Chapter 29
REGAN
I’m at the bottom of the lake. There’s light above me, but no matter how hard I swim, I can’t get any closer.
I feel the muddy, silty depths dragging at my feet, tugging me down, but I don’t want to be there.
I swim and swim, screaming, breath running out, panic setting in, this must be how it ends—
I sit up with a gasp. My chest heaves and my head pounds. I groan, rolling onto my side, checking my body but I’m whole. There’s no water, only a mattress and blankets. I’m groggy and confused. It takes a few minutes before I realize I’m back home.
Back in Liam’s apartment.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay.” He’s beside me and helps me sit up. Liam’s touch is gentle. He’s in different clothes, which is confusing. I accept a glass of water and drink. “Take it easy. The doctor said we need to monitor you closely. You took a bad knock to the head.”
“What… I don’t know…” I search his face, confusion ringing in my brain. “Luke? We found Luke? At the dock, and he had a gun…”
Liam’s expression tightens. He touches my cheek and takes the glass away, setting it on the nightstand. “Don’t worry about that right now. Just rest for a minute, okay? I’ll explain everything soon.” He shifts into the bed beside me and pulls me close.
I accept the comfort. I’m not in a good spot to argue right now even if I wanted to. My skull feels like it’s going to split in half. I reach up and touch a bandage wrapped around my forehead, wincing at a sharp pain.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Half a day. We need to get you scanned soon. But for now, the doctor said to take it easy.”
“Jesus… half a day? Are you serious?”
“I’m sorry, love. You took a bad spill.” He touches the bandage. “Twenty-six stitches.”
“What?!”
“I know. He had to shave some of your hair.”
“Oh god.” I groan and reach to touch myself again, but he stops me.
“It’ll grow back. You’ll get one of those sexy cuts with the shaved sides of the head or something. You can pull it off.”
“I doubt that.”
“Trust me, love, you can pull anything off.”
His arms hold me tight and I lean into him silently. My brain’s working but it’s sluggish, like I’m still in that dream at the bottom of the lake. We found Luke… found him at the dock, but he had a gun… I got pushed…
Pieces start to come together.
“You got shot.” I turn to him, unsure of myself. “But you don’t look like it.”
He lifts his shirt and shows me a patch on his ribs. “He missed. I think he was distracted by you almost breaking your head open. Which is my fault, I pushed you too hard. I’m sorry, love, I was trying to get you out of the way.”
“He wasn’t really going to shoot me, was he?”
“In retrospect, probably not. I think he was always aiming for me. But you were between us and I didn’t want to take the chance.” He grazes a thumb down my cheek. “I’m so sorry, love.”
“It’s okay. You were trying to protect me.”
There’s guilt in his expression even though he did nothing wrong. “We’ll take care of you now though, don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“But what about Luke? What about you?”
“I’m fine. My wound’s a bad graze. As for your brother…” He trails off, his eyes cutting toward the door.
Understanding creeps up on me. “What did you do? Did you hurt him?”
“No more than I had to.”
“Liam, tell me, is my brother still alive?”
He hesitates then reluctantly pats my leg. “He’s still alive. He’s in the other room right now.”
My heart leaps and stutters. Excitement filters through me, but it’s quickly squashed by the grim set of Liam’s mouth. “This is good, isn’t it? I mean, Luke’s okay?”
“You don’t understand…” He kisses my head along the bandage. “I’m breaking a lot of rules right now.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“That’s not a good idea. The doctor said—“
I push myself off the bed. Swinging my legs over the side makes me dizzy and I have to use the wall for support. Liam curses and comes after me, but once it’s clear I’m not going back to bed, he growls something about me being a stubborn idiot, but helps me out toward the living room.
“Keep it short. You need rest. This can wait.”
“I’ll do my best.” I pause in the hallway and face him. I get on my toes to kiss his chin. “Thank you. I know you should’ve handed him in to your boss, but you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.” He looks uncertain. “But I can’t promise I still won’t.”
“I know. Thank you all the same.” I kiss him a second time. “Now, let me talk to him alone.”
“Regan—“
“No arguments. You go take a shower. It’ll be fine.”
“He almost shot you.”
“No, he shot you. Can you blame him?”
“That’s the only reason he’s not dead.”
“Wonderful. Go shower, you stink.” I push myself away from him and stagger on. Liam lets out a frustrated grunt, but in the end he doesn’t follow.
