Sometimes it takes years to realize the truth. Sometimes it takes a moment.
My truth is this and it’s immediate: I’ll always be Lachlan Lockhart.
And I’ll always be fighting a very bloody war.
“You’re going to break my heart,” she whimpers, tears streaming down her face that she wipes angrily away.
“No,” I tell her, shaking my head. I stride to her, grabbing her by the shoulders desperately. “No, no, no.”
“Yes,” she cries out, avoiding my gaze. Up close her heartbreak is terrifying. “Yes. If this continues, yes. You will break me. Or I’ll break myself first.”
“Please,” I beg her, the tightness in my chest suffocating me. “We can work through this. I promise you, promise you we can.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head quickly, her lips pinched together. “We can’t. We aren’t strong enough. I’m not strong enough.”
“Yes you are,” I tell her. “You’re the strongest person that I know, Kayla and I know it’s a lot of pressure I’m putting on you, just asking you to even put up with me, let alone move here, but please. I love you. I love you so much that I can’t see straight and it’s destroying me. You’re ruining me to the very ground, can’t you see, but there’s nothing else I want more than to be at your feet.”
I collapse to my knees, holding her around her legs. “I can’t lose you. Don’t walk away from me. Don’t leave me. I’ve finally found you. You. I don’t want to go through the rest of this life without you at my side. I don’t even think I can.”
She’s rigid in my arms and I sob onto her thighs, holding her so tight because I feel that if I don’t let go, she can never leave. I’m just a ravaged mess of a man at the feet of the woman I love and begging for her to stay.
When her hands find their way into my hair, her fingers touching tenderly among my scalp, I nearly cry with relief. Her touch, her affection, soothes me like a bandage on a wound and I melt against her.
“Please,” I mutter against her legs. “I’ve never been more serious. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Rehab,” she whispers. “Or counseling. Something Lachlan, you need something and it has to be more than what I can give you.”
“Yes,” I tell her, even though the idea of going back to rehab for alcohol, more than a decade after going to rehab for meth, is embarrassing and shameful. Even though there will be no secrets if I go, that the world will find out and know just what kind of person I am. But I would do it for her. “I’ll go.”
“You have to want to go,” she says.
I stare up at her, resting my chin on her thighs. “I want to go,” I tell her.
“But you can’t do it for me,” she says.
But I would be doing it for her. I’d do anything for her, anything at all.
“I don’t want to be like this anymore,” I admit, voice choked with my pain. “I don’t want to be the man you hate, only the man you love.”
She sighs heavily and I can feel how heavy her heart is. I hate that I’ve done this to her, my beautiful, happy girl. “I just don’t know…” she trails off. “This relationship is just so new and…shouldn’t it be easier than this?”
I swallow hard. I have no answer. Because even though loving her scares me, not loving her scares me even more. How can love be easier? How can it not be anything but absolutely terrifying?
“Loving you is what’s easy,” I tell her after a beat. “That’s the only thing I know.”
She glances down at me, her brow softening, even though I can see the battle behind her eyes. I haven’t won her back yet, not fully.
“I have to go to the washroom,” she whispers to me and I let go of her legs, getting to my feet. She shoots me a small smile as I’m back to looming over her and leaves.
I pull out the chair and sit down, head in my hands, waiting in anticipation for some clear sign that everything is going to be okay. But there’s never a sign for that, is there?
All I know is that that things have to change. And as much as it hurts, as scary as it is, I will make the changes. I’ll face everything head on, I’ll work through, anything just as long as she’ll stay with me. The thought of her leaving is this big black hole in my chest, promising nothing but emptiness.
Her phone on the table rings, startling me, and I glance at it. She doesn’t get many phone calls and the number says Toshio, her brother. Normally I would just let it ring but in her emotional state, I figure she may need to talk to him. Who knows, maybe she’d already called him, wanting to come home.
I answer it. “Hello, Lachlan speaking.”
There’s a pause. Then, “Lachlan. Is Kayla there?”
Something about his voice puts me on edge. “She’s in the bathroom, should be out any minute. Do you mind holding?”
“Sure,” he says so softly that it’s almost an afterthought.
I get up and take the phone over to the bathroom, knocking on the door.
“Kayla?” I ask and she opens it, stepping out into the hall. I show her the phone. “It’s your brother. Toshio.”
She frowns. “Okay, thanks.” She puts the phone to her ear, turning away from me slightly. She clears her throat. “Hey Toshio.” A long pause. “Um, no,” she says to something and her voice warbles slightly. She looks at me but she’s not really seeing me. Her eyes are slowly growing wild.
She gasps loudly, mouth dropping open. “What?! When did…” Her hand flies to her chest and I’m right next to her, peering at her, trying to figure out what’s happening. Her lip trembles and she starts to shake. “No. Oh, no. No. Oh my god,” she whimpers. Her eyes pinch shut and I put my hand at her waist to support her. Something absolutely terrible has happened, far more terrible than what happened last night.
Now she’s nodding, staring ahead with pained, glassy eyes, trying to breathe. “Okay,” she says quickly. “Okay, I’ll be there. I’m coming. Just…” she pushes her fist against her forehead and yells, “Oh god. Oh god.”
The phone drops out of her hands, skittering across the floor.
I quickly bend down to pick it up, trying to hand it back to her but the call has already ended. She turning away from me, fingers pressed over her eyes, her mouth open and I have to pull her back by the arm before she walks into a wall.
“What happened?’ I ask gravely, prying her fingers from her eyes. “Kayla?”
She stares at me in a new kind of horror. Her lips open and close. Eventually she says, “My mother. She had a stroke, they think. They don’t know. Oh god. They…they found her. Toshio found her a few hours ago in the house and…and…” She swallows loudly, licking her lips. “She’s in a coma. The doctors had to put her in a coma to protect her brain. Oh god,” she gasps and nearly falls over. I quickly wrap my arms around her, holding her up. She starts shaking in my arms. “I have to go home. I have to go home right now. I never should have left her. I never should have left her.”
“It’s not your fault,” I try and tell her but I know my words fall on deaf ears. My good friend guilt has a way of blocking everything else out.
“I have to go home,” she repeats, her face frozen in this state of blank fright. “I have to get on the next plane out of here.”
I bury the crushing fear deep inside. “Of course,” I tell her. “Let me handle that okay. Just go and pack. We’ll get you back to your mother. Everything is going to be fine, okay love? Everything is going to be fine.”
She nods and turns in a daze, heading over to the bedroom.
I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. If her mother doesn’t pull out of this, Kayla will be beyond devastated. More than that, she’ll be an orphan, just as I was. And though she grew up with two loving parents, when I only had one and for a short time, I know what it’s like to feel utterly alone in this world.
This is going to destroy her.
I lean against the wall, trying to breathe. Our relationship is hanging on by a thread, I’m probably the person she trusts the least at the moment and now she has to go back home. I can’t even go with her because of rugby, even if she wanted me there.