Page 12 of Leather & Lark
“As ready as he’ll ever be.”
“Wish him luck for me, yeah?” His grin is luminous as he takes another bite of pizza and washes it down with a long sip of beer. “Tworestaurants. Who’d have thought you’d all be where you are now. Rowan a successful chef. Fionn a fuckingdoctor. And you with your own studio. Bet you never could have imagined it that first day I found you boys.”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice thin as the haze of memory descends to battle with the present.
“I still remember it like it was yesterday—Rowan some gawky teenager with blood running down his chin. Looked like something from a zombie film. At first I thought he’d bitten a chunk out of Fionn until I realized Fionn was stitching up Rowan’s lip with a fucking sewing needle.”
I nod, or at least I think I do. Leander keeps talking, but I don’t really hear him.
The memory is untarnished. It’s like I’ve stepped into that moment. Every image is so sharp. So clear. I can recall every detail, from the minute to the monumental. I still feel the phantomthrobbing beat in my fingertip that had been sliced off. I can see the precise shade of crimson that poured from a deep slice through Rowan’s upper lip. I picture Fionn’s face as he pulled the thread through the torn flesh, the concentration in his eyes. I remember the way the moonlight poured through the window and reflected off the broken shards of glass and the last of my mother’s porcelain plates scattered on the floor.
And most vividly, I recall my father’s lifeless body lying at my feet, my belt wrapped around his neck, one end still curled around my sticky, shaking fist.
Rowan had turned to me, the thread pulled taut between his split lip and the needle clutched in Fionn’s fingers. His eyes were soft, so soft that I realized that maybe it was the first time I’d ever seen him relaxed. “You can let go, Lachlan,” he’d said as his gaze flicked down to my hand.
It was only a moment later when Leander strode in and changedeverything, even the things that had already been irrevocably changed. That belt was still wrapped around my fist. And when Leander looked down at me, he grinned.
“ … and then Rowan said, ‘I swear it was almost an accident,’ and I thought, yeah, these kids are all right,” Leander says with a low chuckle. I blink away the memory, realizing I missed part of what he was saying …
… and all of what he wasdoing.
“What in the feckin’ hell are you making?”
Leander takes a slice of meat lover’s pizza and stuffs it into the blender where a first slice is already folded, grease and condensation smeared across the glass. “Smoothies.”
I look from the pizza box to the blender and back again. “What?”
“Smoothies. You know, drinkable food.”
“A … pizza smoothie …?”
Leander simply grins as he pours half a can of beer into the blender.
“Why?”
“Robbie doesn’t really have teeth anymore. How else is he going to have a last meal?” Leander shifts his attention to Robbie, who cries in his chair. “Didn’t anyone tell you that candy will rot your teeth out, dickhead? Speaking of which …”
Leander slides the teeth off the counter and onto his waiting palm before he plops them into the blender and turns it on. The beer froths. The melted cheese sticks to the glass. It takes a few stops and starts, but eventually he gets the mixture whipped into a thick, bubbly brown paste.
“Feckin’ Christ Jesus. That is truly horrific.”
Leander shrugs. “Still just pizza and beer, but with extra calcium.”
“Didn’t he have a gold cap on one of them?”
Leander sloshes the mixture around and peers into the jug, but there’s not much to see in the brown sludge. “Yeah, he did. So, it’s gotfancycalcium. Anyway, I’m sure it tastes pretty much the same.”
“Doubtful. You should try it. Test your theory and let me know.”
“Fuckno,” he says on the heels of a barked laugh as he pours the mixture into a pint glass. “I have a thing about teeth.”
I groan and Leander cackles again, clearly delighted with himself. He runs a hand through his silver hair and then rummages indrawers behind the bar until he pulls out the funnel with a sound of triumph. “Christ Jesus, man. I’m leaving.”
I turn on my heel but don’t make it even a step away before his words stop me dead.
“You know, kid, I couldmakeyou stay.”
I stare at the door for a long, unblinking moment before I pivot to face Leander. He’s still smiling as he walks past me with the funnel in one hand and the full glass in the other. But there’s always a threat beneath his bleached smile and the creases that fan from the corners of his eyes. There’s a predatory edge to Leander that cuts through that mask like a razor.
