Chapter 19.
Lucas looked in shock at the man he thought he knew and watched as he transformed right in front of his eyes. He wanted to believe, but he had been hurt too many times before in the past and his mind was refusing to believe what Baz was telling him.
"What?"
"I said I might be your father. Oh boy, this is complicated!" Baz sat down in a chair opposite Lucas. "Well, I don't know if you know this but I worked for your mum for three years. During that time we became really close friends and I also found myself falling in love with her, but I was too shy to tell her."
"She was very quiet and nervous when Lawrence was around, but we went out of the house when he was out, Cynthia could relax. She didn't see many people, she'd either lost touch over the years or Lawrence forbade her to see them. Anyway, Lawrence was away again on business when I noticed a bruise on her face. I asked her about it and, she was so scared she told me that Lawrence had hit her but it was the first time he'd done it. I made her promise to tell me if he did it again."
"A couple of weeks later, I was sacked and, somehow Lawrence had found out and forbade me to see her. It was about a month after that when Cynthia came to my house, she was crying. He'd done it again, but this time it was a lot worse and he'd almost broken her arm. I tried to persuade her to leave him, but she wouldn't. Too stubborn. Anyway, we got talking and well, one thing led to another and… Um… Well… after that, we…You know?"
Lucas guessed the next part and nodded.
"Well, we became more than just friends and would meet every day when Lawrence went away. Anyway the next thing I know, Cynthia suddenly breaks up with me out of the blue and says that she and Lawrence were trying for a baby and now she was pregnant. I didn't think… She never told me..."
"Anyway, after you were born, I came to visit regularly to help your mother looking after you. Then two years later; Cynthia turns up at my doorstep and says she's leaving him, but she needed to collect the stuff from the house. She wanted me to look after you while she had gone to tell him the news. Apparently he hadn't been going to 'business trips' but had various affairs with different women. Anyway she came back with the bags and we moved far away, where she met Matt's father a couple of years later and married him." Baz concluded at last.
Lucas just sat in shock; trying to absorb the information he'd just been told. Baz was his father? Well nothing had been confirmed, but it sure did look that way. Suddenly Lucas felt angry, Baz had been lying to him all this time.
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Lucas nearly shouted.
"I didn't know, all right…" Baz tried to defend himself.
"Well, you still could have told me about the affair and not wait until he's dead before…" Lucas was on the verge of hysterics and was taking out his anger on Baz.
"I made a promise to Cynthia; she made me promise not to tell you about the affair. I didn't have a choice in the matter." Baz calmly tried to explain to the angry teen.
"You still could have told me!" Lucas cried before running out of the room as fast as he could and slamming the door behind him, the letter still in his hand.
Baz sat on the chair in shock, still trying to figure out what had just happened. He buried his head in his hands and for the first time in a long time, he began to cry, mumbling,
'I'm sorry Cynthia, I'm so sorry.'
***
Lucas ran blindly down the corridor, tears stinging his eyes and slowly spilling down his face. He ran round the conference centre, glad of its size and the lack of people he met. Eventually Lucas collapsed in a corridor, near a kitchen somewhere in the building.
'How could he? I thought that monster was my father when all along it was Baz.' Thoughts of Baz and his treachery echoed around his mind. 'Years of abuse that didn't have to happen if only…'
Lucas's morbid thoughts were cut off by the sound of a bell ringing, signifying that lunch was ready. Lucas didn't feel like talking to anyone at the moment, so he decided to rest having spent most of his energy sprinting around the building.
***
"So has anyone seen Lucas recently?" Matt asked when he didn't see Lucas anywhere around.
"I don't know, Baz took him away to talk to him and we haven't seen him since," Bridger replied. "Baz looked pretty worried, so I'm guessing it wasn't good news."
"Ok," Matt raised a questioning eye brow.
"So where did they go?" Ben asked.
"Oh, Baz's probably talking to Lucas about something or the other." Emily reasoned.
"Or maybe not," Matt said, as he noticed Baz walk through the door alone. Sighing, Matt walked over to Baz. "Hi! Are you forgetting someone?"
"No, I don't know where he went." Baz looked around, but there was still no sign of Lucas.
"None of his friends have seen him either. Do you want me to look for him and you get something to eat? I've already eaten." Matt offered.
"Yeah, could you? That'd be great. Oh and he's gonna be upset so be warned. I've had to give him some bad news and I'm not sure he'll ever talk to me again. He's more likely to trust you." Baz smiled weakly and Matt realised he'd been crying.
"You Ok?" Matt asked.
"Yeah, well. I've been better. Thanks. Good luck." The pair parted to go about their different tasks.
***
Matt was getting annoyed. He'd looked almost everywhere for Lucas and there was no sign of him. 'Oh well, only a couple of places to look now. He sure does know how to hide.' Turning the corner and matt thought he could hear a muffled sound. He knew Lucas was near.
