17. Lorcan
LORCAN
Ilowered onto a bench at the edge of the pitch, sweat stinging my eyes and my lungs burning. I flexed my torso and fire shot through my back. My fingers tightened around the hurley lying across my lap and I bit back a curse.
Every move during practice had been agony, but I’d held on. Had to. Showing weakness wasn’t an option. Missing a second practice wasn’t an option.
Rafe and Breezy dropped onto the grass near me with a groan, Breezy using his sports bag as a pillow as he stretched out his thick legs.
Finn lowered himself onto a gear crate and began retaping his hurley. “Jesus, we need to do better than that if we actually want to win this season.”
The other lads on our hurling team scattered around us like fallen soldiers, the air reeking of sweat and that sharp tang of fresh-cut grass mixed with the rubber from our gear.
“Lorc,” Rafe said, his thick dark brows furrowing as he stared at my back, mid-towel wipe. “You’re bleeding, mate.”
I pulled my shirt around and spotted fresh blood seeping into my sweaty sports shirt in the length of a lash. Fuck. I must have split a wound open again during practice.
For a split second, Alistair’s cane cracked across my back, the sound echoing in his study. My vision dimmed for a heartbeat, the world going underwater, muffled and strange, the lads’ voices fading to a distant hum.
Get it together, Lasair. I forced air through my nose and shook my head hard. “I’m grand.”
Finn put his tape aside and frowned. “You hurt?”
I lifted my hands into loose fists by my head, making a show of throwing a couple of fake punches. “You should’ve seen the other guy.”
Rafe and Breezy laughed.
“Go on. Whatcha do?” Rafe asked.
Breezy nudged him. “Betcha he went after Eli.”
The two boys made oooh noises.
The reminder of Elias cornering her against the wall sent a lash of rage through me. I shoved it aside.
“Nah.” The lie rolled off my tongue smooth as whiskey. “Some girl was making eyes at me last night. Lifted her skirt and everything. What was I meant to do, say no?” I shrugged, letting my mouth curve into that smirk that always worked. “Her boyfriend didn’t appreciate my thoughtfulness.”
Breezy and Rafe ate it up, howling like hyenas.
“Bet the boyfriend wasn’t the only one screaming last night,” Breezy said, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Jesus, you’re vile.” Rafe laughed. “He’s not wrong, though.”
Finn didn’t laugh. Just watched me with those sharp eyes of his, seeing right through the bullshite. He knew. Maybe not the details, but he knew enough.
I’d caught him noticing things. The way I flinched at slammed doors, how I sometimes moved with stiffness even during the offseason, how I never used the college showers. But he never said a word. He just stayed close.
“I swear,” Rafe said, stealing a chewy lolly from Breezy’s post-workout stash, “you’re going to end up with someone’s pissed-off boyfriend knifing you behind the gym.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s tried to kill you over a girl,” Breezy said, holding his lolly bag away from Rafe like treasure. “Wasn’t that French exchange crying in the chapel for a week last year?”
Finn grabbed a Gummi bear from Breezy’s other side. “Right, then her fiancé flies here from France to challenge you to a duel. An actual fucking duel.”
I shrugged. “She should’ve come with a warning label,” I said, biting down on a long jelly snake.
“They do…” Rafe grinned. “What’s the golden rule, lads?”
“Don’t stick your dick in crazy!” the chorus came from half the team, voices carrying across the field and nearby courtyard.
Rafe nodded toward the grass courtyard where Aoife and her friends were performing some choreographed dance for a phone camera on a tripod. “Jury’s out on whether yer wan is a full-blown stage five clinger or just nuts.”
Aoife caught us looking and lifted a manicured hand in a bright little wave while the two girls beside her dissolved into giggles.
My stomach curdled.
“I’m not fucking Aoife,” I said, voice flat.
“Anymore,” Rafe added with a smirk.
“Oooooh,” Finn whistled.
Breezy clapped me on the shoulder. “Poor girl never stood a chance against the Lorcanator… blowing through hot chicks like T-800s.”
“Lorcan ‘the Hunger Games’ Lasair,” Finn called out like a bad wrestling announcer. “They all volunteer as tribute, but none of them survive.”
“Who ya gonna booty call?” Rafe sang out the familiar 90s classic movie theme song. “Lorcan, Pussy-Buster.”
Their laughter faded to background noise. Across the courtyard, she sat with Nuala, her legs crossed underneath her, tearing bits of bread from her sandwich to feed the birds. A small smile kept touching her mouth, unguarded and easy, and the sight of it sat wrong in my chest.
