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Chapter Seventeen

Beneath Elizabeth's hoodie, the Ink kitten strained, trying to break free of the hold she had on it like it were wrestling itself out from the centre of the Gordian knot. Aunt Joan sat across from her at one of the tables nearest the glass front of Triple C. Both had a cup of black coffee: Aunt Joan's plain, like the French take it, while Elizabeth's was saturated with two sachets of brown sugar. They had been discussing Elizabeth's upcoming interview with the CIA—Aunt Joan was keen to cover every possible question and eventuality—but as Elizabeth focused on her Ink, her aunt's voice faded into the background, as hazy as the rays of sunlight that drifted through the window, as meaningless as the amorphous chatter that amassed like fog above the other tables.

Just calm down. I know he's there. I know you want to see him. But you can't come out now.

At least the brisk weather gave her reason to cover up in her jeans and hoodie; had the temperature hit the highs she'd known in previous years, her choice of clothing would no doubt have drawn Aunt Joan's attention, and had she been forced to opt for something a little cooler, she would have had far less space within which to contain the Ink kitten. Of course, she could have avoided the problem altogether had Aunt Joan let them talk through prep for the interview at the apartment. Then the Ink kitten would have remained quivering below her left collarbone, like it did whenever Aunt Joan showed up. But Aunt Joan had insisted that they go to Triple C, which Henry had been staking out for the past week, and while she'd managed to avoid him before, she could hardly tell Aunt Joan that they had to go elsewhere because her soulmate, the man who refused to vacate her thoughts for one millisecond, was sitting in the booth in the far corner, driving her Ink into a frenzy as he watched her with an unrelenting stare.

She could still taste the softness of his lips, feel their soliloquy of unuttered promises as they moved against her own, sense how his arms wrapping around her made her feel warm and safe, like they were cocooning her in a new home.

You're afraid of being with me because you're afraid one day you might lose me.

What he'd said to her was spot on, as was his assertion that her fears and wants were different things. They were connected, though. And maybe that fear would never go away. And knowing that, what was she supposed to do?

"Elizabeth." Aunt Joan's voice snapped Elizabeth to attention. "Are you listening to me?"

Elizabeth blinked. "What? Of course. I was just thinking." She focused her gaze on her cup of coffee, gripped the handle, and raised it to her lips for a sip, while, restrained by her hold on it, the Ink kitten growled at her like she'd come between it and a plate of tuna. She lowered the cup to the saucer with a light chink, and then looked to Aunt Joan. "How do you know so much about the interview anyway?"

"From my own interview."

Elizabeth's eyebrows shot up and she all but gawped at Aunt Joan. "You applied to the CIA?"

Aunt Joan rearranged the napkin in her lap. (Why she insisted on laying it there when she wasn't eating anything, Elizabeth didn't know.) (Though, she supposed, it did make a good prop for avoiding others' gazes…) "I was offered a place, too."

Elizabeth rested her elbows to the edge of the table and leant in. "What happened?"

"I turned it down for a what I thought was better offer, but which turned out to be one of my biggest regrets."

"I didn't know."

Aunt Joan's gaze darted up to meet Elizabeth's, her eyebrows arched in an almost chiding manner that made Elizabeth feel like maybe she'd overstepped. Her tone sharpened. "That's because I didn't tell you."

Elizabeth retreated from the edge of the table and folded her hands in her lap. The Ink kitten momentarily quit its growling, shrank back and quivered.

Aunt Joan held Elizabeth's gaze for a long moment. Then she stared down into her coffee and shook her head to herself. "We all make mistakes, Elizabeth. The trick is to learn from them. To not let history repeat itself." She raised the cup to her lips and took a sip, one so elegant it might have been learnt at finishing school, and then she placed the cup down, dabbed at her lips with the corner of the napkin, and continued. "Now, speaking of mistakes, there will be a health section to the interview. There's no record of what happened, so keep it to yourself and you will be just fine."

oOoOo

Henry sat in the booth at the back of Coffee, Cake and Cookies. He'd arrived not long after the shop had opened and was on his second cup of coffee—a dash of milk, no sugar—though he wasn't really drinking it, just using it as a prop to enable him to sit there undisturbed, hoping he might spot Elizabeth's aunt when she came to drop off Elizabeth's allowance. It was definitely a long-shot, expecting that she'd come to the coffee shop, and if she turned up without Elizabeth he'd have no chance of recognising her, but staking out Elizabeth's apartment had felt a little too stalker-y for his liking and he was almost certain he'd seen Elizabeth there with her before.

He'd thought it might take weeks to find her, if he ever did, but maybe a little soulmate fate was on his side, for that morning, after seven days of waiting, his Ink leapt up from where it had been lying, chin to paws, over the ridge of his collarbone and ran down to the back of his hand, surrounded in a tingling cloud of excitement, and a few seconds later, Elizabeth and a woman in her mid to late fifties walked through the door.

The shrill ring of the bell that heralded their arrival faded away beneath the conversations that flowed up from the individual tables and coalesced in the air above. Elizabeth headed straight to the counter and ordered, while the older woman took a seat at one of the tables in the window. From the slight tension in Elizabeth's body, the way she held herself like her strings were wound half a turn too tight, he got the sense that she'd noticed him, even though she did nothing to acknowledge his presence.

