Heart (24 page)

“I want to see them now.” The strength in his own voice surprised Dex, but he could hardly fathom the emotion building in his chest. Most of the horses were surely dead, but a few had been sound when he left. Robin, Lalla, and Ozzie. Maybe they’d survived long enough for the police to take them away.

Seb stood. He pulled his phone from his pocket and held it up to the light. For a moment, Dex feared he’d made him angry, and then Seb looked at him in a way that warmed him from the inside out, rushing through his veins like molten lava and healing every wound in its path.

“I’ll make you a deal. Go inside and get discharged properly, and I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

Dex stared up at him. “You’ll take me to the horses?”

Seb smiled and kissed the very tip of his nose. “If that’s what you want. What
do
you want, Dex?”

“I want to be with you.”

Twenty-Six

Summer 2013

S
EB
TURNED
the car onto the unsurfaced country lane. He pulled to a stop, but Dex was out and bounding up the dirt track before he’d engaged the handbrake. Dex loped up to the wooden fence and cleared it in a single leap. Seb grinned. Back in the city, he’d never noticed how agile Dex was, but now, seeing him hurdle a rickety old fence made him smile so hard his cheeks ached.

He shut off the car engine, content to sit back as Dex did his thing. He watched in wonder as Dex whistled, and the elderly horses in the field answered his soft call, ambling over to where he stood. It was the same every Monday. They’d sleep in, have sex and a lazy breakfast in bed, and then Seb would ask Dex what he wanted to do and it wouldn’t be long before they were climbing in the car to drive the hour-long trip to Amersham. The staff at the rescue center loved Dex, once they’d realized he wasn’t going to steal the scruffy horses back, at least. They let him feed them, and they called him from time to time when one of them—Carric, maybe? Seb couldn’t tell them apart—wasn’t doing so well.

The whole thing was wonderful and heartbreaking, and Seb wanted to cry every time he saw Dex with his beloved horses. The similarities between them were too much. The horses had been locked in a shed, left to die, and Dex’s own fate hadn’t been all that different.

Seb shuddered, fighting the urge to let his mind wander to a darker place. Dex was safe and sound, feeding carrot tops to the horses in the fields, but the true horrors of what he’d been through haunted Seb. They never talked about it. Ever. Not since Seb had brought Dex home from the hospital. Dex because, well, who really knew, with Dex? He didn’t talk much about anything unless he was drunk. And Seb? He didn’t know how. What was he supposed to say?
Hey, Dex? Remember that slavery ring you were sold to when you were a child? The one that left you starved and half-dead on some deserted farmland? Yeah. Let’s talk about that.

Fat chance. No. Instead Seb paid a therapist to help Dex recover from a lifetime of abuse and watched from the sidelines as Dex slowly grew into a happy, healthy man. A man with real light in his eyes and flesh on his bones. A man who smiled like the sun.

That was enough for Seb. Dex’s smile would always be enough.

Dex’s physical affection helped too. Seb had expected Dex to shy away from sex after what he’d been through, but he hadn’t. In fact, sometimes it seemed his ordeal had set him free in some way, like he’d separated his past from his present and never looked back.

It didn’t happen that way for Seb. Sometimes, he looked at Dex and all he could see was the battered, broken shell he’d found huddled on the ground in a hospital car park. The police psychologists said Dex might suffer from flashbacks or bad dreams, and the nightmares came all right, just not to Dex. He slept like the dead every night, safe in Seb’s arms while Seb lay sweating, imagining what could’ve happened if the police hadn’t found Dex in the back of that van.

The police still came back from time to time, trying to persuade Dex to talk, but they always went away empty-handed. It was over for Dex. Done. And he wasn’t going to break the only thing still tying him to where he came from. The Traveller vow of silence was something Seb would never understand, but over time, he’d come to accept there were many things he’d never know about Dex. Perhaps many things he didn’t want to know, and maybe that was the point, the logic behind whatever twist of fate had brought Dex into his life. He couldn’t change the wrongs of Dex’s past, but he could instead help him make his future a life worth living.

Nice theory
. Seb shook his head and opened his eyes just as Dex slid back into the car, his hair a mess, smelling of grass and hay.

“What are you shaking your head about?”

“Nothing. All present and correct?”

Dex glanced at the horses still milling by the fence. “Tauna has a sore leg. She needs some white willow bark.”

“What’s that?”

“Bark from a white willow tree.” Dex shot Seb a look that made him feel like a fool. “It helps horses move better when they’re old and lame.”

“Where do you get that? From the vet?”

“Maybe, but there are probably a ton of willow trees down by the river. Can we go see?”

Seb suppressed a sigh. The question was innocent enough, but that Dex felt the need to ask got under his skin. Dex had trouble making decisions for himself, and it often didn’t occur to him to try. Seb got out of the car and squinted south where the misfit stream of the River Misbourne lay. “Lead the way.”

A
FEW
hours later, after far too much tramping through the mud for Seb’s liking, they made their way back to the bustle of London. Dex had an extra shift at the restaurant, and Seb had plenty at home to keep him busy.

They had a quiet lunch together before Dex left for the evening service. Seb watched him disappear into the heady Dalston crowds from the balcony. A pesky amalgamation of worry and pride teased his heart. Dex had come home to him robbed of what little confidence he’d acquired before his old life snatched him back. It was returning, day by day, bolstered by the knowledge the man responsible would end his days in prison, but Seb still fretted.

How could he not, when the police had found the bones of a dozen young boys buried on that farm?

Stop it
. Seb came back into himself with a jolt. He’d done that a lot recently—found himself lost in the past, dwelling on what could’ve been. He gave himself a shake and drifted back inside. If Dex could look forward, so could he.

