✓ | GOLDEN LIAR ↠ Thomas Shelby.

35.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

               ONE SINGLE THREAD OF hope was all she had left. 

She was broken, shattered into a million little pieces as her recent memories clouded her mind and fought to overwhelm her ― and, much to her utter despair, they seemed to be succeeding. She  was angry, fearful, anxious of everything and anything now that all had been revealed. . . although just why she felt like this, she did not know because she had always known that she would have to spout out the truth one day, no matter how much hurt it caused both her and Tommy. By doing it now, it saved them of the next few years that would be built on lies and misgiven trust. . . years that she wished, with every fibre of her being, she could have. 

Felicity let out a guttural scream: one that ripped open her lungs and tore through her throat as though coated with a thousand daggers. She wanted to cry. She wanted to yell. She wanted to do everything and yet she couldn't ― not when it had been her to bring this upon themselves. 

She didn't do any of that, however, mainly because she was too exhausted to even try. Instead, Felicity snatched up her coat and pulled it on, determined to get out and do something, anything, other than mope about her old flat. So that was what she did, grabbing her keys and locking the door behind her, unsure of just where she was going but knowing that she wouldn't care where she ended up, so long as she was far away from her dingy little room filled with memories. 

The streets were half full, with their only inhabitants being the drunks spilling out from the pubs or from the alleyways, either stumbling their way home or trying to find somewhere to crash. . . never mind if it a road corner, another bar or their own bed. No one was there to bother Felicity as she paced Small Heath, making her way through the winding streets whilst dodging both the other companions and the puddles of grime that danced in the cracks of concrete. She walked for what felt like an age ― hours, even ― and refused to let herself stop, not until she had crossed the bridge into a completely different part of the city that came with an incredibly low chance of her running into any one of the Shelby clan, or even one of the Peaky Blinders' boys. She walked and she walked and she walked, forever with the hope that so long as she kept moving and had her eyes on the grey, grim sights in front of her, her thoughts would not be plagued by guilt and memory and a new, sudden loss of belonging. 

"Oi, give us a smile, won't ya? You'll be a pretty girl with a pretty smile, I'll bet." Men would call as they passed her on the other side of the road, causing Felicity to bundle her fists up in her cardigan with the aim of disappearing inside of it completely, but they would never do anything more and instead left her in peace. 

Eventually, she got too worn out to do much more, but it was only when she had turned around and stared sullenly back down the road that she had come from did she realise just how far away she was from home. Home. Was it really her home, that dirty little flat she had once been so eager to get away from, but now had been forced to reside in once more? No, for the past year she had thought of her home as the arms that she'd curl up in each night ― the arms that belonged to a man promising to protect her for all of eternity. Home wasn't her flat. Home wasn't the Woods household. Home was with the man she hadn't a chance with. 

Felicity, figuring it shouldn't be too much of a rough night, came to the idiotic decision that she might be able to curl up at the door to an inn, as that seemed safer than finding a random bloody park or corner to reside in for the no―doubt restless night she was about to spend. 

"What the fuck are you doing down there?"

Felicity startled at the sudden loud, booming voice. "Sleeping," she mumbled. "Or rather, I'm trying to."