Elizabeth and the woman talked for almost an hour. Henry watched them, while the Ink puppy strained on the back of his hand, like it were trying to drag him over to their table. Then, when Elizabeth grabbed up her purse, slung the straps over her shoulder and hurried out of the coffee shop, leaving the older woman to fold up her napkin, leave it neatly on the table next to her empty cup and then stoop down to collect her own purse, Henry took his opportunity.

He eased out of the booth, squeezed along the gap between the seats and the queue, and made his way to the front of the coffee shop. At first his Ink spun in excited circles on the back of his hand, perhaps believing he was going after Elizabeth, but then when he came to a stop next to the table, where the woman had lifted her purse into her lap and was sifting through the contents, as if checking she hadn't misplaced anything before she left too, the Ink puppy froze and whimpered, and then scampered up his arm and cowered below his left collarbone.

Henry ignored it. Instead, he spoke to the woman. "Hi, excuse me, are you Elizabeth's aunt?"

The woman stopped sifting and looked up at him. She eyed him with a frown, like she were trying ascertain if he was about to attempt to scam her out of money or not. "Yes. And you are?"

"My name's Henry. Henry McCord." He extended his hand. "I'm Elizabeth's soulmate."

oOoOo

"We met through tutoring." Henry had bought both himself and Elizabeth's aunt—Ms. Faulkner—another cup of coffee, and now sat across from her at the small, circular table next to the glass front of Coffee, Cake and Cookies. "Elizabeth insisted that we keep everything professional, but we got to know each other and we spent a lot of time together and we bonded—"

Ms Faulkner paused with her coffee cup raised to her lips. She arched an eyebrow at Henry. "Are you trying to tell me that you were intimate with my niece?"

A blush burned through Henry's cheeks, but he fought to hold Ms Faulkner's gaze, not wanting to appear like an awkward teenager who stumbled over his words and looked away at the barest mention of sex. "I love her, and I'm pretty sure she feels something for me." He paused, and then shook his head to himself, his gaze dipping to the table. "But she's afraid." He swallowed. "She told me what happened, how she felt the summer of her junior year and what she did. And I know you must be concerned about her and you don't want her to go through anything like that again, but I'm never going to hurt her. I want to help her, I want to be with her, I want to make her happy."

"And you thought you'd tell me because…?"

"Because she won't talk to me." His blush heated once again as, once again, he admitted his failings. "For the past few months, she's been avoiding me."

Ms Faulkner sipped on her coffee and then placed the cup down with a delicate chink against the saucer. "So, you want me to talk to her for you? Am I correct?"

"She's scared, and I understand that. She lost her parents and then her—" He almost said 'friend', but caught himself just in time. "—and then what happened with her For Now. I hoped maybe you could make her see that she doesn't have to spend the rest of her life alone, that just because she's afraid doesn't mean that this time things will be the same."

Ms Faulkner studied him for a long moment. The look she gave him reminded him of what Elizabeth had said when he'd walked her home on his birthday: that her aunt disapproved of Inks and would most definitely disapprove of him too.

"You know she wants a career?" she said eventually.

"I do." He nodded. "She told me about her plans, about the internship, and I support her one hundred per cent."

"And what of your plans?"

"The Marines, and then teaching, hopefully."

She studied him once again, her gaze narrowing ever so slightly.

He feared that maybe she'd bring up the inevitable risk that came with him being in the military, point out that perhaps Elizabeth was right to worry that she might lose him too.

But she didn't. She took another sip of coffee. "And how does her Ink react towards you?"

Henry's gaze drifted out the window and he shook his head, a kind of shrug. "She seems to like me. She always wants to play with my Ink and she's comfortable on me."

"You know, Inks can reveal what a person is truly feeling." Ms Faulkner lowered her cup to the saucer and then rearranged the napkin that rested in her lap. "I suspect Elizabeth does like you, no matter what she says. And it seems you have her best interests at heart."

Henry's breath stilled.

Did that mean she would help him?

If it were possible, her expression was even more unreadable than Elizabeth's.

She looked up at him again, her gaze as sharp as the points of two needles.

A short eternity could have passed in that moment.

He waited for the 'but'.

But instead, she gave a curt nod. "I will talk to her."

His heart leapt. "You will?"

She sent him a look that said she didn't appreciate being asked to repeat herself.

"Thank you." He resisted the urge to shake her hand or hug her or show any kind of physical display of gratitude, which he had no doubt she would not welcome.

"But, in the meantime," her tone took on a warning edge, mirrored by the arch that crept into each eyebrow, "I advise that you give her some space. I think she will come around in time, but she needs to make that decision for herself. No pressure from you."

"Of course." Henry nodded, the buzz of adrenaline still coursing through him.

For the first time in a long while he felt like he could see a way forward, like maybe everything would be okay, maybe things between him and Elizabeth would work out. The Ink puppy ought to have been performing one of its mad dashes across his skin, but instead it continued to quiver beneath his left collarbone. He didn't know why it had taken such a disliking to Elizabeth's aunt when she was the one who was going to help them.