I find my brother tied to a chair near the windows. His head is slumped forward and I think he’s asleep. His chest rises and falls steadily, and there’s a clump of dried blood on his cheek. I sit at the edge of the couch a few feet away and watch him.
How did we end up here? What was Luke thinking, trying something like this? It makes no sense. He spent his whole life trying to please our father, trying to be like our old man the best he could, and mostly failing, but still. He wanted to be a part of the Whelan clan more than anything.
And now, he’s a traitor.
“Regan?”
I remain very still as Luke’s head lolls. He picks it up and fixes on me, squinting through one black and swollen eye. Despite the bruising, it doesn’t look like he’s been injured too badly.
“You’re alive. That’s good.” I smile weakly at him. “I wasn’t sure you would be. You know, after you tried to shoot me.”
The color in his face pales. “No, never, I would never try to hurt you, I swear. I saw Liam behind you and I panicked.”
The fear in his eyes reminds me so much of him as a little kid. It kills me, seeing my brother like this, bloodied and tied to a chair, but I don’t move to let him go.
“What were you thinking, Luke?”
The question comes out heavy from my mouth and it holds so many layers.
The gun, the blackmail, everything: what the hell was he thinking?
I’m desperate to understand, because I can’t keep going on thinking my brother would do something so terrible without a good reason.
If he says money, if he says power, maybe that’ll make me think less of him, but at least I’ll understand.
Right now, he’s a black box and it’s killing me, this strange liminal space of not knowing and also being afraid to find out.
He groans and leans his head back. His eyes squeeze shut as he grimaces with discomfort. “Can I have some water?”
Pity hits me. I get up, shuffle to the kitchen, and grab him a glass. He drinks greedily when I come back. When that’s done, I sit again, stretching my legs.
“Liam says I was out for a while.”
“I’m sorry, Regan. I thought you were dead. You hit the pillar so hard and there was a lot of blood… but I guess head wounds bleed a lot.”
“I thought you were dead too. I wanted you to be. Maybe I still do.”
“Yeah. I don’t blame you.”
“Luke. Look at me.” His eyes meet mine. “Tell me why you did it.”
He doesn’t speak for a long time. His gaze drifts back to the windows and he looks like he’s remembering something painful. “You were becoming like her, you know.”
It takes a second to understand. “Like Mom?”
“Exactly like Mom. Not in the way she spoke or anything, but in the way she carried herself. You ever notice that? The way Mom walked into a room?”
I can still see my mother moving like a scared deer. “She shrank.”
“Exactly. She flowed like water and tried to take up as little space as possible. And over the years I watched you doing that too.”
Guilt slams into me. It’s exactly what I was afraid of. I wanted to be a good example for Luke, but instead I taught him to flinch and hide and run away from our father’s wrath, and maybe a part of this is my fault. All my stupid weakness and my failures.
“I didn’t know. I mean, I didn’t want to, but it’s how I learned to get through the day. If I could be just right… act exactly how I was supposed to… maybe he wouldn’t hit me. Maybe he wouldn’t shout at me. And it worked.”
“It worked for Mom too.” He wrinkles his nose and flinches at the pain.
“I hated it so much, Regan. Watching you get crushed down to that. You know why I loved that campground so much? It was the last place I remember you acted like yourself. When I was little, you were so bold and loud and free. Dad hated it, he was vicious, but you didn’t care.
You were you, unapologetic. I guess now I realize you were young and stupid, but still, I looked up to you.
I wanted to be like you, and seeing you crushed, it broke something in me. ”
Tears roll down my face. I can’t look at him.
I know what he’s talking about, which is the worst part.
I haven’t forgotten what it was like to be my own person before the perfection took over, before I learned to survive, back when I had the space to run, dance, laugh, draw, scream, and joke however I wanted.
That life didn’t last long—by the time I was twelve, I was already hiding away.
But it was enough to leave an impression on my little brother.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”
“Imagine trying to explain to Mom the way she acts. You know exactly how she’d react, right?”
I wish I didn’t, but I definitely do. She’d pretend like I never said anything. “You think that’s what I would’ve done.”
“I know it is.”
The way he says it hurts a lot. “That’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want you to see me like that.”
“I know, Regan, you didn’t mean anything by it.
You were doing whatever you had to, that’s all.
It isn’t our fault we grew up like this.
” His mouth lifts and there’s blood around his gums. It takes a lot of willpower not to reach out to help him.
Instead, I stay rooted to the couch, not moving, my head still pounding.