part of the house, they probably just want you out of the way. It’s far from the party area, it’s far from the family vault, it’s far from the bedrooms. No one’s going to miss you if you leave your post for half an hour.”
Still, he is unmoving. She’s beginning to wonder if he really has become a statue after all, and it’s her fault.
“It’s not an order,” she finally says, not knowing what else to tell him. “I don’t want to order you around.”
“I know, miss.” His voice is so gentle, it actually hurts to hear it. “Have a nice dinner.”
“Oh, ma petite princesse, qu’est-ce qui s’est passé?” exclaims Henri the moment Becky enters the kitchen. The head chef abandons his station where he’d been inspecting rows and rows of perfectly plated cakes and rushes to where Becky stands to peer at her in a way that makes her think she’s going to be sent back for being undercooked. “It’s a boy?”
“It could’ve been a girl, too!” Becky exclaims, tossing her arms in the air.
“No, you have a different face for your girl problems. Come. Sit.” He leads her to the kitchen staff’s dining area, drawing her a chair before disappearing for a moment to bark orders to the other chefs. A chorus of heard, chef, and then Henri reappears with a small basket of still-hot rolls and a bowl of soup. It’s a bright orange color that is probably tomato or pumpkin, with a swirl of white cream and a sprinkle of chopped parsley on top. Deceptively simple, though nothing ever is with Henri’s cooking. “How much have you had to drink, hm? And on an empty stomach, too?”
Becky refuses to answer that question, choosing instead to occupy her mouth with the roll, torn in half and dipped in the soup. Sublime, as always, a symphony of flavors so complex she’s sure no one else in the world eats as well as she does. When she’s swallowed the first bite, which settles warm and bracing in her stomach, she says, “I didn’t even drink that much.”
“You know better than to let a boy ply you with liquor,” Henri says, as if he didn’t hear her at all.
“I didn’t let him do anything! Also, he’s not a boy, he’s a man.”
“I have heard that one before, yes,” Henri replies. He’s so lucky he cooks well, with that kind of attitude. “And so what did this boy do that you stormed here looking like… that?”
“What,” Becky says, immediately whipping out her compact mirror from her pocket to check her makeup. “Do I look bad?”
“But of course not, you always look perfect. I only mean you seemed like you were looking for a gun, which I will have you know, we don’t have any, here.”
“I always have my gun with me.”
“You looked like you wanted a bigger one.” Henri rests his elbows on the table, most uncouthly, and presses his fingertips together as he leans forward. “And do not distract me with gun talk, mademoiselle. Tell me about this boy.”
“He’s a man,” Becky protests, one last time before finally telling Henri about Bill. Their little shared history, their meeting just now, his reticence throughout their short conversation, and finally, his refusal to her invitation.
Henri leans back, breathing out quietly. “Well, I’ll be. I suppose he is a man. A very young one, but a man.”
“That’s the highest praise you’ve ever given anyone I’ve shown any interest in.”
“Only the best for the best of the Blackbells,” Henri says, though he says it a little mutinously. “Come now, you cannot blame him for not wanting to abandon his duties, especially not so early into his employment.”
“I guess not.”
“And it is a little inappropriate to be so familiar with the daughter of his employer, hm?”
“You’re one to talk, Henri.”
“Ah, but I am not besotted with the young miss, and she has thrown up on my shoes that one time she snuck in after quite the wild night out. I have leverage.”
“You’re horrible,” Becky grumbles, but then his words register in her mind and she asks, “Is he besotted with me?”
Henri clears his throat. Looks away. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Henri.”
“I have never met him. I cannot say.” He is twiddling his thumbs. She wants to scream.
“That means nothing and you know it! Tell me the gossip, immediately, or I will tell dad about the time you baked us those very interesting brownies. That’s right, I have leverage too.”
Henri’s eyes are very, very wide. Becky glares at him even harder.
“Okay! Okay. You know Maisie runs every new hire through Martha, yes?”
Maisie, Martha’s niece and successor as the Blackbells’ family butler, is a touch paranoid—which is just as well that Martha loves doing background checks even after her retirement. “What did Martha say?”
