Heart (23 page)

Dex’s voice was a whisper, and George’s half smile would’ve seemed kind in any other circumstances. “You don’t need to. Just get your fella and go back to London. Do yourself a favor, kid. Forget where you came from.”

G
O
AWAY
.
Go away. Go away.

“You were living with Mr. Wright in London, is that correct?”

Dex opened his eyes with a heavy sigh. Creepy George was long gone, and the detectives too—back to wherever they came from, distinctly unimpressed with his renewed vow of silence. But he hadn’t been alone for long. He’d barely put a foot on the shiny floor when their spot at the end of the bed had been filled.

The umpteenth new face was a woman—Elaine—a social worker who smelled like lemons and kept blowing her nose. “Declan,” she prompted. “Your place of residence is Shackwell Lane, Dalston? With Seb?”

Seb.
It felt like days since anyone had called him that. Mr. Wright. Mr. Sweeney. Declan. Who
were
these people?

“Or do you live at St. Mary’s hostel in Stoke Newington?”

Dex scowled. Elaine, like the police, seemed to know more about him than he did himself. She knew the answers to her bonehead questions.

“Is that where you’d like to return? To the hostel? Or would you rather go home with Seb?”

“What’s it to you?”

Elaine looked up, a small smile playing at her lips. “That’s the first time you’ve spoken since I came in here. Is Mr. Wright someone you would feel safe with?”

“Yes.”

“He’s here, you know. He’d like to take you home, if that’s what you want.”

Fuck off
. People kept telling him that, but still no Seb. Perhaps they’d made it all up, and he had never been there at all. “Can I go now?”

“Soon. The police will want to know exactly where you’re going, and I’d like to check in with you from time to time too.”

“Why?”

“To monitor your welfare. Given your background and what you’ve been through, you’re classified as a vulnerable adult. I’d like to make sure you’re settled somewhere safe.” Elaine held out a small white card. “Call me anytime. If things don’t work out in London, I can help you find alternative housing.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“Not what I heard. Unpack the one you have under Seb’s bed, turn it on, and program in this number.”

Dex took the card and crumpled it in his fist. How did
she
know he’d stashed his few paltry belongings under Seb’s bed? He glanced around for his shoes.
Whatever
. He’d heard enough. Seb wasn’t here. He couldn’t be, and without him, there was no reason to stay.

Elaine left. Dex took his chance and slipped around the curtain. A uniformed policeman stood at the end of the corridor. Dex turned and fled in the opposite direction. He came to a thick set of double doors, then another. Doors, doors, doors. He pushed through what felt like hundreds before he saw some that led outside.

The big glass doors lay at the far end of a large room. The room was lined with chairs, each one occupied by a pale-faced soul clutching a cardboard bowl or a bandaged limb. Blood roared in Dex’s ears, but no one seemed to notice him loitering barefoot by a vending machine with his strange blue arm. He took a step forward, then another, and another, until he was running.

He darted across the room. Freedom was so close he could almost taste it. Someone shouted behind him, but the sound was muffled by Dex’s pounding heart, and he didn’t turn around. The doors opened as if on cue, and freezing air hit him like a truck. He ran on, following a trail lit only by lamps hidden in the bushes around the frosty car park. Somehow, he’d missed the day turning into a dark winter’s night.

He ran and ran until the lights petered out and he found himself at the entrance to some kind of building site. He stared around the yard and sucked in labored breaths, bent double with his uninjured hand on his knee. His blood slowed to a dull roar, but the quiet was worse. Defeat swept over him. He was out, he was free, but he had nowhere to go.

“Dex.”

Twenty-Five

“D
EX
.”

Seb’s tired voice brought Dex to his knees. Maybe this was it, the end he’d dreamed of. Perhaps if he lay down right here on the frosty tarmac, he’d go to sleep and never wake up.

Exhaustion washed over Dex. He swayed. Strong hands caught him and warm arms engulfed his whole body in a fierce embrace he’d feared he’d never feel again. The world as he knew it spun on its axis. Wetness dripped onto the back of his neck and a belt buckle dug into his hip. He hurt all over and his arm throbbed, but he didn’t care. He buried his face in the sweetly scented planes of Seb’s chiseled chest and let out a breath that left his limbs loose.

I missed you.

“Dex.”

Seb murmured his name over and over and cradled him in his arms like he was made of glass. Dex’s teeth chattered and violent shudders rattled his bones, but the shaking wasn’t his own. Seb touched his face, his cheeks, and his lips. “Oh God, Dex. I thought… I thought you were dead.”

Dex stared up at Seb, half-awed by the masculine beauty of his face and half-horrified by the bruising dark circles marring his magical eyes. He reached up and traced one. It hadn’t been there before, had it? It seemed so long since he’d seen Seb’s face, he wasn’t sure.

“Dex, I’m going to move us, okay? Can you stand?”

Walked out here, didn’t I?
Dex scrambled to his unsteady feet, ignoring the persistent ache in his ribs. Seb followed suit and grabbed his hand. “Come on, let’s get you back inside. We can talk in the warm.”

Dex planted his feet on the ground like a stubborn horse. “No.”

Seb glanced rapidly between Dex and the hospital doors. “You don’t want to go in?”

Dex shook his head. Seb squeezed his hand, his expression torn. “It’s cold out here, and you’re just wearing a T-shirt. The doctors are looking for you too. They want to check your arm before they discharge you. I’m not going to make… shit.” Seb inhaled a shaky breath. The tear tracks on his face gleamed in the murky light of the half moon. “I’m never going to make you do anything, you hear me? Just tell me what you want.”

Dex took his hand from Seb and wrapped his good arm around himself. He wanted to climb inside Seb and never come out, but the words weren’t there. Seb’s gaze didn’t waver… it never had, but Dex had to look away. He wasn’t worthy of the emotion in Seb’s eyes. He didn’t deserve it.

