Sometime between the late warning alarm on Lachlan's phone that pierced through our calm like a tidal wave of 'oh shit' and the cresting of the sun on the horizon, Lachlan had grabbed one of his books on the side table and began reading with me still plastered to the front of his chest like a leech.

I wasn't going anywhere, though, not when he'd put me there, so that was where I stayed.

One hand in front of us holding up the old hardback and the other tracing delectable patterns on my thigh close to the hemline of my skirt, he read each word of the mystery thriller out loud so I could lose myself in the journey of the heroine who had to protect her lover from her stalker. 

In the grand scheme of things, despite myself not having a lover, the concept wasn't all too unfamiliar.

Shivers erupted along the column of my spine as he reached the second act of the novel, where the heroine pushed away her love interest to save him from the evils punishing and following her.  I couldn't have done that.  I was far too selfish to try and face something like that alone...

But wasn't that exactly what I was doing?  Keeping secrets from everyone in my life, not a single other soul knowing the truth about what I was going through, was I so different from this fictional character that I felt was ridiculous for hiding her trauma, her reality? 

"'...stunned, she turned around, and then he was there, forcing her to give up and tell him the truth.  She-'" Lachlan cut himself off as he peered down at me, his eyes searching to meet mine though I kept them trained firmly ahead of me, the truth of everything coming crashing down upon me in a heap of denial and unwilling exposure.

"You still reading?  I can pick another book, or-"

"Why are we here, hanging out like this?  I thought we didn't like each other.  When did that change?  Why does everything change?"

My voice was detached, haunted and filled with demons that he couldn't see.

Sighing out, the book closed deftly and attention now firmly placed on me, I squirmed in his hold until I was sitting up and staring directly at him, no matter how hard it was to keep from trailing my eyes down to his lips.  This was not the time for distractions.

"What do you want me to say, Kat?  I thought...I thought you were the same as everyone else, as my parents and yours.  But you seem to hate this life almost as much as I do, and it was just like, finally, finally, someone else gets it, someone else gets that this isn't normal, what they're doing to people isn't right and they need to know that not everyone is going to take it lying down."

"Wait.  What they're doing to people?  And my parents too?  I'm not sure I'm following where this is going..."

"Kat.  You're seriously going to sit here and try to tell me you don't know what's going on?  The layoffs and money funneling and destroying people's livelihoods, stealing money from their workers to fuel their own greed.  It's disgusting."

I had only known my father to be the most up and up businessman, and my mother?  The only thing she dipped her fingers into was nail polish, not nefarious activity.

The confusion must have been apt on my face, because he snarled out a few curses and reached up to grab my head and neck in the same hand, thumb brushing along my jawline as he did so.

I ignored the shudders that elicited as he asked me the question I'd been dreading, but I was so damn tired of hiding.

"If this isn't why you're so mad at your family then what is it?  What could they have done that's worse than that, because everything I just listed didn't make you angry, just confused.  Like you knew they were capable of that anyway, because they've done something worse."

"They have done something worse..." I trailed off, not sure where or how to start, but his suddenly calmed eyes and open features helped me to breathe easier, to push the story out somehow.

"I was adopted when I was born, the records completely sealed.  No matter how hard I tried to push to find my birth family, my parents were so against it that they never even entertained the idea, immediately shutting me down the second I brought it up.  But I snuck behind their backs and did it anyway.  I did one of those ancestry DNA kits to find relatives and it worked.  I found my birth family...but I also found things I didn't want to find, things I can't-" I broke off, unsure of how to continue with him looking at me so sweetly, and I shut down the second I imagined his features shutting down with disgust and revulsion as I revealed who, or rather, what I was.

That thumb was there along my jaw once again, coaxing me to keep going for him, but the words were stuck in my throat like old, dried up syrup on a forgotten breakfast plate in the sink hiding underneath the other dishes that needed cleaning.

"Kat?  What happened, what did you find?"

Flashes of her lively, beautiful face being slammed down into the ground with that evil man straddling atop her, forcing himself on her to conceive a child she didn't even want, gravel sticking to her cheeks and cutting her open, her lifeblood dripping out as she sacrificed her body for nine months for a monster's baby. 