Seb flopped on the sofa. The mischievous gaze of Dex’s pet cat greeted him, and he eyed the scrawny tortoiseshell with suspicion. He loved cats, but the stray Dex had attached himself to was somewhat of a terrorist. Sweet and innocent one minute, then swinging from his neck by its claws the next.

Bloody thing should’ve come with an ASBO
.

Seb cautiously petted the antisocial cat—
Jeanie
—and reached for his laptop. Dex had come back from his search for willow trees with a sweatshirt full of wild watercress, and it had given Seb an idea. Dex muddled along in the city because it didn’t occur to him to do anything else, but his heart lay in the countryside, amongst the trees and the mud and the animals. Seb was a townie and he liked his creature comforts, but there had to be a way to bring the best bits of both together. There had to be, and he was determined to find it.

He figured he’d struck gold when the flat’s buzzer sounded a little while later. He glanced at the clock. It was too early for Dex, and he had a key, anyway. He shut his laptop with a reluctant sigh and got up to investigate.

His sister’s singsong voice greeted him through the intercom. He buzzed her in and wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on and search out something sweet to keep her quiet. He loved Kelly to death, but she had a tendency to talk his ear off.

Lucky for him, Dex had made a killer Tottenham cake, and it was a while before Kelly got around to winding him up.

“Dex makes a better sponge than you,” she said.

“You don’t have to tell me that. Who do you think taught him?” Seb rolled his eyes, but Kelly’s ribbing was pretty close to the truth. Dex was a good chef, a really good chef. His knife skills were far better than Seb’s, and his lack of classical knowledge and training made his ideas unique. Sticky pear and chili pudding. Who would’ve thought?

Kelly shoved the last bite of pink-iced cake in her mouth. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“What I do every weekend. Working.”

“Don’t be an arse.” Kelly shot him a withering look. “I meant on Sunday. You finish at five on Sundays, don’t you?”

Seb conceded her point with a nod. The early finish on Sundays was new, but since Rick had received an off-the-books warning from the police for letting Dex work without papers, he’d become more stringent about enforcing the rules. To adhere to a forty-eight-hour week, something had to give. For Seb and Dex, that meant Sunday nights and Thursday mornings were now their own.

Declan Sweeney
.

Dex’s full name still didn’t quite seem real. Rick had helped Dex get the documents he needed to live and work in London. Without a birth certificate, it was a difficult process, and at times, Seb had worried it would never happen, but with the help of social services, it had all come together in the end. Not that it mattered much to Dex. Things Seb perceived as important often meant little to him.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Seb blinked at Kelly. “What are you wittering on about?”

“I was saying, brother dearest, are you and Dex going to come to Ezra’s for a roast next week? Save you feeding yourselves after a weekend in the kitchen.”

Seb hesitated. Dex got along fine with Kelly. She mothered him to death, and he let her, returning her affection in ways no one else would probably think of. Painstakingly handwriting thank-you notes for the nice things she did for him. Picking her wildflowers from the fields near the horses. It was much like his relationship with Bernie, only better, because Kelly was Seb’s sister, and seeing them together just felt right.

Ezra, on the other hand…. They’d met up before, and Dex had seemed terrified of his forthright older brother.

“I don’t know….”

Kelly raised an eyebrow. “What’s up? You think Dex won’t want to?”

“It’s not that.” And it wasn’t. Dex would go anywhere Seb asked him to, and that was part of his problem—his ingrained instinct to do what he was told. “It’s Ezra. I think he scares him. He seemed a little rattled when we all went to the zoo that time.”

Kelly frowned, her shrewd gaze turning thoughtful. Rick aside, she was the only soul who knew what Dex had been through, and it had brought her and Seb closer together, bonded them around something horrific. “I don’t think it was Ezra that scared Dex.”

She let the statement hang, but her expression left Seb in no doubt that she had more to say. He gestured for her to go on.

“I think it was the cages and the clanging doors,” Kelly said. “Didn’t you notice how he jumped every time a keeper slammed a cage shut and locked it up? He looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

Seb felt sick. The theory had never occurred to him, but it made sense. The police told them Dex had been held captive for most of his life, one way or another, and he’d been as jumpy as a cat the day they’d met his siblings at the London Zoo.

Kelly ruffled his hair. “Don’t feel bad about it, Seb. These things are going to happen. You can’t protect him from what happened, and he’ll wind up hating you if you try. Let him be afraid of something and get over it in his own way. Don’t coddle him.”

Easy for her to say, and she left after that, leaving him with a jumbled pile of wisdom to dwell on.

He was still brooding in the dark when Dex arrived home a little while later. The front door closed with a quiet click. Seb hauled his arse from the sofa and turned on a few lights. Dex was often content to grope around in the dark, but Seb was trying to train him out of it. He flipped on the kettle and met Dex in the hall.

“All right?”

“Yeah. Quiet night.” Dex hung up his coat and lined his shoes up with Seb’s. He looked disheveled and tired, and wonderful.

Seb wanted to wrap his arms around him and never let go. Ever. “Want a cuppa?”

Dex thought for a moment. “After a shower?”

For once, Seb ignored the habitual uncertainty. “Go on. I’ll meet you in bed.”

They parted ways, Dex to the bathroom and him to shut up the rest of the flat before taking himself to bed. He crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling. The shower shut off, but it was a while before Dex crept up the stairs, and Seb knew he’d find the bathroom spotlessly clean come the morning.

Dex ghosted up the spiral staircase in just a pair of clean boxer shorts. It was August. The weather in London was muggy and warm, and even shy Dex had to concede to sleeping near enough nude. Didn’t stop him burrowing under the covers like a cat, though. Dex loved their bed. In colder weather, it was hard to get him out. Not that Seb minded. Huddled in bed with Dex was his favorite place to be.