CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

                 HE CAUGHT THE LOOK on her face before she did. It happened to be one of underlying dread that she was attempting to suppress from the world's vision, one full of weary realisation. 

She did not even realise the expression was clear upon her face until she caught a glimpse of his own. Full of concern, although it was evident that he was trying to only show half of just how much he cared. Her heart sighed at the thought of this.

"Are you going?" Felicity asked.

Tommy nodded, before raising an eyebrow at the coat that lay sullenly over her arm. "Are you?"

Felicity momentarily pulled an expression of confusion at his words before realising what he was referring to, and thus she shrugged. "I got something from John. . . Woods," she explained simply. "He arranged a time we could meet, something about talking to me about this whole. . . thing." She waved her hand in a vague circle, her features pulling themselves into yet another expression of disorientation. 

Concern morphed into flat-out worry but instead of urging her to say any more, Tommy blew out a huff. "That isn't the best arrangement, I'll say."

"Then it's a damn shame you don't got a say," she returned calmly, unfolding her coat and slipping her arms into the fabric. "Not on this, Tommy."

"Not on something that could affect whether or not this is a whole fucking debacle?"

Felicity shook her head. "I'm going, whether you agree to let me go or whether you don't."

If Tommy hadn't been so sure that the meeting would be a complete and utter failure, he might have found time to quietly marvel at the confidence that had emerged from her being in the last few weeks. Yet this was not the case, as he was certain that with Felicity going to talk quietly with her father, it would only result in either anger or tears. Perhaps both, but Tommy did not want to see any of those outcomes.

So he simply refrained from sighing, and instead turned towards the door. "You'll tell me if he says anything?" Posed as a question but left his lips as more of a demand. 

Felicity nodded warily. "Yes, Tom."

"Good." Tommy pulled on his own coat and curled his palm around the door handle before he paused, and turned back towards the girl. "Only because I said I wouldn't ever let him hurt you. I'm a man of my word, Felicity. I told you I wouldn't let you get hurt, and if you do, I'll be damned."

She allowed a smile to flicker across her features, tugging upwards on her lips. "I know, Tommy."

And when he opened the door out into the chaotic bustle of Watery Lane and allowed her to slip out first, her touch sparked inside of him. A groan built up inside him and so Thomas Shelby decided to get on with his day. . . anything to take his mind off of the golden haired girl.

⎯

"How was it?" Tommy asked as he sat across from her at the bar, a half-empty glass of whisky in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. 

She had hardly uttered a single to him since had walked through the oaken doors twenty minutes ago, and had instead kept herself busy by tidying away all of the menial things that weren't really too noticeable, and yet just fulfilling enough to distract herself from telling the blue-eyed male how things had gone with her father.

Truth be told, her time conversing with her father had gone just as well as she had thought that it would go. She'd entered the Woods' residence with nothing but an expectancy for the afternoon to end horribly, and she had left the property with her thoughts confirmed and the realisation that she had just spent nearly two hours trying to reason with a man that refused to be reasoned with. 

John Woods was a determined man when it came to business but even he could see that it had been an afternoon where he was alongside one with his blood in their veins. He recognised that this was his daughter and he recognised that for something to go well his his business plan, he would have to spend at least a short amount of time getting to know the girl he was basically bargaining with. So when she walked through the door with tension holding her shoulder blades close but a soft, pretty smile upon her face, he straightened and reminded himself just why he had agreed to do this. And when Felicity took her first step over that threshold as she had in over three years, she repressed the sigh that built up in the back of her throat and instead only ensured that her smile was still upon her lips, reminding herself just why she had agreed to do this. 

She was doing this for Tommy, she knew, and also so that this horrid business would come to an end sooner.

"Felicity?" Tommy now continued to prompt as the fair-haired girl turned away from him, refusing to answer yet again. 

