To the day.
Cassie moved back a little and eyed Annabelle, taking in her abrupt silence and the pale coloring of her cheeks. Jack noticed it as well. Out of everyone in the world, they were the only two who would know and understand the reason behind Annabelle’s sudden change in behavior.
Jack acted first. He put the envelope back in his pocket and stood, taking Annabelle’s hands and lifting her with him. She went without argument. With a glance at Cassie, Jack led Annabelle out through one of the three doors that exited from the study, and entered the adjoining dressing room beyond. It had since been converted into a guest bedroom, and Jack led Annabelle to the bed and sat her down.
Then he knelt before her, favoring his injured leg.
“You’re all right, luv. I’m sorry that I brought it up. I just didn’t… realize, at first…”
“It’s okay, Jack.” Annabelle looked him in the eyes. “It’s been two decades, you know? I should be over it by now.” She shrugged, a helpless gesture.
It broke Jack’s heart. He pulled her into his strong arms and held her gently. “Anniversaries are the most difficult,” he told her, his breath caressing the hair on her head. “They always are.”
She nodded against his chest, finding that his shirt was damp against her cheek. She was crying. “I know,” she mumbled. “You should have seen me ten years ago.”
“I did see you ten years ago, luv.” He reminded her. And then it hit him. After a decade, he finally realized the truth of that situation. “That’s why you were in the bar.” She hadn’t been there to get drunk on her twenty-first birthday, as so many people in this country decided to do. She’d been there to get drunk so that she could forget her twenty-first birthday. And he had happily obliged her, buying all of her drinks and seeing her safely home.
He’d fallen in love with her that very night. It had hit him like a ton of bricks, unexpected and disorienting. When he’d gone to the bar that night, it was to make a mark. He’d been traveling back and forth between the States and Britain for a decade, being trained by Samuel Price, and still doing jobs in the UK whenever called upon. At that point, the reality of their situation had hit he and his wife and they’d recently agreed upon a divorce. His family remained behind in Essex, well hidden and protected, for the time being, by a combination of Jack’s money – and Sam’s.
Life was up in the air and Sam had sent him to the pub to do away with a man whose death, apparently, would help solidify Jack’s position in the Business. In that respect, it was like any job. There was a ladder to climb. Only, with this ladder, you kicked the rungs out from under you as you ascended so that no one could follow you up.
So Jack had gone to the bar, riding his bike on the way to relieve some of the fear that he still felt when doing jobs. It was a fear that Sam assured him would lessen as time went by, but never go away entirely. It was a bit of that fear, after all, that helped keep an assassin alive.
He’d entered the bar, scanned it, as he always did, and taken a seat near the back where he had a good view of the entire room.
And while he had been waiting, Annabelle had walked in with a couple of her friends. The friends, he had dismissed upon a cursory glance.
But Annabelle had taken his breath away. She was tall and lithe and her strawberry and blonde hair spilled down her back and over her shoulders like tumbling waves of spun copper and gold. Her skin was perfect. Her smile was nervous and unsure and the teeth behind it were straight and white. Her brown, almond-shaped eyes were sad.
She looked like an angel who’d fallen into the wrong place. She didn’t belong, and he could tell that at first sight. Her companions, who were both wearing less than she was and seemed perfectly at ease with their surroundings, fairly pulled her into the dimly lit pub. At one point, she’d waved her hand in front of her face, clearly bothered by the smoke, before she remembered where she was and clenched her hands behind her back to keep from doing it again.
It was clear to him that she meant to go through with whatever it was she was there to do and was determined not to let any other signs of her innocence show through. It was a hopelessly lost battle, however, as every man in the room had already zeroed in on her like moths to a flame. As if she could somehow develop wings and fly them out of their own personal hells, they gazed at her with mixtures of hunger and hope.
Including the man Jack had been sent there to kill, who was currently sitting alone, a beer to his lips, his eyes on the girl. Jack knew the man by sight, having been given his file the day before. His name was Benjamin Tadler; a handler gone bad, ruined by personal agendas and a fouled-up sense of justice. He’d broken a commandment of the Business by having one of his guns pull a personal favor. He’d orchestrated the killing of a girlfriend he believed had been cheating on him.
In the end, not only had the deed been found out by the powers that be, but to further the grievance of his actions, it had turned out that his girlfriend was doing no such thing.
Jack may have known who Ben was, but Ben had no idea who Jack was. It was one of the benefits of not being as big in the Business as someone like Samuel Price. He retained a small amount of anonymity.
Jack would find Ben later that night. He would track him down, beat the shit out of him, and then end his worthless life.
Later.
Jack had never felt emotions such as the ones that rushed him that night. He not only wanted to kill his target, but every other man in the bar. A sense of protectiveness and jealousy unlike any he’d ever experienced flowed through his veins like liquid fire. In the course of several decisive seconds, he’d mapped out the remainder of the night in his mind.
He would do his job in good time.
The fallen angel girl, whoever she was, would come first.
He remembered standing from where he’d been hiding in the corner and approaching Annabelle at the bar. She’d turned to look at him, already obviously steeling her nerves to tell him off.
But then she hadn’t told him off. Her eyes had met his and held. He’d had trouble breathing when he asked her and her companions if they would mind whether he joined them. Her two friends had agreed readily. Annabelle hadn’t said anything. Not at first.
And he had been unable to take his eyes off of hers.
Finally, she had smiled at him. Jack’s entire world flipped on its axis at that moment and he knew, as he had never known anything in his life, that he was lost for good.
He’d been right.
That was ten years ago.
Ten years ago, today.
As he held her in his arms, now, neither of them spoke. In the recesses of their minds, each of them thought of the past. Each contemplated years gone by and happenstance.
In their own ways, in their own perceptions of pain and pleasure, they each thought of anniversaries.
Several minutes passed, in that shared silence. And then Annabelle cleared her throat. “So… what did you get me?” She asked softly, her words muffled by his shirt.
Jack blinked and slowly allowed her to pull away. She wiped her eyes and offered him the hint of a smile.
Christ, he thought, as his breath caught at her beauty. In ten years, she hasn’t changed. And then he smiled back at her, once more taking the white envelope out of his back pocket.
He handed it to her and, this time, she took it, sniffling as she looked down at it. Then, as he watched, she held it up to the light shining through the window and attempted to see through the paper. He bit his cheek and shook his head.
“Why not open it, luv?” It would be a hell of a lot easier to see what was inside.