She looked almost exactly like Rua. But everything else was wrong.
She wasn’t the girl who used to slink in the shadows to watch me.
This one pushed back when I pressed. She held my stare when she should have lowered hers. She refused to melt at my touch, even with heat rising under her skin and that pulse fluttering in her throat. She looked at me like I was the broken one.
And that… that irked me for some reason.
“Like what you see, lad?” Breezy’s voice cut through my thoughts as a jelly raspberry came flying past my head.
I tore my gaze away and scowled. “Piss off.”
“Why you staring, then?” Rafe pressed as he yanked his sweaty shirt off over his head and replaced it with a Ravenwood Hurling sweater.
“You’ve been staring all week,” Finn added quietly.
Heat crept up my neck. I made a face, keeping my voice casual. “She’s been weird since she got back. Anyone else notice?”
It sounded flippant. But my heart was thudding. I hated they’d noticed me staring. Hated even more that I’d lost focus.
I told myself it was just because I was trying to catch her out. That I was studying her.
Because that wasn’t my sister.
Breezy shrugged. “She’s always been weird.”
Finn whistled low. “Yeah, but it’s like Romania loosened her up. She’s less…” He glanced over to Rua and tilted his head. “…uptight.”
His answer only sharpened the irritation already riding under my skin because he was still trying to explain her as if she were only changed, not wrong.
Rafe let out a laugh. “Someone pulled the stick out her ass.”
“Or put one in it,” Breezy said as he ground his hips against the air. “Bet she got laid.”
Something hot spread across my chest and my teeth ground together, sharp words building in my throat.
“Still touchy about that, Lasair?” Elias fucking Montgomery leaned against the brick wall with that smug, rich-boy slouch of his. “You made me look like a prick this morning, and now I want to know why Rua is worth the tantrum.” His gaze lingered too long on her. “Can’t wait to find out.”
I shot to my feet, hurley clattering to the ground, and I faced off with Elias, ignoring the pain in my back.
“You don’t get a second warning,” I said very quietly. “You won’t so much as breathe on my sister again, or I stop being polite.”
Elias pushed off the wall and squared up to me. “I don’t give a shite if she was your dead ma,” he said, stare locked on me. “If I want her, I’ll have her.”
“Christ,” Breezy muttered. “Always knew he was an obnoxious little cunt. Didn’t realize he was such a stupid one, too.”
Rafe added, “He’ll be a dead cunt, if he doesn’t stop talking.”
I picked up my hurley, feeling the familiar weight settle into my palm like an old friend. “Say that again.”
Elias’s smirk twitched. “I said—”
I slammed the bas end into the wall beside his head, concrete cracking, dust raining down like snow.
Then I pressed the edge against his throat, just hard enough to make him swallow.
“One more word, and I’ll drive this into your throat so deep you’ll be eating through a tube till Christmas. Go on. I fucking dare ya.”
“Alright. Enough.” Finn stepped between us, hands steady on my hurley, pushing it down. “He’s not worth it.”
Because it was Finn, loyal, levelheaded Finn, I lowered the stick. But I kept my eyes locked on Elias, daring him to have a go at me.
“You prick,” Elias spat as he rubbed his neck. “You can’t threaten me like that.”
“Run on home to daddy, Eli,” Finn said, shooing him away like a stray dog. “Maybe he’ll give you a lollipop to make ye feel better.”
Elias’s face twisted into something ugly. “I bet Rua will call me daddy. But to be fair, she won’t be able to call me anything”—his grin turned predatory—“with my cock shoved down her throat.”
I spun toward him, but Breezy and Rafe grabbed my arms.
“Don’t do it, Lorc,” Breezy grunted, struggling to hold me back.
“That’s what he wants,” Rafe added as he tried to twist the hurley out of my hands. “A reason to get you expelled.”
My periphery reduced to Elias’s smirking face.
“Touch her and I’ll kill you,” I said, my voice low and hard. “I’ll fucking kill you and bury you so deep even the maggots won’t be able to find you.”
Finn shoved Elias back. “Fuck off, you pest.”
Elias backed away but kept that smug smile. “Funny how karma’s a bitch, isn’t it?” he called out. “All those girls you ruin, and the only one you want is the one you can’t have.”
I shrugged my friends off and sat down hard on the bleachers, my hands shaking as I ran them through my hair.
The lads went quiet, but I could feel Breezy and Rafe watching me like I was a bomb that might go off.
The field had gone quiet around us. Teammates, students, even a teacher at the far edge of the pitch had stopped to watch.
Finn stood near me like a guard, shooing away the hangers-on who kept drifting too close to be nosy or to ask if I was okay.