“She said…” Henri falters, clearly trying to figure out how much he can say. “Now, mademoiselle, it is quite impossible to know what is inside his heart. However…”
“Yes?”
“Martha said, it would be good to have someone in the young miss’ corner.”
Somehow, that infuriates her even more. “Why does everyone like him?!”
Henri ignores that question. “Now, he may have refused to leave his station to come here and eat with you, but he did admit he was hungry.”
“He didn’t say that.”
Henri clicks his tongue. “A man that size is always hungry. Too much muscle to feed, you see. If you do not feed him, he will shrink, and then there will be less of him for you to like.”
Before Becky can protest, Henri claps his hands twice in quick succession, and as if rehearsed, his sous chef takes away the empty dishes in front of her and replaces them with—
“A picnic basket?” She peeks inside. Rows of sandwiches. A thermos of something, with two cups. Fruits, too, grapes and berries, all easy to snack on with their hands. A small thing of the canapes they serve at the party. Chocolates and cookies. Way too much food for two people to eat, which means Bill probably won’t go starving tonight.
Henri is smiling, kindly and almost parental. “Be careful, now. It is heavy, and we do not want you to twist your ankle.”
“Thank you,” Becky says, standing up—and then nearly losing her balance as she hoists the basket. She’s not weak, but she is wearing the most impractical pair of heels. “Oof, you weren’t kidding.”
She carefully teeters to the kitchen door, one precarious step at a time, wondering if it’s too late to ask them to put the food in a backpack instead because at least it would be less of a balance issue.
As he opens the kitchen door for her, Henri asks, “Would you like me to send one of the commis to carry it for you?”
“No need,” answers a voice Becky didn’t expect to hear.
It is one absolutely massive hand that takes the basket away from Becky’s death grasp, rough palm whispering against her skin. The owner of the hand looks down at her; Becky realizes it is the first time he meets her eyes.
“Why are you here?” she asks, a little breathless and hating herself for it.
“To make sure you made it all right to the kitchen, miss. I was going to go straight back once I ascertained your well-being.” Bill lifts the basket. “I arrived just in time, I see. Where shall I take this for you?”
Becky closes her mouth with a click. Clears her throat. “Your post. It’s for you.”
“Ah.” The bright fluorescent light of the kitchen lets Becky see what the sun lamps at the greenhouse wouldn’t: a smear of dusty pink, high on Bill’s devastatingly sharp cheekbones. “Thank you. You needn’t have.”
“It’s not my idea,” she admits. “I told Henri about how you wouldn’t—couldn’t—come to eat here with me, and he put this together for you.”
“Only because she was worried you would go starving,” Henri says, chipper as anything.
“Well, thank you, too, monsieur,” Bill says politely.
If this goes on, they’ll stand here all night, throwing politesse at each other. Becky hooks her arm around Bill’s elbow and tries not to swoon at how sturdy it feels. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t have you leave your post for too long.”
“Miss—”
“I’m feeling a bit unsteady on these heels, that’s all.”
Bill stammers something, and eventually offers, very quietly, “I can carry you?”
Tempting offer, but maybe she’d rather keep her dignity so early in whatever this is she’s trying to do with him. Rolling her eyes, she pats his—so, so big—bicep. “Just walk.”
“Yes, miss.”
Except they have barely taken two steps when Bill stops in his tracks, head tilted, one hand on his earpiece.
“Problem?”
“A guest is making a scene. He claims someone stole from him.” Bill frowns. “An heirloom… flask?”
Ah, shit. “Guess we’re taking a detour, Bill.”
It is, as Becky expected, Mr. Mendelsohn who is raving and yelling in the middle of the ballroom, a loose circle of guests eyeing him with disgust and amusement. He says a lot of things, mostly along the lines of “One of you all is a thief, and you better step forward now or I’ll make you regret it!” All the while, his wife is clinging to his arm, petting it uselessly. He doesn’t seem to even notice her, really. It looks like even without his flask, he’d done a fine job getting drunk on his own.
