by Lannah Smith
“Her heart?” he asked worriedly.
“Her last doctor told me that the last time she had a full check-up she was fine. I’m having her medical records sent to me, nonetheless. And you know what that means, right?”
A higher fee, of course.
Because Martha Darling wasn’t really a doctor. Yet she was. To people like them.
He nodded at her. “I will have everything taken care of, Martha. Just get it done, please.”
Martha gave him a long look, studying him.
Then she said, “There’s something else.”
“What is it?”
Martha took a sip of her drink, never removing her gaze from him. “She’s afraid.”
His brows drew together. “Of course, she’s afraid. Her fucking father—.”
“No,” she shook her head. “It’s not him she fears now, son.”
A heavy, unpleasant weight settled in his gut.
“Me?” he whispered.
She nodded curtly.
“I didn’t do shit to her,” he said, struggling to keep the bite from his voice. “She’s never even let me close enough to do anything. Even before she disappeared, we’d never been in the same room alone.”
“I know,” Martha told him, putting the glass down. “I know you didn’t do anything wrong to her. I know. I can tell. You’re a good man, Christopher Lawrence. And it’s a trait you actually could do without.”
He didn’t mistake the censure in her tone. In this line of work, goodness and kindness had no place.
“But,” she leaned back with a sigh as she continued to speak, “something about you does make her feel afraid.”
That was what he wanted to know too.
He wasn’t even surprised April demanded him to take her back. All her life, she had been trying to run away from him for some reason. And he was going to finally seek that reason while she stayed here.
“Living with Edward, it couldn’t have been easy.” Martha’s dark gaze slid to the window. “I know Edward. And I know and have seen what he is capable of.”
“It’s not lost on me what that bastard is capable of,” Christopher murmured. “I’ve known since high school.”
Her surprised eyes returned to him. “Since high school?” she asked in disbelief. “But if I’m not mistaken, it was long before you were—.”
“I came upon the information completely by accident,” he interrupted.
That disbelief turned into shock. “That accident could have given you another accident if he knew, Christopher. One that could have made you lose your life.”
He shrugged. “I guess I was lucky.”
Her eyes were now shining with elation when she leaned towards him. “Then you truly deserve that seat, son,” she told him fervently. “You truly are a Lawrence.”
Unfortunately.
But he didn’t want to talk about this shit right now.
He dismissed her after she finished her drink and watched as she walked out of the room.
Then he returned his gaze to the documents and reached for them, not because Alec would nag the fuck out of him but because he didn’t want to think about anything but work anymore.
Including being a true Lawrence.
Chapter 12
The dark-skinned woman was back inside the bedroom.
I heard her cluck her tongue and knew that she had seen the untouched food on the table. Then I heard footfalls behind me that stopped by my bed.
“Are you asleep, dear?” she whispered.
I pretended to be asleep.
“She’s asleep,” she was still whispering.
“She hasn’t eaten?” a deep familiar voice said. It wasn’t Christopher. But that didn’t make me less tense as I listened with my eyes closed.
“Do you see that bowl, dear? Do you think she has eaten?”
“No need to be smart with me, Martha.”
A soft chuckle, then, “I apologize.”
I waited for them to leave. But then I heard a long sigh followed by the woman saying, “This wasn’t smart.”
“How smart would you be if you find the person cared for, the person you wanted to protect with all your life with their ribs bruised, their cheeks nearly ripped open, their eyes blackened, their nose bloodied and their lip split?”
I pressed my lips together.
His question brought silence.
“That’s what I thought,” he finished when the woman didn’t speak. “Let’s go and let her rest.”
“Alright,” she said. “I’ll come back later to check on her.”
“You do that.”
I heard footfalls again, the door opened and closed. My eyes opened. I was alone. With the tears welling in my eyes.
God damn it.
I rolled to my back and brought the heels of my palms to my eyes.
What on earth was going on? Why did Christopher bring me here? Why did he have to save me? And why did I have to see him again?
I could still remember the first day I met Christopher.
It was really a coincidence.
A stroke of bad luck.
I had been twelve. Two years had passed since my mother’s death. Back then, my father hadn’t shown interest in me yet other than punishing me with isolation and so I was left to my own devices.
I had headed out alone from the house for the first time in all of my twelve years. I’d been trying to get to the meadow. The meadow with the yellow flowers where my mother and I used to play.
