Chapter 11 #2
“Why do you call me that?” I asked, my cheeks heating, as Luch slid the backpack from his shoulders and dropped it to the ground. He unclipped a rolled blanket attached to the top and shook it out before laying it on the ground. Oban promptly walked over and sat on it, and I grinned.
“I don’t know. It just rolls off the tongue, I suppose?”
“My mum used to call me that.” I said it before I realized I had, caught up in the moment, where the emotions were swamping me.
I didn’t usually mention my mother to people, as I was never comfortable receiving awkward condolences, so I kept her memory to myself.
As though it was my own precious pearl to pull out and admire when I was alone.
“Did she? It suits you. Do you want to tell me about her?” Luch asked, and I glanced at him, surprised. There were no condolences now, just genuine interest.
And despite my usual reticence to talk about myself—the necessity to hide my past, my life from people—sometimes I’d wished for opportunities for people to know about Eriska.
She was such an amazing woman. And for the first time in such a long time, I did want to tell someone about her.
I wanted to … share a part of myself with the man in front of me.
To show him where I come from, if only briefly.
“We’re rooted, you and I, Faelan. Like the flowers that bloom in the spring and the ancient trees that sing in the wind. Beneath the sky, face to the sun, is where you’ll always find me.” My mum’s words whispered to me across the pages of my memories.
“She’d love this moment, for one.” I laughed as I thought about her.
Luch took my hand and guided me to a seat on the blanket before uncapping a thermos and pouring me a cup of tea.
“She was endlessly romantic, sometimes to the point of foolishness if I’m to be honest. But she always wanted to believe the best in people.
It made her an easy mark at times, for the wrong boyfriends, but her one saving grace was she also had a backbone of steel.
The minute someone mistreated her, she booted them. ”
“Good for her.” Luch busied himself taking a few containers and packages of tinfoil from his bag, spreading everything on the blanket before us. “What about your dad?”
Robert Thomas. Reckless fool. Sperm donor. No one to me.
“He was one of the bad ones.” I cupped the mug of tea in both hands and took a sip, my gaze going across the loch to the island.
“Lived fast. Died young. He’d been drinking and had eight-month-old me in the car with him.
She took me and moved on the next day. He was dead within the year.
To my mother’s credit, I never missed having a father.
She was … everything. All-consuming. Beautiful, funny, whip-smart. And constantly, endlessly, joyous.”
“That’s an incredible talent, to hold joy in the face of adversity,” Luch observed, popping open the lids on the containers.
“I think that’s part of being a mother, isn’t it?
Creating these pockets of joy and happiness, even if sadness burned in her heart?
She never let me see it, even though, intuitively, I often knew she felt it.
She worried over me. That I was too serious.
She didn’t want me to take the sadness of the world on my shoulders. ”
“Why did she think you were too serious?”
“It was a defense mechanism, I suppose. I didn’t, well, don’t, trust easily.
It takes me time to let people in. And she was always an open book, from day one of meeting her.
She’d invite friends and foe alike to dinner, never batting an eye, always happy to have people surrounding her.
I think, maybe, because our family was so small.
So she constantly opened the doors to the world, even when that same world didn’t open the doors back. ”
“Why not?”
I blinked at Luch, surprised I’d said so much. I fell back on a lie, unwilling to tell him that most people didn’t accept witches into their lives. I wasn’t ready to share that information with him. Yet. Or ever, maybe.
“The world isn’t often very kind to single mothers.”
“That’s such shite.” Luch’s eyebrows drew together in a glower. “Why do the men get off on being shite fathers, but the women bear the brunt of it? Ridiculous.”
“Aye, it is at that.” Oban shifted, licking my palm, and I raised my hand to scratch his ears. I need to change the subject. Luch’s phone pinged, and I paused, waiting while he pulled it from his pocket and glanced at it.
“Sorry, I have it on for work.”
“No problem. Feel free to take it.” I could understand better than most about the needs of work.
“No, it’s fine. Just my father.”
“Oh, go ahead.” I waved a hand as his phone pinged again, but he just silenced it and put it back in his pocket. I studied his face as he pressed his lips together, frustration flashing behind his eyes. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.” Luch reached for a tinfoil package. “I wasn’t sure what kind of sandwich you’d like, so I made several.”
