Page 35 of Obsession Under the Southern Stars

“Ah.”

“She told you about what happened with him, didn’t she?”

Elora and I have been best friends since we met at university. I know that she was assaulted when she was eighteen, and we’ve talked a lot about that. But I only found out about Linc a few days ago, when he arrived in the country. I got the feeling her hurt was buried so deep, she couldn’t bring herself to talk about it.

I nod. “Yes. She said he kissed her when they were young, and your father caught them. And Linc walked out. I got the feeling she was pretty brokenhearted about it.”

“Well, he didn’t walk out. My father sent him away.”

My eyes widen. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Linc told Fraser and me when we went for a drink after the dinner party at your place. He didn’t realize that we didn’t know. Not only was the poor guy sent away from the closest thing he had to a family, but he also had no idea why none of us tried to contact him.”

“Ah, that’s so sad.” I sip my champagne, thinking about what must have happened that terrible night. Atticus Bell must have been out of his mind with worry for his daughter if he’d expelled the boy he thought of almost as fondly as his own sons. And Linc… how must he have felt?

I bring my gaze back to Joel, and for the first time I wonder how he felt when he woke up the next morning to discover that his friend had vanished. “Were you close to Linc?” I ask.

“Yeah. Closer than I was to Fraser in many ways, because Linc and I were the same age.”

“It must have been very hard for you.”

Leaning back, he scrapes at the crumbs of cheesecake that remain on his plate. “It was. But my father has never taken other people’s feelings into account. He only ever does what he thinks is morally right.” His tone is carefully neutral.

I know Atticus is a deacon, and the chaplain at the school, and he and his wife brought their kids up as Anglicans.

“Are you still religious?” I ask.

His eyebrows rise, as if nobody’s asked him that question before. “I don’t go to church anymore,” he admits.

“You still believe though?”

He sucks his spoon, then places it on the plate. “It’s complicated.” He picks up his Champagne glass. “Are you religious?”

“My mum is, but my dad’s not, and he didn’t want us to grow up in the church, so no, not really.” I keep it brief, not wanting to talk about my mother and her religious views.

“It’s difficult to explain religion to someone who hasn’t experienced it fully firsthand,” Joel says. “When you’re a kid, you just believe everything your parents say. You assume they somehow know it’s all true. And then when you’re an adult, you see all the loopholes, and you start questioning. And you realize your parents don’t have all the answers. It’s all blind faith. And I have a problem with that.”

“I understand.”

“Logically, once you’ve eaten the apple and your eyes have been opened, you should turn away from it and put it aside. But…”

He trails off and looks away for a moment, out across the semi-dark garden. A frown mars his brow. He’s trying to decide how to explain something to me. So I don’t talk and let him think, taking the time to study him. He hasn’t ironed his shirt, or maybe it just got creased in his case, but it still looks good on him. He’s so casually sexy, as if he’s unaware of how gorgeous he looks. I don’t know him well enough to know if his nonchalance is contrived or natural. I think it’s natural, but I don’t want to be naïve; I know what men are like.

He looks back at me and says, “I don’t know if you’re aware, but when scuba diving with a dive buddy, if a person runs out of air, their first instinct is to grab for the dive buddy’s respirator and take it out of their mouth.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“When you can’t breathe, you panic, and all thoughts go out of your head except to reach for the thing you know willsustain you.” His eyes, which look dark blue in the fading light, stare into mine.

“You’re saying that’s what you do with religion,” I conclude. “When you panic, you reach for God.”

He shrugs. “Religion is kind of baked into you when you’re young. It becomes a part of your DNA. And when you grow up, it’s incredibly hard to separate yourself from it, even if you want to.”

“It’s why people flock to church whenever there’s a national disaster.”

His eyebrows rise as if he’s surprised that I understand. “Yeah.”

We sit there for a little while, listening to the jazz music playing quietly, drinking our Champagne. Joel tips up the bottle and finishes it off, some in my glass, the rest in his.

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