Take it easy, crazy pants, I quickly admonish myself. One kiss and a night of hand-holding and you’d think you were going to marry the guy.
I don’t even have to remind myself that he’s leaving next week.
As if sensing the finality of it all, Lachlan looks at me. “I guess I should call you a cab.”
“Oh, okay.” I look around for the time and spy the clock on his wall. It’s fucking 4:05 a.m. “Holy shit. I have to be up for work in three hours.”
He looks apologetic and unplugs his cell that was charging on the wall. “Time flies when you’re walking across San Francisco.”
He makes the call and tells me a cab is on the way.
I gesture to the dogs who are sniffing in the kitchen. “Are you going to be okay with these guys?”
“Aye, we’ll be fine. Come, let me walk you downstairs.”
He opens the door for me and we head down the hall. Once in the elevator, it’s awkward without the dogs there. We aren’t speaking and I’m not sure what we should be saying. There’s a lot I want to say to him. There’s even more that I want to do.
So many, many things.
But as we stand outside the building, I keep my eyes on the street, scanning for the cab. I want to stare at him. I want to take him in like a cool glass of water. It’s just that I’m so wired and tired that I’m afraid I’ll do something stupid.
“Thank you,” he says to me, and at that I finally meet his eyes.
“For what?”
“For being there,” he says. “Tonight. It was nice to not have to do it alone.” He pauses, licking his lips. “Sometimes…solitude can be blinding.”
God. I know this. I feel those words in my soul. My throat closes up with some flash of strange emotion.
He reaches for my face with his hand, grazes my cheekbone with his rough fingers. His brows knit together and his mouth opens like he wants to say something. I hold my breath, waiting, wondering, wanting.
The cab pulls up and honks, making me jump. Lachlan’s hand drops away.
I give the cabbie my death stare, sighing in frustration.
Rude.
I look back at Lachlan, wishing I could have those seconds back.
“So…” I say, fumbling for words.
“So,” he says. “We should get coffee this week. If you want, that is.”
“Coffee would be great,” I say.
Dick would be better, though.
He leans forward and kisses me softly on the lips. “See you soon, love.”
Fucking. Swoon.
When the cab finally drops me off at home, I stagger over to my bed and collapse on it, remembering at the last moment to set my alarm. I’m going to feel like absolute shit in the morning. I didn’t even get laid.
But, god, it was absolutely worth it.
I know I fall asleep with a smile on my face, because when the alarm rings a few hours later, blaring and unwelcoming in the dawn, I’m still smiling.
CHAPTER TEN
Lachlan
In the dream I’m five years old again. Walking down Princess Street in Edinburgh, alone, naked in the falling snow. Everything is the same and everything is different. The junkies I pass on the street are my friends. I see Eddie with his fingerless gloves, nails thick and yellow with nicotine. I see Thomas and his sobriety bracelets he never takes off, even though he’s too drunk to stand. I see Jenny with her peeling skin and matted hair held back with a plaid headband.
And they see me. But they don’t wave, they don’t smile. They scream as I pass them, until the noise is too loud, until their screams wrap their hands around my head and squeeze.
“Where’s Charlie?” Eddie yells, spit flying out of his decaying mouth. “Where is he? What did you do to him?”
I don’t answer. I run through the snow and then I’m back at the old flat.
I’m no longer five.
I’m thirteen. Tall, skinny, underdeveloped. My anger has just started to eat at me, and the world is poison. Mr. Arnold has me cornered in my mother’s old bedroom. She’s lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling like I’m not there.
She didn’t save me when I was five. She wouldn’t save me now.
I face the wall, too afraid, too disgusted to look at my foster parent as he approaches with greedy hands.
“Don’t tell Pamela,” he says to me, voice dripping with lust. “It’s our secret.”
His hands close over my throat but I don’t turn around.
I cry.
I haven’t learned to hit back yet.
When I do learn, he’s sent to the hospital.
His wife Pamela says I’m a black seed. That I made her husband do it to me.
And I’m sent away again.
Now I’m at the Hillside Orphanage.
I’m twenty years old.
My bony arms are covered with scratches.
I scratch them some more.
I’m dying on the inside.
My teeth are being ground away, falling out of my mouth like sugar.
In front of me, at the headmaster’s desk, sits Charlie.
His back is to me.
He’s not twitching.
He is deadly still.
Charlie is never ever still.
“Charlie,” I hiss at him. “Charlie, do you have any?”
But Charlie doesn’t move.
I step toward him, my limbs jerking, uncontrollable.
Charlie has what I need to make it stop.
The craving.
The ache.
The emptiness.
Everything that resides deep in my bones.
I put my hand—ghostly white and peppered with bruises—on his shoulder and spin him around in the chair.
He stares at me with dead, glassy eyes, blood running from his nose.
It drips onto the stuffed lion he holds in his hand.
In a flash, he moves. Charlie is in my face. Empty eyes. Bared, rotting teeth.
“You’re not just going to leave me here,” he utters, sounding like a child. “You cannae do that, Lachlan.”
The next moment I’m lying in an alley.
Charlie is crumpled beside me. One of the dogs is sniffing his face. Gives him a tentative lick. Charlie doesn’t stir.
Charlie is dead.
I close my eyes.
And I am dead too.
***
When I wake up, I’m drenched in sweat and clawing at my sheets. My breathing is shallow, and I’m hungry and desperate for air, as if it could clean out all the dirt inside.
I smell urine. For a moment I think I’ve pissed myself—how about that for regression—but then I remember the dogs. I remember last night. I remember where I am.
Who I am.
I sit up and try to get a hold of myself. I haven’t dreamed like that for months and its return unhinges me.
Inhaling deeply, I swing my feet out of bed and wince when they land in something wet. I groan and look down to see a faint yellow puddle. I wonder which one of them did it. I’d told Kayla that they must have had homes at some point, but that doesn’t mean they are housebroken.
“Hello,” I call out softly, walking to the door and peering out into the living room. There’s a pile of shit on the carpet and another in the kitchen.
Both dogs are sleeping on the couch, entwined with each other. That sight alone makes up for the fact that I’m going to be in shit myself if I continue to let them destroy the place.
I put on a pot of coffee and absently scratch at my arm, a bad leftover from the dream. I pull my hand away and force my brain into a better place. I saved those dogs last night. There is hope for them, hope that I’ve given them.
But, of course, that’s not the only thing that happened last night.
Kayla.
That tiny sprite.
I kissed her.
I fought and I fought and I fought against it.
But there was nothing I could do.
She’s a riptide.
I’m just a man without oars.
And she…bloody hell, she had started to get under my skin far before last night. I’ve been thinking about her ever since the impromptu rugby match, ever since she left my flat in my clothes, ever since I saw her at the bar. The way she looks at me…it’s not just that she wants me, because I know she does. It’s that…I feel she might see me, too. Beneath the layers.