The Becoming of Noah Shaw (The Shaw Confessions Book 1)

IF SHE REPLIES, I DON’T remember it. I don’t remember her packing and leaving. Only the sound of the door as it closes behind her. I stare at it for a moment and then lean my forehead against the wood and scream.

In that forever moment there’s a storm inside me. When I can breathe again, I move to the window and stare at the street below. The day’s escaped, somehow—at dawn, Stella’s spine was intact and my life was unbroken. Now the dark street’s empty but for a black car. And then I see her. Mara strides down the cobblestones, a small speck, a dot, moving farther away until she turns the corner.

I need to stop staring at the space where she used to be, but when I force my eyes from the window in a minute that feels like an eternity, I’m still here, in this fucking room, somehow fantastically unchanged since she’s left. It’s beyond fathoming—how did I get here? Pacing alone in a room of relics, so completely fucking lost?

I can’t stand still and I can’t seem to leave, so I unlock one of the other trunks, small and brass, and start furiously looking through it, searching for a distraction, a diversion. I find one.

An envelope, large and black, with gold calligraphy addressed to me at the North Yorkshire address. A condolence card, likely—the others seemed to be—but this is unique enough to divert my attention, which desperately needs diverting, so I rip it open, tearing a bit of the thick card that bears only two sentences.

Condolences on your loss. Congratulations on your inheritance.

—A.L.

I throw the card like a disc, giving in to the fresh wave of disgust. I’m about to crush the envelope and bin it when I notice something peeking from the fold. Another paper, which I unfold as well, knowing I’ll regret it, but what’s one more regret to throw in with the lot?

It’s a page torn from a book—some sort of history book. The title isn’t on it. A section about priest holes, the sixteenth-century secret passages created when being a Catholic priest was high treason.

There are rooms in this house even I don’t know about.

I crush the paper in my fist, toss it back into the trunk. The lid slams shut on its own, and with it, everything I’ve faced, to bring me to exactly this moment. He engineered what we are. I knew it, ignored it, and still ended up playing a hand of cards dealt long before I existed, without even knowing the game.

“Only play the games you can win,” Jamie had said. I didn’t realise that the mere fact of my existence makes me a player. How do I win at someone else’s game, with someone else’s rules?

I check my mobile, because it hasn’t sunk in, quite, that she’s gone. I check our texts, e-mails, expecting that little (1) to show up in the account I’ve got just for her, but there’s nothing new. Realising that there might never be anything new again—that I’ve told her I don’t want anything from her again, and she listened—that pain is next level. I can’t take my words back. I also can’t give back the lives that she took.

My hands round into fists, and I dig my nails into my palms. They bleed.

That’s never happened before; the fact of my not healing hasn’t quite sunk in either, I suppose. I consider it.

I don’t have to live without Mara if I don’t want, not anymore. I can finally stop, put an end to it, reach the oblivion I’d been chasing, cut myself and bleed until there is no blood left. That would be an ending too.

That’s when I see the little grey pouch on the floor, where Mara had been sitting. I know what’s inside before I untie the knot, before the single pendant spills into my palm. Mara’s taken the other with her.

I know, then, that I won’t choose to die, not yet, at least. I wagered my heart on her and lost, again and again, but still I would do it. I could never bet on anyone else. I know how you love endings, Mara. But this isn’t ours.

I fasten the chain around my neck.

I won’t quit the game. I’ll destroy the fucking board.