Page 56 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘I got drunk and fucked Danya. That’s what happened. It wasn’t rape. It wasn’t punishment. Your father wasn’t involved, and neither were you.’

Few times in his life has Lachlan actually seen a storm build inside a person. Rarely has he ever truly seen someone darken. It comes slowly but surely.

Julian Penhalyx is a jealous person by nature, possessive at his core.

The lie lands hard because Jules fears it. He always has.

And Lachlan knows him well enough to exploit it.

‘You’re lying,’ Jules says, but it lacks confidence. He’s afraid of it, so it’s naturally a possibility in his mind.

‘Ask him if you like.’

‘You wouldn’t do that to me.’

‘We got drunk. It was just sex.’

‘But you like him.’

‘I do, yeah.’

Jules looks so hurt it ripples into watery disgust.

‘You’re not even sorry, are you?’

‘We never said we were exclusive. I’m not your boyfriend.’

‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

‘It was just sex, Julian.’

‘My world, my compass, my lodestone,’ he parrots in an impressively dead-on impression of Lachlan. ‘Did you forget that too?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Doesn’t matter?’ Jules echoes as though he wants to scream it but has no breath to spare. ‘It doesn’t matter that you fucked someone you love who wasn’t me? That you…’

He looks away suddenly, his face splotchy with patches of red. His lungs are locking up tight. He’s having a panic attack.

Lachlan caused it.

‘Sit down,’ he says, moving closer.

‘Don’t come near me,’ Julian warns, his hand thrown out. ‘Don’t.’

‘Just sit down, drop your head between your knees.’

‘Get out.’

Lachlan ignores the warning. ‘It’s my job to—’

Julian slaps him.

It could have been a punch, could have been several moves because this boy takes to CQC like a fish to water, but it’s a vicious slap across the face because only a slap denotes his pain, his disgust and his heartbreak.

Sometimes only an open hand will do.

‘Get the fuck away from me.’