Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
ALEXANDER
I stand outside the place Lucas once called home.
The trailer looks worn, aged, and lifeless, like something had bled out of it long ago and nothing ever came back to refill it.
Even the air feels stale, heavy with the weight of things left unsaid.
The whole motor park reeks of quiet ruin, like life itself packed up and left a long time ago and never looked back.
I don’t know what it means to grow up in a place like this. I’ve never had to.
But Lucas did.
And he never talks about it.
He speaks even less about his childhood. The little I know is scattered—fragments of memory he’s let slip through clenched teeth. A few words about his mother. A few flickers of something that might have once been love. He must’ve loved her, once.
Maybe still does. And maybe that’s what makes all of this worse, because he must have loved this place too.
The trailer door creaks open, pulling me out of my thoughts.
His mother steps out.
Her gaze lands on me and freezes, then she moves stiffly, like the ground beneath her isn’t sure it wants to hold her weight.
She’s a reflection of him, almost—blonde curls messy and unbrushed, pale skin, sharp cheekbones that mirror his, and huge brown eyes.
But where Lucas carries his beauty like armor, she carries hers like a fading photograph, washed out and tired, her beauty is brittle now, worn down by too many nights of drugs and alcohol and god knows what else.
She looks like someone who gave up a long time ago and took everything down with her.
Her eyes flick past me.
“Where’s Lucas?” she asks, her voice tentative, searching. Like she actually expects to see him appear behind me.
I raise a brow.
Is she serious? Does she think I will ever let him set foot here again?
She must see it in my face. Because her breath stutters out, and she folds tighter into herself like she’s cold. Or guilty. Maybe both.
“If he’s not here,” she says, voice lower now, fragile, “then what are you doing here?”
I take a slow step forward, keeping my voice even.
“I need answers.”
Her mouth parts, but I don’t give her time to speak.
“I need you to tell me what the fuck happened to him.”
The words are quiet. But they slice through the air like a blade.
Because I need to know.
I’ve held back for so long and given him time.
Space. Patience. I’ve waited through the silences, through the quiet smiles he gives in the mornings after nights filled with whimpers and sudden jolts awake.
It started ever since that night of Tyler’s birthday.
I’ve told myself not to push, that he’d tell me when he was ready.
But I’m starting to wonder if that day will ever come.
He keeps saying it’s just anxiety that it’s manageable.
But I see the way his eyes dim sometimes when he thinks I’m not watching.
I feel the way he clings tighter at night when he sleeps, like he’s fighting something in his dreams, something I can’t reach.
And I hate it. I hate how helpless I feel.
I hate how he shrinks into himself when I ask too much.
So I don’t ask anymore. I just hold him when the nightmares come, pull him into my arms, and whisper things I’m not sure he hears. I tell him he’s safe, that I’m here.
He wakes up the next morning bright-eyed, smiling like he’s untouchable.
Like nothing haunts him, the kind that could fool anyone who hadn’t heard his quiet whimpers at midnight when he’s asleep, hadn’t held him through all that.
But I have, and I know better. I’ve seen the cracks in the armor, I’ve felt them, I know he’s hurting, I know he carries something heavier inside him, I’ve known it since I met him in that Alley.
And I wonder just how many years it took him to bury his pain deep enough to fake it this well. How long did it take him to learn to block it out from everything else? How long did it take him to train himself to survive like this quietly, beautifully, tragically?.
“Don’t believe whatever that fucker Oliver says about my son,” Kathryn cuts in, her voice tense, raw. “He’s a sore loser who thinks he can use it against Lucas any chance he gets.”
I blink. My eyes narrow at her.
Oliver?
I haven’t even spoken to the bastard. He hasn’t been able to open his damn mouth since I chained him in that damp hellhole beneath my grandfather’s mansion. And even if he had… I wouldn’t have believed him. Not about Lucas. Not about anything.
The idea that he knows something about Lucas—something he could throw in his face—makes something boil low in my stomach. A slow, ugly heat that climbs up my spine. His intestines would be wrapped around his neck when I leave here.
“I haven’t heard shit from Oliver,” I say, voice cold, measured. “And I don’t want to”
Kathryn swallows. Her eyes flick away from mine.
“So tell me,” I say. “Tell me what I need to know.”
