Page 115 of Callous Shot

I smiled. There he was. My Link. I lowered my head, gently biting down on his soft bottom lip.

“Just accept the compliment, you bellend. Seriously, what do I have to say? I don’t wanna live without you. I basically have a shrine to you on my phone, so that should tell you something. And I know you know how obsessed I am with you. That obsession’s been there all my life, not that I wanted to admit it before. Now it’s…y’know. At this point, it’s not going anywhere.”

“You know how obsessed I am with you too.” His chest rose and fell rapidly beneath me as he struggled to get his emotions under control, and despite my overheated face after basically baring my soul to him, I was glad I’d said the words. He needed to hear them, maybe even more than I’d realised.

“But do you have a shrine to me on your phone?”

He exhaled slowly, and this time when he looked at me, his eyes were smiling. “By shrine, do you mean a stalker’s dossier?”

“Two different ways of saying the same thing.”

Instead of replying, he reached for his phone. When he’d unlocked it, he tapped at the screen and then held it up so I could see.

Oh, yeah. This boy was obsessed with me. “Wow, Link. You might have a problem. Eight different subfolders? All for me?”

“Fuck you, Hoyton. How many do you have?”

“Uh…”

“Daniel.”

“Eleven. But in my defence, at least two of them could be merged. Probably more.”

“Hmm. You have my photos on your wall.”

“So? You wank over my photos every night.”

“Always lowering the tone.”

“You love it.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said softly, wrapping his fingers around my nape and pulling me into a kiss. When we broke apart, I shifted over so I wasn’t completely crushing him with my body weight and rested my head on the pillow next to him. After pulling the covers back over us, I fumbled for his hand, sliding my fingers through his.

“Are you okay to carry on? We can take a break if you want.”

He rubbed his thumb over my skin. “I…it’s hard to talk about, but you seem to know how to make it easier. You lighten the heavy parts.”

I leaned in, brushing my lips over his cheek. “I’m glad, but I can be serious, I promise. If I, y’know, get too much or whatever⁠—”

“You’re never too much for me. Never, ever,” he said fiercely. “And I know you can be serious. You always get the balance right with me. You know me, Dan, better than anyone else.”

There was a huge lump in my throat. “Same,” I managed to choke out, and Lincoln lifted his head, cupping my jaw as he slid his lips over mine. I kissed him back with everything I had, speaking to him without words, telling him how fucking grateful I was that he was in my life, and we were together again.

Resting his head back down on the pillow, he sighed. “So…the party. My father had beaten me right outside. In the car, in fact. I’d questioned why we had to go to the event, because I was missing out on movie night at school. I’d been boarding from the age of seven, but they pulled me out sometimes when they wanted to appear at events as a family. Keeping up appearances, you know. I was being an annoying little kid⁠—”

“No kid deserves to be beaten.”

“I know. I know that now, anyway. At the time, I just thought, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be the child they want me to be? Why can’t I be more like my brother?” Fuck, Link. I squeezed his hand, and he gave me a tiny smile before continuing. “We went inside, and I was struggling to walk properly because he’d hit the backs of my legs so hard, and my mother clipped me around the ear, warning me to stand up straight. That was when I saw you. You were standing on the other side of the foyer, grinning up at your uncle. You were saying something to him—I couldn’t hear what it was, but whatever it was, it made him laugh. He crouched down, this big, scary-looking crime boss, and let you climb onto his back.”

“Neil isn’t scary. He’s like, I dunno, a teddy bear, or maybe a grizzly bear.”

“He might be to you, but to me, he was someone from a nightmare. Someone my parents hated. Someone they looked down on. Someone they told me horror stories about.”

“I bet most of them were made up. Ryker’s dad is the one where the horror stories are true. Or Volkov’s family. Don’t get on their bad side.”

“Are you going to let me finish?” He shot me an exasperated look, but I knew he wasn’t really annoyed because his lips were twitching again. I nodded, and he quickly kissed me before continuing. “You climbed on his back, and he spun you around, probably two or three times. You were both laughing. Then I remember your mum coming over to you both, and I thought maybe she’d tell you off, like my parents would’ve done, but she just smiled and ruffled your hair, then kissed your cheek. That was when I knew, really knew, that my parents were wrong.”

“They were.”