CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE #3
So Lachlan lets Jules do what he needs to while his energy slowly burns out and all that remains is grief too heavy to sustain the momentum of violence. His blows grow weaker, his breaths fracture beneath ugly, heaving sobs. It’s painful enough to witness, let alone feel.
When Jules exhausts himself, Lachlan sits up slowly.
‘Jules,’ he says, hand hovering close to his face, awaiting permission.
Eyes closed tight, Jules brings Lachlan’s hand clumsily to his cheek, pressing it there like he wouldn’t do it otherwise, and it’s true. Lachlan wanted permission. Jules cries in silent, anguished paroxysms, the kind that make your insides ache afterwards.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lachlan whispers. He feels so lost.
Jules shakes his head. ‘Don’t.’
‘I am though.’
‘I thought—’
‘I wasn’t trying to—’
‘I thought she was enough,’ Jules cuts over swiftly.
Lachlan tries to read him but it’s hard with his eyes closed. ‘Mimi?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Jules opens his eyes, all red from crying. ‘I thought Mimi would always be enough for you to stay. I know I’m… that’s not how it is with us, but I thought you’d stay for her if no one else.’
‘If no one else?’ Lachlan echoes. ‘Jules, I wasn’t—’
Jules kisses him, angry and harsh. He’s still weak after the attack but he does what he can to spill his anger into the kiss and Lachlan feels like he’s drinking it, drowning in it. ‘You were trying to go away.’
‘No, baby. I love you. I love Mimi. I wasn’t trying to go away. I just…’
Jules wraps cold arms around his neck, the jealous octopus who will not be denied. He bites Lachlan’s jaw, whines irritably as fresh tears fall and Lachlan feels their wet warmth bloom against his own cheek. ‘You just what?’
‘I wanted to know how it felt.’
‘To die?’
‘To drown.’
‘Bodyguard.’ Jules has blood around his mouth from Lachlan’s split lip. ‘You never told me what happened.’
‘I did. I… I know I did.’
‘No,’ Jules says gently, brow dented. ‘You didn’t.’
‘I told you in the showers or… after? Didn’t I?’
‘No. I asked Blaire and Danya what happened and they told me they didn’t know.
Blaire said you were having nightmares and it’s why I should give you space.
’ Jules makes a face, visibly distressed.
‘I’ve tried to. I’ve tried really hard, but I know you’re pushing me away. You make me train with Danya.’
‘He’s better than me at—’
‘You don’t kiss me, touch me, or talk to me. Please.’ Double tear streams roll down his face. ‘I can’t lose you. I wouldn’t survive it. Don’t you understand?’
‘Baby—’
‘Don’t call me that if you’re planning to leave!
Don’t do that to me, Lachlan. I never had anyone who was mine.
I can’t lose you. I don’t know how to live without you.
I… I love you too much. Before the island, that night together, I’d never felt so happy.
And you don’t get to just show me how good it can be and then take it away!
Not now, not ever, because I meant what I said,’ he intones, voice unstable, eyes burning bright like fire underwater, like lava.
‘I won’t let God have you.’ The words brand deeply into Lachlan’s bones and blood, a promise that settles like a curse. He’s hurt Jules so bad.
‘I wasn’t trying to die. I just…’ Lachlan closes his eyes. ‘It’s so stupid.’
‘Tell me.’
‘On the island, on the last day, two guys told me it was end of the line because they wanted to leave. They were just going to hold me under, I think. No bucket, no towel.’ Jules is in his lap.
Lachlan wraps one arm around the boy’s middle, presses his forehead to his collarbone, hiding.
‘I let the tide take me out. They followed me. I killed one but not the other. He was taking me back to shore when something…’ Lachlan swallows thickly.
‘Something pulled the guy down and me with him. It shook him, worried him back and forth and then I felt him let go of me. I keep feeling it now… the way his arms relaxed. When he let me go, I swam up and saw the fin, but the shark didn’t eat me.
It let me go. I swam back, and I tried to save everyone, but I made it worse.
I made it all worse. Everything I did was wrong. ’
‘That’s not true.’
‘I gave Sorrenko the gun.’
‘You saved us.’
‘Danya was coming. He’d have saved you all. Roman would be alive.’
‘And I would be dead because if you die, I’m gonna kill myself.’
Lachlan sighs roughly, instantly mad, pulling back. ‘No, you will not.’
‘I can’t live without you, I won’t. And if you think I’ll be brave and try, then you’re wrong, Bodyguard,’ Jules whispers furiously. ‘You are so. fucking. wrong. You can’t go out into the lake with fucking rocks in your pockets, you prick!’
‘I just wanted to know how it felt when he let go.’
‘He died, Lachlan,’ Jules states coldly. ‘That’s why he let go.’
‘But how did it feel?’
‘It felt like leaving, and I forbid it. Do you understand?’ Jules’ fingers tangle in Lachlan’s hair.
He touches his forehead to Lachlan’s, their noses brushing.
