21. Konnor
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
konnor
When we turn down a dirt road and pass a sign that reads “Main Estate”, something dark shifts through me that bleeds into my focus and calm.
We pass an old, broken-down homestead overrun by vines. Large white pillars and a weathered timber frame, still in good nick—the three-story house looks like a waste of a great family home. And I don’t know why I keep looking at it in the side mirror.
It isn’t until we come to the end of the dirt-track that we notice Erik’s car parked up on top of a hill. She is with her brother. That’s… good. That’s good…
A sandy track leads up the hill, then continues along the top. Bet the view from up there is—
Dark.
The thought comes unbidden.
“Lucky we brought the Prado and not the Beamer, hey?” Jax says, pulling the hand brake. “Should we drive up there? Or walk?”
I don’t answer.
My pulse spikes. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.
Something is wrong. The field pulls at me like gravity.
I can’t stop staring at... all those daisies.
That single, crooked tree. The sun burning the top of the hill down to what looks like snow.
And that smell—that sweet, sweet smell crawling up into my skull—
Ringing starts.
My lungs have forgotten how to work—I rub my chest. I’ve never been here.
No. No. I’ve never been here in my life.
So why does this place already know me? Why does it whisper my trauma back to me.
Words surface from a place inside me that is deep and forgotten, a place I’ve been trying to reach for years.
“It is the daisies. They are my favourite flower. I will bring you a new one every day.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to share them with you. They light up the entire world.”
“No, you do that.”
“What’s up, man?”
“Slater?”
“Slater!”
Jax is shaking me.
I blink. “Huh?”
He frowns. “Slater, where did you just go?”
I meet his hard stare. Blink again. I shake my head, trying to dislodge the siren of the hill. Rattle it away. And fight to find the last few seconds.
Elise touches my shoulder, and I tense. She is leaning forwards to look at me. “Konnor? Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I nod, stiff. Once. “Sorry. Ah…”
They frown at each other. Elise smiles tight, then says, “You just sort of zoned out.”
“Wait here." Before I know what I’m doing, I’m jumping from the car and sprinting up the hill. Every single muscle in my body is working on pure instinct.
Why am I sprinting?
I hit the top and double over, hands gripping my knees, heaving at the ground, because my body wants to be somewhere that my mind can’t see. I pant, looking at the foliage under my shoe… Daisies.
I'm suddenly blinded by the sun. I straighten up slowly. Coming to a stand. I raise my forearm to shield my eyes. Squinting, I search around the area, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. Or what I’m doing here—
There…
Every cell in my body freezes at once. My heart thunders in my ears, breaking the serene silence of the daisy covered hill.
There… There is an open hatch between the foliage. And stairs. Stairs that lead down. Down into a basement. A dark. No light. Fucking basement.
I clench my teeth until they hurt.
Seconds pass, or moments, or an hour. Time has no structure right now as I stare at it.
I hear a small whimper.
Fucking move, Konnor.
Another whimper.
My entire body throbs with my pulse. Forcing my foot to take a single step, I peer down into the black hole. I attempt to lift my feet a second time.
Move. Move!
You can’t go down there.
I drag in fierce breaths.
There is a masculine moan.
And a feminine sob.
The words, “Thank you.”
The sounds reach me like they’re crawling up from hell, and I can’t make them out between the boy screaming in my head, and I can’t make my feet move, and I’m going to be fucking sick—
My whole body throws itself forwards and down the stairs. As soon as I’m officially underground, the air becomes its own kind of entity, its own villain.
I get to the bottom.
And freeze.
Erik is on all fours over her. Blesk’s hands are pushing her dress down her thighs. His belt buckle catches the light. Her face is turned away from him. Towards me. Eyes are filled with tears and—
A bolt of heat strikes my temple, and everything goes pitch-black…
Then I’m on him. I don’t remember lunging or moving, but I’m whaling on him.
My knuckles split open against his cheekbone, but I don’t feel it.
He goes down. I follow him down. The sounds surrounding us are rhythmic and ugly, and my throat hurts.
He tries to get up. His head snaps sideways.
Snaps back. I keep going. Something gives under my fist with a sound like an axe making its first crack in a log, and my hand comes back warm and wet and crimson. I raise it again.
All I see is red.
Something guttural is tearing out of my throat. I don’t recognise the sound until my voice breaks. My fists find his face again and again. A crunch. Warmth spraying back across my knuckles, my forearm, my cheek.