Becky sights Anya in the far corner of the room. Their eyes meet. Becky shakes her head, just once, but Anya’s expression transforms into something completely aghast as she mouths something that Becky is willing to bet spells out, Bill Watkins?!
Becky shakes her head harder, then ignores Anya’s increasingly insane gesticulations. She has more pressing issues at the moment.
Releasing Bill’s arm, Becky takes one step into the circle. He tries to stop her, but she shoots him a look and he steps back, arms behind his back, shoulders perfectly square. God, but his posture is flawless.
Focus, Blackbell.
“Mr. Mendelsohn? Hello?”
“You,” the man whirls, his toupee bouncing on his very smooth head. “You stole from me.”
“Um, no,” Becky lies. “But I did find this just now, near the buffet?”
Mr. Mendelsohn snatches the flask, opens it, tips it toward his lips. “It’s empty!”
“Is it?” Becky asks, making her eyes go very, very wide. “I didn’t really check.”
“Stop lying. You stole this, then you drank it all.”
“I—” Becky begins, but then Bill steps forward, placing himself firmly between her and Mr. Mendelsohn.
“Sir, Miss Blackbell lives here. I cannot imagine any reason she would have to steal your flask of—may I?” He leans in, sniffing the air. “Ah, yes. Middle-shelf vodka.”
“How dare—”
“Only the best for the best of the Blackbells—and I must insist that it be applied to your behavior too, sir, or we might have to ask you to leave.”
It is then that Mrs. Mendelsohn stands up straighter, gripping the arm of her husband tightly as if holding the leash of an animal. “We are leaving,” she says coldly. “Miss Blackbell, you seem like a sweet girl, if young and silly, so I’ll tell you what you might not know already. Your guard dog is a failure his family tried to sweep under the rug. Since you insist on having only the best, I thought you might want to be informed of that fact.”
Bill doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. He simply stands there, still except for the trembling tension of his arms.
Becky places a hand over his tight fist and puts on her best business smile. “Happy new year, Mrs. Mendelsohn. Mr. Mendelsohn.”
When she turns around, her father is there, sweat dotting his temples. Still not speaking, Bill shifts half a step back and away from her.
She asks, “How much did you hear?”
“I just got here, sweetie. The defense minister wanted a private chat.”
Becky nods. She understands. Business is business, and it’s not like a lot of people can say no to the defense minister. “It’s okay. I handled it.”
“Are you alright?”
She smiles stiffly, if only to reassure her father. “I have a headache, honestly. May I be excused?”
“Of course.” Her father leans in, pressing a kiss to her temple. Then, to Bill, “Will you escort her for a while, Watkins?”
Bill nods, and off they go, stares and murmurs sending them off.
Bill doesn’t ask where they’re going, so Becky doesn’t say. If she has to shatter the frangible silence that has descended upon them, she’ll do so when she actually has something to say. For now, though, she simply walks, and he simply follows, her heels clicking against the floor, his steps oddly quiet for his size. If she doesn’t look back, she can almost pretend she’s walking alone—so she makes sure to turn to him every so often, just to be sure that he’s there.
They stop at the double doors of her rooms. When she pushes them open, taking a step inside the sitting room, she feels his hesitation once again, but one look from her and he inclines his head, following her in.
Carelessly, she kicks off her heels—wincing as her soles reacclimate to being flat on the ground again—and flops down onto the sofa. Bill sets down the basket he’s still carrying on the coffee table, and when she pats the armchair next to the couch, he sits down, sinking ungracefully into the cushions.
Finally, Becky says, “You know, I did steal that flask.”
Bill huffs out a half-laugh. “Yes, I figured as much.”
“I mean, I was the distraction. Anya did the lift.”
“I didn’t know she’s an accomplished pickpocket.”
“She’s not.” Becky frowns. “I don’t think so, at least. She said it’s just fun to learn.” Anya has an arsenal of skills she’s learned for fun: lockpicking, lipreading, codebreaking. She’s not an expert in any of them, but she told Becky that her teacher considered her ‘passable’.
“Learning is rewarding. I’ve been picking up gardening myself.”
