Chapter 18 #2
I look up to realize he’s stopped in the doorway, dark reddish brown hair tousled and expression holding exhaustion from the day.
“Oh… yeah… I came up here to chill with O’Keeffe,” I answer. “She’s good company.”
“Better than me?” he asks, cocking a brow. He steps into the room with his hands in his pockets and strolls over to the settee.
“Well, keeping it one hundred? O’Keeffe’s never sold me to the Bratva.”
His expression promptly darkens. “That was a mistake. The worst I’ve ever made.”
“I know. You’ve told me every night since.” I pad over to him, abandoning the painting on the wall and sliding into his lap. “How was your day? Not to be that girl, but I’ve noticed the speck of blood on your shoe.”
“Yeah… that. Pretend it’s ketchup.”
“I think you and I both know I’m waaay past being able to pretend any slick red substance on you is ketchup, Callahan.”
He heaves a sigh, his hand gliding up the side of my thigh. “You want me to keep it real with you?”
“Always.”
“It was a busy day. Fucked up some more shit. Blew up another one of the Callahans’ cargo trucks,” he answers plainly. “I’m taking them down day by day, and they’re powerless to stop it.”
“Oh.”
“Just checked in on Callahan House using the surveillance cameras I’ve had installed—my brother’s losing his shit over it.”
My face falls and I repeat myself. “Oh.”
“What’s that about? Oh what?”
I don’t answer him right away, instead studying his face. Details like the hard set of his jaw and how his vivid green eyes gleam with a sense of darkness that I still don’t get.
It’s startling that he’s even sharing what he is with me. It’s a sign he’s letting me in more and more each day.
A real sign of trust.
But what am I supposed to do with this information? How am I supposed to react when he’s trying to hurt people I know and care about?
It’s not as if me and the Callahans are tight, but Simone’s like a sister to me. Which means any war waged against her husband also feels like an attack on her too.
“Nothing,” I say hesitantly. “Just… um, bragging about blowing up cargo trucks? It’s giving ‘casual Tuesday’ when it should be giving ‘federal crime.’”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I was charged with one of those,” he answers dismissively. “I was sent away to Sing Sing for eight years before I died.”
“Lochlan, it’s just…” I pause and drop my gaze to his throat where some of his thick scruff grows under his jawline.
He’s been letting his hair grow longer in recent days, and I’ve enjoyed running my fingers over it.
I do so now as I reach up and trace my fingers along his scratchy jaw.
“I don’t know how to say this without you going off…
but… have you ever thought about confronting your family?
Letting them know your perspective? Think about how Ronan would feel if he knew his brother was alive. ”
He goes rigid under me. His hand on my thigh stills and his eyes sharpen. “What kind of question is that?”
“Lochlan, when you died, Simone told me how difficult it was for Ronan,” I say hurriedly. “She mentioned how he was grieving and—”
“And then he took what was mine,” he interrupts in a growl. “He moved on like my father did. Like they all fucking did.”
“That’s not true!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But I do, though! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Simone told me—”
“It must be true if Simone said it,” he snaps. “The same girl whose allegiance was never with my family ’til it was convenient for her and her father!”
“Simone was forced to marry your brother,” I interject, offended on her behalf. “Of course her loyalty would be with her blood family.”
“You’d think so. Which is what’s so funny when you realize the opposite wasn’t true. My father and brother betrayed me, their blood. They took what was mine. Then they took my son!”
“This is a misunderstanding, Lochlan! Why can’t you see it?” I cry out. I reach for his arm but he pulls he away then abruptly stands on his feet. I slide out of his lap, stumbling back. “You need to talk to them. If you just—”
“Stay out of it!” he barks. “It’s not your place to play peacemaker!”
“But I could speak to Simone. Maybe we can arrange a meeting—”
“You’ll NEVER speak to Simone again!” he rants. “Do you understand me? So get that out of your head right now! You forget you’re my captive? That you don’t make the decisions here, I do?!”
I take a step back, shocked by the level of rage in his voice. “Nothing’s changed. Everything’s still the same between us. You’re still a psychopathic asshole, and I’m the poor girl you’ve chosen to hold hostage for leverage.”
“Why would it?” he asks gruffly. “Did you think I wasn’t gonna get my revenge? Did you think things between us meant you could sweet talk me into letting you go? That you could go running to them and tell them what you’ve found out about me? So you could betray me for them?!”
