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“And yet you still did this to me,” Luke replies bitterly, knowing that this will always be the weapon that he wields, the stick with which he’ll continue to beat guilt into Finlay.
“We’re just going round in circles,” Danny declares to the surprise of everyone in the room, and he drains his glass as if for instant access to liquid courage. “Luke did something bad. Finlay did something bad. Don’t you get it? You’re even. And now both of you are trying to drag each other down further so that one of you comes out on top. It’s never going to happen. You’re just going to keep clashing.”
Luke and Finlay say nothing, though each of them scowls at their general surroundings.
In a softer voice, Danny continues, “And if Rory can hide a damn psychopath in Lochkelvin for a whole term, I’m sure he can smuggle in a prince.”
It’s not quite true, that Rory had been nobly concealing Benji for Lochkelvin’s sake. More like his father’s sake; for the sake of the greater good, whatever that is. This — what we’re enduring now — is the result of that greater good, and Rory hiding Benji is how this whole trouble started.
“I’m nothiding,” Luke insists, and as his fingers trail down the thick drapes, there’s something wistful about his demeanor. “I refuse tohide.”
Finlay turns to look at him. “Then ye have tae speak oot. Ye have tae say something tae make all this stop, because yer mother is holdin’ fast.”
“I owe them nothing.”
“Ye cannae have it both ways,” Finlay says, and this time there is no frustration in his voice; he’s trying his hardest to placate, to encourage. “Ye cannae say ye owe the world nothing and expect the world tae owe ye back. That was okay in the before times, but no’ noo. No’ noo yer big family secret’s oot.”
With a sigh, Luke glances at me over his shoulder. “And you?” he asks, his eyes not quite as narrowed on me as they had been for Finlay. “You’re being remarkably quiet.”
For a long time, I say nothing, observing the quiet hurt on Luke’s handsome face. “I agree with Finlay,” I murmur, and Luke sighs again, turning his back to me, as though to conceal the new wave of hurt I’ve just added. “You need to make a statement. Eventually, something’s gotta give.”
“Has to,” Luke mutters distractedly. “Somethinghas togive.”
Despite the heaviness in the air, my lips spread into a half-smile. “Something has to give,” I repeat, the words feeling like an enchantment on my tongue. And then, with experimental slowness, I clear my throat and recite, “The rude red rabbit runs around the farmer’s rod.”
There are long, agonizing seconds of silence following this proclamation. Stillness fills the room, the heavy atmosphere frozen and crystallized by these nine words.
Luke slants his head to the side, his chin angled just enough over his shoulder that I can make out his sloping frown, the tension along his square-set shoulders that hadn’t been there before.
On the sofa, Finlay stares at me with wide, wide eyes.
“What was that?” Luke asks quietly, captured in that half-attentive position, like he doesn’t want to risk his full attention on me, lest I disappoint, lest I might not deserve it.
I close my eyes briefly, praying that I manage to get the words out. “The rude red rabbit,” I say, the syllables projecting so far forward in my mouth, creating a new flex to my jaw, to the back of my lower lip, to the pursed shape of my protruding mouth, all of it so unused to this pressure, “runs around the farmer’s rod.”
Finlay’s eyebrows fly up to his inky black hair. Luke spins on his heel and faces me fully, and for a moment he gives me nothing, just stares at me with a kind of unmoving astonishment.
And then, like sunlight, his face breaks into one of the most gorgeous smiles I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s radiant. It’s pure. It heats me from top to bottom, and I think I could melt inside it. It’s the kind of bright, enchanting smile that makes me want to spill onto the floor, and I know right then that I’d do anything, I’d say anything again and again, just to have Luke smile at me like that once more.
He approaches me slowly. “Where did the red rabbit run?”
“Around the farmer’s rod,” I answer, swift as anything.
“And what runs around the rod?”
“The rude red rabbit. The rude red rabbit runs around the farmer’s rod.” I gaze up at Luke in happy shock, which is reflected at me. In the background, Finlay hollers in victory, and even Danny, who knows nothing of this, is laughing. For a moment, everything’s perfect. The only thing that matters in this world of corruption and anger is the way I pronounce the letterR, and I keep doing it, I keep saying it, like a spell that can make the world better, “The rude red rabbit runs around the farmer’s rod.”
I keep saying it until Luke, with his broad, breathtaking smile, kisses me soundly on the mouth and I’m soon unable to say anything at all.
“By George,” I overhear Finlay exclaim in the background. “I think she’s got it. I really think she’s got it!”
