Lochlan is forty-six now.
(Finally, an age that lends a little weight to his quasi-parental method of relating to me over the years. I'm mostly kidding. He's not that bad all the time. Well, okay, sometimes he is but I'll let it go. His impish smile and ageless good looks make it easy. If you saw him walking down the street you would think a high guess might be early thirties. He doesn't age. It's rather disgusting considering he turns so golden in the sun even his hair fades from his customary bright auburn into a strawberry blonde-gold that takes my breath away. But not a line on his face because he's led a somewhat charmed gypsy life. Or has he?)
He is reading aloud from his phone.
'...Pure-hearted, barely educated red-headed unpredictably-temperamental Scotsman and ask him to compromise. I remember the fights...' Jesus, Bridget, is that what you remember? Maybe the frustration was borne out of trying to protect you and provide for you. Christ almighty. How many nights, peanut? How many nights did you ask me not to take extra shifts and then tell me you were hungry? I was twenty years old. I tried my best. When we couldn't make it work I did what I had to do and took you home and I know you hated me for it but I had to put you first. I put your needs before everything and all you cared about was that I had abandoned you when you needed me most. We were fucking starving and you weren't safe there anymore and I didn't want you to hate me for the wrong reasons, doll. It wasn't in my hands anymore.
I couldn't hate you.
Oh, but you do, you just won't admit it.
There's the lump and I swallow but it doesn't go away. It's so hard to breathe. It's impossible to think. I know this. I get it. He was forced into a hard place and he made an adult decision because he was an adult and I was still a willful child and the willful little girl inside still holds all sorts of bitterness over her perfect princess world where they lived on love and the adult understands that when you are responsible for a whole human being you make sure they are warm, fed and safe and if you can't manage to pull off all three, something changes before you blink again or you fail and everything falls apart. It won't get better, it will only get worse.
Lochlan took the fall and he took it again when the relief of me leaving Cole proved to be short lived in that I went straight into the arms of someone who was not Lochlan. He's held on and stood by and he fell back again when Caleb came back into the picture full-time because this time he wasn't in charge of the decisions and he couldn't watch anymore so he went away, twisting screws as he walked out the door. A false life created and then abandoned when he discovered he wasn't the only one looking for second-best.
He holds it all in, this one, and all it does is make his voice a little more clipped in his fair, still-perceptible accent. It make his arms hold me tighter whenever he gets the chance. It makes everything a little more important.
I swallow again but the lump in my throat is survivable. The truth serum is hops and barley and at forty-six, Lochlan can no longer handle his liquor. He is on a roll, along with the tears spilling from my eyes and I want to be angry but he hasn't been wrong about a damned thing.
The hardest part here is Benjamin, still relatively new to our universe, who sits on the steps that lead down to the walkway, drinking tea, absorbing Lochlan's words like poison, the whole story perfectly understood in terms of space and time but not in depth. Depth is where we make up ground and supersede fate and the future and the present but never ever the past.
Oh, fuck, we are so stupid sometimes. Every major holiday and event he makes his case. Every time he drinks, he pleads for my heart.
You know I would compromise for you. You know damned well I would do anything for you.
Ben's head turns and he's gazing at Lochlan now. I can't read the expression on his face, I'm not sure if it's mild pity, total acceptance or concern.
We would do anything for you too, brother.
I think it was meant as reassurance but it wasn't taken that way.
Then get a divorce and let me have her.
Lochlan kicked over his now-empty beer bottle when he stood up abruptly. He did not wait for a reply as he went inside. Ben looked at me but I was busy fighting for control of my emotions. Lochlan came outside again and pointed his finger at me and said This time don't fucking post everything I say. Bridget, you've made me out to be the enemy and I'm the only one who really loves you.
He went back inside and closed the patio door for good measure this time. Several minutes later the light came on in the window upstairs. I counted to seventy-five and it went out again. He will wait in the dark for me. I'll be a no-show.
Gage comes out and surveys our body language and the dead silence cast around us like a pall.
Is it always this intense around here?
Ben shakes his head. No, usually it's worse.
And then he starts to laugh.
