CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE #2
‘You’re the one Mimi loves more than the waking day. You are the one she wants to be like, and you’ve lost the ability to refuse her anything.’
Jaw working, he forces himself to look away.
They’re sitting on the edge of the biggest pool.
Blaire’s legs are in the water.
Lachlan’s aren’t.
‘Yeah, I really am spoiling the six-year-old who’s never seen anyone her own age, who hasn’t left these grounds since birth.’
‘You wilfully misunderstand.’
‘No, I think I get it, thanks.’
‘Lachlan,’ Blaire intones quietly. ‘She’s six. You’ve seen what she draws.’
‘She draws rainbows and foxes and castles.’
‘And bodies and guns and blood.’
‘She’s a kid. They draw crazy stuff!’
‘How would either of us know that?’
‘Should we keep her weak? Let her be afraid of everything?’
‘There’s a line between letting her fear the dark and baptising her in it.’
He stares sullenly at the four people in the water.
‘She’ll never be afraid of the dark.’
‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ Blaire asks after several tense beats.
‘I’m not in the mood for this.’
‘The distance, the pullback, the research. Teaching Mimi about money. Teaching her how to kill—’
‘I’m not teaching her how to kill, she’s minuscule!’
‘Letting Danya take over with Jules. It’s so obvious what you’re doing, Lachlan, and you either know that and don’t care how hurtful it is, or you don’t realise because you’re a fucking idiot.’
‘What am I doing, Blaire? What the fuck am I doing beyond trying to keep everyone as safe as possible? Christ, forgive me for not being the perfect role-model for a maladapted kid who has a trauma-bonded older brother and two employees where there should be parents. Forgive me for outsourcing training to someone who’s more capable than I am.
Please lend me your mercy for working myself to the fucking bone to give everyone the tools they need to survive what lies ahead! ’
Blaire is silent for a while.
Lachlan’s outburst rings in his ears.
He doesn’t know how she can stand to keep her legs in the water like that, and the sight of the kids splashing and playing makes him feel physically sick.
Eventually, Blaire says, ‘I’d forgive you for anything,’ and then slips into the water to go be with the kids, ‘except dying.’
?
She’s right.
She’s always fucking right.
Lachlan is pulling away from everyone except Mimi who will need him up until his last breath.
For everyone else, he tells himself, early distance strengthens them.
Pulling away from Jules means Jules will bond with Danya, he’ll forge meaningful relationships with Vasily and Savannah, hopefully lifelong.
Lachlan is aware that the more he becomes involved with Jules, the more it isolates Jules from healthier relationships.
And Blaire’s instincts are, of course, spot on.
Because Lachlan knows he’s going to die here, one way or the other. He’s known that for a long time. He just has to get everything set up first.
Sable Key has changed Lachlan in ways he doesn’t want to understand. He ignores what he can of wounds that fester in his own blood, much like he did when Alistair stabbed him.
Danya is right too.
He’s not doing well.
Most days, Lachlan operates with a very specific kind of tunnel vision.
He can only focus on whatever he’s looking directly at.
Sleep evades him, rest is unobtainable and he’s forgetting to eat.
Sometimes, to soothe himself during hard nights, he fantasises about finding that boy Brayden who tried to rape Jules.
He lets the whole scene play out in his head, but it doesn’t really help.
Nothing does. Nothing can. Nothing will.
One unbearably restless night when the heat lingers past sundown, Lachlan goes out into the trees with Jules’ knife and sits by the lake.
He’s not in a good frame of mind which is why it’s best to be alone, but the knife feels like a friend and the moon above feels like a kind smile from a stranger, so Lachlan decides to put something in his skin.
He carves an R into his inner left wrist, neat and clear.
It looks more like a rune when it’s done due to the lines.
Lachlan kisses it and wills the grief to come out with the blood and the salt, but he knows it’s the kind that lives in his bones.
I was so brave, wasn’t I, Lock?
Mikhail Sorrenko was never going to shoot Jules.
Lachlan had no reason to cover him.
He just couldn’t take even the slightest chance of Jules being hurt.
He should have covered Roman, who would still be alive today.
And Lachlan would probably be dead.
What does death feel like, he wonders.
For a man who has crafted it so often, he still can’t fathom how it feels beyond the instant blackening of awareness and a total, dreamless sleep.
Away. Nothing. Gone.
Lachlan Tanner sits on the shore of the lake, bleeding from his wrist and wishing an attack would come so he could sink his teeth into anyone who deserved it. Maybe he’ll hunt down Craig Fenwick, one of these days, because he went through the casualties manifest for Sable Key and he was not there.