“I wasn’t trying to betray you! I was just trying to work things out between you and the Callahans! You’re so angry, so convinced you’ve been wronged that you won’t see reason. You think they threw you away—”
“You want to talk about being thrown away?” he sneers, a glint of cruelty in his gaze.
“What about you, Chantal? Your father had every opportunity to pay for your release. Did you know that? He stalled, then outright refused. He’s been taking in record donations, though.
Even made a deposit on some renovations at the family beach house in the Hamptons. ”
“Stop it!” I scream. “That’s not true!”
“IT IS TRUE!” he roars back. “Every fucking word of it is! I just didn’t tell you to spare your feelings. Face it, Chantal—you’ve been discarded just like I was. Your own father couldn’t even be bothered to buy you back.”
Air leaves my lungs as I go to draw a breath and then come up short.
I shake my head and turn from Lochlan, no longer able to even face him.
“So now you’re back to hurting me,” I say. “You know what? Fuck you, Lochlan. You’re a lost cause.”
I rush from the parlor both tempted to tear up but also scream and break something. I’m left feeling foolish as I hurry down the hall and head up the next flight of stairs to make it to the third floor where my room’s located.
Within only a few steps, Lochlan’s thundering after me.
“Chantal!” he calls.
“I said FUCK OFF!” I scream.
I make it to the doorway of my bedroom before Lochlan’s grabbing me from behind. He spins me around, and I react by slapping him across the face.
“Don’t touch me,” I growl. “You touch me again, and I’m kneeing you in the fucking balls! Get away from me!”
I wrench the bedroom door open, but he plows through without giving me a chance to slam it shut. It seems the slap has only energized him more. Made him more insistent on cornering me and making me hear whatever the hell he has to say.
“What do you want from me?” I yell in frustration.
“You want me to be your sexy, bratty little captive and pretend everything’s alright all the time?
For me not to tell you what’s really on my mind?
You act like you’re so real and honest, but you can’t handle it when someone tells you shit you don’t want to hear! ”
“Chantal—”
“I’m not that girl, Lochlan!” I shove at his chest the more he advances on me.
“You can go back to starving me, making me bathe in that biohazard you call a bathroom, and put me up to whatever manual labor you can find—but I’m never going to not do me!
I was trying to help you; I was trying to get you to see maybe things could be different. Nobody else has to get hurt!”
He grimaces as if my words do hurt; they sting to hear after what he’s convinced himself for so long.
“But what do you do?” I continue angrily. “Instead of realizing I’m on your damn side, you’re paranoid and assume that means I’m betraying you too! So you try to hurt me. That’s not okay!”
“You’re right!” he shouts. “You’re fucking right, Chantal. I’m wrong!”
I shake my head side to side and back up from him. “Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear.”
“Listen!”
“I’m done listening!”
As he tries to grab my arms, I’m still pushing back against him. We’ve locked ourselves into a struggle where I’m evading and he’s capturing and neither one of us relents.
…then he drops to his knees.
Lochlan drops to the floor and grabs onto me by the hips, forcing me to go still.
“I was fucking wrong!” he growls. “I’m sorry. I said shit I shouldn’t’ve. You don’t deserve it, and I’m a fucking asshole for doing it.”
“Then why—”
“Because I’m angry, alright?” he grits out, his brow creased.
“I’m livid. I’m hurting and you’re right.
I want to make somebody else hurt; I want to make them hurt.
I gave my life to my family—forty years of loyalty, from the moment I was fucking born—and they threw me away like I was nothing.
They let me take the fall and left me to rot in prison. They took my son from me.”
His voice cracks on the last word, cutting himself off as he tears his gaze from me and glares at the floor.
The heaviness that unloads on his face speaks volumes. The deep sense of betrayal and pain he feels from everything that’s happened.
“I… I feel so fucking betrayed,” he mutters under his breath. “I don’t know how to be anything other than angry anymore. It’s all I have left.”
I’m struck speechless as he clenches his eyes shut and remains where he is, on his knees holding me by the hips.
All I can do is stare down at him, both startled and concerned by how broken he really is. As formidable and commanding and tough as he presents himself to be, he’s deep down broken.
He’s hurt and alone and grieving. He doesn’t know how else to process what’s happened except to lash out.
My heart aches as I realize he’s shown me these things. He’s obviously kept this buried for so long, it’s been tearing him up inside.
But it’s a hidden part of himself he’s shown me and no one else.