Chapter 9 Arran
ARRAN
The whisky’s numbing magic finally settled upon me, the pain of the past dulling as I wandered outside town hall for fresh air.
A cool spring breeze fluttered through my shirt as I weaved along the edge of the building, away from the smokers who’d come outside to light up. I’d abandoned my jacket inside, but fuck knows where.
Across the street on a bus stop bench sat a familiar kilted figure.
I squinted against the streetlamps.
Lachlan.
Concern filtered through my whisky fog, and I crossed the street to him.
He sat with a bottle of Clynelish in hand. A third of it was gone.
Without a word, I slid in beside my big brother, and he passed me the bottle.
I took a swig and passed it back, staring up at the sky full of a million stars but not a cloud to be found beyond the one over my head.
“Still worried about Robyn?” I asked Lachlan.
“I’ve been acting like an absolute prick,” he spat in self-directed anger. “It’s a wonder she hasn’t left me.”
I couldn’t imagine Lachlan treating Robyn with anything but respect. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“It takes a lot to make Robyn cry, and I made her cry last night. Because I’m a selfish arsehole.”
“What happened?”
He shook his head. “She tried to talk to me about the baby, about my worries. She’s been trying to talk to me for weeks, and I just … I won’t let her.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m ashamed I’m not stronger,” he answered immediately. “My wife is the strongest person I have ever met, and I am unraveling over her pregnancy because our mother died over thirty years ago. Pathetic, no?”
Compassion cut through my self-absorbed misery, and I patted my brother’s knee. “You can’t help your fears, big bro. They are what they are. They don’t make you weak. Not facing them, not facing your wife, that’s a different story.”
He grunted. “Thanks.”
“I’ll always be honest with you.” I shrugged.
“Just fucking talk to her. I know Robyn’s strong, but she’s still human, Lachlan.
She’s not invincible. And she’s pregnant for the first time.
Do you not think she’s scared of what’s coming?
Of being a mum? She needs you now more than ever, and you just need to fucking man up and communicate with her.
” I ripped the whisky out of his hand because I was equal parts sympathetic and annoyed.
After I’d taken a drink, he yanked the bottle back. “You know, you’re bloody irritating when you’re right.”
“Aye.” I sighed heavily. “Doesn’t happen much, so I wouldn’t worry yourself over it being a regular occurrence.”
Silence fell between us as we passed the bottle back and forth, getting drunker by the second.
“Do you think because I’m a bag of shite right now that I haven’t noticed your dark mood these past few weeks? And tonight”—he waved the bottle at me—“well, you didn’t even get drunk at my wedding, and look at you now.”
I grunted.
“What’s wrong, Arran?”
Squeezing my eyes closed, memories assaulted me. Memories I wished were just a dream.
But they were real.
So damn real, it was a living nightmare.
Why was it so bad this year? Why was I so haunted?
Krabi Province, Thailand
Three years ago
There was nothing but midnight sky bleeding into black water, the moonlight rippling across its lazy waves. Ocean lapped at the shore in a rhythmic sound that lulled beachgoers to sleep on their loungers during the day.
It was cooler at night this time of year, and I welcomed the whisper of a breeze on my skin as I took another swig of my beer and stared out at the water. Sometimes I wondered if I shouldn’t just walk into it. Just walk in and let it take me.
Like it took him.
“So, this is what running a bar looks like?”
The familiar voice jolted me from my morbid thoughts. It was a voice I hadn’t expected to hear.
Turning toward it, I saw my brother in the moon’s glow, walking along the sand toward me. “Brodan?” I murmured, pushing to my feet, staggering as the world spun.
“Damn it.” Brodan hurried to help me, but I pushed him off. His eyes dropped to my beer and then to the cooler at my feet filled with many more. “How many of those have you had?”
