Ben’s gone.
We both know it.
We both know that when Blair understands it, she’ll try not to break.
Throughout my childhood, fatherless and poor I learned to be hard, impossible to fracture. Whatever shit got thrown at us, me, our mother and Ivy, I learned to not react.
Instead I waited. Watched. Became a chameleon who could blend in wherever.
Anything I feel can be boxed up and encased safely to be dealt with later, it can explode in safety where no one risks getting hurt.
Blair looks at us both. “I’m going to look for him.”
The clock is just about to chime midnight and we’re sitting in the lounge, the family one in their private suite. Blair is silent, her lips pressed together and the glass of wine in her hand untouched. Shadows created by the fire flicker across her face and I can’t pull my eyes away.
I’ve seen her come undone at the hands of men; I’ve seen her mourn her brother and make a fool of a man who wanted to claim her as his own. But I’ve never seen her despair.
“What if he’s injured out there? What if he’s lying in the cold and he’s hypothermic?”
“He went out properly dressed, Blair. He knew what he was doing.” He took his gun. His knife. The pocket tool I got him for Christmas, the one I wasn’t thinking too much about. An
“Micky doesn’t know where he might be and he’s not triggered the cameras…” I don’t mention the note. The brief script with the apology and the promise he needed from me.
Look after her. Be what I can’t. Remember what you gave.
I leave my seat and step over to her, take the glass out of her hand because she’s not drinking it anyway.
“Stop it.”
Her eyes blaze.
“Stop thinking of scenarios that won’t have happened.”
“How do you know they won’t have?”
She grips my forearm with her hand and my body flares.
“Because he’s a soldier. Because he’s survived more than you’ll ever know. Because he left this morning on purpose with somewhere to be. Micky’s got people out looking for him but he may not want to be found.”
This is the moment.
My first.
The point where I break someone’s heart.
I can almost hear it cracking.
“He’s left again.”
I want to fucking kill him.
Tear his limbs off and feed them to the eagles that soar above the loch because he’s made her hurt and I know he’ll have a reason because this will be killing him slowly.
“Maybe. We don’t know.”
She stands up and forces me backwards to give her space.
“This isn’t how I should be starting the New Year. My father’s dying. Ben’s gone.” She studies me. “And I don’t know the first fucking thing about you apart from you work for the man I know would take me down in a heartbeat if he could keep his hands clean in the process.”
