“Oliver! What is the matter with you? Jesus, stop this nonsense, right now!”
I move to his side and touch his shoulder. There’s a trembling under my hand, the rage and whatever other emotions he’s bottling up surging like a storm beneath his skin. “I’m okay. Come on.” Sliding my hand along his arm, I pull it away from Alister's throat, then gently ease Oliver back.
His mother rushes to Alister's side, patting her hands on his chest and checking him over for injury. She only looks at her son again when she’s sure her friend is okay.
“Oliver. How dare you do this on the day of your father’s funeral? And to our friend who has been nothing but kind and forgiving after you – ”
Alister cuts off Mrs Cross, a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He looks at Oliver, a plastic grin on his face. “Like I told your mother, I am willing to forgive you for your false accusations and put all this nastiness behind us.”
“Fuck you,” Oliver spits. “They weren’t false and you know it.”
He tightens his hand in mine and I step closer so our arms are connected. Slowly, pieces of a puzzle I’ve never seen the complete picture for are coming together.
“Enough! I think you should leave. I should never have asked you to come back. I should have known that you would still be trouble.” His mother’s words hit him with a force that has him stepping back, his body poised to run.
Oliver chuckles, but it’s without humour. “I was your son!” He raises his voice, the tremor in his body growing. “You should have fucking believed me! I wasn’t trouble. I was broken andbegging for help without knowing how. I got in fights and I stole shit and I skipped school because my life was falling to fucking pieces and all you did was put me in his path more and more. You fed me to the fucking wolf.”
Oliver turns around, and with my hand in his he speeds us up the stairs and into a room that must have been his, once. There’s still a certificate on the wall with his name on, and a photo of him and an older man who looks just like him on a desk near the window. He lets go of me and in a move I don’t expect, Oliver knocks everything off the desk, sending them crashing to the ground before he flips the piece of furniture onto its side.
The underside of the desk is varnished a dark mahogany, but cut into the wood are at least fifty marks, seemingly scraped in with a knife or blade of some sort.
“I kept count,” he says. I’m the only one in the room and I don’t know if he’s speaking to me or to himself, but I move closer, so he knows I’m listening. “Every time they left Alister to babysit me, or had him over and they were too busy to notice, and he came into my room and did things I begged him not to.”
Anger pulses in my blood and I feel the sadness for this man in front of me as a physical ache in my chest.
“Ollie.” I reach for him with both arms, but he shrugs me away.
“It stopped when I was big enough to fight him off, but he told me he would make sure it hurt a lot worse if I ever told anyone. He said no one would believe me, anyway.” I want to go to him and hold him, but when Oliver turns to look at me, his shields are up, his features tight, and I know I have to give him his space. As much as I need to hug him right now, this isn’t about me.
“You told your parents?” I ask, another piece of the puzzle slotting into place. I knew things had been bad between him and his parents, enough to make him want to leave, but I never expected this.
He nods, defeat in his deep brown eyes. “Three years ago. Alister had moved away when I was round eighteen. He’d taken a job in Scotland and I found ways to bury it. I was drinking, smoking weed, having sex with anyone who wanted me. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest way, but I was coping.”
“What happened?”
Oliver sighs, his shoulders drooping as he sits on the edge of the bed.
“Shortly after I turned twenty-one, I walked in to find him on the sofa laughing away with my parents, like no time had passed. They said he had moved back, but would be staying with us while he waited for the renters to move out of his place. I lost it. All those memories I had packed away in a dark, solid box in my mind rushed back. I couldn’t bear the thought of staying under the same roof as him. I told them everything right then, and of course, he denied it all. And I never had proof. It was the word of a troublemaking youngster against the word of a man well respected in this village.”
Oliver turns his hand palm up, his sad eyes meeting mine and I take a seat next to him and slide mine into his.
“My dad said I was looking for attention. That if what I said had really happened, why did I wait so many years to tell them? Maybe they were right and if I had been braver at the time things would have been different.”
“God, no!” I blurt, standing and moving between his legs. I cup his cheeks and lift his face so we’re eye to eye.
“Hehurtyou and you survived it. You are brave, Oliver. You did nothing wrong.”
His eyes glisten with unshed tears. “Then why didn’t they believe me?”
Needing to hold him with my entire being, I straddle Oliver’s thighs and wrap my arms around him, pressing my lips to his temple.
“I don’t know, baby. But I do. I believe you.”
He hugs me tighter, tears wetting the dress shirt I’m wearing.
“We could tell someone now. The police?” I suggest but Oliver shakes his head, his words mumbled against me when he replies.