And that was how I found him.
He was sitting on the grass just between the spruce trees in a small meadow in the forest. I thought I had imagined him when I spotted him. Short, thin and with brown hair and eyes, he had looked like a tiny woodland creature to me.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I approached him.
At the sound of my voice, his whole body jerked. Lifting his gaze, he pulled in breath sharply when he saw me.
“What’s that in your hand?” I asked him again.
Immediately, he crumpled the flower bracelet that he was making in his fist. Then he got up and started running through the trees.
“Wait!” I shouted, following after him. “Please wait!”
He didn’t wait. And I became afraid that he’d disappear and leave me alone, lost in the woods.
“Wait!”
He didn’t stop.
Desperate to reach him, I ran faster. And didn’t look where I was going.
My foot caught on a tree root and I stumbled, pitching forward. I flung out both of my hands to grab for anything but grabbing nothing. And so I fell stomach first on the ground.
“Ouch!” I cried out more in surprise than in pain. Because fortunately, I had landed on a soft patch of grass.
When I shouted, he had slowed to a stop, nearly tripping over his shoes, and turned around. He was breathing harshly and his face was a mixture of fear and worry. I was afraid fear would win out, fear of me so I tried to appeal to him.
“I’m lost!” I shouted, trying to hold in a sob. “I’m lost! Don’t go. Don’t leave me alone. Please.”
The pleading in my tone made him hesitate. But he didn’t want to stay. He turned his head back around and looked like he was about to leave me again. He couldn’t leave me alone.
“Don’t leave!” I shouted again when he took a step away from me. “Please!”
Biting his lip, he glanced at me. I slowly sat up, wincing at the pain that shot from my ankle up my leg, never removing my gaze from him, watching him carefully.
Then it hit me.
Brown hair. Brown eyes. The aristocratic tilt of his small jaw. And shoes and clothes that looked expensive.
I knew who this boy was. I’d heard stories about him. Him and his family.
And what was left of it.
“Are you...” my brows furrowed together, “Are you Christopher Lawrence?”
Surprise made several moments pass by before he could answer me with a small nod. And when he did, I smi
led in relief. The Lawrence house was near where I lived. I knew because I always saw it from the window of my bedroom.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked, pointing at herself.
He shook his head.
“I’m April Locke. I live just over...” Unsure, I looked around me, “somewhere near you,” I ended lamely. “We’re next-door neighbors. Did you know?”
He shook his head again.
“I got lost,” I admitted pitifully. “I was looking for a place in the woods. It’s a... a meadow filled with small, yellow flowers?” my face scrunched up, trying to remember exactly where it was. Giving up, I sighed, “I just don’t know where it is.”
He suddenly started walking towards me.
I blinked up at him but he spared me no glance and looked straight over my shoulder. I opened my mouth to speak but he passed me by. I hurriedly got off the ground, ignoring the pain on my ankle, and followed him quick. He didn’t seem like he was trying to bolt to the other direction but I wasn’t going to let him disappear. He was my only hope to get home
“Where are you going?” I asked, limping behind him.
He kept quiet and just kept walking.
“You don’t go to school, do you?”
A tree had fallen over and he pointed at it, making sure I saw it under the dwindling light.
“I go to East Private School,” I kept on talking. “And I think I we’re the same age. You’re twelve, right? I’m twelve too. I’m one of the tallest girls in our grade so I might not look like it. You just have to drink a lot of milk so don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll catch up.”
I thought I heard him sigh but I wasn’t sure.
“Hey, do you know your way around the forest?”
He started to quicken his footsteps. Was he trying to get rid of me? The thought made me smile especially when he’d been so slow to walk so that I wouldn’t be too far behind him.
“You were making flower bracelets, right?” I tried again. “I knew how to make them too... I think? It’s been a while since I last made one though. My mother taught me. Did your mother teach you too?”
Suddenly he stopped walking and looked at me. And seeing his face, his angry expression, the smile on my face faltered. I realized, looking at him, now that we were closer and neither one was sitting that he was indeed a short boy. I was a good head taller than him. And he must have noticed it because he began to look even angrier.
He pointed at the distance. At break in the forest. At the fence wall surrounding a large house. And seeing that, I blinked several times before returning my gaze to him.
“You do know me,” I exclaimed happily with a clap of my hands.
Turning abruptly, he began to walk past me to go home. But I latched on his arm, jerking him back.
