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“On my ninth birthday, my mom insisted on giving me a party. The trouble was my dad wanted her attention. She had baked me a cake and done decorations and she hadn’t... I don’t know. She hadn’t done something he wanted. He came in and he picked up the cake and dumped it on the ground. Then he grabbed me by the back of the shirt and dragged me outside. He had a wooden switch that he used to spank us. And when he got tired of using that on me, he went ahead and used his hands. All the way up and down my back. He punished me. Because she wanted my attention. He punished me, because she cared about me. Because that was how they were.”
“Lachlan...”
He shook his head and took a sip of the drink in front of him.
“There’s no use pitying me about it. It just is what it is.” He felt a blackness spread through him. “And then you know a few months later it was Christmas. And then she left.”
“You poor boys.”
“Yeah. Poor boys. But that’s just the way of it.”
“But it was wrong.”
“Sure it was. Sure it was wrong. But...it happened. So what can you do?”
There was no use crying over it. Not any of it. So he wouldn’t. He never had. He never did. He wouldn’t start now.
“He just got worse and worse, you know. He couldn’t stand losing her. It made him crazy. It made him—” He looked up at Charity and the feeling of possessiveness that gripped him was near paralyzing. “Go back to bed.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not going away. What did your dad do? What happened?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t... I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Lachlan...”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Charity. I’ve known you a hell of a long time, and we never talked about this shit. I’m sitting here drinking because of your damn birthday party. Because of all this openness you claim to want.” That wasn’t fair. He had these often enough without ever talking about his father, and blaming her was petty in the extreme. But he didn’t want to tell her.
He didn’t want to expose the poison that had run through his father’s veins. A poison he’d spent all his life being afraid was in him, too. He had his wedding, and he had changed his life and he was supposed to be fixed. It was just supposed to be fixed.
“Lachlan,” she said softly. “You can talk to me. I want to know everything about you...”
“That’s not how it works. You didn’t know it before. It’s not... It doesn’t matter. This isn’t a part of us. You understand? It never has been.”
“But...”
“No,” he said.
“I want to help you.”
“You can’t, Doc. Not with this.”
Because when he looked at Charity he felt a dark, spiraling need to pull her to him. Hold her to him forever. It was the thing that compelled him when they were in bed together. The thing that made him get out of that bed every night and sleep on the couch.
The dark thing he’d been sure banishing Byron would get rid of.
It made him feel ashamed. Made him feel like he was...
Like he was his father.
He suddenly saw the wedding in a whole new light.
Had he been happy because it felt normal?
Or happy because she was bound to him.
“Lachlan, I don’t understand...”
“Then you’re not going to understand.”
