“Oh,” I choke out.
The room goes silent, and Amy gets to work. I’m grateful when she asks for my help and I don’t have to feel the weight of Lachlan’s questioning gaze on me. Throughout the procedure, I act as her assistant. She tells me what she needs from me, and not a word more. She isn’t meeting my gaze, and I have a feeling she’s really hating me right now for putting her in this situation.
When she’s removed the bullet and stitched him up, she washes her hands and packs up her medical bag. Her gaze moves to Lachlan as she lingers in the bedroom doorway.
“Is that all you need from me?”
Her voice is flat and cold. And I don’t like it. Because Amy’s always been good to me, and I feel horrible for involving her in this.
“Aye,” he tells her. “It is.”
“Amy,” I call out.
She glances at me, and I hug my arms across my body, unsure of what I should even say at this point.
“Um, thank you.”
She nods and leaves.
The front door closes, and then it’s just Lachlan and I, left to the silence of the room. It’s strange, being here with him. I don’t know what to say or do. I’ve never known what to make of this guy. Sometimes he can seem so cold. But seeing him with Mack, I know he’s human too. My way of dealing with him has always been to avoid him, but right here and now I can’t.
So I sit down beside Ronan on the bed, and Lachlan takes the chair across the room.
“You aren’t going to hurt Amy,” I blurt. “Right?”
He shakes his head with a grunt. “No, Sasha. I’m not going to hurt Amy. She was paid well for her time here tonight, and I don’t think there’s even reason for it to be spoken of again.”
I nod and brush my fingers over Ronan’s hand and arm.
“Tell me what happened to him,” I whisper.
“It’s not my story to tell,” Lachlan answers.
I look up at him, and my eyes are filled with tears. “I just… I want to understand him. I don’t know how to understand what he needs, or wants.”
Lachlan sighs and leans back in his chair. His eyes dart to Ronan a few more times and then back to me.
“Then ye understand how he feels perfectly.”
“Huh?” I stare at him in confusion.
“If you feel like you can’t make sense of your own thoughts or emotions, then ye know exactly what Ronan’s going through. Only he feels that all the time.”
“Oh.”
“Come with me,” Lachlan says.
“But, what if he wakes…”
“He won’t,” he says. “He needs to rest.”
I stroke Ronan’s face one more time before I follow Lachlan down the hall and into the kitchen. He makes himself at home, going through the cupboards until he finds a bottle of wine. He opens it up and pours me a glass. And even though I’m exhausted and the last thing I need to do is drink, I take it. Because I need to know what Lachlan has to say.
“I can’t tell you Ronan’s story,” he says. “Because even I don’t know the half of it. I met him when I was thirteen. I won’t tell you the where or the how. I don’t even know where he came from. Only that he was raised in a paramilitary training camp run by a political fringe group. They were well known for bombings, copper killings, things of that nature. Their ideologies were radical, and Ronan had been spoon fed them since he was only a wee lad. He had no say in the matter. About any of it. He was born and reared to do one thing alone.”
I close my eyes because I can’t stand to hear him say it. That Ronan’s nothing more than a killer.
“He’s a good man,” I tell him.
“Aye, he is,” Lachlan agrees. “But he’s still recovering from the things he went through. Truth be told, I don’t know if he’ll ever fully recover.”
“What do you mean?”
Lachlan scrubs a hand over his face and takes a seat across from me. “I don’t know how to say this in a way that you can understand, Sasha. But Ronan doesn’t know what to do with himself if he isn’t being told. Thinking freely does not come naturally to him. His days are completely regimented. If he isn’t working, he’s at home. He works out. He eats at a certain time, and only from a small selection of foods. He reads. He works. And he takes orders as they come. Anything else, he doesn’t know how to handle it. He comes to things in his own time. And on his own terms.”
“But he came to me on his own,” I say. “Why?”
“How long do ye think it took him to come to terms with that decision?” Lachlan asks.
I stare down at the table, knowing he’s right. It took Ronan two years to come back to me.