"You better do, because if not, you're going to have the life of a boy, on me."
The words of Dr. Maloney, Ian's friend, hit the back of my head, as I watched Elliot, unmoving and very still on the floor.
"You suddenly barge in with a boy who looks like he was beaten up with an object I presume to be something like a golf club or a baseball bat- and has a fractured rib, clear signs of sustained physical abuse on his body."
I felt sick.
"Fuck. Shit, fuck my life. Fuck!"
After a good scream, Landon glanced at me, sighed, and bent down, his back to me. "Put him on my back. Hey, hey, you- Horan."
He snapped his fingers. "I'm a fucking alcoholic and I'm old. I can't fucking carry two of you, so don't you faint. Faint a bit later, all right? Put him on my back."
I couldn't remember how, but the next few moments, I found myself hauling Elliot onto Landon's back.
Landon was cursing at the men to get lost and open the "goddamn door". As Gerald rushed out of the house, Landon outstretched his hand.
Gerald lowered his hand, the car keys in his grasp, shaking his head. "You're not in-"
With a grunt, Landon steadied himself, Elliot on his back.
"Give me the keys, and you're not following," Landon said with the most calmness I'd seen in him, "or you're not going to see your daughter again. You know Richard Lockwood is held up, don't you?
"I might be an alcoholic but I have a bloody lot of money, and I'm a fucking Lockwood. You know what that means in this fucked up world, right?"
Without hesitation, Gerald handed over the keys to me. It seemed threats ran in the family too.
"Fucking idiots always need us to spell out everything, fucking annoying. Ah, fucking waste of my breath," muttered Landon, jerking his chin towards the car doors.
I opened the car doors, and Gerald put down Elliot onto the back seats.
The next thing I knew, I was in the passenger's seat, and Landon Lockwood was driving us off, away from the three-story house that was Isabella Lockwood's world.
~ * ~
Landon drove at the speed of a fugitive. After tightening the strap of my seat belt, I looked back at the back seats, where Elliot was, unconscious.
"Where're you going? To the hospital? I know a doctor who-"
"He's alive." Popping a cigarette into his mouth like one would a lollipop, Landon glanced at the back mirrors. "You can open your eyes now."
Through the rearview mirror, I saw Elliot rise to a sitting position. I turned my body back and stared at him.
Nonchalantly, Elliot comfortably strapped himself onto the backseat. When our eyes met, he shrugged with a flash of his smile.
"I don't know what this is, but it seemed important. She gave it to me as soon as she heard people coming up the stairs."
"You're smiling? Smiling? After-"
After all that he heard, about his biological father, and what his adoptive mother had done to his biological mother?
Only when I saw Elliot sitting upright and looking out the window, did I realize my heart had been thumping hard in my throat.
"Some dramatic fate you have, Clare Horan." Slowing down, Landon drove around a familiar juncture of a road. "Your father, mother and even...boyfriend. All this goddamn mess you're in."
I couldn't deny that. "What did you mean by your father being 'held up'?"
"Technically, voluntarily held himself up. He went to the police to be interrogated. Let me ask the questions. Elliot Lockwood. You knew the whole time what my mother did, and you kept your mouth shut?
"You have some fucked up masochist tendencies or something? Did you enjoy seeing me think you made my mother like that because of something you did? You son of a bitch..."
Sitting just by his side, I could clearly see Landon's chin quavering, his eyes growing redder.
"I didn't know," muttered Elliot. "Just suspected."
"Fuck, and what was that all about? I saw the news. I saw the interviews- Ian Neil, Nicole Romano... What did mum mean, when she talked about all the...all the things dad did?
"It- I thought it was all just tabloid. Not just one or two times that some leeches accused dad of doing some things just so that they can get cash out of lawsuits and..." Landon glanced at me, and stopped.
As the car came to a halt at traffic, Landon pulled out the lighter from his pocket.
"I'll faint later." With a sigh, I pulled the cigarette from his mouth, and slot it into the cup holder of the car. "You can smoke later."
"Some guts you have, Clare Horan." Landon's bloodshot eyes looked at me with more amusement than annoyance, as he put back the lighter in his pocket.
"You're not scared? Being in the car with the two of us? If what my mum said is true, we're the sons of people who should be behind the bars.
"Ah, more so for me. But too bad, seems like game's already over if my dad walked into the police station without even a warrant, free of handcuffs."
"What do you mean?" I looked back at Elliot. He was leaning against the car seats, his eyes closed.
"That means what you did was just child's play." We were driving into the parking lot of the hospital. Landon had driven us back.
Landon chuckled, and parked the car haphazardly into two parking slots.
"You tried to crack a rock with an egg. Nice try. Might've left a stain on the rock, but the egg's broken. A couple of days later, the stain won't even be visible. So, Elliot Lockwood. Couldn't be that you were putting up with me all these years because you're a saint. I know you.