I curled my lip at the judgment in his tone. “Apparently, not enough.” I’d been happy to hear my brother’s voice only seconds ago. Now I wished he’d fuck off. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s nice to see you too,” he said, and I tried to focus on his face. Whatever he saw on mine made him curse under his breath. “Okay, I came because you’ve not been answering anyone’s emails or texts, and I was worried. I paused a shoot to come find you.”
“Sorry if I wasted your precious time.” I stumbled back and fell onto my arse in the sand. But since it was where I wanted to be, I just shrugged and reached for another beer.
Brodan’s hand curled around my wrist.
Anger boiled in my blood. “Let me go, Bro, or I will fuck you up.”
“Considering you’re half cut, I like my chances.”
“You’re a prick.” I wrenched my hand away and tried to focus on the water.
I heard my brother sigh and then watched him out of my peripheral vision as he sat down beside me to stare out at the dark ocean. We hadn’t seen each other in six months. I didn’t suppose this was the welcome he’d expected.
“I always understood why you wanted to work at the bar here. The Highlands couldn’t compete with paradise.”
That felt like another dig, even though he probably didn’t mean it as one.
The truth was, I hadn’t been running from the Highlands.
I was running from who I’d been there. Overlooked by my father, not talented like Lachlan and Brodan or smart like Thane or passionate like Arro.
I was the joke. In trouble constantly at school and even with the police.
One day, I realized I didn’t want to be that person.
I didn’t want that to be my label, and staying meant it always would be.
So I followed my wanderlust around the world, bartending wherever I could to pay for the next flight or the next train to my next adventure. I’d stayed in Thailand the longest.
Bartending for my friend Kasem.
We ran his bar together and befriended people from all over the world as they came to the province for a piece of paradise.
We weren’t alone, though. Colin had tended bar with us too. Until last summer.
And for the past year, paradise had become purgatory.
“You’re miserable here,” Brodan said, as if he could read my mind. “You’re wasting away, Arran. You’ve lost weight. Come home.”
I snorted. “Why should I listen to you? You’re never fucking home.”
He sighed. “I try. Work keeps me away.”
“And is it work you enjoy?” I mocked, knowing full well Brodan was running away from home, just like me. Hypocrite.
“Arran … this isn’t you.”
“Isn’t it?” I grinned unhappily. “I’m the Adair fuckup, remember? This”—I gestured to myself—“plays right into my wheelhouse.”
“You’re not the Adair fuckup. And what happened isn’t your fault.”
Bile rose in my throat. “Shut up.”
“No. I’ve shut up about it too long.” Brodan turned to me. “You don’t need to go home if you’re not ready to. But you need to leave here. I’ve got a mate in Australia. He has a bar in Byron Bay. He’s looking for a bartender.”
“I’m already a bartender,” I drawled.
“Kasem tells me you’ve been blowing off work for weeks. He never mentioned the drinking, though.”
Indignation and shame roiled in my gut. “I don’t drink. Tonight is special. It’s one year tonight that it happened, don’t you know?” I said with a casualness I mostly definitely didn’t feel.
“Fuck.” Brodan let out a ragged breath. “I didn’t … I knew it was a year, but I didn’t realize tonight was … fuck, I’m sorry, Arran.”
“It is what it is.” I side-eyed him. “Can’t believe Kasem called you.”
“He’s worried. He thinks you should move on from here.”
Bloody hell. My friend had gone behind my back to my brother. Like I was five. I flinched, dropping my head as the shame overtook my indignation. It had to be bad for Kasem to have done that. And if I was honest with myself, I had selfishly left him in the lurch many times this past month.
Shit.
“Have you told Lachlan?”
“No,” Brodan bit out. “I promised I would tell no one, and I’m keeping that promise.”
Lifting my head, I stared out at the dark water again. I could hear Colin roaring my name in panic. Then silence. And then it was me calling for him.
So much silence. Just water crashing and silence.
I felt like I was losing my goddamn mind.
Staying was punishment.
Did I really deserve to leave it all behind?
