22. Negotiating the Future
NEGOTIATING THE FUTURE
Hunter
The cold outside the ballroom is chemical and instantaneous—like a splash of vodka to the eyes, burning away any sentimental residue left behind in the stink of lilies and the sticky gloss of fake candlelight.
I come out hot on the heels of O’Toole, the doors shuddering closed behind us, and the air hammers home every ugly thing about this city: the sour smell of wet concrete, the brackish puddles that linger at the lip of every curb, the exhaust hanging over the parking lot like old sin. We don’t speak. We just scan.
I catch sight of her almost before he does—a slice of bare shoulder, the wreckage of her hair coming undone, heels digging divots into the sodden grass as she cuts behind the catering van.
For a second I think she’ll make it to the street, maybe run straight out into traffic and let a city bus solve this the way the universe likes to tie off loose ends.
But O’Toole’s got those long legs and he arcs wide, flanking her with all the subtlety of a military extraction.
I let him run interference, following at a fast walk that’s all business, no chase.
She doesn’t scream. She just stops, her back to us, both hands pressed flat to the side of my black Mercedes as if she could tip it over with willpower alone.
I move in, careful—like I’m approaching a bloodied animal, something feral and terrified that could bite down hard if you got too close too fast. She turns, and her face is a destroyed, yet beautiful: mascara cracked down both cheeks, eyes rimmed with that wet, inflamed red that only comes from the kind of sobbing you try to stifle in public.
She won’t look at me. She won’t look at O’Toole, either.
Her hands curl into fists, knuckles gone bone-white, and for a second I think she’s going to punch through the glass.
Lachlan is the first to speak. “Stella.” Just her name, but soft, the vowel drawn out, a lament.
She shakes her head once, violent, sending a fleck of snot off her upper lip.
“Don’t talk to me!” she rages, suddenly furious. “Either of you!”
I pop the lock on the Mercedes with a flick of the key fob. The taillights pulse in the dark like warning lights. “Get in the car, sweetheart,” I say, and my voice is calm enough to surprise even me.
She doesn’t move. For a full five-count she just stares at the door, breathing like she’s at the finish line of a marathon.
Then, slow as a condemned woman, she folds into the back seat, her head bowing so low it almost touches her knees.
O’Toole slides in beside her, his big hands useless in his lap, and I climb in up front, turn over the engine, and pull out of the lot.
No one says a fucking thing.
The city slides past in a greasy, slow-motion tumble.
Every stoplight is a Rosary bead, ticking off the silence.
I keep one eye on the rearview, where Stella is hunched against the far door, knees pulled up under her chin, the hem of her dress wrinkled and clotted with what looks like red wine or maybe just blood.
O’Toole sits beside her, his clerical collar bright white, his face so locked-down that he looks sculpted out of soapstone.
If you watched us drive by, you’d think we were a family headed home from a funeral—which, in a way, we are.
I take the long way, looping up past the river where the ice is already banded in dirty stripes, then cut through Northeast, letting the city’s neon blur the edges off the night.
Stella doesn’t look up once. At some point, she starts to shake, just a tremor at first, then a full-body quake that rattles the seat.
I want to say something. I want to stop the car, drag her out onto the median, and shake her until the feeling comes back to her face.
But I don’t. Instead, I crank the heat, tune the radio to static, and drive.
We end up at O’Toole’s place—a squat, brutalist block of a building a couple blocks away from the church itself.
The parking lot is empty except for a fleet of abandoned Camrys and a half-dead pickup with a busted taillight.
I kill the engine, and we sit there, none of us moving, the tick of the cooling engine the only sound.
“Honestly, I have no idea what the fuck just happened,” I say. “Someone better clue me in.”
But Lachlan shoots me a warning look.
“Inside first.”
He gets out, circling to open Stella’s door. She lets him take her by the elbow, lets him steer her into the building and up the cinderblock stairs, never once pulling away or talking back. I follow, close enough to catch her if she folds, but not touching, not yet.
The apartment is a bachelor’s space: small, spare, clean with just a minimum of furnishings.
One lamp in the corner throws a weak yellow triangle onto the threadbare carpet.
There’s the crucifix on the wall above the sagging couch, the cheap bookshelf loaded with theology and the kind of literary fiction that impresses book group types, and a battered kitchen table covered in unopened mail and a single mug of cold coffee.
It smells like lemon cleaner, with a shadow of something darker—maybe incense, maybe the rot of old despair.
Stella stands in the center of the room, arms wrapped around herself, and spins once, taking it all in.
She laughs—a dry, choked sound, more cough than giggle—and then she collapses onto the couch, body folding up so tight she looks fetal.
O’Toole stands in the kitchenette, hands braced on the counter, staring at the floor.
I close the door behind us, leaning against it like a bouncer at a bar that’s just seen its last call.
The silence is fucking nuclear.
I’m the first to break. “You want water? Coffee? Anything?”
Stella shakes her head, hair curtaining her face. Her voice is so thin it almost doesn’t make it across the room. “I want to wake up and have none of this be real.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
O’Toole walks over, drags a chair out from the table, and sits. He angles himself toward Stella, but not too close. “Stella,” he starts, and the accent is deeper now, something rural or ancient pressing up through the vowels. “I need you to listen to me, and I need you to believe me.”
She doesn’t move.
He waits, hands clasped in front of him. “I didn’t know. I swear to God—I had no idea you were my niece. Not until tonight. If I had known—” He stops, jaw working. “No, that’s a lie. I would have still wanted you. I’d have just been smarter about it.”
