Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 522(@300wpm)
“Myrtle’s lamb stew. Yours?”
“Toast with butter and strawberry jam.” She caught his sideways glance and shrugged. “Don’t judge. It was the one thing my mum always made sure we had.”
“I’m not judging.”
“And who’s Myrtle?”
A warm smile curved his lips. “She’s the closest thing I ever had to a real mum. You’ll meet her when we get back.”
“She lives with you?”
“Yes. So does Nick.”
She grinned at the thought of returning to his home and meeting more of the people that filled his life.
“Favorite midnight snack?”
“Peanut butter on a spoon.”
They traded answers like currency. Favorite colors, favorite books, favorite movies. She didn’t have any shows on account of not having a television. But sometimes, when she visited Maryanne, they would watch The Golden Girls. She liked Rose and Sophia best.
She learned Jack couldn’t cook, had never been on a holiday that wasn’t business, and listened to jazz the way other people took medication.
“Jazz is messy.”
“That’s why I like it. It commands your attention and distracts the mind from everything else.”
She liked his reasoning. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.”
“You talk in your sleep.”
“What? What do I say?”
He smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
She swatted his arm, and his laughter filled the car with a sound so rare and unguarded it made her chest ache.
Miles dissolved beneath the tires. The countryside gave way to suburbs, suburbs to the outer sprawl of London, and the city gathered around them in thickening layers of concrete and noise. But instead of turning toward the glass towers and manicured squares she associated with his world, Jack navigated deeper into the city’s underbelly, steering the Bentley through streets that grew narrower and rougher with every turn.
The sky turned flat and grey as factories sent smog billowing into the air. Terraced houses sagged against each other like drunks propped along walls, their brickwork stained with decades of exhaust and neglect.
Satellite dishes clung to facades like barnacles. A mattress slumped against a wheelie bin on the pavement, its stuffing spilling onto cracked concrete. Graffiti tagged a boarded shopfront in violent loops of red and black, and a cluster of teenagers huddled beneath a bus shelter that had lost its glass.
She knew streets like this. Had grown up on one that could have been its twin. She just didn’t know why they were there.
He turned down a narrow road that hadn’t been paved in decades. The potholes were so deep that the Bentley jostled from its usual smooth ride.
Jack pulled the car to the curb and cut the engine. The silence that replaced it was deafening.
He rounded the car and opened her door, offering his hand.
She stepped onto the pavement, her gaze sweeping the row of flats across the road. One building sagged worse than the rest, its windows boarded with damp plywood, a condemned notice pasted to the door in faded municipal ink.
The brick was blackened beyond simple grime, darkened by years of rain channeling through broken guttering. A chain-link fence leaned at an angle across what might have once been a front garden but was now a square of cracked earth.
His jaw was set, his stormy eyes fixed on the condemned door. She followed his stare to the building, then looked up at him, sensing that something about this place still hurt.
“Where are we, Jack?”
He pointed toward the second floor, where a single shattered window reflected the fading sun like a black eye. “My childhood home.”
Everything clicked with the force of a deadbolt sliding into place.
His words from The Preserve came back to her. You’re more like me than you realize.
She looked at the condemned building, then back at the Bentley gleaming at the curb. Took in the man standing between them. The distance between that crumbling flat and the home she visited that morning wasn’t measured in miles. It was measured in scars.
Daisy slipped her hand into his, and his fingers laced tightly through hers.
“That was my room,” he said, still staring at the busted window. “I used to sit up there, planting seeds of revenge like Jack planted magic beans waiting for a beanstalk to grow.” He looked down at the ruined walk. “I was standing right here, when Mum sold me.”
Daisy’s lungs seized in her chest. She had no words to follow such a horrific statement. All she could do was hold his hand as she held space for him in her heart.
“I thought she sent me to a castle in the clouds. Everything was so big. Giant. Even the chancellor.”
She knew in that moment, the chancellor was R.A..
“I was obsessed with the story Jack and the Beanstalk when I was young. It was the first book I ever owned.”
She thought of how Jack in the story slayed the giant and stole his treasures and gold.
“People underestimate what a tiny seed can become. But bury it long enough, and it eventually grows. Quiet and patient. Left unchecked, it will overtake a kingdom.”