CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dancing is fucking wonderful.
Not at first.
Definitely not at first.
Kade is self-consciously shuffling from one foot to the other, arms by his side, glancing around to see if anyone’s looking and some are but most aren’t. He hisses mean curses at Lachlan, who laughs, charmed by Kade’s bad mood.
‘No one cares,’ he tells Kade. ‘They’re all the main character in their little stories. You be yours. Do whatever you like.’
‘Gee, thanks for the wisdom.’
Kade is angrily shuffling and counting the seconds until he can give up but then the song shifts into something with a deeper bass and heavy drop, and his adrenaline kicks up as if he’s fighting.
A couple of people come dance to this new one, or maybe they just needed Kade and Lachlan to be the first, but either way, with people around them and this new song playing, Kade leans into the rhythm and closes his eyes.
This is where it starts to feel good.
Hips swaying, body moving naturally, arms high, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, nothing matters so everything matters. Kade laughs, runs a hand through his hair and gives in.
And the bodyguard makes it all so much better.
Lachlan’s not a good dancer by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s solid and strong and Kade can kind of dance up on him if he likes, which he does.
He likes pushing and testing and measuring all this man’s reactions.
He wants to time the gaps in between when his throat contracts and he does that little soft blink, lashes fluttering.
The rhythm calls to Kade like a siren to the sea, like all rivers to the mouth of the open ocean, come crashing home, my love, and all water obeys the moon, doesn’t it?
What even is the moon? A broken shard of earth who could not let go.
Bright call of the dead sister makes waves, wind, and wildness.
She whose light cannot sustain but calls monsters to rise.
Kade laughs, arm around Lachlan’s neck.
His castle was sand.
His world a titanium box.
His backbone of truth a fairytale fallacy.
Kade lets the music take him.
He thinks the name he’s heard so much in the last forty-eight hours.
Jules.
Julian.
Jules Penhalyx.
Who the fuck is that?
It doesn’t feel like him.
He is Kade.
Kade’s the fucking best.
Unstoppable. Unbeatable.
Powerhouse. Machine.
The.
Best.
But aside from that… who is he?
Who is Kade?
This is the first time he’s danced in his whole life.
Kade doesn’t really have much of a life outside of Iron Star.
But that’s the way of professionals. Right?
Throughout his mini-crisis, Lachlan Tanner is there, watching him, eyes on but not hands. He’s stable and strong, smells of clean sweat and earth from where he dug up that fucking monstrosity to show Kade the truth.
Kade wants to kiss him.
As soon as he admits it, fresh hunger awakens within to fix greedy eyes on this curious man.
To map him in a new way, to know him inside and out, to take, take, take until it hurts, until Kade wants to beg for it to stop but he won’t because he’s a slut and no one could give it to him the way Lachlan could, no one sees him like his bodyguard does, no one else ever will because he’s Lachlan fucking Tanner, motherfucker supreme and Jules is—
No.
No, wait.
Stop.
Stop.
S T O P.
‘It’s OK, you’re good. Just breathe nice and slow.’
Kade blinks as soon as he opens his eyes because harsh neon white stabs the back of his skull, makes everything sting. He’s… where the fuck is he?
It smells of piss and bleach, thudding bass coming through the walls.
The fucking men’s room. Great.
Lachlan has him sat up on the countertop beside the sink, one hand on his shoulder, the other massaging his wrist.
‘You,’ Kade says, frowning, mind all soupy.
‘C’mon, you can do better,’ Lachlan quips lightly, seems to be taking Kade’s pulse, which is so weird. He’s so fucking weird, this guy. Weirdo. ‘What about motherfucker, huh? You like calling me that.’
Kade snatches his wrist back, instantly bemoans the loss of Lachlan’s touch but hides it well. ‘Don’t baby me. What happened?’
‘You passed out on the dancefloor.’ Kade casts back but has no memory of that. Lachlan is reading him. ‘What do you remember?’
‘I remember drinking tequila.’
‘And?’
‘Walking here with you ‘cause you don’t have a fucking car.’
‘Do you remember us talking?’
‘I… kinda?’ Kade replays events. Lachlan told him he’s a Brightling (bullshit), said Riley’s “curse” is something to do with them being bound, told Kade a little about the father of the Penhalyx kids.
Then dancing.
Dancing was wonderful.
After that, nothing.
‘I’m just drunk,’ he says, which is a lie. ‘Sorry.’
‘Why are you sorry?’
‘For passing out?’
‘It’s not a problem,’ Lachlan tells him honestly. Kade can’t imagine getting used to having someone care this much about him that it’s ingrained, instinctive, no flash, no novelty.
‘Why do you think I’m a Brightling?’
‘I don’t think it, I know it.’
‘Why?’
‘The last few months it was undeniable. The electronics, the storms, the rain. It was you from the start. That’s how you slipped free of tracking.’
