Hi!
So. Huh. If you don't follow me on Tumblr, this might be coming out of nowhere for you haha.
I planned to take a one-month-long break from writing, and... the break kind of lasted longer than expected? So now it's been two years since I last updated this fic and jaldfkjaldkjflkadjf I feel so bad you guys I'm sorry!
Anyway, I'm here now, and i have good news! I finished writing the entire fic! Yes, all of it! It's not all ready for publication, I still need to edit it, then have my lovely beta reader look it over, before i can publish. But I can guarantee that I'll publish regularly from now on, since the fic is finished! The final story will be 30 chapters and one epilogue, so we still have a long way to go ;)
Since its been so long, you might want to reread a couple of chapters (or the whole thing haha) to get a refresher on the story, because we're jumping right in!
So, yeah, i hope you guys like this chapter, I hope you're excited for the rest because I'm certainly really excited to finally being able to share it with you! Let me know what you think in the comments!
The sun had already set when she heard the front door of the house open quietly. So quietly in fact, that if she had been in her bedroom, she probably wouldn't have heard it. She was on her feet immediately, and walked towards the entrance.
"Rhys?" she said, and saw him turn to her. "You said you were coming back this morning, so I thought maybe you …"
Her voice trailed off as she took in his face. He was somber, more than she'd ever seen him, and a bruise was starting to form on his cheek. His lips seemed swollen, and she could see a red stain just under his lower lip, as if he had wiped away blood. His voice was hoarse when he spoke.
"I hoped you'd be sleeping."
"What happened?" She stopped just in front of him, taking in the damage to his face.
"Nothing, I just… something from work came up. I'm fine."
"You're not fine! Come on," she said, grabbing his hand to get him to the bathroom upstairs. But she saw him wince at her touch and looked down at his hands, only to find his knuckles extremely red, and slightly cut open in some places. Letting go of his hand, she still led him up the stairs and inside the bathroom, forcing him to sit down on the edge of the tub. She turned the light on to look at him properly, and felt her heart sink at the view. Both his hands were red, and his lips looked worse under the bright light. But more than anything else, he seemed angry, on edge, his jaw clenched and his eyes staring blankly at nothing.
"Rhys? Do you have a first aid kit somewhere?"
He didn't say anything for a while, and only when she started to rummage through the cupboards did he answer. "Third drawer on your left."
She took out a small case from the drawer, opened it on the counter, and sat down beside him. The silence around them was heavy as she found a clean compress and some disinfectant, and proceeded to spray the liquid on the cloth.
She reached up, and gently started applying the compress to his lips. He winced at that, and finally looked at her. But she was too focused on what she was doing to look back.
"What happened?" she asked again, as she was wiping away the dry blood that covered his chin.
He seemed to think for a moment. "Just some deal at work. Nothing unusual."
"I knew you didn't keep the peas for intense workouts," she grumbled, and he chuckled.
"Nope."
She took a new compress and finished cleaning up his lip. Then she looked at his cheek, where a bruise was slowly turning darker. "I don't suppose you have frozen peas here?"
"I don't think so. Maybe there is some ice in the freezer downstairs, I'm not sure."
Indeed there was, and a few minutes later, she was wrapping it in a cloth and applying it to his cheek. They didn't move until finally, he talked.
"So, how was your day? How are you feeling?"
She wanted to know more about what had happened to him, but he didn't seem ready to talk about it, so she just answered.
"I called my boss to ask her if I could take a few days off. She said yes, and told me Tamlin went there looking for me yesterday. Apparently, he scared off quite a lot of people, he was very angry."
She had said all this in a matter-of-fact tone, hoping he wouldn't dwell on the news, but he answered immediately. "He didn't hurt anyone, did he?"
"No, of course not." And because she felt him tense up, she looked into his eyes. "Why?"
"No reason."
But the answer had come too quickly. "Rhys," she insisted, but didn't get a response. "Rhys, did you get into a fight with him?"
The answer was too long to come.
"Yes."
She was unable to form a coherent thought, her heart pounding in her chest as she tried to picture what might have happened between them. She wasn't sure what she could say. So she said nothing, instead she let him hold the ice against his cheek, and moved to prepare a new pack of ice for his hands, hoping he'd tell her more.
"I didn't plan for it to happen, Feyre. But this afternoon, he came to my apartment. Looking for you." Her fingers tensed around the cloth, but she gently put the ice on Rhys' red fingers as he continued. "The second I saw him, I could only think about the bruises on your wrists, and I wanted to get back at him. But I remembered that I wasn't supposed to know about you leaving, so I feigned ignorance. I thought he'd believe me but then things sort of… escalated."
"What do you mean?"
He seemed reluctant to answer, but she kept pressing the cold cloth against his fingers, waiting for him to talk. Finally, he sighed.
"He was really aggressive, and kept asking me where you were. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, and that he needed to calm down if he wanted me to understand him. He didn't." She closed her eyes, because of course he hadn't. Tamlin only got angrier around people that tried to reason with him. But Rhys wasn't done talking. "He kept repeating that he was looking for you. I honestly don't know why he was so hellbent on the idea that you'd come to me. I mean, I get why you came, but I don't know what got him thinking you'd come to me."
Feyre didn't answer. Because of course, she knew why Tamlin had thought she'd go to Rhys. The painting had enraged him, he had been persuaded that there was something going on between them. So obviously, he thought she would go to him.