She wrapped the cloth in her hand around her palm as a way to distract herself, before unwrapping it. Her cheeks felt cool and she no doubt looked as though she had seen a ghost, for she felt like she had. She'd seen the ghost of her past, of the life that she had once been not happy with living, but had accepted it as a way of life. Not realising what she was doing, she pulled the cloth around her hand once again, her mind drifting back to earlier that afternoon and filling her with the same sense of sickness that she'd felt there.

"The least you could do is say something, Felicity!"

Without really thinking, she uncurled the cloth from around her palm and slammed it down on the bar, angrily pushing it to the side so that it slide across the surface for a couple of inches before remaining in an untidy heap. 

"The least I could do? Is that what you think? Is this what you care about?" Felicity retorted in a flash, meeting his gaze with a cold one of her own, "Business? Money? Is that all you fucking care about?"

"What?" He stared at her with shock clouding his eyes, shock at her sudden angry flurry of words. "Felicity. . ."

She cut him off with a glare.  "No," the girl snapped immediately, her eyes for once burning with something that more fire than just warmth . "No, you do not  get to stop me, not now, not after everything I've done for you and your stupid, stupid business shit. D'you want to know why?" 

Felicity exhaled heavily, her breath hot and angry as she regarded the man in front of her, the man who was barely uttering a word to her outburst. 

At the realisation of how little he seemed to care, her anger only continued to grow until it boiled over, more so than she had ever expected it to go. "You just don't care, Tommy! You don't care about how I, I don't know. . . maybe how I just walked into my father's house and acted as though I hardly knew the guy! You don't care that I'm scared shitless because I still don't know what you plan on doing with the entirety of this idiotic plan, or even what you do when you're not sat in here, drinking goddamn whiskey."

"Felicity, please, stop."

"Why?" Felicity rubbed the back of her hand against her cheek as tears began fall, hot and heavy, over her eyelids, over her lips, down her chin. 

Silence descended upon the two and Felicity became aware of everything that had blurred together in the the previous moments. Everything that she hadn't focused on as she directed the overwhelming tide of emotions at the man before her. 

"Say something, Tommy," she pleaded, almost wincing as her voice caught. 

As the silence prevailed, Felicity found the tears coming faster, cascading like a waterfall that had been repressed by the counteracting force of nature for too long. "Say something," she tried again in a whisper. "Please." 

Tommy didn't say a word as he stood slowly, walked around the bar until the pair were only a foot apart. No words left his lips as he took her hands in one of his, using the other to tilt her chin up until she was looking at him, the tears still falling. 

"Of course I care," he murmured, gently thumbing away a drop that was about to cascade down her cheeks.

Felicity sighed, unsure of what to do, unsure of what to even say. "Do you, though?" she whispered, closing her eyes for fear that if she looked into his, she might see the answers that he wouldn't speak aloud.

Because deep down, she was terrified that he didn't. She was petrified that this was all a pretence, that this was all one huge façade that he only continued to keep up for his benefit and his benefit only. She was terrified that she had let her heart fall for this man for so long that she would not be able to get it back. . . not yet, not any time soon.

Felicity Woods didn't want to get hurt.

And yet before she even had a chance to register what was happening, the raven-haired gangster's lips met hers and she gasped, her eyes still closed as she was too scared to open them, yet not at all afraid to return the kiss. 

"What are you doing?" She eventually murmured, although she refused to break from him. When he didn't answer, she tried again, more urgently but still not taking a single step away. "Tommy?"

"Taking care of you," was his simple reply, and that was when the two finally broke apart and she looked up into his cerulean irises through her thick lashes, taking in each feature that made up his face. "Is that going to be alright with you?"

The girl felt the gasp as it left her lips. "What do you mean. . ."

He hushed her gently. "Is that going to be alright with you?" Tommy repeated, his tone soft.

Felicity smiled. Two droplets rolled down her cheeks but the man only brushed them away as he awaited her reply. . . the reply that she was almost too scared to give.

"It's more than alright."

AUTHOR'S NOTE
i'm so excited to finish part one
of this book! there aren't many
chapters before then - then we
can start on part two and dkjfvf
pls i'm so excited i can't help it.
love you all!