I stand at the stone wall that surrounds the paddock next to my cottage and watch the train’s headlamp cutting through the faraway darkness, raising the bottle of wine to my lips.

I think it’s a freight train. Coal probably, up here, if not then lumber or maybe sheep.

“Could be you unlucky fuckers next,” I say to the sheep standing just on the other side of the wall.

It’s dark, and they’re all lying down, likely asleep. One flicks an ear, but otherwise, nothing. I take another long pull and watch the train.

I shouldn’t. I should be inside, going through the want ads on my phone, finding another job so I can make the rent next month. From a penthouse and a Maserati to this, surrounded by fields and desperately in need of a job, but I did it to myself.

Jesus, did I do it to myself.

Instead of going in, I watch the train. I think about that night, about the temptation to jump, fly, fall. It wasn’t a temptation to die, not exactly, so much as it was the desire just to find out. It helped that I didn’t care if I lived or died, but that was a muted feeling, background noise.

No. I had to know, the same thing that’s always been my downfall. I smoked pot the first time at age fourteen because I had to know. I snorted heroin the first time because I had to know. Needing to know has led me down dark alleyways, into dangerous shanties, into the arms of women who’d have taken my soul if they could.

I’ve smoked things handed to me by strangers who didn’t speak English, not that I’d have asked if I could have. I’ve poked needles into my veins without asking who used them last. I’ve drunk concoctions that could have been half blood, half piss, and half arsenic because I always wanted that next step down, that lower pool of darkness.

That’s why Shelton’s been good to me. It’s got almost nothing to offer that I’m not already familiar with, nothing that piques my interest and makes my junkie-brain demand more. It’s good because I haven’t got any idea where to find the things that led to my downfall, since I clearly can’t be trusted to control myself.

Well, until Frankie showed up. A fucking trial, tailor-made just for me, pure temptation in this sleepy village. A chance to resist something for once. A chance to exercise the least bit of self-control.

And I did. Women were never my biggest problem — that was the heroin, obviously — but a few years ago, if I wanted, I’d have been fucking her against the wall in the restroom within twenty minutes. She could have been engaged, married, she could have been pregnant with a toddler in tow. It wouldn’t have mattered to me before.

It did this time. I fucking did right this time, and look where it got me. I ought to have just kissed her at the gala, because at least I’d have done it and I’d know instead of watching a train in a field while being ignored by sheep.

In two years there’s been one real spark in my life, and I don’t think I’ll get to see her again. My sudden dismissal from the pub sends one hell of a message, and it’s not a pleasant one.

Just as the train’s lamp passes by and disappears, there’s another light on the horizon, out on the road. There’s not exactly much traffic out here, so I watch the car with mild interest as it winds slowly along the lane, tilting the bottle of wine up so I get the last drops.

It slows, turns onto the unpaved road that leads to the farm house, two miles away.

Stops right before my own brief driveway, like it’s lost. I tilt the bottle up again just in case there are a few more drops left, feeling it slide around in my brain like a river finding its course. I’ve got a dark feeling about this lost car, because the only reasons I can think of for someone coming out here who doesn’t know where they’re going are bad ones.

I’m being evicted, for example. Or perhaps I’m being sued, perhaps Alistair has found some way to open a criminal case over Allen’s death and I’m now being formally charged.

For all I know, he’s got ties to dangerous gangsters and they’re here to shoot me and feed my body to the sheep.

The car moves again, turning toward my cottage, and the headlights sweep over the low stone structure, washing me briefly in the process. I push myself off the stone wall, dropping the bottle on the grass, and walk toward the car as it crawls uncertainly toward the house.

Probably not murderous gangsters, at least.

I come up beside the cottage to the headlights directly in my eyes. The car slows to a stop, and though I shade my face against the light, I still can’t see a bleeding thing.

The door opens, and a black shape gets out. I’ve now drunk nearly a bottle of wine and a few shots of whiskey besides, probably more than I’ve drunk since the last time I watched the headlamp of a train travel through the darkness. Not that I can keep count too well.

“Whatever you’re here about, you can fucking sod off as I’m not interested,” I call out.

There’s a brief pause.

“You sure?” Frankie’s voice calls.

She flips the headlights off as she says it, and I’m left blinking in the sudden dark, ghosts of the light tracing across my field of vision. I walk up to the car, weaving slightly as I navigate the uneven ground. Frankie shuts the car door, shoving the keys in her jacket pocket.

“Less sure now,” I say, sauntering up to her. “Depends on what you’re here about.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I’ve been drunker,” I say.

“How drunk?”

I come closer. Frankie doesn’t move away. Of course she doesn’t. I’ve lived long enough to know what interested and shouldn’t be looks like on a beautiful woman, and it’s written all over her face right now.

“I can still get it up just fine if that’s what you’re here for,” I say. “Just say the word, Frankie. I’ve got another bottle of wine in the kitchen and if you want, it’s got your name on it.”

“I thought you stopped getting drunk and making a fool of yourself,” she says softly, though her tone is more teasing than angry.

“I thought you stopped driving out to see me after dark,” I say.

“Who says I was driving to see you?”

I step back and gesture broadly at the rest of the scene around us: fields, sheep, stone walls, my cottage, the deep night sky.

“You just happened to show up for a freezing nighttime stroll, then?”

“I meant before, at the pub.”

I close my eyes briefly. The few parts of me still sober enough to reason are screaming at me to say anything else, to not speak my mind, to change the subject and let her get away with this.

“There’s not a single living being in the north of England who thinks you came time after time for a pint of warm beer and the company of a dozen codgers who can barely string a sentence together free of grunts,” I say. “We both know you came to see me. Giles and Malcolm know it. Harry knows it. Your fiancé knows it. The fucking queen knows it.”

“He’s not my fiancé.”