It was a good thing she hadn't stayed any longer at Rhysand's apartment.
"Anyway, he wouldn't calm down, and the other tenants started coming out to see what was going on. That only got him angrier."
She could picture it now, Tamlin standing in the shabby corridor, yelling so loudly the neighbors heard, incoherent and hellbent on getting an answer to his questions. She put the ice down and reached for some clean dressing to wrap around his knuckles.
"I tried to get him to calm down, and when I saw it would be no use I tried to get him to leave. I… I might have told him you had good reasons to leave." She looked up and found him looking at her. "I know I shouldn't have, but he was so angry and I said it without thinking."
"What did you say?"
He looked away again. "That he was a violent, angry man and that if you'd finally realized how bad he was for you, then good for you because you deserved better." She probably needed to say something. Anything. Thank him, tell him he was right, and he hadn't done anything wrong. No words came. But Rhys wasn't done. "That's when he gave me this," he said, pointing to his bruised cheekbone, "and started throwing punch after punch at me, so I fought back until a neighbor pulled him off and he finally left. I'm sorry."
She finished wrapping one of his hands, and gently grabbed the other one to repeat the operation. "It's not your fault, Rhys."
"I shouldn't have answered his blows, I should've remained calm and not fought back."
"He wouldn't have stopped." The words were out before she knew it, and the second she said them, she knew they were true. "He wouldn't have stopped hurting you if you hadn't done something." She put a plaster to hold the dressing together, but didn't let go of his hand. Finally, she looked back at his face, and found him already looking at her. They stayed silent for what seemed like an eternity, and finally he shot her a sad smile.
"I still should have been calmer. He fired me."
"How can he fire you? I thought you were working for Hybern?"
"I am. But Tamlin called him and told him that he wanted me to stay away from his family and his business."
"I'm sorry. You lost your insight on their affairs because of me."
"It's okay. The Atwell family's business isn't the prime subject of my investigation anyway. Plus," he added in a lighter tone, "it wouldn't have mattered now. I'm being pulled out of my cover in a few days."
"What? For real?"
"For real. That's actually what I wanted to tell you the other day at your house. Amren decided we got everything we could out of my assignment, so it's almost over."
"That's great!" He didn't answer. "Isn't it?"
"It is. It's just… I don't know how to go back to my real life, now." He let out the last sentence in a mere whisper, and she wanted to hug him, to take away all that pain he was feeling and help him feel confident again. But she only squeezed his hand slightly as he continued. "I was gone for so long, I don't know how to be myself anymore. Even being here," he gestured to their general surroundings, "in this house, feels strange. I inherited this house from my parents when they passed away. I love it with all my heart, and I spent the last two years dreaming about being here. And now that I am, I feel like I don't belong."
He had a lost look in his eyes, and she wanted to make it go away. So she got up.
"You need some air." And without letting go of his hand, she led him out of the bathroom and towards the terrace. A minute later, they were sitting in the chairs outside, a fresh wind blowing from the Sidra, their only source of light coming from the buildings on the other side of the river.
They didn't talk for long minutes, but Feyre never let go of his hand, and he didn't move away either. Finally, when she was getting used to the quiet sound of the river, he said:
"I did bad things while undercover. Things that I will never be able to erase."
She pictured Sandy's eyes going blank and the blood pooling around her head. Her hand must have started shaking, because she felt his grasp tighten on her fingers, even though he still didn't look at her.
"Sandy's death was definitely one of the worst," he said, as if he'd read her mind, "but there were other things, too."
She didn't know if she wanted to hear more awful things about the world she had crawled away from, but he needed to talk about it, and she wouldn't deny him.
"When I was in prison, I was part of so many brawls, I even instigated fights to create the opportunities I needed to move up in the hierarchy. Prison was dangerous, all the time… Here, even though the danger is always present, I almost always have an out. In prison… if something happened to me, if somebody discovered who I really was… there was no out. I was on my own. So I did what I had to in order to stay under the radar and still get noticed. Just the right amount.
"When I got out, I already had a reputation, so Hybern used it. He made me go and collect his debts. Or ask questions to reluctant people. For more than a year, that's all I was, a lackey executing orders and beating people up to get what my boss wanted. I did… I did bad things. A lot of bad things."
She could see his eyes shine with unshed tears as he talked, and she had a hard time imagining that this kind, gentle man beside her had done such awful things. She couldn't imagine the soft fingers currently intertwined with hers beating someone up. She couldn't think about his charming voice instillating bad thoughts and rumors into other people's minds to get them to fight for his interests.
"He sent me to beat one of the salesmen in front of his girlfriend and kid last year, because he had lost some of his product and couldn't reimburse Hybern for it." Tears were running freely down his cheeks now. "His girlfriend, their kid… they cried so much, but the other men were holding them back, and I had to do it, and… I tried to go gently, but after a while I felt his nose break under my fist and…" He trailed off, and a sob escaped his lips.
Feyre couldn't take it anymore. She let go of his hand, got up and went to sit on the arm of his chair, wrapping her arms around his neck. drawing his head towards her until his face was buried in the crook of her neck. She felt one of his arms encircle her, and he was crying freely, tears crashing against her skin as he let out everything he'd been holding onto.
She didn't move away.