Page 53 of Consume Me

“Isn’t it?” I asked. “I knew better than to fall in love with her. I knew this life would destroy her.”

“You knew about this?” Georgia snorted and moved beside me.

“I knew my family was fucked up,” I said.

“Every family is fucked up. You didn’t choose this life.”

“But I chose her.” It was the same inexorable truth I kept coming back to. I’d chosen her against reason and common sense and public opinion.

“You chose happiness,” Georgia said softly, “which is what we all want—and that wasn’t stupid or selfish. It was brave. It takes guts to choose to be happy. Most people aren’t strong enough to do it. I’m not.”

“Why?” I didn’t understand, because I no longer felt brave or happy.

“Because being miserable is easier. It’s humanity’s natural position. We invent technology to make our lives simpler but not happier. We pretend everything is okay when it’s not. We fake happiness because the real thing has to be worked for. You fought for Clara. She fought for you.”

“I’m tired of fighting,” I admitted to her.

“I know.” She placed a hand on my back. “But choosing happiness is the best revenge. Refusing to suffer when others want you to eats away at them.”

“If you know this, why aren’t you happy?” I leveled a gaze at her. We’d danced around this since she’d come back into my life. For all of Georgia’s confidence and courage, she hadn’t been happy for a moment. I don’t think I’d ever seen her happy once.

“That’s not how my story goes.” Her eyes were haunted as she spoke. “I only know happiness because I’ve seen it. I’ve never…felt it. The closest I’ve ever come. Well, you know.”

I’d seen Georgia’s files. I knew things about her past, she would never speak of, so I understood that she’d been broken. But it filled me with pity to know that she equated happiness with nothing. That oblivion was as close to bliss as she’d ever come.

“I hope that’s not true someday,” I murmured.

“Me too.”

“There you are!” Brex called from the doorway. “Look, I don’t know, but I think we found something.”

It took effort to turn and follow him. It was another dead end. I knew it. When we reached Smith, he held up the blue prints.

“This house doesn’t make sense,” he said.

I shrugged. I’d always felt that way about it. “These old estates never do.”

“Not the actual house,” he clarified. “The blue prints clearly show the exterior square footage, but when you come inside—”

“It’s too small,” Brex said. “We just went through the whole house. It doesn’t add up.”

“Either the walls are really thick or…”

“There’s something behind them,” I finished for them. It made sense. Windsmoor was adjacent to Windsor Castle, which, like Buckingham, utilised a number of hidden passageways to help royalty move about while the guests used the stairs and halls.

“What’s interesting is that it’s not in the blue prints,” Smith said.

“But they wouldn’t have added them later.” It didn’t make sense. “Why wouldn’t they have included the passages on the blue prints, especially if the aim of the plans was to make Windsmoor more secure? The passages could have linked to the bomb shelter.”

“Because they didn’t need to make it more secure,” Brex said. “Think about it. Why draw up plans a few months before the war ended? They knew it was drawing to a close.”

“And why leave out the passages?” Smith added.

“Because you didn’t want people to know the truth. You wanted to send them in the wrong direction.” It was starting to become clear. The fallout shelter was a diversion, meant to keep people from looking closer at Windsmoor.

“There’s a shelter here somewhere,” Smith said. “I’m sure of it. They’ve left it off here on purpose.”

No one asked why. That reason was clear. Someone didn’t want it to be found.