He stepped in beside me, his voice low enough that only I could hear him. “Lorcan… whatever this is, don’t make it a weakness.”
My jaw tightened before I could stop it. “I don’t give enough shites for her to be a weakness.”
The lie sat between us, ugly and obvious.
I locked eyes with her as she sat across the courtyard within sight of it all, watching me, the birds forgotten.
Annoyance sat under my skin. She was no longer just a lie in my house or a problem in my school.
She was getting under my skin, making me act in ways that destabilized me.
And I had just shown my hand in front of her, let her see exactly how far off-balance she could throw me, and that made her dangerous in a way I would not accept.
I would unravel her properly. I would strip back every lie and force the truth out of her one way or another.
Whatever game she thought she was playing in my house and my school, it was mine now.
My little back to college party at Lasair Manor wasn’t a celebration. It was a lure, bait strung with candlelight and velvet, a stage set for her. With Alistair gone for the weekend, there was no leash on my collar, no one to temper my plans.
The manor had been transformed into a gothic spectacle, flickering candelabras throwing long, trembling shadows across marble floors, dresses and diamond cuff links glittering in the shifting light.
The gold champagne tower gleamed like bait in a trap, the masked faces beneath the candlelight warping into grotesque smiles and sharp edges.
Even the music seemed to wind tighter, melodies pulling taut in anticipation.
I sat back in a high-backed chair, whiskey glass heavy in my hand, one ankle hooked over my knee. To anyone looking, I was relaxed, but inside the coil tightened with every tick of the clock.
My friends surrounded me, Finn, Rafe, Breezy, but their voices blurred into noise I didn’t bother to answer.
Every corner of this night was designed for her.
Girls in tight dresses danced nearby, tossing glances in my direction, their movements suggestive, deliberate.
My gaze skimmed past them, the bright red of their lips, the glint of sequins.
None of it stirred me. They were mere shadows in gray scale, background noise compared to the anticipation of her arrival.
The front door opened. I stiffened, waiting to see who stepped in.
It was her.
I sat up, my entire body sharpening with awareness, my blood pounding, my senses honed in.
I saw the moment she clocked all these strangers in her house, saw the flash of apprehension across her features.
The muted purple of her dress might be subtle to others, but to me she stood out brighter than anyone else in the room.
Someone—Breezy?—asked me something. Someone else made a joke. Others laughed. But I barely heard it.
My attention was fixed solely on her.
Across the crowd, her gaze caught on me and I felt it like a pull deep in my chest. The tension crackled in the air like a live wire between us.
The corner of my mouth lifted, not a smile. A promise.
I didn’t move yet. I didn’t approach right away. I took my time, studying her stiff posture, the hesitant tilt of her chin, the way she chewed her lip as if she sensed the trap was closing in on her.
Her gaze tore from mine, darting around the room as if looking for a way out. Then she moved, darting through the crowd.
Game on, my little imposter.
I knocked back the rest of his whiskey in a single swallow, set the glass aside, and rose from my seat, no longer the patient king on his throne, but the hunter ready to move in.
I began to stalk her through the crowd as she weaved between my guests.
The crowd split around me as I aimed straight for her, my gaze never leaving her.
Aoife slid into my path, her perfume thick, making me scowl as I looked over her head to my target.
“Dance with me,” Aoife purred as she threw her arms around my neck.
I peeled her off with a single hand, my eyes never leaving the imposter.
“No,” I said, already moving.
Behind him, Aoife’s scoff cut through the music. “Lorcan, where are you going?”
I didn’t bother answering.
She began pushing through the crowd, her movements frantic, glancing back over her shoulder every few seconds, her cheeks red.
She knew. She could feel me on her trail.
Like a deer breaking from the herd, she ducked under the red rope Mervyn had put up to block off the stairs and the bedrooms upstairs.
My smile cut sharp. She’d taken the bait.
I followed her upstairs, my feet soundless on the stairs.
On the mezzanine floor above, the music dulled, the air cooler, the light from sconces a dim wash. The hallway stretched ahead, lined with closed doors. The hush up here was oppressive, intimate, the perfect place for her punishment.
Shadows swallowed me as I skirted the creaky boards that would give me away.
Up ahead, she hurried toward her bedroom and disappeared behind her door. I could almost hear her sigh of relief, could almost feel her sagging against the wood.
Oh, mo chlunaireín, don’t think that a locked door will ever be enough to keep me from you.
The anticipation wound tighter with every step. I slowed as I neared, pushing my sleeves up.
Time to spring the trap.