The horror must've been evident in my features, the uncontrollable shaking of my body as Lachlan wrapped himself around me in an attempt to try and console me, but I knocked his hands away, needing to stand up and feel something different, anything different than this wracking and delirious pain and helplessness ripping though me in ribbons of tattered anguish.

I shucked off the tie from my school uniform that was constricting my airway, undoing the first two buttons of my dress shirt as I strode away from the bed and escaped to the front door, throwing the door open as snow fell down from the small awning perched above the entryway.

I devoured the air I was killing myself to breathe, leaning against the doorjamb as my fingers found clumps of snow and then pulled back while slathering the melting ice along my collarbone, allowing the biting cold of the frozenness to numb my senses and throw me out of this state, out of this panic that refused to draw back its icy claws that had dug themselves so deeply inside of my body that only an industrial strength drill could release them.

"Kat, I'm here.  You're not alone, can you breathe with me?  In through your nose for five, out through your mouth for five.  Can you look at me?  Can you look right here, right in my eyes?"

I was whirling around in a frenzy before he'd come up beside me, searching desperately for something to make me feel better, something to make me forget about this dread building up inside of me constricting my chest and forcing my heart to reach a jack hammer's pace.

Eyes searching, I didn't know what I was doing until they finally landed on him and then everything seemed quieted a bit, dimmed, and I found myself doing as he'd said.

In for five, out for five.  In for five, out for five.

Again and again, I just stood there in the freezing cold in barely any clothes but still sweating down my back somehow just simply breathing while Lachlan held his hands out to me in a surrender, and I was struck with how not freaked out he was.  Like this was just a normal day for him...

Slowly I came back into myself and on the first shiver that made my teeth chatter I stepped back inside the sanctuary of warmth inside the cabin, though my skin felt permanently frozen, a stone slab of a human encased over the actual organs and blood that rushed beneath the surface.

"Hey, you're okay, you're good.  I'm still here, I'm not going anywhere," Lachlan declared, mistaking my horror at what I'd just done in front of him as my panic flashing to the surface yet again, thinking that he'd have to talk me off the edge yet again, but there wasn't any apprehension in those dark eyes of his, if anything, there was more understanding than the disgust that I was expecting at my freakout.

I collapsed against his chest since he was so close, and his arms reacted immediately, wrapping delicately around me as he held me to him.  I continued those deep breathing techniques, but it was harder to keep my concentration with his scent clogging up my senses.

He ran his hands in circles across my back, and I couldn't bring it in myself to shy away from the intimacy he gave to me despite our lingering circumstances that still confused the hell out of me, but I was far too emotionally exhausted to care.  That had been happening a lot more lately.

I somehow ended up straddled across his lap after he slid to the floor as we had been backed up to the island in the middle of the kitchen close to the front door, the draft still wafting by every few seconds as I laid my face in his neck, his pulse thundering through his warm skin to my still numb and frozen lips and tip of my nose.

Still his hands never ceased their movements on my back, calming and soothing me as he had just witnessed myself shatter while he picked up the pieces.

Why?

"You don't have to tell me anymore, Kat.  I can get the gist of things just from your reaction.  They hid the truth of something terrible from you, just like mine did to me."

He pulled back and I had to lift my head from his neck in order to meet him in the eyes.

"You can stay here whenever you want, I know Jenna's got Taylor in the dorm most of the time, and it probably makes you feel like a third wheel staying with Vera and Blythe.  I can always sleep on the couch if you need to come here to escape from everything, I know how suffocating it can feel."

"Why, though?  Why are you being so kind and helpful and showing interest in me when before a few days ago, you could have cared less about me and what I was going through?"

I was transported back to the hot tub party where he'd accosted me about still wanting Holden and tried to scoot back a bit but his arms held firm, making sure I heard everything he had to say next.

