The Darkest of Shadows

by Lisse Smith

  “Yes.” I was as happy as I was able to be, but he didn’t need to know the specifics.

  “Do you love him?”

  I really didn’t want to answer that question because he would read more into it than he should. “I’m not going to talk to you about Lawrence’s and my relationship.”

  He nodded, then tried another approach. “Is he good to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you miss me?”

  He was just full of questions. “I miss our friendship.”

  “Did we ever have more than that?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I told you that from the start. It’s not my fault if you chose to ignore that.”

  “I fell in love with you,” he admitted.

  “I didn’t intend for that to happen, and I’m sorry if I gave you any encouragement in that respect. Please believe that I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “Does Lawrence know that you can’t love him?” He was fishing there, hoping that I’d admit that I didn’t love Lawrence.

  “Lawrence accepts who I am.” Unlike some.

  “And I don’t?” He was getting angry, ever so slightly, as the questions continued.

  “You want to change me into someone that I’m not. You can’t accept that I’m not ever going to be what you need, what’s good for you.”

  “You are good for me; you’re exactly what I want,” he countered.

  “I’m not good for you, Patrick. I’m so very far from what’s good for you that I can’t believe you don’t see it.” I watched his face, knowing that he couldn’t, wouldn’t see the truth of my words. “Don’t you see how unstable I make you, how confused you are when I’m in your life? You make decisions that you would never contemplate; you fight against Lawrence, the one man who could make or break your career. You are so close to losing everything.”

  “I can’t help how I feel about you.” He sounded a little unsure, and I wondered if maybe I was getting through to him.

  “You don’t know me well enough to be in love with me, Patrick,” I assured him. “You know nothing about me. You have spent time with me, and I would consider us friends, but that doesn’t give you the right to love me or to consider a future for us.”

  “I know enough to know that I want you in my life,” he replied.

  “And I can be, as your friend,” I told him. “I can’t be more than that.”

  “But Lawrence can be.” He snorted.

  “Yes, he can.” Now I was the one getting angry. “Because he understands the limits of what I can offer him, and he doesn’t push me for more. You want a fairytale, and I can’t give that to you.”

  “What if I said I wanted to go back to what we used to have? Just you and me, no strings and no responsibilities.”

  I shook my head. “We can’t turn back the clock. I can’t forget what has happened, and I can’t pretend that me being with you isn’t a lie. You deserve better than that, and I won’t allow you to belittle yourself in that way. You are a strong, honorable, and wonderful man and there is a woman out there who fits you, who owns a piece of your heart, and for you to settle for me is not right.”

  “So it’s really over between us?” he asked, sounding infinitely sad about that fact.

  “I’m sorry if anything I did hurt you.” I meant that. “I understand who I am, and I accept that I’m not a good person, and I’ll take the hurt I gave to you and add it to my own, because that’s what I deserve. Please don’t feel sad. You could make this a good change in your life.”

  “Who said you weren’t a good person?” Patrick’s eyes flicked to mine and I saw pain in their depths.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I answered, waving away the question. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Considering I feel like I’ve had my heart ripped out and stuffed back in my chest in tiny little ragged pieces, I’m fine.” He shrugged, and the reality of his words hurt me. “I’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sorry, Patrick.”

  He laughed, but it was a bitter, hard sound. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” he said. “You didn’t set out to have me love you. I do remember your words that first night, but I believed that I could change you, that I could make you love me in return.” He sighed. “Whoever did a number on you, Lilly, did a really, really good job.”

  My face blanched of color at his words, and it must have been stark enough even with the dim lighting of the library that Patrick noticed. “Are you all right?” he asked, as he bounced forward on the chair and picked up my hands as they limp in my lap. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  He tried desperately to rub warmth back into my hands, but I couldn’t feel anything. His words had opened a floodgate in my mind and allowed the harshness of my memories to run ragged through my thoughts. The pictures, the horrible, gruesome pictures, images that I had kept hidden for such a long time popped up in my mind and sent me ever so much closer to that crazy place in my mind that wasn’t the answer.

  I couldn’t stop the images, I couldn’t; once they started, I couldn’t stop them. I groaned, or maybe screamed, or maybe I didn’t make any sound at all, but what I did do was allow the blackness that tinged the edges of my vision to claim the rest of my mind. Oblivion was the only thing that could help me now.

  Fifteen

  When I came to, it took me a moment to work out the difference between the sounds around me, to distinguish between the voices and to realize that the hands that now held my own were Lawrence’s. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know his touch, and I wasn’t quite ready to open them yet anyway. I needed to rebuild the walls around my memories. They were fragile and raw, and they needed a great deal of work before they would stand strong again.

  I could hear movement around me, then Patrick’s voice. “I swear, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t touch her.” He sounded horrified, worried, scared, many emotions.

  “Well, something happened,” Nicholas said plainly.

  “I just said that someone did a number on her and the next thing I know she was screaming and holding her head and then she passed out,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to frighten her. I swear. We were OK. We talked, and we were OK.”

  Lawrence’s fingers pulled tight against mine for a moment, then his voice, deep, tight and infuriated, responded, “Get out, Sloane.”

