Hazelthorn

Chapter Twenty-Three

TWENTY-THREE

This boy cannot be trusted. He is wretched and irreverent, and his beautiful, mocking mouth is so full of lies.

Yet Evander is helpless to stop his strangled cry of relief as Laurie jumps off the window seat and strides across the room to the bed.

He tosses the hammer aside, his boots tracking mud across the carpet, and he reaches for Evander as if he’s about to cup his jaw.

But he pauses, his fingertips hovering so close but not brave enough to make contact.

“You look like shit,” Laurie says, but his glib tone doesn’t match the flame-licked fury in his eyes.

Evander’s eyes map out that purpled, tender cheekbone. “So do you.”

Another wave of dizziness takes hold of him and he drags his knees to his chest, pressing his forehead to the sharp, knobby bones.

His stitches throb and he wishes he wasn’t being seen like this: half-naked and weak, bandaged and withered like old sunflower petals.

But he’s also so tired of being ashamed of himself all the time; what they’ve done to him isn’t his fault and maybe he should take fierce pride in having survived it.

“I kept trying to get to you,” Laurie is saying, still out of breath.

“But they’re guarding the north wing entrance and then Oleander locked me in a bathroom for a few days.

She’s gone completely ballistic about something new, but not sure why it’s doubled her hate of me.

” He gives a small, tight laugh. “Today’s treat was Bane taking me outside to dig a hole in the garden.

Wonder what that’s for. I bolted when he was distracted, but he was never going to chase me too far when he’s so terrified of that garden. ”

Evander drags his head up, his eyes wild and panicked. “They’re going to kill you. I—I heard them—”

“Eh. I’ve known that for a long time.” There’s no inflection in his voice and his shrug is nonchalant as he sinks onto the edge of the bed. “I knew it the second I wasn’t in the will. Why do you think I was so pissed?”

“I thought,” Evander says dully, “it was because you wanted Hazelthorn.”

“I still do. And that’s why I’m not leaving.” He hesitates and then his voice comes rough and fierce. “I’m not leaving Hazelthorn because I’m not leaving you.”

Evander stares at him. The knot in his throat tastes of violet stems and soft mud.

He wonders if, all along, he has not been listening to Laurie.

Though maybe the misunderstanding isn’t wholly Evander’s fault when Laurie has buried the vulnerable truth of himself as deep as he can, leaving only this insolent mask for everyone to see.

Maybe he does this to protect himself. Maybe he does this to hide.

Seeing this side of him is jarring and exhilarating and Evander wants to sink his teeth into it before it vanishes; that’s the only way he has ever known how to hold on to something like Laurie.

“We need to flush the sedatives out of your system.” Laurie stands abruptly, glancing around the room as if he’s taking stock. “When was the last time you ate?”

“No one brings me food,” Evander mumbles. “They’re p-poisoning me … every day. I should be dead, shouldn’t I?”

“I think it’s just enough to keep you sick, not dead. Really, really sick. You won’t make the climb out of the window like this though.” He strides into the bathroom, purposeful and confident, and it is a relief to have someone else making the plans.

Evander’s eyes drift closed and he almost misses when Laurie comes back and waves a hand in front of his face. Evander blinks, so drowsy that it feels as if there’s a delay between word and sound.

“—said, do you want to try throwing up?” Laurie says. “It might help. When was your last dose?”

“I dunno.” Evander tilts his head backward so it thumps on his headboard.

“Helpful.” But Laurie sounds unfazed. “So you could vomit and then drink a ton of water. Or you could just try sleeping it off. Your choice.”

Since when did Evander get choices? Since when did anyone ask? He is forever bullied into whatever option is most convenient for everyone else.

Thick tears catch in his eyelashes even though he desperately wants to hold them back. “I’ll try. I—I just want to get out of this room. But I don’t—Where would we even go? I can’t…” He swallows thickly. “I can’t leave Hazelthorn.”

“I have half a plan.” Laurie is staring very hard at the old bloodstain on the carpet.

“I know you can’t leave.” He says it as if he knows Hazelthorn made the decision long ago.

“A few more of my relatives have arrived for the funeral and I think Oleander is having the wake tonight in honor of Grandfather’s memory.

