Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
LAURA
I don’t stop pulling together an emergency strategy for five hours straight, rigid on Ellen’s grandmother’s chair. It isn’t massively comfortable but that’s fine, I deserve discomfort right now.
My stomach hurts, an ache that radiates through my torso, and I know what this is. I take my laptop into the bathroom to change my panties and fit a pad from Ellen's stash, then walk it back down, glued to the screen. My period arriving early is a sure sign of stress, but I can't stop. I can't.
Ellen comes downstairs late afternoon, yawning. “Hey, Laura.”
“Hi. I can’t chat much today, sweetie.”
“I’m putting the kettle on,” she says. “I’ll make you one of your posh coffees?”
A longing for caffeine rushes through me, but it won’t be the way I like it. My coffee has to be a certain way and I don’t have time to stop. She’d have to be a mind-reader to get it right.
Like Dom.
She hesitates at the threshold. “Don’t work too hard. How long have you been at it?”
“Coupla hours.” Not long enough. My stomach cramps a couple of times, but I don’t move.
She shuffles off, and then I feel her hand on my shoulder. It makes me jump, sending a spike of icy panic straight to my heart.
‘Law-rah?’ The low thrum of Dom’s voice is like an engine, ready to roar into action.
‘I’m fine,’ I try saying into my head. Did he hear that? The last thing I need is someone else worried about me.
“I’m fine,” I say out loud, just in case.
My best friend places the steaming mug next to my travel mouse mat “Are you? You’re working late recently.”
“We have the inquiry this week, it’s to be expected.”
She brings up another dining chair, sitting on it backwards and resting her chin on the wooden backrest. “You’ve been working late for months, though. It’s not just this week.”
“I know, but…” Reasons flash past me, all of them good. “It’s the inquiry, Ells. I need to be at my best to get them the justice they deserve. And… and today I fucked up.”
Her eyes widen slightly. “What do you mean?”
“I…” Took an alien on a joyride, nearly got attacked, did some risque things with him, let him into my bed, and then somehow he got roped into my head.
“I slept in this morning,” I admit to her. Even that hurts a little to say.
Ellen slowly puts a hand to her mouth. “Holy shit, Law, are you serious? You slept in?” She drops her hand and the act, a glitter of mirth in her eyes.
My shoulders ratchet up another notch. “It’s so not funny. My boss chewed me up and spit me out, then ground me underneath his Gucci shoes.”
“No, okay, alright, I’m sorry. But at the same time, it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s as if you’re human.”
I grab control of my anger before it sparks.
“I missed the first day, Ellen. The first day is crucial. It’s when we set out all the evidence we're going to present, and get to see the other side’s cards.
What if John missed something? I wasn't there to remind him! It’s like…
I don’t know, sending someone completely new in to catch a bull. A big constellation of a clusterfuck.”
Ellen frowns. “We wouldn’t send someone new to work one on one with an animal, and I doubt your firm would send a completely new barrister into a trial either. Is whoever they are capable?”
“John, yes, he’s independent of the firm and one of the best.”
“Uh-huh, so he’s not inexperienced.”
Now that I’m not in a blind panic, I lean back slightly.
A last minute briefing would surely be more of a power chat, psyching him up for the opening statements.
If there was anything of substance to tell him, it would be too late anyway.
I did construct the arguments and prep him pretty thoroughly over the past few weeks.
‘Of course you sent your wave brother in prepared,’ Dom says, a tinge of pride in his words blooming into a pale pink rose in my mind.
His comment is nice, but I can’t have him dropping in like this. “Can you pipe down?” I mutter to him.
“Ouch,” Ellen says, standing. “Okay, Law, well, I can tell you’re stressed–”
I grab her hand. “Not you, I’m sorry–”
“I’ll see you later.” Shaking me off, Ellen strides out, tossing her plait over her shoulder.
Well, that went well.
‘I’m so sorry.’ I can feel as well as hear the slam as Dom falls to his knees.
I wince. “Your poor knees!”
‘They don’t matter. All that matters is I’ve broken my word to you.’ A twisting snake of shame constricts around Dom’s chest. This is deadly serious to him, and I know if I asked him to pull out his heart, he’d probably do it.
‘At once–’
“No!” I practically scream.
‘I have two hearts, you can have one–’
“No, Dom. Don't hurt yourself.” Shit. I have so much power over him, he'd literally rip out a heart for me.
I can't mess this up, either. If he gets hurt, or mentally unbalanced because of me… it'd be worse than anything.
My uterus kicks me for good measure, but the pain recedes and I can finally breathe.