Becky tries to imagine Bill crouched in a garden, dirt under his nails, face cast in the shadow of a sun hat. It suits him, she decides. “Really?”
“Please don’t raise your expectations too high. I don’t have a real garden, only a few potted plants I care for at my apartment.”
“What kind of plants?” She busies herself by taking the food out of the basket, pushing a sandwich on a napkin his way, pouring what she can see now is hot chocolate into the two mugs.
“Ah… an herb collection, mostly, for cooking. A few decorative ones, too—spider plant, tulips. It’s not their season yet, though.” He picks the sandwich up. “Thank you.”
She watches him polish the sandwich off in two massive bites, then pushes the basket a little farther his way. “Help yourself to more. I already ate earlier.”
He does. The gusto with which he demolishes the sandwiches is, quite honestly, impressive. It’s like he’s scared the food will be taken away if he doesn’t finish it within a ridiculously short amount of time—which, considering what she knows about the military, is probably not that far off the mark. He does slow down, though—after the fifth sandwich, he takes his time to pick at the things in the basket. When he finally takes something out, it is a strawberry, gleaming red and perfect.
“This is the best one,” he declares, and sets it carefully in front of her.
Blinking away treacherous, unwanted tears, Becky looks down at the strawberry—it really is the best of the best, its shape such that it looks like it just rolled out of a still life painting—and then at him. “If you knew I stole the flask, why did you cover for me?”
“I don’t work for him,” Bill answers, every word firm in its surety. “I work for you, miss.”
A wild bubble of laughter escapes Becky. “Is that it? If I killed a man, would you help me hide the body, too?”
He thinks about this for a while. “I assume you’d have a good enough reason, so yes, I suppose I would.”
“You didn’t know what my reason was for stealing his drink, though.”
Bill chuckles. His teeth are terribly straight and white. “I see a man who has every reason to have his alcohol separated from him.”
“Why do you have a good answer for everything?” Becky demands. “It’s annoying. You should try to be unreasonable about something, every now and then.”
His smile drops. All of him droops, like a wilting plant, and Becky has to curl her hands into fists on her knees to stop herself from reaching out to him.
“Is it something I said?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “No, it’s…” he begins, then trails away.
Becky waits. She’s never been too good at waiting. Too impatient, too fidgety, too used to a lifetime of convenience only money can buy. And yet, she waits now, watching Bill closely, trying to read every minute twitch and every tense muscle in his frame as if she could then read his mind the way her best friend can read minds.
Except, of course, she can’t.
Hence the waiting.
When Bill speaks, his voice is small. Timid, almost. “A month before graduation, I dropped out.”
She draws a breath. “I didn’t know.” She thought he must’ve at least graduated.
“Father wasn’t too pleased. He did his best to keep it under wraps, as did the rest of the family. It’s embarrassing. They didn’t even see it coming.”
“What happened?” She knows Bill well enough to tell that it’s not something silly like bad grades or a misguided rebellious phase. In fact, she’s willing to bet he excelled at all the skills he had to learn, and then some.
“It’s not one big scandalous incident, if you’re wondering. Rather, an accumulation of little things I’d had to endure or at the very least turn a blind eye to. Petty bullying, mostly. I respect the chain of command. I understand its necessity. But to watch it be abused, and watch that abuse be excused, so many times…” He picks his mug up. It looks like a demi-tasse, in his hand, and he downs the cocoa like a shot of whiskey. “I started researching. Military law, at first, to see if I could’ve argued against the bullies better. But there’s the backlog of cases, and the things I saw—the things that have been done under orders of the state—it’s difficult to reconcile that with the ideals I believed we were protecting.”
Becky understands. She, too, has seen the things that Blackbell weaponry has facilitated and enabled. It has shaken her, and for the longest time, she considered leaving it all behind. She remembers telling Anya as much when she was visiting the Forgers, and she remembers Mr. Forger asking her offhandedly as he served them tea and cakes, and what happens to the company after that?
She realized, then, that only by staying could she have the power to decide where to take Blackbell Industries in the future. And so, she stays.
Pouring more cocoa into his mug, Becky asks, “What did you do?”