Everyone is pretty focused on that and downstairs is swarming with caterers.

I heard Oleander and Bane talking about bringing you down during dinner and …

There’s a coffin, but I think it’s empty.

I don’t know what they’re up to and I don’t know where my grandfather’s body is.

” He starts picking at the mud crusted on his brace and Evander thinks, maybe, they both know that part is a lie.

Dread is a slow, seeping monster fitting its fist in their lungs and making it so hard to breathe around the understanding of exactly what the Lennox-Halls are willing to do.

Panic has slid a knife between Evander’s ribs. “Dawes isn’t going to stop any of this, is he? He doesn’t care what happens to me so long as he gets paid.”

Though he is now wondering what else Dawes knows, with the way he was so eager to put distance between himself and Evander before, how he holes up in that office with his fingers in all of Byron Lennox-Hall’s affairs, how he made sure to read the will with only Evander and Laurie present and has avoided the rest of the Lennox-Halls ever since.

“Byron’s death would have been…” Evander’s fogged brain struggles to put words down in a coherent line. “A big opportunity for him.”

Laurie rubs his eye. “Sherlock is onto something. Grandfather never kept a lot of staff, but we’re supposed to believe some postgraduate brat is the only person on his payroll at the time of his death? Convenient.” He hesitates. “If I help you to the bathroom, I’d need to touch you. Is that okay?”

The fact that he asks brings such brilliant and violent relief that Evander can’t hold back the choked sob.

He nods. There’s time to steel himself, to anticipate the way Laurie’s hands slip under his armpits as he half lifts, half drags Evander toward the bathroom.

But more than that, Laurie’s touch doesn’t hurt.

It shouldn’t be hard for Evander to upturn his insides when he’s felt nonstop nauseous for days, but he ends up with his cheek on the cool toilet seat while his attempts at dry heaving only leave him dizzier.

“Put your fingers down your throat,” Laurie suggests.

Evander moans.

“Do you…” There is a pause that lasts exactly seven lifetimes as Laurie looks very hard at the wall. “Do you want me to?”

What Evander wants right now is to die and be reincarnated as a slug that everybody leaves the hell alone, but failing that, he wants to be able to think through this fog. He wants to escape. He nods.

Laurie crouches down awkwardly beside him and gently cups Evander’s jaw.

“This is not,” he mutters, “what I wanted to be doing with your mouth.”

Evander squints at him.

A bright, hot red spreads up Laurie’s throat and he coughs.

“What,” Evander says.

“Just throw up,” Laurie says, and jams two fingers down the back of Evander’s throat.

They are both a mess after that: Evander with his head half in the toilet bowl as he empties his guts, while Laurie stands at the sink scrubbing his hand. Their eyes meet and Laurie winces half a smile while Evander’s eyes sting with salty tears and bile burns his throat.

That was, actually, the worst idea.

He drinks at least three cups of water before Laurie cuts him off, worried he’ll start puking again.

Exhaustion has emptied him and he doesn’t argue, just sits slumped with his back to the bathtub and legs splayed out, long and coltish, his lank curls trailing down his bare shoulder blades.

Repulsiveness oozes from him, which is why he’s confused when Laurie lowers himself to the tiles beside him and just waits.

Evander’s chin tilts toward the floor, he can’t quite look at Laurie. “Who hit you?”

“Mostly Bane.” He sounds disinterested. “But he’d been wanting to for a while, so.”

“What about … Carrington? Did he hurt you?” Evander swallows. It’s still too hard to think of the depraved rage that swept through him as he split apart the old butler and he can’t confess what he did. He just can’t.

“I’m used to it.” Laurie shrugs. “I froze that night. He went for my bad wrist and sometimes I just freak out when that happens. Reminds me of—Anyway, whatever, it’s stupid, I’m—I’m stupid.”

Don’t talk about yourself like that, Evander wants to snap, but he doesn’t have the energy.

It’s easy, somehow, to think of himself with loathing and contempt, but then to realize how wrong it sounds when someone else does it to themselves.

He hates it, the nonchalant way both of them reduce themselves with offhand comments of disgust.