I don’t stop.
Then the ground moves. My arms are gone. Jax has me from behind, both of mine locked up in both of his, and I’m still trying to swing with no arms, feet scrabbling for purchase, the whole basement lurching sideways.
Erik is a heap on the floor. Blood bubbles out of his mouth.
“Oh, my God!” Elise drops beside him. Her hands move fast—tilting his head, tearing fabric, pressing down hard.
My vision blurs. I edge back towards him. “Leave him. Leave him to choke!”
“Shit, Slater!” Jax yells while dragging me back again. “Think about the girls, you fucking psycho!”
“Konnor.”
Her sweet, shaky voice crashes through my rage, snapping me back to the here and now. Snapping me back to what I just saw and to what I now know.
To who she is…
And where I am.
“I’ll stop. I’ll stop!” I shake Jax’s hand off me and spin like a wild animal in search of Blesk. I’m covered in sticky blood and dripping with sweat. Every inch of me is twitching with fury and fear, a tangled combination of fight and flight.
The room is black at the edges, dotted in the blood on my lashes, but I can still make out silhouettes. My eyes strain. Her trembling frame comes into focus. Her hair, her face, that sweet girl, my everything.
My sunshine.
I remember.
We both stand like statues as the truth we've been feeling since we laid eyes on each other consumes us. I swallow, seeing her in a totally new way. Hair, yellow. Her song, hero boy. Was that about me? That was about me. Oh, fuck. I can finally finish the thought about why her? Why I feel this way. What is happening between us. I know why she’s familiar, I know why it needs to be her.
Why since I saw her she seemed to be everywhere. Inside me.
I mouth her name first.
Then I yell.
“Liz!”
Her face breaks and tears burst from her eyes as she drops to her knees. “Oh, God, don’t call me that!”
I rush to her as she lands on the floor. Wrapping my arms around her shuddering body, I hold her desperately to me. Pained sounds explode from her.
There is no way I’m ever letting her go. No way I’m ever going to let anyone take her away from me again.
You died.
I thought.
She died.
“You died; you died!” I chant, exploding, splitting down the centre, making sounds I hadn’t realised a man could make. Tears fall hard and fast on her like rain.
Her little hands clutch at my clothes. Her face buries in my chest. I try to calm down.
I try to calm her down. Threading my fingers through her yellow hair, I grip it like silk against me, remembering how often I'd wanted to do just that—to touch her hair.
She is finally in my arms. After all these years, I can touch her.
Ever since I saw her at The Grill, a part of me had known it was her.
I'd felt it.
I couldn’t describe it.
Even in the hazy memories, searching the darkest parts of my past, I could feel her, knew her like a glimpse of light that blazed in the pitch air.
I knew. And, yeah, I don't know much about Blesk, but I know everything about Liz: she loves to read and draw horses. She used to twirl and twirl. Her smile lights up the whole damn world which was once this basement. When she’s nervous she bites her lip.
Her birthday is the 20th of March. Her favourite colour is the same green as my eyes.
I want to ask her so many questions, like, do you still skip instead of walking?
Do you still prefer white chocolate to brown because you said it’s sweeter?
It is; I’ve tried it now.
I feel like a small boy.
Liz is my best friend.
This is by far the best moment of my entire life. Of anything I’ve ever experienced and anything I could imagine experiencing. I can’t hear above the drumming of my heart. I'm so overwhelmed. So happy. On overdrive, processing and evaluating—she’s alive.
As she sobs, I rock her back and forth. Pretending it’s once again just the two of us, my voice cracks as I whisper to her the last story we wrote. I was nine.
The story we'd written the day before they told me she’d died on this hill.
"There was once a boy named Deakon. He spent a lot of time away from the sun, but he had shining dreams. One day, he looked in the mirror and reflected in his eyes was a girl. She had golden hair and chocolate eyes.
"Years later, while he was walking past a shop front, he caught the reflection of a girl in the window. Yet, when he turned around, she was gone. She was the same girl reflected in his eyes.
"He dreamed of her, saw her by his side everywhere he went.
He spent years travelling, searching and meeting beautiful people and beautiful girls.
No matter how far he went, though, or how many people he met or how beautiful they were, they were never as beautiful as the girl in his eyes, the girl in the window, the girl in his dreams.
"One day, they will be together, and she will be by his side, reflected in his eyes, next to him in the window, and in his dreams. His dream girl.”