‘I’ll follow you to find you and drag you back and then make you so sorry for loving and leaving me, you motherfucker.
Of all the ways I’ve been hurt in my life, you leaving would be the worst.’
A sobering slice of cold guilt burrows into Lachlan’s spine. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are you really?’
‘I am.’
‘Don’t ever do that again.’
‘I… I won’t.’ Guilt lodges hard behind his ribs. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I don’t forgive you.’
‘Good. You shouldn’t.’
‘None of it was your fault, Lachlan. You did everything you could.’
‘I could have done m—’
Jules catches his mouth mid-breath, silences him with a kiss. Lachlan kisses him back, so knotted up inside, every twist of his nerves is agony, and love is at the core of it all, he knows.
Love puts us on the losing side.
Lachlan will do everything he can to prove Sorrenko wrong.
No longer cold from the lake, Lachlan’s wrist stings when it brushes over the fabric of Jules’ shirt and he winces.
‘What?’ Jules pulls off. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
Jules, of course, cannot be fooled.
He zeroes in almost instantly on Lachlan’s wrist, mouth falling open.
‘Oh my God.’
‘Not that,’ Lachlan says quickly. ‘It wasn’t that. I swear. I just… it’s…’
Thickly, Jules says, ‘I can see what it is.’ He shakes his head, wipes his eyes. ‘I need you to tell me what happened during the three days we were apart.’
‘I was held while they tried to—’
‘No, not the blurb. Everything.’
Lachlan wants to squirm at the idea of Jules feeling sympathy for him when people suffered so much worse, when Roman died, when Savannah was hospitalised… it’s unbearable to him.
‘It was pretty standard.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It was…’ Why can’t he say it? ‘They had us tied up.’
‘Did they hurt you?’
‘Yeah, but not too bad.’
‘What’s not too bad, Bodyguard?’
‘Just beating, cutting, burning.’ He shrugs. ‘Waterboarding.’
‘And if someone did that to me?’ Jules asks. ‘Would you say it’s not too bad?’
Lachlan scowls. ‘It’s different.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I was trained for it.’
‘Why?’
‘Why… what?’
‘Why were you trained for it? Is that normal for soldiers?’
‘Deniable assets are trained for capture-risk environments.’
Jules starts opening his shirt, looks up for permission. Lachlan nods, then sighs shakily as the taller boy’s warm chest presses bare against his own. He loves being touched, yet it always threatens to break him apart.
‘So you were a deniable asset?’
‘Jules.’
‘If you don’t want to tell me, I won’t push, but I love you and I want to know you, Lachlan. What did you actually do? Like, what was your title? You joined the army and then what?’
I won’t push but here’s a million questions anyway.
Lachlan loves him so fucking much.
‘Basic training, then infantry assignment.’
‘You were becoming a soldier.’
‘I thought so, yeah.’
‘What changed?’
‘At nineteen, I was pulled by special ops. Maybe three or four people per intake catch their interest.’
‘Why did they want you?’
‘I scored higher than anyone for stress response.’
‘And what did they want you for?’
‘They framed it as an advancement opportunity. Resolution Branch.’
‘And what is Resolution Branch?’
‘Recovery, containment or resolution.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘I don’t think you want to know.’
‘I do, though. I do want to know. So if you want to tell me,’ Jules murmurs softly, kissing Lachlan’s hair, ‘then I want to listen.’
‘RB is who they’d send to retrieve, contain or kill a stolen asset.’
‘Kill?’
‘Worst-case scenario, take him out before he talks.’
‘Go on.’
‘We were a tight-knit group of six, very close. Due to the nature of the job, all of us were capture-risk trained, so when they held me on Sable Key, it actually wasn’t that bad. That’s the difference, baby, OK?’
‘What did they train you for?’
‘Drown resistance, CTT—’
‘What’s that?’
‘Compound tolerance training.’
‘Which is?’
Lachlan frowns. ‘Out of context, this all sounds bad.’
‘I want to know.’
‘They drug you repeatedly until you’re resistant to the effects and recover much faster. It was part of the program. We took it in turns in the black sites where they trained us. I learned how to do it to the others. It’s why I woke up before you.’
‘You were drugged too?’ Jules asks. Lachlan nods. ‘My father told me the photographer was the one who led the attack, that he dosed the champagne, but I didn’t know you were drugged. You never drink.’
‘Just one glass, but like I said, the effects didn’t last as long.’
Jules frowns, likely sensing something is off.
Lachlan still hasn’t told him it was his father who ordered the botched extraction.
He doesn’t know if he can tell Jules without Alistair knowing, so for now, he lets it go uncorrected.
Jules is stroking Lachlan’s skin, fitting three fingers over the stab wounds that became scars.
He does that sometimes, Lachlan has noticed. It seems almost unconscious.
‘OK, what else did they teach you in this place?’
‘ARC. Advanced resistance conditioning. It’s essentially pain tolerance training, designed to keep operators functional so they can hold up.’
‘Hold up under what?’