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The first time Daniel tells her he loves her, he doesn't say the words at all. Instead, he mouths kisses along her shoulder to her neck.
"I think—no, I know. I know. I mean..." Daniel sighs, forehead coming to rest against the back of her head.
He could be two different people at times. Talk your ear off one day, barely get a word out the next.
The determining factor? Alcohol.
That night, Daniel hadn't licked so much as a drop. It was how Charity knew something important was about to happen. An I love you, maybe. Let's move in together, perhaps.
Hey, hope was free, after all. Just about the only free thing left.
And if she dared to hope, then what she really hoped for were four little words: A will and you and marry—
"I think it's time you met my family," Daniel says instead.
Those eight precious words are the only proposal she gets.
Daniel's family is—well, everything you'd expect googling Le Domas on the internet. Dad as warm as a setting sun in the Arctic; mom, by comparison, a frigid bitch. Sister, a little too excitable, if you know what she means.
Brother, absent.
They have traditions, too. Old money traditions. One tradition, in particular, Daniel tells her about that very night.
And that night, there'd been plenty to drink.
Afterwards, back against the wall, Daniel watches her with big, wide, bloodshot eyes. Waiting for her to say something. Anything. Anything at all.
"I don't want to die," Charity hears herself say.
Daniel nods, as if to say: fair. Looks relieved to hear it, she thinks.
But then another voice, a sounder voice, says: Is this any way to live?
Charity knows what it means. She knows.
Two months later, she draws chess.