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“But were you ever like Caelan?” I said quickly to catch him off guard and hopefully get a truthful answer. “Did you ever just fuck for the sake of it?”
“No,” he replied instantly. “It always… there had to be something I found irresistible. Like it’d be a mole on their cheek, the shape of their breasts, or their eyes, a tight butt, their laugh, maybe they had really good hair, or we got on… something… that got me off. For Caelan, he buried himself in nothingness. In vague attractions. Fuelled by alcohol. Lots of alcohol.”
I’d been afraid of that—of the darkness that lurked beneath. That responsibility weighed on me a great deal sometimes—because without me, I knew he’d go right back there again. I didn’t even need Eric to confirm all this. I’d felt it, all this time, that I was the one thing preventing him going back to that lifestyle. That darkness.
“Did Caelan tell you I killed his uncle?”
Eric’s jaw dropped. A man his size and with his brutality looked shocked.
Part of me revelled in being able to shock someone like him. Another part of me was terrified he’d judge me forever… see me differently. Treat me differently. No longer like a lady he would allow to bruise him while he did nothing in return.
“We’re trauma bonded, you see, we two. Me and him. I’ve not been able to talk about this with anyone else for fear of judgement, shame, mostly judgement.”
“I would never judge you, Flora,” he said softly. “There must have been a reason.”
“Yes.” I gulped and rubbed at my chest, staring into space. “Jimmy was working for my father, got high and drunk one night, tried to rape me… and I killed the bastard with a tool one of the stable lads had left lying around. Dug it into the femoral artery… maybe in more than one place.”
I didn’t look up, but I could sense Eric taking it all in. “So, he was looking for the killer… and found you.”
Nodding, I met his eye, finding only acceptance and sympathy there. “This is true, Eric. He might not have stopped his pillage through life… if Sherry hadn’t put him onto me, as a way of exacting revenge on my father.” I had to take a breath. “The thing about that woman is she’s conniving and clever, but so mean. Oh, so mean. She saves information for when she knows it’ll hurt the most; when it has the potential to destroy rather than just break.” Another deep breath. And Eric had sat forward, still shocked and astounded by the whole thing. “I truly think she would use Caelan for her own ends, if she could. That she’s always planned to break her son so thoroughly as to make him her weapon. I think she knows, even from her current position, Caelan is breakable.”
“He often spoke of Jimmy like he was a hero.” Grave words from Eric.
I’d been afraid of that. “He won’t speak of it at all. We don’t talk about it. I made that decision, to draw a line, to forget, because I know— I know—if we do havethe talk, then we can’t go on. So if he’s angry he never says, or if he’s sad, but I know… he did love his uncle. More than most kids love an uncle.”
“Not just his hero, then… but, like a—”
“Father?”
“Yeah. I sometimes felt jealous.” Eric considered, rubbing his index finger and thumb across his bottom lip. “But also, something told me Caelan was… hero worshipping because he’d died, maybe… making it seem more than it really was. Like, I’d ask when he last saw him, did they spend every weekend together, what was the last thing his uncle said to him… and it’d be different answers every time.”
None of that surprised me, and, it only made me sad, not angry.
Sad.
We’d both shared a lot of information in a short amount of time and in that moment, as it all sank in, an awkwardness descended. We’d got pretty familiar really quickly. A week of passing each other on the way to the bathroom or politely queueing for the coffee machine…
Yet it was only that night we actually spoke, finally meeting properly for the first time.
“You should never be sorry for protecting yourself, Flora.”
I swallowed hard, smiled sadly and said, “I think that’s it, I’m not.”
“What’s happened, why he’s out there, it has nothing to do with you, okay? He’s just… stuff happened. It’s a war zone.” He sat even further forward on the edge of his seat, gesticulating he was sure of this being the case. “He’s not happy if there isn’t a problem to be solved. That’s who he is.”
I wasn’t sure if he was lulling me into a false sense of security, or, if I really did like Eric, after all. Going with my gut, I decided, I could trust him and I did like him.
“I know exactly what it’s like you know, Eric.”
His jaw twitched at my serious tone. “What do you mean?”
“Trying to be good when everyone else around you is bad. I know what that’s like. What it takes. What reserve of hidden power that requires. What tiny morsels we cling to in order to preserve our true selves.”
He said nothing but I could tell, this time, I’d really shocked him.
“What barriers we put up, the front we put on, the personas… the masks.”
He threw back the last of his drink and suddenly stood up. “I’ll say goodnight.”
