Page 311 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘I’ve been in bed for nearly a week.’

‘You’re still sick.’

‘If you want me gone, just say it.’

Lachlan begins unwinding the tape from his hands.

Trying his best to walk the line, he gently asks, ‘What do you need?’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘We’re talking.’

Jules stares at him. ‘Danya told me everything.’

‘I know.’

‘You let me believe you slept with him.’

‘Yes.’

‘You watched me tear myself apart over it.’

Lachlan pulls the last of the bloodied tape loose. ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

There’s no good way to answer.

Only the truth, stripped of anything that might make it forgivable.

‘I knew it’d hurt you the most.’

‘You wanted me to hate you.’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘The truth.’

‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘Zaitsev is looping the wraparound and using the snow as cover—’

‘You don’t understand,’ Lachlan cuts across him, his tone clipped. ‘I don’t trust that anymore.’

‘You don’t trust Zaitsev?’

Lachlan drops the tape into the trash. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Do you have any idea what you did to me, letting me believe that?’

Lachlan can delay looking at Jules in a dozen different ways, but it’s just postponing the inevitable. Jules won’t leave without answers, and Lachlan owes him whatever truth he can still give.

‘I know what I did, but I can’t imagine how it felt.’

‘You locked me in my room.’

‘I didn’t lock you in. I had your room guarded, and for good reason. You drove into the city without knowing how to drive. You abandoned the car unlocked in a public garage, stole your friend’s credit card, got blind drunk and shacked up on a downtown rooftop with a man twice your age.’