Page 15 of Eden

It was the same thing he always told himself. Instead of dealing with his pain, he pushed it away. He wondered, not for the first time, if that was the reason he couldn’t think of Eden without feeling like his world was crashing down. He’d never dealt with his grief. He didn’t know how to.

He looked up into blackness, feeling like he was looking into his soul. Dark, empty, hollow.

Lachlan stared into nothing for so long that eventually his eyes closed. Whether it was from dehydration or exhaustion, eventually he drifted off to sleep.

“Lachlan? Lachlan?”

His name came to him like a whisper in the night, her voice easing his tired soul, but he was too tired to open his eyes. He didn’t want to open them; he wanted to stay in this dream, to see the girl calling his name, the voice of an angel.

“Lachlan?”

Again he heard the voice, but this time it was a little closer. A little more vivid and less like a hallucination.

His eyes opened groggily, and he wasn’t sure if it had all been a dream until he heard her voice again.

“Lachlan?” she yelled, her voice sounding raw now, less poetic than it had in his dream.

“Bethenny?” Lachlan tried to call out, but his throat was so dry it sounded more like a grunt.

A pause followed.

“Lachlan?” Bethenny called out quickly. “Lachlan? Where are you?”

He swallowed, wetting his lips. “Here! Here!” His heart skipped a beat.

“Keep talking to me!” she said, sounding like she was closer, although he couldn’t be sure.

“I’m here, against the tree,” he said, immediately realizing how ridiculous that was. There were about a billion trees in the woods.

He saw a sweeping light.

“Bethenny!” he said more urgently. “Here! Here!”

The beam of light hit him and he swore he heard her gasp. He heard her footsteps as she ran toward him before he saw her break through the darkness.

She ran the light up and down him. “Are you okay?” she asked as she stopped in front of him, her voice slightly panicked.

“Yeah,” he said, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion.

He had no idea what time it was, but it must be the middle of the night.

What was she still doing out here?

“Thank you, Lord,” she whispered as she crouched down, unzipping her backpack. She handed him a water bottle. “Drink it, all of it,” she instructed, and he happily followed her order.

He watched her as she moved fast, propping the light on the branch of a nearby tree.

She looked over him again. “Are you hurt?”

He shook his head. “Not really. Sore wrist...” he said, grimacing as he tried to hold it up.

Her eyebrows pinched together and she tilted her head, studying it.

“Okay,” she said, methodically. She reached into the backpack again and unzipped a first-aid kit. She popped out some tablets and he swallowed them gratefully. As he did so, she opened some bandages and took out what looked like a splint.

“You want to tell me how you did this, and why your phone and sweater were found on the banks beneath Devil’s Throat?” she asked gently.

He sighed, not wanting to reveal his mistake but he felt like he owed her that much.

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