"You know. No one in our family is a good soul, everyone's fucked up in some way. Insanity runs in the family. Our dear late grandmama Olive was the most fucked up. So tell me. What do you want? My shares? My apology? My life?"
Wearily, Elliot opened the car door. "Your arm," he said after a while, pointing to his leg in a cast. He smiled wryly. "I'm going to Doctor Doyle."
And looking only at his cast, raising himself to his good foot, Elliot said icily and briefly, "Clare. You should go home. You've done your job. I've done mine. Our use for each other has run out-"
The soft, but distinctive sound of a click came.
I turned my head sharply towards the direction of the sound.
It was a man who seemed to be in his mid-thirties, dressed in a green button-up shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. He must've thought he'd muted his phone camera sound.
When his eyes locked with mine, he didn't run away.
In fact, he came up from his position behind a pillar of the parking lot, and walked up towards us, sliding his phone into the pocket of his ripped jeans.
"Mr. Lockwoods. And Ms. Horan." The man's deep set eyes lopsided into smiles.
He outstretched a hand with long fingers and a silver band ring on the fourth finger, towards me.
"I'm Gabriel Nikol. I run a YouTube channel called JustNikIt. I like to call myself the journalist hired not by a company, but by the people of the world."
I didn't take his hand. "Did you just take a picture of us? We're not celebrities. You should know that."
"Ah, Ms. Horan. Individuals don't decide if they're celebrities. The public does." He winked, lowering his hand with some sheepishness. "But my apologies."
It seemed there were numerous permutations to assemble a line of bullshit. I blinked. "Um."
"Oh, really?" Landon grinned. "Then I'll knock out your nose and then apologize, how about that? Fucking bloody YouTubers that leech on Hollywood gossip think they're on a goddamn moral high horse."
As the smile from Gabriel Nikol's eyes faded, Elliot lowered his arm from around Landon's shoulders, and outstretched a hand to the man who called himself journalist hired by the people of the world.
"Mr. Nikol, I'm sorry about that. Very honored to meet you. I've watched your videos. Including those about Clare and me."
Elliot winked, shaking the man's hand. "I believe in the importance of democratizing media content, in unbiased content untainted by media companies that are under politicians' control and for-profit corporations' pressure and sponsorship.
"And I believe you might do even better with some exclusive content. Would you like to have a chat over some coffee in the car?"
Before my very eyes, I could see Gabriel Nikol's ears flush in excitement at the part of 'democratizing media content'.
"Oh, lord. You are really...yes, that would be wonderful. And it'll be great if your brother and girlfriend could also-"
"Oh, my brother is a little unwell, so Clare will be helping him get to the hospital." Elliot opened the door of the passenger's seat, and gestured to it with the brightest smile I'd seen on him, towards the simply enraptured Gabriel Nikol.
"Please."
~ * ~
More obediently than expected, Landon followed Doyle back to his ward to get some rest.
Noah had gone home at his parents' prompting. Bianca and Ester had remained in the hospital cafeteria, and doing up essays for their History class.
Shutting her book upon seeing me, Bianca stood from her seat, and pulled me into a hug.
"This is so not our thing. This kind of a cringy physical contact," she muttered, awkwardly patting my back. "But special occasions call for special...action. C'mon. I'll drive you home. You look like shit. Your mum called me. Your parents are worried about you."
Bianca and Ester didn't ask questions about Elliot. But not a moment of silence persisted in the car.
"...so Ester tried out the vanilla flavor ice cream. And wow. That hospital's gotta open up as a dessert shop, I'm serious."
Ester nodded in assent. "It was really good. The hotdog was good, too."
I smiled. "For real?"
"Yeah, bloody hell. I was going, wow, can I really be eating this very delicious hot dog with such happiness while my friend's boyfriend is in the ward just upstairs." As Bianca pulled over in front of our house, she smiled.
I'd known for Bianca for years. That was the smile she'd shown years ago before jumping down the slide and having to get three stitches on her forehead.
I raised my eyebrow. "Why are you smiling like that?"
"Ester and I were thinking we could sleep over at your house. Of course, we're not exactly giving you a choice. We literally bought disposable underwear and ice cream from the store next to the hospital."
What a combination. "Disposable- what?" My jaw slackened.
"You know it'll be a bit embarrassing to wear disposable underwear when we're at our own homes-"
"Shh, oh my god. I don't really want to see how your disposable underwear looks like."
I burst into laughter, as she confidently pulled out plastic wrapped pieces of underwear from the plastic bags on her lap, and two tubs of Ben & Jerry's.
"It was very hard trying to dissuade Noah from joining us," added Ester solemnly. "Oh- your parents, right?"
Jessica and Michael stepped out of the house, and were peering at the car with open suspicion.
Rolling down the window, Bianca, as if to show everything was all right, flashed the plastic bags of disposable underwear, ice cream tubs and a few other familiar food items.
"Jessica! Michael!" she grinned. "Long time no see!"
Very courteously and a little awkwardly, Ester waved. "Hi, Mr and Mrs. Horan."