34. Konnor #3
“I thought all I had to do was show up?” she challenges, forearms resting on my shoulders, fingers finding the back of my neck, brushing up and down.
“That was before I knew your potential.” I pull her in and kiss her, and for a moment everything else disappears. She moans softly and goes slack against me before remembering Jax and Elise are there. She pulls back. I let her go reluctantly.
“Tell me how it went,” I say.
She untangles herself from my lap and settles beside me in the grass, cross-legged.
I brace myself.
“They only gave him my first name,” she says, “but I still didn’t know if he’d even come out.
For all he knew, I was nobody. We sat in this cafeteria-type room with the other visitors.
The longer we waited, the worse it got. The cell block door swung open, and I jumped.
They came out in these green scrubs, and I found him in the crowd before I’d even really looked—which was strange, because I’d never been able to hold his face in my mind.
It was always just... nothing there. But those eyes. Icy blue. I knew.
“He sat down and smirked at me. I kept waiting for something to surface. Some memory of when I must have loved him. It didn’t come.
“For five minutes, neither of us spoke. I wasn’t going to be the one to crack.
He leaned in eventually, elbows on the table, and said I have my mother’s eyes.
Called me Lizzy. It threw me, but I just…
I just got straight to the point. I asked why he took you.
He told me I was prettier than my mum. I asked again, and he scowled, waved a guard over, and the two of them shared some joke about me being a ‘knockout.’ He got up and left.
Glanced back a couple of times. I wanted to believe he was trying to hold onto what I looked like.
” She glances down, almost ashamed. “I don’t know why I wanted that to be true. "
I nod slowly. “Because he’s your dad, Duch.”
She sighs. “I didn’t know what I felt. Sad for you, mostly.
Like I’d wasted both our time.” She picks at the grass.
“On the way out, the guard my father had spoken to stopped us. Asked me to hold my arms out. Patted me down and slipped something into my hand. That was it. Now, I’m here. I’m so sorry, Konnor.”
She tries to smile, but it looks more like a wince. I want her grin back, fuck. She reaches back and retrieves a folded square of paper tucked into the top of her leggings.
I take it from her.
My first instinct is to open it immediately, but the second my hand takes hold, I take a moment. So, I just hold it there between us, this nothing, this everything. It has to have something. I want the truth. No more lies. I’m willing to accept pain and discomfort for the truth.
“I haven’t read it,” she says, nodding towards it. “But please don’t get your hopes up. He’s… not a nice man.”
Jax takes a step closer to me, looking down at the note, ready to read it with me. “Yeah, Slater, for all you know, it says, ‘Fuck you, have a nice day’.”
I feel the press of three sets of eyes on me as I sigh roughly and unfold the note.
Lizzy
It is all yours. You’ve earned it.
Safety deposit box 101
45 South Side Street Moorup
2217
Daddy
I clench my teeth. “It’s the code to a safety deposit box…
” I stand, Blesk follows me up. I hold the note out to her.
My thumb finds the fold and runs along it once—not wanting her to read that first line—before I let go.
I look at Jax, who was reading over my shoulder.
He frowns and says nothing. Is he thinking the same thing as me?
That this is dangerous. Maybe a set up? Maybe a trap.
That we should be careful with whatever this means. “Ignore what it says, Duch.”
Blesk sniffs back a tear as she reads the words that I know will affect her.
Glancing down at her feet, she shuffles them in the dirt.
“He wrote ‘You earned it',” she whispers, her voice trembling along each word.
“Like I've earned whatever prize he got for keeping you kidnapped, like I was his accomplice or something.”
I wipe away a single tear with the side of my finger. “He’s an arsehole, Duch. He wants to hurt you. He probably knows you blame yourself.”
“I know,” she says. “But it still makes me feel sick.”
I say nothing at first. I find the loose strand of hair at her temple and tuck it back, and she lets me, which is the thing about her that still gets me every time—she moves into my touch. Wants it. Sighing against it.
I press my forehead to hers. “I love you.”
“I wanted something from him. That’s the part I can’t stand.” Her chest rises and falls as emotion fills her. “He’s the only blood relation I have, and he just wrote a silly note that he knew would hurt me.”
“Don’t let it.”
“He is the only family I have.”
“Hey.” I pull back just enough to see her face, demanding her gaze. “Look at me.”
She does.
“I’m your family.”
She makes a sound that’s almost a laugh and also not, and her forehead drops against my shoulder with a heavy sigh. “Yeah. We always were.”
I pull her against me and hold her there, one hand at the back of her head. I don’t soften my hold until her breathing is deep and slow. “You wanna go?”
“We have to.”
Then I look over her shoulder at Jax and Elise. “We’re going back to The District.”