  “What? No,” he responded. “I want to make sure that she’s all right.”

  “Get out before I do something both of us might regret.”

  “Ah, I think it’s probably time for you to leave,” Nicholas added, and I heard movement, which I assumed was them moving around the room. “Leave it alone now. You had your talk with her, and you said that everything was OK now. Leave her with Monterey; he’ll take care of her.”

  It was quiet for a few minutes, then I felt Lawrence’s lips against my forehead and heard his whispered words. “Do you want to open your eyes now, baby? He’s gone.”

  Lawrence knew I was conscious; he knew me well enough to tell the difference. I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on a daybed in the library, with Lawrence squatting beside me. His face was a shadow of worry and fear. It hurt me to see those emotions. I reached out my hand, only slightly shaky, to rest it against the side of his face. “Sorry.” I hated that I made him this way. I hated that I was the only one that seemed able to ruffle his perfect world.

  He held his hand over mine and pushed it more firmly against his face. “Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t your fault,” he told me. “Are you OK?”

  With his help, I managed to swing my legs off the sofa and sit up. It all seemed less real when I wasn’t lying down. “I think so,” I finally replied.

  “That one surprised you?” He asked and I knew exactly what he meant. I had promised him once before that if I felt like I wasn’t coping, I would tell him, and he would help me try and deal with it. He could have thought I broke that promise tonight, but instead of becoming angry, he attached himself to the only oth
er explanation. I didn’t see it coming, either. The moment was unexpected, and the very nature of the shock was what made my reaction so severe. I could fight against the gradual aggression of the pain, but I couldn’t win against a sledgehammer slamming into my brain.

  “Yeah, it caught me off guard,” I agreed. “It wasn’t Patrick’s fault. He didn’t say or do anything to hurt me. It was just me being stupid.”

  “You scared me a little there,” he admitted, as he settled beside me. “But you freaked the shit out of Patrick, too, so I totally forgive you for scaring me.”

  I laughed softly, my fingers curling with his as they lay between us.

  “Do you need anything?” he asked, his eyes making a thorough study of my face.

  “Just a moment to recover.” I glanced up and noticed Nicholas leaning against the wall across from us. He nodded silently in greeting but didn’t encroach upon our space. He looked solemn and serious. “I think I want to talk to Reed.” I needed something, some comfort, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was I was looking for.

  Lawrence pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Do you want Nicholas to leave?” he asked, and then amended it. “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No.” Strangely, the thought of him leaving was not comforting to me at all, it was terrifying. “Please stay.” I looked deep into his eyes and hoped that they told him what my words couldn’t. That I needed him just as much as I needed to hear my sister’s voice.

  With a nod, he settled against the back of the daybed and pulled me back to rest against his chest. I slipped my legs up to curl under me and lay wrapped in the strength of his arms.

  “I’ll come back in a little while,” Nicholas said as he walked across the room toward the door.

  “No, it’s OK, Nicholas.” My words stopped him near the door. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, but I think if you saw what happened before, then you at least deserve to have the choice about seeing the rest. I won’t mind if you stay.” Lawrence kissed the top of my head. I think I surprised him more than I did myself.

  “I’d like to know that you are all right,” Nicholas admitted after a moment’s pause. “But I don’t want to upset you further.”

  “You’re not going to hear any secrets. I’m just going to call my sister. She makes me feel better.”

  “Then I’ll stay.” I nodded as he settled on the lounge across from us.

  There was no answer on Reed’s home number, so I dialed the mobile and hoped that she would pick it up—and considering the hour, she better answer. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?” Reed’s sleepy voice was hesitant and slightly worried when she finally answered.

  “Hey, Reed,” I greeted her in a tired voice.

  “Jesus Lil. You gave me a friggin’ heart attack. Who’s phone are you ringing me on and why didn’t you call the land line?”

  “I did call the land line, Reed.” I stressed her name to let her know I wasn’t happy about the attitude. “But you didn’t answer it, and I’m ringing on Lawrence’s phone.”

  “Duncan.” Reed’s voice bellowed down the line so loudly that even Nicholas heard it. He raised his eyebrows in surprise as I held the phone away from my ear. “You forgot to turn the phone off silent, you idiot!”

  “For Christ’s sake, woman, would you stop screaming down the phone line? You’re going to wake the boys.”

  “Sorry,” she muttered. “Stupid men, they shouldn’t be allowed near electrical devices, and the boys are having a sleepover at Grandma and Gramps’s house. So what’s up?”

  Talking to Reed was always a challenge, and it certainly grounded me. “I had a bit of a moment.” Somehow my little moment had lost some of its seriousness against the catastrophe of Duncan forgetting to turn the phone off silent.

  “Bad moment?”

  “Pretty bad. Bad enough for me to pass out.”

  “That’s bad. You OK?”

  I shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see that. “I think so.”

  “Lawrence there?”

  “He is now. He wasn’t when it happened. I was with Patrick.”

  “What did he do?” she accused.