No funeral was held for Roman, nor Mikhail, nor Ariadne. Or if there was, no one from the Estate was required to attend and that’s probably for the best.
Maybe he should… see how it feels.
Lachlan removes his rig and jacket but keeps everything else on, boots too because they’ll pull him down. He stuffs stones from the shore into his pockets and then walks out into the lake, waves lapping gently.
How did it feel to just instantly give up the fight when the jaws of a greater monster took hold? Peaceful, Lachlan would bet. A relief.
The water goes past his knees, then his middle, then up to his neck when he walks further out. He can’t feel the cold, it’s all just warm, warm waters.
He wants the bite, he wants that shock of pain, he wants—
‘Bodyguard!’
Fuck.
‘I’m…’ Lachlan tries to think fast, seeking what, if anything, will get rid of Jules. ‘I’m just swimming.’
‘No, you’re not!’ Jules snaps loudly. ‘Get back here right now.’
‘Yeah, I will,’ Lachlan says, walking further out. He’s so close to where it’ll pull him down. ‘In a minute.’
‘No, now, Bodyguard. Now.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Lachlan, get the fuck back here!’
‘Yeah, I—’ Lachlan chokes on water, spits it and coughs. ‘I will.’ He selfishly moves towards the middle of the lake, just needs to know how it feels.
A half step pulls him under as he reaches the drop. The weight of the large stones in his pockets prevents him from bobbing up like the body of the man in the ocean. The man whose insides saw the sunrise, isn’t that funny?
Lachlan didn’t take a breath on purpose, and the darkness of the water is the most terrifying part of it all because he is so sure he’s about to see wide, gaping teeth any second now.
The opportunistic, indiscriminate hunger of a wild thing without peer.
A brief, strangling silence takes hold and there is relief, that much of his theory was correct, but no peace to be had because in the darkness he sees Roman by firelight and Mimi by sunlight and Blaire by screenlight and Savannah in the blue and Jules—
Jules is grabbing him, pulling him out.
Lachlan only hesitates for a second before kicking up and helping. They break the surface, but he’s instantly drawn down again by the weight in his pockets, clothes and boots waterlogged.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Jules screams.
‘Sorry,’ Lachlan chokes out, can’t even tread water. His boots make it almost impossible. ‘I’m c-coming. Go on, you swim back.’
‘No, I’m not leaving you.’
‘Jules—’
‘If you drown, so will I! I’ll drown too, do you understand?’
Oh.
Oh, he’s terrified.
God. What has Lachlan done?
‘No, no, sweetheart, I’m—I’m sorry,’ he utters, brow knitted.
Lachlan kicks off his boots, lost forever to the bottom of the lake, and then with one hand he fishes out as many stones as he can, but a big one gets stuck.
Once he can tread sufficiently, he kicks up into a confident swim. ‘Let’s go back.’
Jules clearly doesn’t trust him because he stays close to Lachlan the whole time until their feet hit the gritty shingle of the shore. Panting hard, Lachlan drops to his knees once they’re out.
He is intensely ashamed.
‘Sorry,’ he croaks on all fours. Jules’ hands are warm on him for a beat before they start moving aggressively, feeling Lachlan all over, no not feeling. Searching. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’
Jules pulls out one of the bigger stones from Lachlan’s pocket.
No words follow his discovery.
They both just stare at it.
Lachlan spits lake water, furious with himself but paralysed in the moment by the weight of his indecision. Not knowing how to begin explaining, not knowing if there’s any point. He drops his head before he crawls closer to Jules, meaning to take the stone but the boy closes his hand to keep it.
Their eyes meet.
And then Jules slaps him.
It actually fucking hurts.
It’s not like Lachlan doesn’t deserve it and worse, so much worse. He’s just surprised by the power behind it. When he opens his eyes, he sees that Jules is shoving to his feet on the shore, sodden and silently betrayed, walking away to leave Lachlan there.
‘No, no, no, wait, just…’ Lachlan forces himself up, knees weak, head pounding. He grabs Jules’ hand to stop him and pulls him back. ‘Just let me explain, let me—’
Wheeling around suddenly, Jules attacks him.
There’s no other word for it. He literally jumps on Lachlan, hands flying, knocks him flat to the shore, straddling his chest. There’s emerging skill in his blows and Jules has fury on his side, but Lachlan still lets him, doesn’t stop him, doesn’t push him off even though he could.
He’s hitting Lachlan open handed, just sort of mauling him, noises slipping free, grief-soaked anger and fury too damp to catch fire.
He uses his hands to make Lachlan hurt, to say, look what you did, look what you fucking did!
Except no, Jules isn’t like that.
He doesn’t hurt anyone for the sake of it.
He’s nineteen years old and he’s terrified.