“Nothing. I hadn’t even had time to arrange my thoughts. Just… one family dinner, out of nowhere, my father told me, be reasonable, William.”
“Ah.”
“It was surprisingly easy to quit. I think they only tolerated me there because of who my father was, and because my grades were too good to justify expulsion. So they let me go. With what little savings I had, I moved out and rented an apartment, and then I applied to work here.”
“Why here specifically?”
“I enjoy doing security, I work well in a hierarchy, and your team has a good reputation,” he answers, counting the reasons on his hand. “It’s a little bit of a dream job. I honestly didn’t expect to get it.”
“Martha likes you, I think.”
Bill turns ever so slightly pink. “Yes, she called me for an interview pretty much immediately after I applied. She wanted to know, ah, what I thought of you.”
Leaning forward so far she almost falls from the sofa, Becky asks, casually, “And what did you say?”
“The truth, miss.”
“Which is?”
He sits up straighter, looking a little ridiculous in his throne of pink cushions. When he speaks, the pink on his cheeks deepen as if to match the sofa in an act of camouflage, and yet his voice is steady. “I didn’t think you ever really noticed me, and we didn’t share a lot of classes together—but I had admired you ever since you threw that message out of the hijacked bus we were on.”
Helplessly—and for lack of a better thing to say—Becky responds with, “But that was so long ago.”
“I’m not a forgetful man.”
“What if I’d changed since then?”
“You did get taller.”
Against herself, Becky finds herself laughing. “Bill Watkins,” she says, giggling in a most girlish and unfashionable way, “was that a joke?”
He smiles at her, so sweetly and earnestly that she cannot help but smile back—though the moment is soon broken by her yawn, stifled a little too late.
“I should get back to my duties and let you rest, miss,” he says reluctantly. “Thank you for the dinner.”
He stands up. She catches his sleeve. He stops, staring at her, wide-eyed.
Outside, she hears the crowd of guests counting down. Ten, nine, eight…
“It’s almost the new year,” she says, improvising wildly.
“Yes,” he replies.
Seven, six, five…
She continues, “It’s good luck to kiss someone at midnight.”
“Miss—”
Four, three, two…
“Wouldn’t you like the both of us to have good luck next year?” And, pathetically, “Please?”
One!
“As you wish.”
There’s a cheer outside, and then the thundering sounds of fireworks—and yet nothing is quite as loud as the thrum of her own blood in her ears as Bill leans down, tips her face up, and kisses her like he’s always wanted to kiss her and would never get a second chance at it. Becky finds herself clinging to him, hands gripping his shoulders, and—when that’s still not enough—legs hiking up so she can climb him like the tree that he is. He doesn’t seem to mind at all, happily supporting her weight, large hands wrapped around her thighs, pressing dimples into her flesh. When they part and she begins kissing the rest of his face, starting from those ridiculous cheekbones, he gasps:
“Becks—”
Becky pauses her attentions on him. She wants to tease and say, what happened to ‘miss’? Except the look on his face stops her short. It is an expression she truly has never seen on Bill Watkins, thoroughly discomposed. Almost debauched, even.
Fun.
“Yes, Bill?” she replies, resting her chin on his shoulder so he cannot see her absolutely giddy grin.
“Becks,” he repeats, and this time it sounds like he just wants to taste the nickname, dragging the syllable with his now-hoarse voice. He gets on his knees, depositing her back on the sofa, but does not immediately stand up. His hands linger, wrapped around hers. “I really should go.”
Pouting a little, she says, “I guess I wouldn’t like you so much if you weren’t such a high-caliber guard.”
It had been the right thing to say, looking at how he perks up. “I’ll be off-shift tomorrow morning, if you’re amenable to a breakfast date.”
In response, she kisses him again, quick and chaste this time. “Happy new year, Bill.”
He stands up, tall like a monument. “Happy new year, miss,” he says, and leaves her alone in her room.
Becky sighs, picks up the perfect strawberry he’d picked out for her, and pops the whole thing into her mouth. To her surprise, it is more sour than sweet—just the way she likes it.