Following the sound, Matt hurried down the corridor and followed it to the right. There he found his kid brother huddled against the wall in tears. He looked so small and fragile that Matt was unsure how to approach him at first. Matt carefully called the youngster's name, to make sure he was aware of the elder man's presence. He sat down beside the crying bundle and hugged Lucas, who buried his face and cried even harder into his chest.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Matt coaxed his kid brother. "What are you crying for?"
Lucas didn't respond at first, so Matt began to rock him gently from side to side, like he used to when Lucas was younger.
"It's not fair!" Lucas finally stated, lifting his face up into his face his brother and blinking his big blue eyes.
"What's not fair?"
"Have you ever thought you knew someone and then found out that you didn't know them at all?" Lucas paused.
"Yeah, I did." Matt paused; his eyes suddenly became distant, as though it still hurt him to remember. "One time in training, we discovered that someone was leaking information from us to the enemy about our training tactics and plans. We discovered… it was my best friend Cameron, and he nearly got me killed because one of the plans he had leaked was a mission I went on. They ambushed us and I discovered that my best friend had used me as a friend." Matt almost spat out the word 'friend' and shook off the trance he had slipped into. "Why? Has this got anything to do with Baz and why he looked so upset?"
Lucas bowed his head at the mention of Baz's name and Matt realised that was part of the problem. Lucas fished out a letter he had in his pocket with the Blackstone logo on it and let Matt read it. When he had finished, Matt looked a bit shocked. Lucas then added,
"And I found out that my real father is actually Baz, a small fact he forgot to tell me." Lucas fell silent before saying, "I mean, I thought I could trust him, I tell him all my secrets and then suddenly it's like, oh and by the way I forgot to tell you… I'm your father." Lucas relapsed into silence again. This time Matt spoke,
"I thought that was your dream, to have Baz as your father. Isn't that what you always used to say when you were younger? How you always wanted to be Baz's son? And now you are, so what's stopping you from making your dream come true? Because that's what is happening now. Your dream is coming true. Don't push away what could be your only chance, I mean at the moment both of you are hurting because neither of you have talked this through. From the sounds of things, Baz only found out at the same time you did and don't forget he's trying to adjust to this as well. You don't have to go around calling him dad because he's your father. You both have to talk about this and sort things out together. Ok? You feel hurt by him not telling you this, but he broke a promise and he probably feels as vulnerable as you do now. Baz won't hurt you like you've been hurt before. Don't you see? Baz was trying to spare your feelings because he didn't want you to suffer." Lucas listened to Matt's words of wisdom. He had never thought about it from Baz's point of view before, but was still too bitter to think about anything else other than Baz's betrayal. "Do you feel ready to go back and at least talk to him, or not?" Lucas nodded his head in agreement. "Ok, so how do we get out of here?"
Lucas just shrugged his shoulders and hugged Matt again. The elder brother sighed, and tried to figure out a way to the hall using the out of date map he had been given by the guide.
***
"Where did Matt go?" Emily asked Baz as he sat down with the tray of food.
"He went to find Lucas. I had to give him some bad news and he ran out. I've been searching for him since, with no luck. I just hope Matt has more luck than I've been having." Baz explained more to his food than anyone else. He thought, 'I hope Matt can talk to him, I don't want Lucas to hate me for the rest of our lives.'
Baz drifted off into a daze, staring at the wall in front of him and began to dissect his food rather than eat it. He didn't hear the conversation generated by the crew and Emily; he didn't hear anyone who tried to talk to him nor did he notice when Matt and Lucas walked through the door half an hour later animatedly chatting to one another and got his lunch. Lucas stopped when he spotted Baz sitting with his friends, unsure of what to do next. Baz hadn't seen the pair, as he had his back towards the door but the some of the crew members had spotted him and called to him.
"Hey, we're over here! Where've you been?" Ben shouted from where he sat. Baz looked up at Lucas and for a moment their eyes connected. He sat down opposite Baz.
"You know, here and there." Lucas replied, finally looking around at the group of people around him, before tucking into his 'meal'. Matt sat down beside Lucas.
"So. What did I miss? Anything interesting?" Matt asked, taking the attention off Lucas momentarily.
"Yeah, you missed a stampede of elephants rushing through the lunch hall, a lion asking for directions, but apart from that, nothing at all." Emily replied, making Lucas choke on the drink he started to swallow. Matt laughed at the teen.
***
Lucas didn't feel like talking to Baz just yet, he was still too bitter and resentful at Baz's betrayal. Although Matt's talk had eased some of the pain, the hurt was still there for Lucas and every time he even thought of Baz, his chest grew tighter and his breathing became laboured again.
Baz, realising Lucas wasn't going to talk to him anytime soon, had left quite soon after the youth had sat down at the table. Only Matt seemed to notice Baz's abrupt departure and sighed quietly, knowing he had done all he could do for now to ease the current situation.
TBC…
Hope you like it. I probably won't be able to do any more work on this till next weekend, so hopefully I should have the next part up around then.