“Taxis don’t come here. The drivers know better.” His eyes started the night as light hazel but they’re now darker than night. Darker than obsidian. Darker than when you put your eye to a plughole, trying to see what’s scurrying down in the depths of the drain.
“Uber, then,” I suggest but he’s already shaking his head.
“Them neither.”
“Let m-me…” Fear chokes me to a standstill, and I freeze, my mouth open, my throat straining. I try to think of another solution. Anything that will get me out of this room, away from this boy who’s a thousand times stronger than me. Whose dad just wound him up before setting him loose.
Lachlan steps closer to me, fingers resting on his belt buckle. My eyes fix to them. Helpless to look away. If he moves, undoes it, I feel like something inside me might crack.
Whether that lets out a scream or a whimper remains to be seen.
Then a slow smile spreads across his face. “How about your dad?”
I look at him, waiting for the twist, then seize hold of the idea with joy when none is forthcoming. “Yes.Yes,let me call my dad. He can come and pick me up.”
He puts the phone into my hand, and I stare at it in delight, my newest holy grail.
“The number’s programmed in there,” he says, scrolling through the contact list and stopping on a picture he snapped of my father earlier today, beaten and bloody. “You just need to dial it.”
My thumb caresses the button, eager to push, eager to speak to my father and get the hell out of this place. Get away from these people who aren’t the slightest bit like me.
I hover over the icon, letting my gaze travel up to meet Lachlan’s, asking his final permission.
“You’ll need to tell him his debt’s back on.”
The voice he uses is almost sad, like he’s watching some starving child on TV but doesn’t have one dollar a day to send them.
He reaches out to touch my face, his forefinger tracing my cheekbone with a touch so feather light it’s like being stroked by a ghost. His thumb takes over, rubbing across my bottom lip before he steps closer, so near to me his body heat warms my cold skin.
“Call him and tell him that if he picks you up, he’ll still owe the money, but if he leaves you here the rest of the night, he won’t.”
My eyelids weigh so much that when I blink, it’s work to lever them back up high enough to see. Lachlan’s face fills my vision. His hand tilts up my chin at the same time he bends over, closing the height difference, almost like he’s angling in for a kiss, but he stops short.
My lips pulse with memories from earlier in the night. They remember how soft his were as they pressed against mine, how enjoyable.
But there’s nothing malleable about them now. Those chiselled lips look like they’d slice straight through mine, cutting razor thin lines in my flesh until every piece of me isbleeding.
I was resigned to his plans, to what comes next, but with every passing second, my fear spirals.
“What’s the matter?” He removes his hand from my face and taps it lightly on the phone. “Don’t you want to make the call?”
What I want is to believe that if I do, my father won’t care. He’ll come and he won’t waste a second of thought on what-might-have-been on his way here.
I want to believe that. My trembling hands and ringing ears are proof I don’t.
Don’t show him. Don’t show him your fear.
The order comes too late. A tear slips from my eye, a renegade making a break for it while the going’s good. Lachlan raises his hand again, catching it on the ball of his thumb before gently sucking it into his mouth.
“You can cry,” he whispers, the words twisting into my ear like an aural snake. “It’s okay. I like it when girls cry.”
My breath catches, a scream swelling inside me; a desperate sound I lock behind my clenched teeth and clamped lips while his thumb strokes the soft contours around my eye. I can’t look away from him any longer. Completely hypnotised.
“No more tears?” He rests his forehead against mine for a tiny fraction of a second before pulling away. “Never mind. I’m sure you’ll find some, later.”
He taps the phone again and I stare at the contact details, reading my dad’s number before the screen plunges into darkness, falling asleep in a way I wish I could.
“Sometimes, it’s better not to find out, don’t you think?” He slowly removes the device from my hand and tosses it onto the table. I wince when it hits the hard surface, but he doesn’t seem to care. “Sometimes, it’s easier not to know for sure. Now, get on the bed.”