“Luch. What’s going on? Is everything okay?” It annoyed me, just a bit, that I’d opened up about my mother and he was going all clench-jawed and quiet about his father. “Tell me about your family. Please.”
“Fine. But tell me what sandwich you like first. I have a tomato and cheese, egg, and tuna salad.”
“Are you vegetarian? I am.”
“I am too!” A grin chased the clouds away from his expression. “But I do eat fish.”
“I’ll take the egg salad. Thanks.” Pleased that I didn’t have to discuss my reasoning for being a vegetarian—it was hard to eat animals when I devoted my life to treating them—and I didn’t like to press my views on anyone else, I happily unwrapped the sandwich.
“My family is … complicated to say the least. I have four brothers, and I’m the youngest. My father is a surgeon, all my brothers are as well, and when I went the comprehensive emergency services route, they were stunned.
They’re a tight-knit family, demanding, and the egos are intense.
They always think they know what’s best for everyone else, I suppose that’s a casualty of their occupations, but it also makes them difficult partners, friends, and frankly, family members. ”
“Ouch,” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich. “That does sound tough. Your mother?”
“A goddamned saint.” Luch sighed, but some of the tension left his face when he spoke of her. “She’s in a wheelchair. From my birth.”
“Oh, Luch, I’m sorry. Was it nerve damage?”
A look I couldn’t decipher crossed Luch’s face, and then he shook his head, his expression clearing.
“Aye, it was. I was a large baby and it was a long labor, twenty-one hours to be exact.”
I’d heard of it, though I wasn’t largely familiar with it. The ins and the outs didn’t matter, just that I could understand why it would be hard for him, particularly in a family that sounded as difficult as his. Was there blame placed on his shoulders for his mum’s injuries?
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She’d chosen a healer for her labor. One that used magick.”
A healer that used magick. Oh.
My eyes tightened at the corners as I forced my emotions down.
“Like a midwife?” I asked, casually, and made myself take a bite of the sandwich. “Or like someone using crystals and whatnot?”
“Something like that.”
The air felt heavy between us, and I wasn’t sure how to navigate going forward.
“Your father? He wasn’t able to assist?”
“He wasn’t at my birth.”
“Ah.” Again, I wasn’t sure how to swim through the undercurrents of what he was telling me, so I just took another bite and sat in silence.
I often found that saying nothing prompted the other person to continue speaking and save me from saying anything that could cause distress, or in this case, be potentially harmful to me.
The reality was, if his mum used any type of healer that professed to use magick to help during labor—and it had gone wrong—Luch’s opinion of non-traditional healers would be horrible forever. Particularly coming from a family who dedicated themselves to modern medicine.
It didn’t matter if the man kissed like a god, there was no path forward for us.
I could never be honest with him about who I was.
And he blames healers forever for harming his mum.
This relationship was dead in the water before it started.
And even though there’s a pinch of disappointment, I was glad to know that now before I became too invested in Luch.
“I love my mum.” His voice cracked as he looked out over the loch. “Fiercely. But I also had to leave them behind to start fresh. It was … they are … too much. Too many rules. Too controlling. I can’t, no, I won’t, follow in what they believe to be right.”
“And what do they believe to be right?” I reached over and stroked Oban’s ears, needing to soothe the tension that roiled in my stomach.
“Everything has to be a certain way. Done by the rules. Approved by my father. Down to even the person I marry. They follow a very specific set of guidelines on what is allowed and what is not.”
“Sounds stringent. Militaristic, almost?”
Luch’s eyes met mine, and he smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Yeah, something like that.”
He’s hiding something. Part of his truth. I couldn’t fault him for not opening everything about his world to me, as I was guilty of the same.
“So you left and came to Loren Brae. Starting fresh. And they’re furious about it, I gather?”
“Pretty much.” He shrugged and polished off his sandwich in two bites.
“That’s got to be fun for you.”
Luch barked out a laugh and leaned back, stretching his legs out in front of him.
“It’s been over a year. I’m hoping they’ll accept it, while they’re hoping I accept my destiny.”
I tilted my head at that word. Destiny was an odd choice, wasn’t it? I wondered if his family just had a flair for the dramatics or if they really felt he was destined to follow whatever role they’d laid out for him. Either way, it sounded stifling and cold, and certainly no way to raise a child.