‘So this kid was good with tech—’
‘No, I’m good with tech,’ Lachlan corrects quickly. ‘Jolene was good with tech. What you could do was something else. I researched it a lot. Had my people hack into government files. I read reports. Tests they’d been running since the sixties. It’s all real and it’s way more than anyone knows.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘It’s not just Brightlings. There are others.’
Kade stares, something unsettling stirs within. ‘Others?’
‘Your father knew it too,’ he adds, tone grim. ‘Hence the lack of a pool.’
‘What?’
‘Are you feeling better now?’
‘Bodyguard.’
‘Yes or no?’
‘Obviously yes. Answer my question.’
‘You’re determined not to believe me anyway so what’s the point?’
‘I just…’ Kade scowls, shakes his head. ‘It’s not like I don’t think they’re not real, I know they are. I just think it’s not real. It can’t be.’
‘Magic.’
‘I mean, yeah. It can’t be real. Think about Tesla discovering how to harness electricity when everyone else was still using lamplights. That would have seemed like magic, but it was just science.’
‘What about me?’
Kade looks away. His mind seeks to reject it, but no one who’s seen Lachlan heal could ever deny the truth. ‘I don’t know. Does that mean that God’s real?’
‘Blaire used to say that God was water which makes more sense to me than a book of violent fairytales, but I don’t know. There has to be something.’
‘Why?’
‘Because why does life strive to continue? Why not just have efficient nothingness? Why do your cells try so hard?’
‘Do they?’
‘They do. They’re listening to you right now, working endlessly to keep you alive. Why, though? Why bother? First there was nothing, so where did the something come from? If God is real, that’s what it is. A little something in the dark.’ Lachlan drops his gaze. ‘Your legs feel OK?’
‘Yeah, fine.’
‘You wanna dance more?’
Kade smiles despite himself. ‘Maybe.’
?
The bar packs out around eleven at night. Kade avoids the tequila after his incident, switching to beers. They dance for what feels like hours although Lachlan’s dancing never evolves past being a pole for Kade to hold onto.
In all honesty, it’s nice to just exist in motion while his brain does what it can to reconcile what he’s discovered. It helps.
At this point, Kade can no longer deny what Lachlan is saying about him being this long-lost Penhalyx heir or whatever, but it won’t exactly sink in either. He accepts it the way the sea accepts a boat atop the surface, cannot take it deeper without destroying it.
‘Tell me something about you,’ Kade asks around midnight when they’re at the bar, only club soda and lime now, no more tequila.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’
‘Uh.’ Lachlan seems briefly lost. ‘I’m good at killing.’
‘Yes,’ Kade says making a face, ‘I noticed.’
‘Your turn.’
‘That wasn’t even an answer.’
‘Fine. I’m ambidextrous.’
‘From birth?’
‘No. I trained.’
‘Why?’
‘Took a few bullets in my right arm during the blackout party. I could still use it, but it made more sense to train the left as well. Your turn.’
‘My favourite colour is rose red.’
‘I knew that.’
‘And I already knew you were ambidextrous. Your turn.’
Lachlan seems nervous. Unsure of himself for the first time.
‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’
‘Tell me something about you.’
‘I love seeing you happy.’
‘That’s not you.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Kade, I’m the most boring guy on the planet.’
Kade squints. ‘Hardly.’
‘I am, though. There’s nothing about me that isn’t—’
‘Pretend we’re on a date.’
‘What?’
‘Pretend we’re on a date and you’re trying to land me.’
‘Land you?’
‘Precisely.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to say.’
‘Make the effort, Bodyguard. Tell me something personal that’s not a fun military fact or your kill count.’
Lachlan has to think. Kade pretends really fucking hard he doesn’t have the same problem. ‘OK, well. I like this old movie. It’s dumb. But.’
Oh, he’s nervous about it. ‘What movie?’
‘You’re gonna laugh.’
‘I could use one.’
He rolls his eyes slightly. ‘Hocus Pocus.’
‘The witch movie?’
‘It’s a perfect movie.’
‘I’m not judging,’ Kade says with a grin, hands raised at the defensive tone. ‘It’s just not what I expected. What do you like about it?’
‘The colours.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s very distinct and rich. Plus, I like the cat.’
‘Of course you like the cat.’
‘Have you seen it?’
‘Everyone’s seen it.’
‘When?’
Kade’s about to answer but he instantly knows that he hasn’t watched a single movie in the Tower, so his knowledge of that movie comes from before.
He probably watched it with Lachlan.
‘Don’t know, but OK, this is good! Hocus Pocus, I can work with that. I really like,’ he says, thinking hard because so much about him is being a professional, is Iron Star, Riley, the Tower, ‘… being outside in the rain.’
‘That’s a nice one. OK, I like wet sun.’
‘I really like French toast.’
‘Oh fuck, me too. I could polish off three servings, easy.’
‘Right?’ Kade grins. ‘Damn, now I want French toast.’
‘You wanna hit a diner?’
‘Can we?’