"I thought you knew what your parents were doing and just didn't care.  I was a dick, and it all started a year and a half ago when I found out the truth about the company, when my dad wanted me to start taking on more responsibilities.  I went snooping through some protected records, dumbass kept his password in his desk, and that's when I found everything.  He was money laundering, stealing from his workers, paying undocumented workers seven dollars less an hour than documented workers.  He'd blackball anyone who spoke out against him, and he'd ruin lives even quicker.  And that was when I saw your parent's names."

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion.

"My dad's firm didn't represent your family's companies, though.  He owns an accounting firm, how are they connected?"

A few strands of his shadowy hair fell haphazardly into his forehead and I couldn't help myself as I reached up to brush them away from his head.  I was right, his hair did feel silky smooth against my fingertips.

His reaction was subdued, but the shiver that raced through him for a split second was there, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

"I found dozens of emails between our dads, a few of them were about merging their companies together and a few were about some offshore accounts.  Your dad talked about you in one of them, and that was why I assumed you were in on all the details.  He said you were coming to live with him in California to help smooth over some business transactions, something about him setting you up with one
of his prospective partners' sons to get inside information on them or something.  It was pretty weird, the way he talked about you like you were some kind of pawn in corporate espionage."

"Ian was his new partner's son, but he didn't approve of the relationship at the end, it was part of the reason why I was sent back home, but it wouldn't surprise me that he was using me to spy on his parents, even if I didn't know it.  Maybe things went south and that's why he stopped approving of us being together..."

"Part of the reason?"

His eyes were scrutinizing and inquisitive, but these details I could speak about without going into full out manic anxiety.

"I was getting drunk and going to parties, sneaking out, smoking in the house, among other things.  After I found out...what they were hiding from me, I went a little wild and rebellious."

He nodded his head as if he could relate completely, arms tightening around my waist as he regarded me in another light.

"You don't have to tell me what happened but I just want you to know...you can, if you want to."

"I know," and I did.  I knew that he would listen and bear my crosses with me, because he had struggles of his own, and in the three times that he'd saved me, really four counting the most recent panic attack, I grew to realize that for some reason, Lachlan was in my life. Not as my casual friend, childhood crush, or teasing bully, but something different entirely, and I wasn't all too sure I wanted to find out just exactly what place in my life he had taken up.

"I'm definitely failing my classes already.  It's only the first week of school and I've already missed so much."

"Don't worry, I know the owners," he said with a wink and a half smirk that had me almost swooning completely in his arms.  I wished I knew how he could do that- take me from my spiraling panic to the verge of laughter at his antics.

His features fell at the mention of his parents then, though, and the question was at the top of my tongue but I didn't voice it, knowing the harmful effects of that simple question.  'What happened' was more loaded than anyone ever thought.

"You know you can always tell me, too, if you want to."

His eyes, smoldering and intense, snapped to mine and held my gaze for a long, unblinking moment before he inhaled a deep breath and leaned his head back against the kitchen island we were pushed up against.

This view gave me a glimpse of his neck and Adam's apple, the figure in his throat bobbing as he swallowed, and soon my bottom lip was locked between my teeth watching him run his free hand through his hair contemplating what to tell me, if anything.

"I confronted him-my dad, when I found out what he was doing to all those people, stealing their money and putting them out of a job if they tried to speak up and making sure they never worked in this town again, or even the state.  He told me that I needed to grow up, that this was how money was made and that I needed to remember that if I wanted to inherit all of it one day. I told him I didn't want it, any of it, that Brandon or Blythe could have it all but Brandon was already assigned to the foreign division and does such a good job my dad wouldn't dream of taking that position away from him and he doesn't want Blythe to be a part of the company because he hates that she's a lesbian.  So I kept pushing and pushing and eventually he pushed back."

He swallowed once more, his eyes glazing over as he stared ahead at the ceiling, unblinking.

"He started by beating the shit out of me, told me it was to teach me a lesson, but no one else knows he did that, I kept it to myself.  I just told my mom someone jumped me and left it at that, but after I started pushing him I couldn't stop, and neither could he.  Our last big fight was about lacrosse," he started, flexing his hands at his sides before placing them firmly on my hips and squeezing gently.

