Page 78 of Lost
Lysander...
Alfonzo dropped like a stone.
There was an expression of surprise etched permanently onto the boy’s face. Just a kid, Zack reminded himself, barely older than Lysander. But he’d played a stupid game, and this was his prize. The gun slipped from his hand and clattered noisily to the floor. He landed with a solid thud.
Lysander’s eyes shot wide as he made a muffled scream. He looked down with a mixture of shock and horror, trying to jerk his body away from the mess. His arms strained against his restraints, the chair almost toppling with his movements. He was panicking.
So were Alfonzo’s two companions. One stood frozen, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly. The other tripped over his own feet and fell flat on his backside in his haste to back up. Zack hoped he would always remember the looks on their punk little faces.
The looks that only got better when the warehouse was suddenly swarmed by the police.
“Drop your weapons!”
Lysander looked around frantically. The bulk of the uniforms were coming through the building’s single door, but there were some who had been ordered to break in through the boarded up windows in the back and sides — a smart idea, Zack knew now, given the position of the armed idiot behind Lysander. The other two dropped their weapons at once and put their hands in the air, shouting things like “Don’t shoot!” and “We were just messing around!” Zack wondered how much of that was true, and how much was them trying to save themselves from meeting the same fate as their friend.
He made for the centre of the room the second those boys were unarmed. He knew he should have stayed put, let the police do their thing and not move until they told him he was safe to do so, but he couldn’t take it anymore. Not when Lysander wasright there, struggling and panicking. He ran to his son, crossing the distance in less than a second, and pulled him into his arms.
“You’re okay, kid,” he breathed. “You’re okay.”
The chair tipped forward and made the embrace uncomfortable, but Zack couldn’t bring himself to let go for several moments. Having Lysander safe in his arms was the only way he could get his racing heart to still. Even surrounded by police and seeing those boys in handcuffs, it still raced with fear, scared for Lysander despite the fact that everything was over. What if he’d already been hurt? What if there was no coming back from this? He held his son at arm’s length and looked him over.
The gag was the first thing to go.
“Are you all right?” He flicked a single, stray tear from his son’s cheek. “They haven’t hurt you, have they?”
“No,” Lysander breathed. “I’m f-fine.”
But Zack still looked the boy over. He needed to see with his own two eyes that his son was okay before he would believe it. And even then, a trip to the hospital was in order — just in case. He was taking absolutely no chances. Not after seeing Lysander with a gun to his head. And certainly not after what had happened with Dakota.
“Can you untie my hands?” Lysander asked. “It’s really uncomfortable being tied to this thing.”
Zack obliged. The tape around his son’s wrists didn’t seem eager to come away, so it took a little longer than either of them would have liked. But eventually he was free, wrists aching but still in working order, and he returned Zack’s previous embrace without delay. Zack was all too happy to wrap his arms around his son again.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the boy said against his chest.
“I wasn’t going to let them hurt you. What kind of a father would that make me?”
“But they were going to kill you. If the police hadn’t busted in...”
“But they did.” Zack looked Lysander firmly in the eye. “They did, and we’re both fine. It’s over now, kid. He’s dead. You don’t have to worry about it anymore. It’s over.”
Alfonzo’s two friends were already being led out in handcuffs, and there were police scouring every inch of the place for any sign of hidden gunmen or weapons. The more they looked and found nothing, the more convinced that Zack grew of the situation’s end. It truly was over. The nightmare had come to an end.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
Zack blinked in surprise.
He had known from the beginning that Lysander had never really cared to know him. He’d only come for his sister’s sake, to plead for help when he knew he would get it from no one else. But they were a long way from that now. They’d both grown so much. Been through so much.
And Zack knew now, without a doubt, that he felt the same.
“I love you too, kid. More than you know.”
Lysander looked relieved to hear it. Zack should have said it earlier. He should have said it more often. He should have made sure that the boy knew he was loved, even before Zack himself had known it to be true. Because that was the job of a father, wasn’t it? To make his children feel loved? He would tell Lysander every day if he had to, just to make sure the boy never forgot. Just to make sure he never had reason to doubt it again.