I didn’t let go when she asked him, “You know your way around right? Can you take me to the meadow with the yellow flowers? Please? Pretty please?”
Christopher looked at me and tried to get my hands off him. But I wasn’t letting go until he said yes. I needed to see that meadow again. opened his mouth like he was about to say something. But nothing came out and he pursed his lips before he tried again. Still, nothing.
Realization dawned on me.
“Are you...” I hesitated before saying, “You can’t talk?”
He looked away from me, his pale cheeks flushing.
And when he felt me loosen my hold, he instantly pulled his arm away and started running without looking back.
I should have just let him alone.
Removing my palms from my wet eyes, I stared at the ceiling.
When he ran away, I shouldn’t have tried to hold him back.
I thought about how much energy it would take for me to understand what on earth was going on. Or why he searched for me for eight freaking years when he could just let go. When he could just forget me.
Then to my dismay, I realized, just before I fell asleep for real this time, that I didn’t want to stay here and find out.
Chapter 13
The documents Alec had handed to Christopher were all read, understood and approved.
There were problems with some of his tenants but that could be easily managed. Christopher was certain that Alec had already started taking care of them, he only needed Christopher’s approval and signature to make everything official.
Having completed his duties, Christopher swiveled his chair to the side and stood up to leave the study. He glanced at his watch as he made his way down the hall. Half past nine. No wonder he was starving. Her bedroom was just at the end of the hall. He hesitated for a brief moment before turning the knob and slipping inside.
For a moment, he couldn’t see anything. It was too dark. As his eyes adjusted, he looked at the bed. At the woman lying on it. Tiny. Fragile. His heart clenched.
April.
She was resting on her right side, facing him, just like the way she had always napped in the forest. During that short time that they were together. He moved to the bed, turning the lamp on. Her food on the table was untouched. He frowned then turned to look at her.
Her skin was still splotched with angry, purple contusions that made him release an angry sigh. Sitting on the edge of the bed, careful not to shake her, and he lifted a hand, trailing his thumb along her bruised cheek.
“April,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not finding you sooner.”
She didn’t respond. He leaned forward to press a kiss on the side of her head. She was quiet, so quiet that he had to check twice if she was still breathing.
Damn it.
Her father was fucking dead when he sees him.
April started to shiver and Christopher pulled the sheets up to cover her shoulders. A tear rolled off her eye. He wanted to touch her again, comfort her but stopped himself. He might wake her. And scare her. And he didn’t want to scare her.
Christopher remembered a time she wasn’t scared of him.
A time she didn’t seem to be scared of anything.
April turned in her sleep and Christopher saw it then. The small scar just a few centimeters from her hairline.
His chest tightened.
He hadn’t seen it in years. She had grown a fringe when she entered middle school and it covered the scar but he had thought she would have done some procedure to remove it. She didn’t.
Why didn’t she? he thought in confusion. When he was the one who gave it to her 14 years ago?
After he met the strange unbelievably chatty girl with strawberry blonde hair and curious gray eyes, it took a week before he could go back to the woods. He wasn’t keen on meeting that April girl again so he stayed away. Pushy, annoying, noisy and tall, he didn’t like her. And didn’t like how she invaded his part of the woods and broke his peace.
But he couldn’t no longer stay away. The forest was his reprieve from the world. His grandparents were planning to take him to another psychiatrist in the afternoon and he was done being poke and prodded and asked stupid questions.
Of course, his parents were dead. He knew that.
Yes, he’d seen them die. And seen them die over and over again almost every night in his dreams.
And no, he wasn’t going to be normal again. How could he when he couldn’t even get a word out of his mouth?
He hiccupped and he realized that he was crying. Shuddering sobs that reverberated throughout his body. In a burst of anger and frustration, he picked up a rock from the ground and hurled it through the bushes with all his might.
“Ouch!”
Startled at the sound, he blinked. The bushes shook and someone stumbled out, holding their head. Not just any person. April.
“Did you just throw a rock at me?” she asked in total bewilderment.
He didn’t answer and just stared at her.
Why was she here again?
“Are you crying?” she asked him after a long minute. Her eyes narrowed on him. “You are.”
Quickly, he wiped the tears from his face. Boys do
n’t cry, his grandfather had always told him.
“Why are you crying?” She let her hand fall from her head and stepped towards him. “Are you hurt?”