The words hang there, ugly and perfect.
I guffaw a bit.
“She’s your niece too? What the fuck? I mean, I saw Brenda across the way, but how the fuck did you end up being Stella’s uncle?”
Lachlan shoots me a poisonous look.
“It’s a long story. My dad was married to Brenda’s mom. He passed. Irma packed me off to boarding school, and then I went into the military and divinity school, so out of sight, out of mind. But via marriage, yes, I’m Stella’s step-uncle.”
“Holy fuck,” I mutter. “Jesus Christ.”
Stella lifts her head, just enough to glare at me. “Stop with taking the Lord’s name in vain.”
I throw up my hands.
“This is a holy clusterfuck! I’m going to swear up and down all night if I want.”
Stella shakes her head, exasperated. Then she turns to Lachlan. “You’re a man of God,” she says, but there’s no heat in it. “You’re supposed to be better than this.”
O’Toole barks a laugh, sharp as a slap. “I had no idea, Stella. Same as you. I was in the dark about the job, your dad getting me the job, everything.” He shakes his head, then looks her dead in the eye.
“But I know this: I love you, Stella. Doesn’t matter how wrong it is.
Doesn’t matter what label you want to put on it.
I adore the ground you walk on, and this time that we’ve been together,” he says, including me, “has been the best of my life, and I haven’t had a lot of good times in my life.
” His voice is steady as a freight train, and for a second I wonder if he’s ever said those words out loud before. Maybe not even to himself.
I wait for Stella to shriek, to throw something, to run. Instead, she just closes her eyes. “Oh no,” she whispers. “Fuck. Fuck.”
I watch O’Toole’s hands, the way the knuckles have gone bloodless, the skin stretched so tight you can see the pulse. I know that feeling. The need to grip something until it breaks.
I push off from the door, crossing the carpet in three strides.
“Look,” I say, “this is a hellscape, no question. But none of this is your fault, Stella. It seems that your dad—my brother—he’s been pulling strings since day one.
I guarantee you, Thomas knew who O’Toole was the second he came to Trinity. Hell, he probably made it happen.”
Stella snorts. “Yes, of course! My dad’s always been like that. The fucking Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.”
“He’s good at it,” I say, not unkind. “It’s what made Thomas a billionaire.”
She looks up at me, blue eyes streaked with misery, and for a second she looks about eight years old. “But I’m not a victim,” she says, and the words are a dare.
“I know,” I say. “You’re the farthest thing from it.
” I take a knee in front of the couch, elbows on my knees, close enough to smell the champagne and adrenaline sweat off her skin.
“You want the truth, sweetheart? Here it is: I adore you, too. Maybe I don’t get a say in what’s right or wrong given the depraved life I’ve lived, but I know what I want, and I want you.
” The words come out rough, stripped of everything but fact.
For a second, the room is just us. Three fuck-ups in a church apartment, waiting for lightning to strike.
Stella starts to laugh again, but it’s broken, and then she’s crying—really crying, shoulders shaking, hands over her mouth to keep the sound in. Lachlan stands, comes over, and sits beside her on the couch. He doesn’t touch her, not yet, just sits close enough that she can feel the heat of him.
After a minute, she pulls herself together. “This is so fucking stupid,” she says, voice muffled by her hands. “I always knew I was a slut, but I had no idea just how slutty I am.”
“Don’t say that,” O’Toole says, gentle for the first time.
“Why not?” she snaps. “It’s true. I’m your niece. I’m your sister’s daughter. And I’m his niece too. I let both of you—” She stops, choked off by the depravity of it. “There’s a word for this. Several, actually.”
I reach out, peel her hands from her face, and hold them between my palms. They’re cold as ice.
“You’re not a slut,” I say. “You’re a woman who knows what she wants, and you take it.
That’s rare. That’s something most people never get.
So, yeah, maybe the world wants to shit all over it, but I don’t.
Lachlan doesn’t either. You belong to us, Stella, and that’s all that matters. ”
She looks at me, searching my face for the lie, and when she doesn’t find it, her shoulders slump.
O’Toole leans in, voice low. “I meant what I said. I adore you, Stella. No matter what, and no matter how fucked up this situation is. You don’t have to say it back, or even feel it at this time, but I want you to know.”
I seize her hands, staring at her golden head, even if she won’t look at me. “Same goes for me, star girl. I’m not going anywhere no matter how fucked up the situation is.”
She wipes at her face, streaking the mascara even worse.
“I love you both, too,” she says, so soft I almost don’t catch it.
“But I can’t keep going like this. Too many secrets.
Too many things I didn’t know.” She draws a shuddering breath.
“I’m going to confront my dad. I have to. I have to know what else he’s hiding.”
I nod. “Whatever you need. We’ve got your back.”
O’Toole grins, lopsided. “Guess we’re in this together.”
We sit like that for a while, the three of us, the room gone quiet except for the low whistle of wind through the cracked window. There’s a church bell somewhere, the sound warped and distant. Maybe midnight. Maybe later.
Stella is the first to move. She stretches out on the couch, feet in O’Toole’s lap, head tilted so she’s looking up at the crucifix above us. “Is this what a happy family looks like?” she asks, and for once she’s almost smiling.
“Better than most,” I say, and Lachlan snorts.
The world outside is dark and cold and full of angry history. But in this room, with her between us, it feels—for a second—like the past can’t touch us at all.
And if it does, we’ll burn it down together.