Seb put his arm around Dex’s shoulders, pulling him closer when he didn’t resist. “There’s a bench over there. Will you sit with me awhile?”

As if he could refuse. Seb led him to the bench beneath the flickering streetlight and eased him down to sit curled on Seb’s lap, his head on his shoulder, as Seb brushed his fingers gently through his tangled hair.

Seb draped his coat around him, and for a while, they sat in a silence that seemed to swallow them up. A silence that consumed the time they’d spent apart like it had never happened at all. Periodically, one of them shivered, but Dex was too tired to figure out who. Instead, his mind wandered, drifting in and out of a strange doze that felt like an out-of-body experience.

Eventually, it became disconcerting. He flexed the fingers on his injured arm, using the pain to tie himself down to the world. Strapped into the steely blue cast, his fingers were pale and limp. He wondered if they’d ever feel the same as they did before.

“I’m sorry, Dex.”

Dex tore his gaze from his arm. “What for?”

“For everything.” Seb shrugged. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. I should’ve looked harder for you. I should’ve fought harder with the police.”

“The police? What do you mean?”

Seb sighed before he seemed able to look back at Dex. “I reported you missing the morning after you disappeared, but the police in London wouldn’t take me seriously. I couldn’t tell them anything… fuck. I didn’t even know your name. I had to go back twice before they let me file a report.”

“How did you know I was lost?”

“You left your hat on the pavement. I picked it up, and I just knew something was wrong. I could accept that you might leave me… but I knew you loved the hat.”

Seb grinned faintly, but Dex frowned. Didn’t Seb know? Didn’t he know Dex loved him to the moon and back? Like his ma used to tell him when the nights turned cold and the stars were their only friends? “What changed their minds?”

“Rick asked around the locals, and after a bit of persuasion, it turned out some old codgers in the snooker club saw someone getting thrown into the back of a van. They didn’t give us much, but I knew it was you. I went back to the police station and refused to leave until they heard me out. A woman from CID walked past while I was giving the desk sergeant a hard time. She’d just read an e-mail from a force in Hertfordshire investigating the prosti—network at the site you came from.”

Seb’s slip was slight… a hesitation, a tremor in his voice he couldn’t quite hide, but Dex heard it like he’d shouted it from the rooftops, and reality hit him deep in his belly.

He knows
.

He sat up and pulled away from Seb, tearing himself from the embrace that made him feel whole. His breath stuck, but instead of panic, he felt hollow and lost.

He knows.

Seb caught Dex’s arm. His grip was loose, but his eyes were stricken and wide. “What’s the matter?”

Dex shrugged away. Seb’s touch was a cruel trick. Too good to be true. “Why did you look for me? Why didn’t you just leave me there?”

“I didn’t know where ‘there’ was. I didn’t know if you were dead or alive… or worse.”

Worse. Yeah, this is definitely worse.
“So?”

“So? So, what? You think I didn’t give a shit? That the last two months meant nothing to me? Fuck’s sake, Dex. You know me better than that, whether you want to or not. Goddamnit. I love the bones off you. Can’t you tell?”

Dex snorted and shook his head. “Why would you love me? I’m a whore. I’ve always been a whore. It’s who I am. You can’t love someone like me.”

“You’re not a whore.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a young man who had his childhood stolen by a sick bastard who used him for his own gain. You didn’t choose it. You were sold… like a commodity, and you weren’t the only one. The police found human remains on that farm, Dex. The remains of murdered teenage boys—” Seb broke off and stared up at the sky. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if the police had found your body.”

Dex hauled himself to his feet and turned his back on Seb.

I’m just a whore.

“No, you’re not,” Seb said quietly. Dex blinked, unaware he’d spoken aloud. “You’re not
just
anything. You can read, you can write. You’re a chef, a friend, a lover. You know, the night you went missing, I was going to tell you I loved you and ask you to stay… stay with me, properly. Officially. With papers and shit, so you could earn real money and have a normal life.”

“You wanted me to be
normal
?”

Seb sighed. “I wanted you to be
safe
. I didn’t know about any of this, but I knew you were hiding from something, someone. I wanted to keep you safe… protect you from whatever you were so scared of. Fucked that right up, didn’t I?”

“Not really. This is who I am.”

“No, it’s not.” There was movement behind Dex, and Seb was suddenly right in front of him, his eyes fierce, as though he wanted to shake Dex’s very soul. “
This
is something awful that happened to you. I know who you really are, and I love you more now than I did when you were taken from me.”

How? How can you love me?

Seb closed the gap between them and took his face in his hands. “Dex, I love you, and I want you to come home with me, stay with me, and be happy with me for as long as you want to be, but it’s your choice. You don’t belong to me any more than you did to… anyone else. Whatever happens now is up to you.”

Choice. It wasn’t a word Dex knew well, and he only knew it at all because of the man holding him in such a gentle grip. There was no doubt in Dex’s heart that he loved Seb… lived and breathed only for him, but could he be what Seb deserved in return? Could he even try?

Seb rubbed his cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Apparently you’re quite the stable boy too. Someone on the site told the police you took care of the horses they found in the outbuildings.”

“What?”

Dex snapped his eyes open. Seb stilled his thumb and studied Dex a moment. “The police raided the site months ago. They found some horses in an old shed. The RSPCA took them away.”

“Where? Took them where?”

“Easy.” Seb laid his palm flat on Dex’s chest, like he could push his jumping heart back in his chest. “I don’t know, exactly. Somewhere in Buckinghamshire, I think.”

Dex slid from the bench, jarring his battered body. “Where’s that?”

“Miles away. Dex, calm down. It’s okay. We can look it up when we get home. Maybe we can go see them when you’re better.”