Page 32 of A Castle in the Sky: Fern & Connor
"Fern... "
"No." Her throat burned with the restraint of controlling herself as she made herself hold his gaze. "Yes, you were a kid. Seventeen is not an age when you are old enough to make life-changing decisions. But you weren't a kid when you moved us back here. You weren't a kid when you started prioritising Jacob over your daughter. Or when you decided that humouring Matilda's mood swings mattered more than your child's safety."
He flinched.
She rested her head on the pillow, putting a sliver more distance between them, because if she stayed too close, she would hit him for being a wanker.
"Why, Connor?" she asked quietly. "Why would you choose to walk straight back into this dynamic? Your mum, Matilda, and Sawyer inthe background somewhere, doing god-knows-what. It’s like you've rewound the tape of your life and hit play at the worst bit."
His mouth opened, closed. "You don’t know... "
"Then tell me," she snapped, then winced at the sharpness and forced herself to soften it. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like this: your mum is all cosy with the girl who blew your life up. She calls her 'Matty,' like she's some beloved daughter she never had. She leaves voice notes telling you to check on her, to run over when she's 'not coping,' and you go every fringing time. You make her and Jacob a priority over me and Coral. Why?"
The questions had been circling her mind for months, wild, stinging things she'd been too scared to swat at. Now they poured out, untidy and relentless.
"If Jacob really is yours," she went on, "then fine, we deal with that. We navigate it together. But you have done nothing to confirm this. You poured time and energy into him when there was no proof. You rearranged our lives around him and fragile Matty. And if you weren't sure..." Her chest hurt. "If you weren't sure, then why didn’t you just... insist on a DNA test?"
Connor's head snapped up. "You think I didn’t want to?" he said, a bitter laugh catching in his throat. "I did. For months, I went round and round in my head—'Just ask for a test, just tell her you won’t see him unless she agrees.'"
"And?" Fern pushed. "Why didn’t you?"
"Because it's not as simple as stamping my foot and demanding anything," he said, rubbing hard at his face. "In this country, I can't force her to do it. The law doesn't let you drag someone off to a lab and make them give samples because you've got a bad feeling. Eventhe courts can onlydirecttesting in a case, but they still need consent in the end. If she refuses, the court can draw conclusions from that, but no one's pinning her down and swabbing her mouth. Or Jacob's."
Fern blinked. She'd half expected him to say he hadn't thought of it, that he'd just trusted Matilda. Hearing that hehadthought of it, and still done nothing, twisted the knife a different way.
"You could have gone to court," she said quietly. "Got a declaration of parentage, something. If you really wanted to know, and she was that difficult—"
"And started a war?" His voice came out sharp. "Me, Matilda, my mum, Sawyer, solicitors, hearings... all of it on the record. She has been threatening to accuse me of rape if I pushed too hard. You really think she wouldn't have played that card if I'd filed anything? An accusation of rape doesn't wash off ever! All of you would have wondered if there was any truth to it. You don't know how it is when a man is accused of rape. I was seventeen when I left. I barely understood how to open a bank account; you think I was ready to go head-to-head with her and the entire family court system back then?"
He dragged in a breath, shoulders rising and falling.
"And on top of that," he added, quieter, "there's the Human Tissue Act. Yes, I actually looked it up once and have checked with a lawyer. You can't just nab a kid's hair or cheek swab and send it off without proper consent from the people with parental responsibility. It's literally a criminal offence to do DNA testing in secret without it. I can go to jail. And I have so much more to lose now: Coral, you, my job, everything I have worked for."
"I didn’t know all that when I left," he said quickly. "Back then, I just... accepted what she told me. By the time I started looking it up,years had passed, I was working full-time, we were together, you were pregnant with Coral. Every time I thought, 'Right, I’ll insist on a test,' I saw the fallout in my head. Her kicking off. My mum taking her side, like she always does. Sawyer stuck in the middle. The whole thing blowing up, and you hearing about it fromtheminstead of me."
"You could've avoided that if you just trusted me," Fern said. "You could've said, 'Look, the law says I can't force her, and I can't legally do anything sneaky without her consent or a court order, but I'm not sure, and it’s eating me alive.' You could have said, 'Matilda is crazy, and she is threatening to accuse me of raping her when I was seventeen'. I could have listened in on one of your conversations. You didn’t even give me that much. You just needed to manage it on your own. In the end, you just didn’t trust me."
He flinched but didn’t refute her accusation..
"I need to ask you one thing," Fern said, the words leaving her before she could take them back. She knew she was showing her weakness, but she needed to know. "When she started with the tears and the threats, did you oblige 'fragile Matty' and agree to fuck her to keep her quiet?"
Connor's head snapped up. "No," he swore as if burnt. Colour flared high on his cheekbones. "Christ, Fern. No. After that... 'prank,' as she calls it—when she told me we might be siblings just to watch me fall apart—I can't even think of going there with her. She makes me sick."
Fern's lips pressed into a line. "You're always watching her," she said. "Always hovering. Always checking. From the outside, that looks a lot like wanting."
"Yes, I'm watching her," he shot back. "But it’s not because I want her. She is not sane, Fern. There are kids in the middle of this—Coral and Jacob. Do you even know what she's capable of?"
Fern's laugh came out brittle. "I know she always dresses like she's waiting for you to tear her clothes off," she said. "Even at the bloody playground."
His mouth twisted, something ugly flickering through his eyes. "If I tear anything off her," he muttered, "it'll be her head. And I'll spit into it."
Connor's whispered hatred hung between them, sharp and horribly believable.
Fern stared at him for a beat, then shook her head slightly. "If you hate her that much," she said, quieter now, "then answer me this. Why is your mum so pro-Matty when she's spent years looking at me like something she scraped off her shoe? Matty hates her."
He sagged back in his chair, exhaustion carving deeper lines into his face. "I don’t know for sure," he said. "But I think she's built this weird story in her head. Because she couldn't be with Matilda's dad when they were younger, somehow me and Matty being together is like some twisted Romeo and Juliet next-gen fantasy for her. Like it makes up for what she missed out on. I can't explain it properly, but Mum can forgive Matty anything."
“That is so fucked up,” Fern whispered.