  “Nothing. At least not intentionally. It was just a stupid comment he made that bought back memories that I wasn’t expecting.”

  “But you’re OK now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I talk to Lawrence?”

  “Must you?” It shouldn’t have surprised me that she would want to talk to him. Once my sister got a connection with someone, she tended to think she owned them. I could only imagine what she would do to him if she actually got to meet him in person.

  “Yes, please. It will make me feel better, and if you’re really all right, you won’t have a problem with me talking to him.”

  She had me there, so I dutifully handed over the phone to a slightly surprised Lawrence.

  “Hi, Reed.” His deep voice rumbled through my back as he spoke.

  “I didn’t see it. But she isn’t hurt, at least not physically,” Lawrence continued. Reed was obviously after an unbiased rundown of what happened.

  “Yep.” It was strange to listen to his one-sided conversation, which gave me some idea what he and Nicholas had just experienced when I was speaking with her.

  “Yes….I don’t think so….No, probably not….It won’t be a problem again. Apparently, Lilly and Patrick worked out their issues before this happened. It doesn’t seem to have affected how she feels about him.” I played idly with his free hand as he spoke.

  “Your sister seems very intense.” Nicholas’s quiet comment floated across to me as Lawrence continued speaking.

  I rolled my eyes. “You have no idea,” I assured him. “She’s very protective.” I meant that as a compliment. “I love her. She’s very special to me, and I’m not sure what I would do without her.”

  “Does she live in Australia?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a long way away.”

  “That’s the beauty of the cellular network. Isn’t technology wonderful?” I joked. I wouldn’t admit how much it hurt to be away from her. It was a fine balancing act between the good—namely her—and the very, very bad things that remained back in that country.

  “It must be hard,” he said. I nodded and he left it at that.

  Lawrence finally handed the phone back. “Satisfied?” I asked my nosy sister.

  “Not totally, but I’ll have to manage. Where are you?” she asked.

  “The Gateway. One of Nicholas’s hotels. We’re holding the MDs’ dinner here tonight, but I think I might be missing a good portion of that.” Which really wasn’t a good thing.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Lawrence told me at the same time that Reed responded, “You should go home. Get some rest.”

  “Probably.” I said, just to placate her. “I’ll give you a call in the morning, OK?”

  “That doesn’t sound like you’re going to do what I said.” I didn’t need to see her to know that I was getting a serious frown.

  “How’s Dad?” I tried to steer her off subject.

  “Good.” She hesitated just a fraction too long before answering, and I knew her far too well to not realize what that pause meant, add to that the fact that Lawrence’s arms had tightened ever so slightly at my words, and I was sure there was something wrong. I sat up, pulling myself out of his arms enough that I could see his face.

  I watched him as I asked the question. “Reed? What’s wrong with Dad?”

  “Nothing, I swear,” she promised, and Lawrence’s face gave nothing away.

  “Bullshit. Tell me now, or I’ll ring him myself.”

  “Well for a start, he’ll be sleeping and won’t be at all thrilled with you for waking him. But if it makes you happy, I’ll get him to call you tomorrow when I go out there to visit him. Geez, woman. Talk about overreacting.”

  “Are you sure he’s OK?”

  “H
e’s fine, Lil. He’s old and as well as can be expected for someone pushing ninety.”

  “Sorry.” I guess I was still a little emotional.

  “Ring me tomorrow,” she reminded me, and hung up the phone.

  I looked Lawrence in the eye and asked him the same question. “Is my dad OK?”

  He nodded. “As far as I know, he’s fine.”

  “OK.” I could breathe again; my heart slowly returned to normal, and I lay back down against his chest.

  We sat quietly for a while; it seemed a long time but was probably only about ten minutes in all. “Did we miss the whole party?” I asked into the quiet of the room.

  Nicholas shook his head. “Nah. Only the dinner, and that’s not finished yet.”

  “Oh, good.” That was good. It was bad enough that I disappeared, but for

  Lawrence to miss the dinner as well would make things difficult. You don’t host a party and then disappear and leave your guests to fend for themselves.

  “We should get back,” I said reluctantly. What I really wanted was go home and sleep. It was always draining, both emotionally and physically, when I had episodes like that, but this was an important night, and I wasn’t going to walk away now.

  “No,” Lawrence responded. “We’re going to go home, and you’re going to sleep.”

  “We can’t.” I slipped from his arms and stood, smoothing down the length of my dress. I was immensely thankful that I had chosen a dress with a lace overlay. It didn’t crease and came through the whole ordeal relatively unscathed. “We have to make an appearance, especially now that we missed dinner. I’m pretty sure they are going to notice if you’re not there.”

  “Who cares what they think?” Lawrence rose and reached for me. “It’s my company, and every one of those people works for me. If I want to leave, then I’ll leave.”

  Great, we were going to argue about it. “Would you have left tonight if it wasn’t for me?”

  “I’d leave for any reason that I want.”

  I cocked my head to the side in exasperation. “Lawrence. We’re not leaving.”

  “Lilly, we are leaving.”

  I appealed to Nicholas. “Nicholas, tell him we’re not leaving.”