"I put up a hell of a fight for that one, though.  I decided I'm not going to keep fighting him, it's too obvious.  My best chance at doing any good is making my dad think I can go along with whatever illegal things he's doing and once I take over I can get him voted off the board of directors and do things the way I want to do them."

Once he was finally done, I had a new appreciation and view of Lachlan Brooks.  It made so much sense, every time he'd confronted me asking me how I was able to live with myself, but my dumb self was thinking that he was talking about Holden and Sloane, not realizing just how many snakes I called 'family'.

I felt a need to reciprocate something to Lachlan, just to let him know just how much I appreciated him telling me what he'd just shared.

I was close, so desperately close to pulling out my phone and showing him the threatening text messages, to telling him that Ian's accident wasn't an accident at all, but the words got stuck inside my throat yet again, but this didn't preclude another panic attack, at least not yet.

It was dead silent for a few moments before I knew that I had to speak, had to tell him something.

"I found out that my biological father...he murdered my biological mother...along with other things that I still can't talk about yet."

Our gazes locked, his head snapped back to meet me in the middle.

Understanding dawned across his features just as a sympathetic pain flashed, and for a moment I was dreading the pity that I knew would inevitably come, but instead we had bonded over this unique brand of pain- pain inflicted by our 'fathers'.

"Do your parents know that you know these things?"

"No, and I'm going to keep it that way, at least until it benefits me to tell them and not the other way around.  They all think I'm just some heartbroken girl mad at my sister for stealing some stupid old boyfriend, upset about Ian in the hospital back in California...they have no idea the things that I know and just how much more there is to it.  And I can't wait to see their faces when I finally confront them, both of them, and my annoying step mother, too."

His lip quirked up into a wry smirk at that last quip and only then did I realize the darkening pink fading sunset and it dawned on me just how long we'd been together, his hands still resting lightly on my hips, the same gentle pressure applied there now sending shockwaves of desire running from that spot on my hip to another certain spot just below my belly button.

He seemed to realize the change in the atmosphere at the exact same time as I did, his cocky smirk firmly back in place as I shifted nervously on his lap, eliciting a weak groan from his lips.

"You do realize you're straddling me right now, right?"

"Possibly..."

His laughter filled up the air around us as he stood effortlessly with my legs wrapped around his waist and my arms clinging to his neck as he gently set my feet down on the ground below me, the deep and haunting air replaced by light teasing and gentleness.

"Let me take you back to your dorm, it's almost time for dinner and you didn't eat anything at lunch and I didn't see you at breakfast."

I didn't want to tell him that I wasn't hungry, not with all these new emotions swirling around inside of me but before I could protest his hand was inside mine after setting me down gently and he was tugging me to the bathroom where my things had been on the drying rack since my earlier freakout.

He left me to it as I donned my stockings, socks, boots and outer coat which were still a little damp but bearable.

I groaned as I realized Blythe and Vera were definitely going to give me the third degree about this little excursion about Lachlan but I came to a conclusion about that before I even stepped outside the bathroom.

"Can you drop me off in the back so they don't see me in your car?"

His eyebrows quirked up in amused confusion but waited for me to explain.

"I'm a private person.  If we're...hanging out, I don't really feel like answering to your sister or Vera or even Evan about it, shit, especially Evan."

He chuckled darkly and pulled me close to his chest before placing a light kiss on my forehead which did things to me that he shouldn't have been capable of doing.

"I'll be your dirty little secret, don't worry Kit-Kat. That just means I get to keep teasing you, and I just know how much you love that," he said and I blushed bright red at his insinuation.

"I even believe there was mention of you on your knees at one point-"

He didn't get to finish his sentence as I jabbed him semi hard in the stomach but he just laughed and roped his arm around my shoulders and escorted me out into the frigid night air.  He didn't comment on me calling this 'hanging out' so I wondered if he thought it was something more, or even something less than that...

I did know that there was attraction between us-even more so, there was lust and desire pooling between us, and it was only a matter of time before one of us made the first move, but watching his gorgeous eyes dancing in the cresting sunset with pink and purple hues casting colorful shadows across his angular face I just wondered which one of us would strike first, though I had a sinking suspicion that that cocky grin would get the better of me sooner rather than later.