“If you don’t leave here, I’m terrified we’re going to lose you,” Brodan confessed hoarsely, “And Christ, Arran, hasn’t this family lost enough?”
Tears thickened my throat as I forced myself to look at him. The sight of the glassy emotion in his eyes undid me. “I don’t deserve to be here.”
Brodan’s jaw ticked. “It was an accident. Not your fault. And you don’t deserve to wither away here in misery. Your family certainly doesn’t deserve to get a phone call one day telling them their brother is dead.”
A sob broke out of me before I could stop it, and I buried my head in my hands, half despair, half mortification.
I felt Brodan’s warmth seconds before he pulled me against him.
“I’ve got you, Arr.” He gripped me, his words gruff with his tears. “I’ve got you.”
“I-I can’t go home.” I was a mess. There would be so many questions. I’d always vowed when I returned home, it would be as a man I was proud of. Now, it seemed like that would never happen.
“Then go to Byron Bay. Start over there. Get yourself together. Maybe talk to someone.”
It sounded like an awful bloody plan.
But Brodan was right about one thing.
I was wasting away here.
If I wanted to move on, I couldn’t stay. Only ten minutes before, I was certain I didn’t care about moving on. Happy to live out a miserable fucking existence on my own. Seeing Brodan, however, changed everything. I couldn’t do that to him. To my family. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“You have to at least answer an email or text,” he pressed. “Everyone is worried about you and asking me questions I can’t answer.”
“I’ll … I’ll email or something. But can you … can we just pretend I’m still here?”
“They won’t think it unusual if you move somewhere else, Arran.”
“I just … let’s just …” I couldn’t even explain why I didn’t want them to know I was abandoning my life in Thailand. I was ashamed, but it wasn’t as if they knew I had reason to be.
“I won’t tell them,” Brodan promised. “Just as long as you get on a plane with me in a few hours.”
I pulled out of my brother’s embrace, scrubbing aggressively at the wet on my cheeks. “I’ve got shit to do. Kasem, the bar, my place …”
Brodan waved me off. “We can tie all of it up from a distance. We’re going to head to your place, pack what you need, and go.”
“Just like that?” I smirked unhappily. There was only a year between us in age, and among all our siblings, Bro and I were the closest. We’d shared everything, even women. But he’d always been the more sensible of us, the one who stopped the fights I started, the calm who tempered my wildness.
He was always my greatest defender, too, smoothing over the tension between me and Lachlan who acted more like a father to me than our dad ever had. I’d actually feared Lachlan’s disappointment more than our dad’s.
And it seemed I was always disappointing him.
I’d only disappointed Brodan once, but he’d gotten over that.
He was always picking up my pieces.
Even now.
It humbled me more than it ever had.
I probably never would have gotten up off that beach and walked away from that life if anyone but Brodan had asked.
Still, as I followed my brother, I glanced back toward the water and swore I heard Colin calling my name as I abandoned him once more.
“Arran?” Lachlan cut through the memories. His hand clamped onto my shoulder. “You’ve got me worried.”
I blinked rapidly and shot him a smirk. “Not an unfamiliar feeling, I’m sure.”
He sighed. “Aye, once upon a time, I worried constantly about you. But you’ve been different since you’ve been home. You’re a man now. A man I’m proud to call my brother.”
Emotion thickened my throat.
“But something has been bothering you these past few weeks, and tonight, you look as wrecked as I feel.”
The truth, the confession, rose inside me as I looked into my brother’s eyes.
Everyone always said I was Lachlan’s spitting image, just a younger version.
Despite his own turmoil, he had always been our patriarch, even when Dad was alive.
Lachlan was our anchor. I wanted to tell him, but his words of pride made the confession stick inside me.
Looking away, I shook my head. “I’m okay.”
I think I disappointed him with the lie we both knew I’d just told.
Yet we said no more.
Just passed that whisky between us until the world tilted back and forth like the bow of a ship on rough waters.