Love and Lies • 𝑇𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑦 𝑆ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑏𝑦

Chapter Sixteen

At the hour Ann got to Birmingham, she knew the likeliest place Tommy would be was the Garrison, but when she made it to the bar, it was empty, save for Grace, cleaning glasses behind the bar. 

"Grace," she said in greeting as the door closed at her back. The blonde barmaid stopped her cleaning. "Sorry, I was just looking for Tommy, but I guess it's later than I thought." She moved to leave, but Grace stopped her.

"He told me he'd be here tonight, said to keep the doors open a while longer. Sometimes he takes a late night drink...he says he likes the company."

Ann breathed a soft uncertain laugh at the second meaning behind Grace's words, but walked towards the bar nonetheless. She wasn't jealous. Not when she was the one who left, who was keeping secrets, but she was something. "I'm sure he does, but maybe tonight you go home on time." 

"Are you asking me to leave?"

"No. I'm not asking."

Grace watched her for a few moments before she swallowed and put her cleaning rag down on the bar top. Then she headed for the back door.

"Don't make me have to rescind my promise to not hurt you." Ann said, and Grace stopped with her hand on the door knob. "Please actually go home." Her conversation with Tommy wasn't one that needed to be spied on. 

A few seconds later, Ann was alone in the pub. She took a deep breath and took off her coat, placing it on the back of the nearest chair. She played with the frayed skin on her finger tips as she paced slowly in front of the door, counting the time that passed to distract from the speech she'd written in her mind. She had gone over it at least fifty times.

At the sound of someone approaching the door outside, Ann stopped and took a couple steps back. The external door opened and shut, and then Tommy walked through the internal one, with a restless breathlessness that cut off when he saw her. 

Ann opened her mouth to speak, but the words she had rehearsed falling absent.

Tommy broke their standoff by closing the door, never taking his eyes off her so she could see his surprise fall away to an emotionless mask.

"I don't know what to say." She started, but instantly knew they were the wrong choice of words when Tommy frowned. "Actually, I do know what to say, I just don't know where to start." 

Tommy's face adopted an expression of long-suffering patience. "You're not Celia Wilson," he said, and it took everything in Ann to stop her mouth gaping as her eyes fluttered. 

The silence that stretched thin between them made it seem to Tommy that she wasn't going to answer, but alas, she shook her head, her eyebrows creased with apology.

"No-."

"I take it you work for Mr Campbell?" Tommy asked.

"No, no." Ann instantly answered. It wasn't until he angled his body away from her that she realised she'd moved towards him. She stopped as he surveyed her face with little flicks of his eyes, before they crinkled at the corners in sarcastic amusement. 

"Why am I trying to figure out if you're lying to me when you've been lying for months without me catching on?"

"I'm an assassin." Ann said abruptly, and Tommy's mouth hardened. "I was sent by the Secretary of the State, but I don't work for him or Mr Campbell. This-you were a one-off job."

"You were going to kill me?"

"Yes," her voice was hesitant. "But-."

"Instead, you chose to fuck me." 

"Tommy." Her eyes pleaded, but she was met with frost. They looked at each other for as long as they could stand it, working another fragile silence. She broke it. "The first night at the Wilson Manor, I'd already decided I wasn't going to kill you, I was going to leave, but then we...and I tried so many times to pull away, but I couldn't."