Wrong Side Of The Bed

20 | terrible, terrible realizations.

CHRISTIAN'S P.O.V

MY MIND FELT LIKE IT WAS A KALEIDOSCOPE. All of my thoughts blurred and shifted and melted together until I didn't know where a single thought began and ended alone. The words that Lucas had said that night just kept echoing in my mind — "Christian, do you remember the last time when my mother had to go to the… Hamptons? If the information that Ava has gets out, things might have the same outcome."

Of course, I fucking remembered. We were fifteen, and were hanging out at the patio near the pool in Lucas' backyard when Mr.Turner, had rushed in and asked Lucas to get ready. When Lucas had inquired why, I had seen the hard resolve on Mr.Turner's face waiver for the first time. He had kneeled down, his expensive suit being tainted by the grass stains, but he didn't seem to care about that at the moment. "Your mother is in the hospital. She had an accident," He had said, keeping a gentle hand on Lucas' shoulder. "We have to get going for the Hamptons right away." Hamptons. That's where Mrs.Turner, or Clara, like she insisted on being called, was spending her summer vacation. Lucas didn't go this time because he had practice for an important game. I didn't go because we didn't have a summer house in the Hamptons, and it would have been rather rude of me to accompany Mrs.Turner to their summer house without Lucas, even though she had invited me there. Thinking today, maybe if I had tagged along, things would have been different.

Turned out that the accident wasn't an accident after all. It had been a suicide attempt, and after her recovery at the hospital, she had been sent to a rehabilitation center for around ten months. I wasn't supposed to know all this because this was a very messy affair kept under wraps and not really known publicly, but I was told everything and was asked to swear my secrecy by Mr.Turner after I had dragged Lucas home on one such bad day. He had come over at my house after practice like always, but something had happened to him when he had seen my mum come into the room, serve us some snacks, and kiss me on the top of the head before leaving the room. He had a full blown panic attack, and had been struggling to breath and had been a trembling mess. I had hailed a cab and had helped him back to his house, where I stayed with him until Mr.Turner had come back. I couldn't just leave him alone. There were caretakers and servants present, of course, but he didn't need someone to listen to his orders at that moment. He needed someone's shoulder to lean and cry on, and I had been there. So Mr.Turner had made me sit down, told me everything, had made me swear my secrecy, and had asked me to stay the night with Lucas if possible. I had called my mum and told her that I was staying the night. The next morning when Lucas had woken up and had found me on the couch, he had hugged me so tight that I felt like my bones had broken. 

Lucas had then told me something Mr.Turner had very diplomatically omitted from telling me — that Mrs.Turner had fallen into her pit of depression because she had been convinced that Mr.Turner didn't love her anymore. And the spiral had started when Clara had found out that Mr.Turner was cheating on her.

Which led me to the conclusion that Mr.Turner was cheating on Clara again, and Ava somehow had gotten her hands on the information — a suspicion that Lucas had later confirmed. Of course Ava knew about what had happened to Clara the last time,  Lucas' closest confidant had once been Ava, and this time she had decided to be a heartless bitch and went with the option of blackmailing Lucas with it. She knew that Lucas would go to all lengths possible to protect his mother from that situation again. It had been hard, very very hard, to drag her out of that deep, dark pit.

"You're staring so hard at the wall," Someone commented. "One would think that you're trying to find the answers to all the unsolved questions of the universe."

The chair next to me was dragged in a single flourish, and as soon as the seat was taken, the sweetly overwhelming smell of jasmine and sandalwood flooded my senses. I turned my head towards Walter, finally snapping out of my thoughts.