‘Good,’ Dom says, as if he felt that too. ‘If I may… Your wave brother will return victorious. I know, because you would prepare him well.’
“How can you be certain of that?” Was he snooping, rifling through memories?
‘I don’t need to ‘snoop.’ I’ve seen from your actions, how even when you were exhausted last cycle, you ensured I had comfort too. You have no doubt done the same for your wave brother.’
Dom’s right, in a way. I made sure John was prepped, locked and loaded. I wrote strategies for every conceivable situation, created contingencies upon contingencies.
He’ll be fine.
‘Yes. And… I have an idea on how to address this mind sync. When can we see one another tonight?’
“As soon as Ellen and Ilia go to bed, or even earlier if I’ve pissed Ellen off enough.” New fuck up to add to the tally. I’ll have to apologize, but I can’t explain why I was talking to myself apart from the blanket excuse of stressed off my tits.
‘Stressed off your…?’
I tip my head back, staring at the ceiling. The sooner I deal with the mental chorus in my head, the better. “Nevermind. I’ll meet you in the shed as soon as I can after dinner.”
Ellen was a bit short with me at dinner but I apologized profusely and blamed the stress of the inquiry.
It’s shitty that Ellen thought I’d lashed out at her, a bitter taste in my mouth at the lie because it implied I’d hurt someone else just because I was having a bad day.
I’d never, ever do that, but now my character carries a horrible smudge I’ll never be able to polish away.
But at the same time, I can’t tell her the truth, because then everything else will come out: “Oh, yeah, I took Dom home last night, but I didn’t have like normal vanilla sex with him, we’re exploring this kind of kink situation which is getting wildly out of hand, but don’t worry, I’m not exploiting him.
” I’ve kept my relationships separate for so long, opening up now feels… too vulnerable.
‘You do not have to disclose anything you do not want to,’ Dom chips in while I’m chewing on the greens to go with Ellen’s cheese and leek pie. ‘I will keep your secrets beyond my last breath.’
He isn’t listening in, he’s just perceptive. I swallow with dignity. I wish I knew how to talk back to him in my head. “We’ll talk more later,” I mutter as I wipe my mouth with a napkin.
‘To speak to me, imagine pushing the words toward me in the lean-to outside.’
I picture waving my hands around my chest, then thrusting them out like karate kid doing a move. ‘Does that work?’
‘Yes, but no need to push so hard.’ An image of Dom collapsing under a barrage of sound waves pops into my head.
I chuckle, stifling it in a napkin, and the image gets more exaggerated. He tries to stand up underneath, struggling to get to his feet, and then shoots me a small smile. Dom doesn’t smile very much, but when he does, it makes him very handsome indeed.
The visual splinters. ‘Handsome?’
‘Yeah. Don’t let it go to your head.’ Hopefully I didn’t flatten him when I sent that.
I put my knife and fork on my plate and stand. “I need to take a walk, I’ll do the dishes later.”
“‘Kay,” Ellen says. Ilia slides his arm around her shoulders and she leans into him with a sigh. “Laura, I’m worried about you. Did you ever go back to the doctor about—”
“Yes.” I put the plates in the sink, the clang loud. “Took the therapy offered. Got discharged a few years ago.”
“Right, but this case and, well, everything else going on, that’ll add up.”
I forcibly relax my shoulders and turn to face her. Pull up my mask. “Really, it’s fine. Thank you for your concern.”
Ellen studies me for a moment. Her expression softens. “Have a good night, Laura, and… just don’t work too hard.”
“It’ll be worth it,” I say instead, because she doesn’t understand what this career demands. What this inquiry needs in order for us to win. What those victims deserve.
I head out into the darkness, making a show of wandering around the barn. It really is coming together, and they’ve finished the walls and the orangery, starting to put glass panels into the eyeless windows whenever it’s dry enough to work.
I tap one with a long nail, hearing more of a tinny sound than glass, so maybe this is an alien formulation.
Whatever it is, it looks the part, and the aliens’ handiwork and dedication shines in all the perfectly straight lines and exact spacing between the blocks.
It would be a huge shame if the council makes Ellen pull it down. I have to stop that, too.
“Good night,” Dom says behind me, voice echoing against the empty walls.
His sudden presence doesn’t startle me, as if I knew he was there already.
“That’s a goodbye-type of greeting. A hello would be ‘Good evening,’” I tell him.
He nods solemnly. “Good evening, Law-rah,” he says, voice rough and low and lavishing all over the syllables of my name again.
I know from experience his tongue is great at lavishing and ravishing things.
The slight raise of his eyebrow shows me he heard that, or perhaps more accurately I shouted it at him.
“I hate this,” I say with a sigh.