“I meant Alistair.”

“Obviously.”

I’m thrown for a moment, suddenly not sure what we’re talking about.

“I’m misinformed, then?” I ask, because I can’t manage to shape my brain into any other questions right now.

“I ended it,” she whispers.

My heart soars.

“I came to say goodbye. I’m going home,” Frankie finishes.

Goodbye slams into me like a freight train, and I take a step back, suddenly breathless.

“Right now?” I manage to ask.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Come have a drink first.”

It’s not a request. It’s not a question.

“I shouldn’t,” she says. ‘There’s a train leaving Brougham for Manchester in ninety minutes, and it’s dark and your roads are awful—”

“Have a fucking drink with me, Frankie.”

I turn and walk to the cottage, ten paces away. She’ll follow. She didn’t somehow find my address and drive all the way out here to say goodbye as we stand next to the car, and we both know it. I open the door, stand in the doorway, and turn to face her, leaning back, one hand in my pocket.

She rolls her eyes. Crosses her arms.

And walks toward me, through the doorway, into my two-room home.

“One drink,” she says as she passes me.

In my small kitchen, she slides her coat off and tosses it over the back of a chair, sitting down as I get the second bottle of wine from the cupboard and grab the corkscrew from where I left it on the counter, next to the empty bottle and the whiskey, still half-full.

I can feel her looking at it. She may as well be announcing it through a megaphone.

“I’m sorry Alistair got you fired,” she says suddenly.

I pause, the corkscrew halfway into the bottle, before twisting again.

“It’s not your fault,” I tell her.

“If I hadn’t kept coming around he wouldn’t have done whatever he did, and you’d still have a job,” she points out.

I pull the cork free with a pop, grab a tumbler from the cupboard. I haven’t got wine glasses, so this will have to do.

“It wasn’t so good of a job,” I say as the wine glugs into the glasses. “Shit hours, lots of drunks. Nothing to do half the time but watch football on the telly.”

I carry the two glasses back to the table, only a bit unsteady on my feet. I’m drunk to enough to say plenty I shouldn’t, certainly drunker than I should be, but not quite so drunk I’m tripping over my own feet.

“And you minded watching all that football?”

I set the glasses down, and Frankie eyes hers. It’s got rather more than a regulation-sized serving of wine, two at least, but she doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll tell you another secret about me,” I say.

She leans forward, her face on one hand, the other on the glass full of wine.

No ring.

“I don’t like football.”

“No,” she whispers, mock-scandalized.

“I know,” I say, lowering my voice. “It did get me roughed up more than once as a lad, but watching a load of men chase a ball around a field has just never interested me.”

“You’ll have your British passport revoked.”

“Only if you tell.”

Frankie takes a long drink of her wine, the corners of her eyes crinkling over her glass. I follow suit, the silence stretching out for just a bit too long. When she’s finished it’s half-gone.

Suddenly, I know she won’t be driving herself anywhere tonight.

“What are you gonna do now?” she asks.

“Right now, I’m going to drink until this second bottle is gone, and you’re more than welcome to help,” I say. “And after that, I’ll find another job. There’s pubs everywhere. I might see if I can’t find a few drumming gigs, I used to be all right at that. And you?”

“Back to New York,” she says, shrugging. “I was thinking about it on the way over here, and I realized nothing’s actually going to change that much. I mean, wedding deposits and whatever, but we didn’t live together. We don’t even have a goldfish. I didn’t want to do any of that before we were actually married and now I guess I know why.”

She takes another long drink, her glass now almost empty, a flush rising into her cheeks. I stand, grab the bottle from the counter.

“Because he was a right fucking prick who considered you more decoration than partner? Because by all accounts the Little Lord could only pretend to be charming for so long at once, and by living together you might have discovered his true nature too early to be married?”

“I know, I know, I’m an idiot,” she says, her eyes flashing. “Who the hell dates someone like that for so long without realizing besides some kind of moron?”

“Someone with the abominable habit of wanting to believe the best about people,” I say.

Frankie just snorts, draining her glass. I pull the cork out, pour her more, this bottle closing in on empty as well.

“I don’t want to talk about Alistair,” she says softly.

Truth is, I could listen to her badmouth him all night and it wouldn’t get old.

“I don’t mind,” I say.

She sighs, looks up at me. Her eyes are a little glassy, and it’s clear she’s been crying, but she’s not right now.

“Alistair’s an asshole,” she says softly, leaning forward. “Let’s forget him. He’s not worth it.”

I lean forward as well, closer to Frankie, every freckle abstract art. She takes another long drink of wine, her pale skin beneath the freckles flushing light pink.

“What do we talk about, then? Shall we discuss the weather?”

That gets a half-smile out of her.

“The weather’s shitty, Liam. It’s December in northern England.”

“That was over fast,” I say. “What else?”

“Anything but him,” she says. “Tell me about the band you used to be in. Tell me about growing up on the moor, tell me about the sheep outside.”

She takes another drink and sets her tumbler on the table, her motion a little sloppy, as she looks up at me through her eyelashes.

Frankie’s a bit of a mess right now, smudges of black around her eyes, hair wild, lips stained with wine, but fuck it. I’m a mess right now and I’m a mess most of the time, and none of it makes me want her any less.

“I know what I ought to tell you,” I say.

You saved my life one night and what I remember most is how pretty you were.

I’ve wanked to the thought of you removing your jacket at least two dozen times.

You’re the first thing in years that’s woken me up like this and if I weren’t drunk I’d be crumbling apart that you’re leaving.

She raises her eyebrows, eyes huge, lips slightly parted, and my breath catches.

“What is it?” she asks.

I don’t answer.

I stand, both hands on the table, Frankie’s hazel eyes following my face. Wanting. Begging.

So I lean over the table and finally kiss her.