“You good?” his stubbled cheek brushed across my forehead, his lips leaving a kiss on my skin.
“Mmmm,” I hummed, the pads of my fingers tracing patterns across his chest. “Was just trying to remember what woke me up,” I joked, and the resulting rumble through his chest made me smile.
In a sudden movement, he rolled over me, pressing his mouth against mine. That grin, my favourite one in this whole world, reaching his eyes and bringing forth a carefree joy he didn’t wear often.
“Guess I’m an oddity in your even number loving brain,” heteased, planting kisses down my neck before taking one of my nipples between his teeth. My head lulled back, desperate to respond with something witty, but my brain was all apple puree. Him, only him.
“Wow,” he said, “I’ve figured out how to shut her up.” His chin rested on my chest, watching me cheekily as he taunted me with his mouth. Tugging his hair, I moved his face until he took the hint and with a smirk he flicked my nipple with his tongue.
“I will never stop talking if that’s how you try to make me stop,” my words tumbled out between breaths and his husky laugh delighted me to no end. I didn’t want the night to end. There was so much to say and do once morning came, but in the depths of the night, it was him and I and everything else could wait.
“Stay here,” he said suddenly, gone before I could even protest. I wanted him to stay until the new day dawned, until we went back to the facade of pretending for a world that shouldn’t matter. Only it did. It all still mattered and was lingering on the other side of the darkness.
He returned not long after with two bottles of water and a bowl of crisps.
“Oh, yes!” I groaned far too excitedly as I reached for a handful.
With our backs against the headboard, we ate in silence before I eventually leaned on his chest, more comfortable than I’d been in ages.
“Am I heading back to my bed?” he teased, and I shook my head.
“Nope. But we do need to talk.” I said with a mouth full of crisps.
There were things which couldn’t wait, questions I could feel bubbling up, desperate to be answered.
“I want you to answer some questions.” I said and he pushed the bowl of crisps aside, pulling me back down until I was lying flat and he was drapedover me.
“Ask away.” I could hear the grin in his voice as he kissed along my clavicle, his hand brushing the outside of my thighs.
I tried to focus my thoughts and maintain steady breaths, but he wasn’t making it easy. After everything that had transpired, I wanted to understand him better. To unpack the big things in his world which made him the man he was.
“Tell me about The Cellar.” I said casually, and he froze, his entire body rigid as his gaze snapped to mine. “It didn’t take a genius to locate the only gym in the city owned by someone named Marcus,” I explained, with an eye roll. “So, you can relax, I haven’t been there.” I felt his exhale, heavy with discomfort, but I wasn’t letting him off easily. When he didn’t answer, I prompted further.
“Why did you start going there?” I stroked his hair, his face resting against my chest, his hand still tracing patterns on my skin. I waited, giving him the space and time to work through his response and his brain formulating a confession was almost palpable, his body twitching with something I was certain he’d never spoken aloud.
“I needed an outlet,” he whispered so quietly I had to hold my own breath just to hear. I twirled his hair around my finger, an unspoken gesture that I was here, and I was listening. “I learnt pretty early on not to call on my parents for anything. If I got in trouble at school, it wasn’t worth them knowing because they never bothered to listen to thewhy. Never asked how I felt or what they could do to help. It would have been better to talk to a tree most of the time, because if I ever did vent my feelings, at least I wouldn’t be cut off to hear how the tree felt about what I’d done. So, I stopped talking. Stopped trying to explain and started internalising.” He huffed a self-deprecating laugh, and my heart ached. Ached for the little boy who needed his parents but never had them. The little boy who spent every weekend with us and returned home to an empty, sad house. I didn’t move or breathe, terrified if I disturbed him, he’d retreat within himself.
“And then I realised when I hit something I felt a little better.Only it was a bigger high when I hitsomeone. So, I would fight. I would fight my anger, my sadness, my loneliness.” My eyes filled with tears at the frayed edge to his words, the smile he always wore, long gone.
“I’d put everything I felt into my fists and sometimes I would come home and when I woke up, my sheets would be covered in blood. The blood of someone else. And I would think, finally - finally my parents will ask me what happened. But they didn’t, of course. They didn’t even do our fucking washing. But as a kid I never put all that together.” His touch had long ago lost its tenderness, and I doubted he even knew how tightly he was holding me now. How he was holding onto me as if I was the only thing stopping him from floating away.
“So, I would go out at night and look for fights. Turns out I was pretty good and so people started talking about the blond kid who loved a whack.” His voice took on a mocking tone, but I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t, my heart heavy.
“I’d look for anyone who wanted to lay down some money and have a go. I didn’t care about the money, but it tended to pull a crowd…” He pressed kisses on my skin before continuing.
“I’d sleep all day and wander the streets at night. And before I realised, I hadn't been to school for two weeks and my parents didn’t even notice.”
My tears were falling freely now, my hands gripping him as tightly as he was holding me and for once, I was speechless. Nothing I ever could have imagined would have come close to his confessions. Of all the times I’d judged him for his inability to talk and it was because he never knew how. No one ever showed him and so he found other ways to cope.
He looked up at me, a soft smile lining his face as he reached up tenderly and wiped the tears from my face. “Your brother was the one who saved me. He snuck out of your house one night and followed me. He found me ready to fight two men much older than either of us. I was reckless. Looking for trouble and hebegged me not to go out again. Begged me to come and stay with him.”
“And you did.” I suddenly remembered. Cooper had come and stayed with us for a month until his mother finally arrived at our door.
“I did.” He smiled eventually, probably remembering all the nights we’d spent pretzeled on the mattress downstairs, similar to how we were now actually.
“I tried to push him away back then. Like I do with everyone if they get under my skin.” He shrugged guiltily and I could sense there was more to that but couldn’t keep up. Too many revelations for my early morning brain to pilfer through. “But he was persistent. Even punched me in the face a couple of times.” His laugh took me by surprise, and I found myself smiling. I’d seen Cooper and Sebastian fight as kids but never seriously.
“And then my mum came with a suitcase full of empty promises and it wasn’t long after that Marcus asked me to come to The Cellar. It was a healthier way to keep fighting, less risks, same reward. And I thought I was smart enough to hide it from Seb.”
