I want my love to be the thing to bring him light.
But in these passing days, in the situation we’re in, I’m not sure that’s possible. I’m not even sure if I’ll ever tell him how I truly feel, because who trusts those words from someone you barely know? It doesn’t matter how much I know it. It doesn’t matter that people fall hopelessly in love all the time, every day. I don’t know if he’ll ever see, really see, just how I feel. And the complicated part is, it’s only going to get worse as the days go on and I fall more and more under his spell.
That evening, I make myself some tea and settle down on the couch, with the comfiest, over-sized cushions ever, Lionel and Emily lying beside me. I flip aimlessly through cable channels, trying to soak up as much local Scotland flavor as I can.
When Lachlan comes home, I realize that I should have gotten off with my vibrator earlier when I had the chance. The poor man is absolutely wrecked, and even though he’s not limping, he’s walking with extra care, as if he’s been hit by a truck.
He tells me not to worry, that he probably gave too much trying to prove himself, and that he’ll be fine. But I enjoy playing nurse anyway. I run a hot bath for him, dumping in some of my body wash for bubbles, and make him soak the aches away.
“Call me if you need anything,” I say to him from the bathroom doorway, enjoying the sight of his hulking, inked body among all the frothy water.
But the way he looks at me makes my blood still in my veins.
It pins me in place.
It’s a look that says he needs me and only me.
Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lachlan
I have the same dream three nights in a row.
For the first few nights Kayla’s been in Edinburgh, my dreams have been unmemorable. I’ve been sleeping deep, solid, and the night, unlike a lifetime of nights, have passed by in the snap of one’s fingers. I close my eyes, Kayla at my side, and then I’m opening my eyes, and she’s still here.
But by night number four, I’m swept into a wave of terror that resurfaces again and again, pounding me out of slumber and into reality.
Sometimes I wake up gasping for air, which in turn only makes Kayla worry. She questions me with her eyes, imploring me to talk to her, to explain. But I can’t, not yet. Not until I have to. Not until I know she won’t look the other way. The thought of losing face in front of her, the idea of losing her affection, that sweet, hopeful, hungry look in her eyes, is painful.
It’s a dream I’ve had before, and to share it would mean she’d see all the dark in me, the horrible, pathetic person that I once was.
It’s the day that Charlie died.
Of course, in a dream, it’s all skewed and a bit off. Just enough to fuck with you. But it’s the same alley, ironically not too far from the housing projects I grew up in. It’s the same Charlie. It’s the same Rascal, the stray that I would call my own dog until that very day that I never saw him again. It’s like Charlie’s death scared sense into the both of us.
In the dream though, it’s snowing. And unlike reality, we are never alone. There are people lined up along the alley walls in black and red rugby colors. Some of them wave flags that say McGregor number eleven on them. They are completely silent, and that’s the scariest part. They are rooting for me, for us, for our demise, with open, flapping mouths and judgemental eyes, and the only thing I can hear is the falling of snow and Charlie’s raspy breath.
It was only his second time doing heroin. I had been there for his first, but I hadn’t approved, not that first time. I didn’t have a logical, coherent part of my brain left, and yet somehow I knew that heroin was one step too far. As if it weren’t that much worse than meth.