Page 64 of Locke 2

Maybe hiding wasn’t the way.

Maybe I should have run.

But fear choked me and made me paralysed. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t.

Drip, drip.

Drip, drip.

“Come out,” he whispered. “I know you’re there. Come out.”

Silence.

I hadn’t taken a single breath, and my vision became spotty. He moved around the bed, and I wanted to escape. I wanted to flee. To make him chase me and forget all about Aurora.

But my tears were the only things moving.

Drip, drip.

Drip, drip.

Twenty-Nine

Locke

“What can I do to help?” Conor asked.

Locke watched the dog roam the room. He’d let her out almost immediately, hating her confined in that cage. She wasn’t a wary dog. Her tail wagged the closer she got to him, but she didn’t respond in the same manner to Conor. She looked bored of him, sniffing him only once before returning to Locke’s side to drop down and yawn.

He couldn’t help it, but fuck, he felt special to this animal, and it warmed the cold parts of him.

“I’m taking care of it,” Locke simply answered.

Conor’s expression tightened. “Locke, I want to help.”

“You were going to take her from me again,” Locke hissed back, his voice dripping with betrayal. “I don’t want your help. I want nothing from you right now, Conor.”

“I’m sorry.”

But Locke shook his head. “Don’t.”

“You’re going to shut me out again, aren’t you? I can’t live like that. I need you.Weneed each other.”

Locke stared calmly at Conor, his words tinged with melancholy. “No, Conor, you have Charlotte. You have your girls.”

“What about my brothers?”

Locke nearly lost his breath. A pain tore through his chest so unexpectedly, he might have hunched over if he’d been alone. But he wasn’t alone, and Conor couldn’t see him in that way. He didn’t want anyone to see him in that way: vulnerable and bleeding and so fucking hurt.

Just like that damn boy that sat at the bottom of the fucking hole, hoping for the light not to hurt when the door opened.

He couldn’t be that boy again.

No.

Conor needed to stop talking. To go away. Why didn’t he just go away?

“Give up on me,” Locke said sternly. “I won’t change for you, Conor. This is who I am.”

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