I think Something in my voice hits her, because she stares at me for a long second.
Then, she lets out a breath that seems to break something inside her.
Her shoulders slump. Her hands tremble slightly as she walks toward the shade beside the trailer and lowers herself slowly into one of the lawn chairs.
She pulls out a worn pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket, grabs a lighter, and fumbles to light it.
Her fingers shake too much on the first try.
The second time, it catches. She drags in smoke like it’s the only thing steadying her, then she looks up at me with tired, sunken eyes—eyes that have seen too much, done too little to stop it.
“You need to sit,” she says. Her voice is low. Hollow. “We can’t keep standing if we’re going to talk about this.”
I stay still for a moment. My body feels tight, wired with the kind of dread that settles in your bones before a storm.
I watch her in silence.
The cigarette trembles slightly between her fingers, the smoke curling into the thick, humid air like ghosts she’s long since stopped trying to exorcise. Her eyes don’t meet mine, and I know she’s stalling. I know she won’t speak until I do what she asked.
I let out a sigh—part impatient, part resigned.
Fine. She wants me to sit? I’ll sit, as long as it gets me the answers I need, I’ll give her this small victory.
I step forward, slow, every muscle in my body wired tight. The cheap plastic chair groans under my weight as I lower myself onto it, the crack of it loud in the heavy quiet. I sit across from her, my elbows resting on my knees, and I don’t say a word. I just wait.
I brace myself for whatever version of the truth she’s willing to give.
She finally looks up.
“I can’t tell you exactly what happened to Lucas,” she says. Her voice is rough, like her throat hasn’t held honesty in a long time. “But I will tell you the things I think you should know. And I’ll give you something when I’m done.”
My jaw clenches. I don’t respond. My chest rises and falls a little faster now, and I don’t know if it’s anticipation or dread—or both. But I wait.
Whatever she gives me, I’ll take it.
“I gave birth to Lucas when I was eighteen,” she starts, voice distant.
She doesn’t look at me now. She looks out at nothing, the smoke drifting around her face like a veil.
“Just a girl back then. My mom was already dead. My father was alive, but calling him a parent would be generous. He was a drunk. Mean. Loud. An abuser.”
She pauses to take a drag of the cigarette, like the smoke helps her swallow the memory.
“I left home at fifteen. Got a job at a small strip club by seventeen. It wasn’t glamorous, but it fed me. Kept me off the streets. It paid enough that I managed to buy this trailer. Back then, that felt like something. A win.”
I don’t interrupt. I didn’t come here to learn her story, but I can’t deny that it’s starting to grip something deep in me.
“Then came Lucas,” she says, a bitter smile flickering on her lips before fading.
“I got pregnant after a night at the club. It wasn’t consensual.
I don’t remember much—just that I was drunk, too drunk to say no, too drunk to fight.
He was a stranger, I knew nothing about him, I just knew that he wasn’t American, but a backpacker traveler from Spain. ”
Her eyes don’t change as she says it. They stay empty. Detached.
“I didn’t want to keep the baby. I tried to get rid of it. I tried everything. Nothing worked. My body kept holding on. Then the bump showed. I couldn’t hide it anymore. The club fired me, of course. No one wants a pregnant girl on stage.”
She laughs, dry and sharp like broken glass.
“And that was it. That was the beginning of the fall.”
I swallow hard. There’s a tightness in my throat I didn’t expect.
She shifts, flicking ash to the cracked concrete.
“I didn’t love him at first,” she says, voice quieter now, worn and fragile like old paper. “Lucas.”
She exhales, shaky, and then continues.
“I hated the pregnancy. Hated the way it trapped me and made me feel like I was drowning in a life I never chose. But the day I gave birth to him…” she trails off, lips trembling.
“When they handed me that little boy, when I saw his face, his beautiful face, I swear to God, I’ve never seen anything so perfect in my life. ”
She stops, and when she looks up, her eyes are rimmed red. She’s trying hard not to fall apart in front of me. But I see it. The guilt. The love. The weight of everything she’s held inside for years.
“I cried so much,” she whispers, “because he came into this world… just to suffer with me.”
Something shifts in my chest. I don’t even know what to call it. A strange, uncomfortable ache—like grief for a past I never lived, for a boy I didn’t know back then but would die to protect now.