“I—I don’t understand.” Evander’s words stretch with plaintive confusion. “The garden had grown all through Carrington, right? So it should’ve wanted to kill me … Instead, it went after you.”

Laurie’s voice comes hard. “Of course it did. The garden fucking hates Lennox-Halls, and why shouldn’t it?

My family does the worst kind of evil down there and then we take and take and take.

The garden wasn’t like that until they started feeding it blood.

They made it a monster. So I guess it gets revenge when it can and sometimes turns corpses into puppets so it can send them inside and gouge out a few Lennox-Hall eyes. Good for it, quite frankly.”

Evander is too tired to properly appreciate the fact Laurie is talking uncensored for the first time ever—or ask who was keeping him quiet before.

“I nearly drowned in the garden that night,” Evander whispers.

Laurie’s head tilts toward him, a frown leaving a divot between his brows. “You should’ve called for me. If you put my name in your mouth, I will always listen.”

The wretched, raw conviction of his words hurts, and Evander can’t keep looking at him, can’t keep staring at those eyes gone soft with longing, because Laurie isn’t holding himself behind any icy, sardonic walls anymore. It’s too fervent. It’s too real. Evander can’t bear how much he wants this.

Both of their hands have ended up side by side on the tiles, a sliver of distance between their pinkie fingers.

“I want you to swear”—Evander’s looking at their hands—“to tell me the truth from now on.”

“I swear.”

“I like you like this.”

Hushed amusement edges Laurie’s voice. “Like what?”

Evander’s heartbeat picks up and his mouth feels oddly crowded with hummingbird wings. He doesn’t know how to say, I like it when you’re actually being you, so he just says, “Muddy.”

“Okay, Evander.” He’s trying not to laugh.

His fingertips stretch out and brush Evander’s, and then it’s as if he can’t bear the distance anymore and he simply picks up Evander’s hand and threads their fingers together.

The warmth of him, the obvious tender earnestness, sparks a wildfire up Evander’s spine and he almost can’t breathe.

This doesn’t feel like a thing he should want and yet the idea of pulling his hand away is unbearable.

He wants their twined fingers to grow together like soft green vines across a rose trellis.

If he is to be held, to be touched, he wants it to be like this and only by this boy.

Outside the bathroom, there is a faint thump and then the familiar sound of the lock turning over cracks through the quiet.

Evander stiffens, his ribs caving inward, fear oozing through his veins in an oil spill.

But Laurie’s already moving, scrabbling to his feet and darting back into the bedroom, while Evander follows a few steps before fear roots him to his carpet.

Hinges whine as Bane’s nasally voice drifts through. “Rise and shine, brat. We have a big evening ahead.”

Claws of panic rake Evander’s lungs open, but then Laurie moves to stand behind the slowly opening door. That mocking smirk is back in one corner of his mouth. He looks straight at Evander and puts a finger to his lips.

Then he turns and yanks the door wide open to Bane holding a tray.

“Hey, what the—” Bane splutters.

“Surprise, it’s your favorite cousin.” Laurie slams the door so hard into Bane’s startled face that the crack of cartilage is loud and glorious.

Bane reels back with a cry, the tray crashing to the floor as he grabs hold of his face. Blood spews through his fingers.

Evander starts for the exit, his heartbeat thundering under his ribs, but then he sees the field guide slid half under his pillow.

Roots cradle the old book and slowly, as he watches in growing alarm, they push the field guide toward him.

No time to think. He just snatches it up and ignores the way moss stains his fingertips. Then he plunges for the exit.

“Go go go.” Laurie lunges for Bane and yanks something from his pocket before leaping out into the hallway.

Evander skirts the crumpled, howling Bane on the floor and plunges after Laurie.

Adrenaline streams through him in a dizzying wave and he doesn’t know what to do, where to go. But Laurie reaches back, breathless and bright, a hand outstretched and fingers splayed in invitation. He is holding out the thing he stole from his cousin.

A key.

“This is yours,” Laurie says. “It unlocks the red door.”

Evander doesn’t have time to ask what exactly Laurie means, so he simply snatches Laurie’s hand and lets himself be pulled into a run.