✓ | GOLDEN LIAR ↠ Thomas Shelby.

14.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

               FELICITY WOODS HAD HEARD once that if one was to fall hopelessly in love with a man that would never return such affection, then it would be a pain worse than every kind of heartbreak. Unrequited love was what it was called, and it was a feeling she had only ever experience once. . . but that was when she was both young and stupid, and love was just a feeble, fickle word that could blurted out more often than it should have been.

Now, she was six years senior to that little girl who thought she knew what heartbreak was, yet she felt that she was hardly any wiser.

Unrequited affection still ran through her veins but this time, it was for another man: a man she had never dreamed of feeling any sort of emotion for, let alone love. Now, though, Felicity had pushed it aside in the hopes that she would forget it ever existed, with the feverish plea that no words should spill her secret from her mouth in one god-awful moment. 

As the girl sat on the quilted duvet on her bed, her eyes took in the wall situated opposite her, but it was although they did not see any inch of the plain, greying bricks. Instead, they looked further and she found herself letting her thoughts run for longer than she had ever done before: exploring each and every whisper that emerged from her mind in tones so hushed so would have missed them. . . as had happened so often before. 

It was not long before she tired of the torment that was beginning to loom before her - growing dangerously fast and she knew it would only continue if she carried on letting her thoughts roll out before her. Felicity let out a weary sigh before she swung her legs off the bed and they hit the floorboards with a light thump, making contact with the cold wood instantaneously. 

She found her feet taking her to the Garrison without her even realising it. Felicity had walked the narrow streets and winding roads of Small Heath so often - for the entirety of her life, in fact - that she hardly thought about where she was headed. . . all that she knew was that she needed a distraction, she needed something to take her mind off the constant stream of torment flowing from her thoughts. If that distraction just so happened to be drunkards and beer spillages, then she would take it as it came. 

As it happened, Harry Fenton had taken the day off once again, and Grace was no where to be found. She had disappeared from the city a week or so ago, still with the claims that she had family to attend to, but promising that she would return as quickly as possible. Felicity hoped that she would keep to her word and arrive back in Small Heath soon enough, because she missed her friend. Keeping to be entertained behind a bar and fending off half-hearted drunk advances was only ever an okay experience if you had someone there to keep you amused, as Felicity had quickly found.

Unlocking the door, Felicity stepped over the threshold and into the room that was filled with nothing but silence and hastily discarded chairs and stools. As she pelted through the room towards the back, where a sink stood, she glanced hurriedly at the clock and found the hands to be pointing at precisely twelve o'clock, which was later than she had expected it to be, in all fairness. Perhaps sitting amongst your thoughts was a time-consuming activity, after all. 

⎯

              Thomas Shelby's head burned with fire and with annoyance as thoughts clouded his mind: dangerous thoughts; calculating thoughts; time-consuming, ever-present thoughts. He avoided the workmen that gaggled together and formed hushed clusters, and sidestepped away from a puddle of oil and grease that only reflected the dismal appearance of the surrounding buildings up into the sky. It was, for once, a picture-perfect day yet that did not stop the cold, burning aggravation that had consumed his being for much of the week now.