Heart (21 page)

Mikey took hold of Dex’s chin. Dex flinched and confusion scattered his thoughts. Mikey was Braden’s right-hand man, stoic and loyal, and he’d never once shown a hint of dissent. And one of their own talking to the police? To the gorjers? No. It would never happen. Traveller silence was sacred. They didn’t talk to outsiders.

A vehicle rumbled into the muddy yard. Dex closed his eyes, knowing it was Braden. Mikey released him and stepped away. He called a terse greeting through the open door. Braden’s reply was gruff, and for a moment, Dex wondered if Mikey would make his move. Express his discontent and strike out. Kill Braden, or disable him. Perhaps there’d even be a moment for Dex to slip away. He wasn’t bound, and his legs still worked. He could run.

I can run.

But nothing happened. Mikey said no more and left the house, abandoning him to Braden’s ill will and deepening temper. Chains, leather belts, and iron bars. Dex bore it all in silence until his wrist bone broke with an audible snap.

Twenty-Three

D
EX
CURLED
up in the pitch-black of the van. His throat was raw from screaming and his broken arm hung limp at his side, but he felt no pain. Not anymore. Pain was old news, almost a distant memory, and instead, he felt nothing. Nothing at all. He heard voices from time to time, and tried to worry that they might’ve been coming for him, but he didn’t care. Not anymore. His perspective had gone and he was floating. Reality and his own imagination blurred together, and though he knew he was alone in the back of the van, if he squeezed his eyes shut, he found himself back in the barn… back with Braden. The snap of his wrist echoed in his head, and he remembered Braden untying him and letting him fall to the ground. Blood had flowed back into Dex’s uninjured arm, and his eyes had rolled with the pleasure of it.

Braden had seen his reaction and struck him with a length of hose. “You sick little whore.”

Yeah.
Maybe Braden was right.

Dex licked his cracked lips. He was thirsty. In between Braden’s increasingly deranged interrogations, Mikey had been slipping him water and the occasional scrap of food, but it had been a while… a few days, maybe? He’d lost track, but he hadn’t seen Mikey in quite some time. Somewhere in the back of Dex’s mind, he was aware it had been a long while since he’d seen
anyone
, that even his torture sessions had petered out, but he couldn’t be sure. He was distracted. The hunger didn’t bother him—it was like an old friend—but the thirst… God, the thirst. Slowly and surely, it was driving him mad.

Dex closed his eyes. Sounds echoed around the disused farmland, and he tried to gauge the time. The voices and vehicles meant nothing—Braden came for him at all hours—but Dex recognized the birdcalls. They were owls, and the owls only came out at night. Dex strained his ears and heard foxes too, the call of the vixens to their mates. The gravelly screams took him back to London and the first time he’d seen an urban fox scavenging in the bins of the restaurant. He’d watched the young fox, a cub, really, crunch through discarded meat bones for ages before Seb came to get him, and he’d felt a strange and ancient affinity with the wild, resourceful creature. Were it not for hunting and technology, foxes would outlast them all.

“You like animals, don’t you?”

Seb’s voice washed over Dex, warming him from the inside out like the shot of amber whiskey Rick had passed him on Christmas Day.

No. Don’t think of him. It’s too late. He’s gone.

Dex pushed Seb from his mind, but the lull was brief, because in a place where darkness felt like it would last forever, the lure of his memory proved too tempting to resist. Even imagined, fantasy Seb was a balm to his wounds.

“You look like a dormouse burrowed up in there.”

Dex smiled, and the haze overcame him. He let his eyelids fall closed and drifted to a place where Seb’s voice was real, his hands strong and warm and the only hands in the world….

“It’s just a bedroom, Dex. See for yourself.” Seb held out his hand, amused, his grin wide and welcoming.

Dex stared at the spiral staircase. It was harsh and metallic, like the rest of the converted warehouse, and he couldn’t imagine it leading anywhere nice. And why did Seb want him to go up there? Dex’s experiences with stairs had never been good. Though his time with Seb had proved an exception to every rule, Dex always seemed to end up somewhere dark and unpleasant when he went up or down a set of stairs he didn’t trust. “Why is your bedroom up there?”

“Why not?” Seb shrugged and stepped closer. He caught Dex’s hand before he could protest. “Bedrooms are upstairs in houses, right? And they make all these conversions weird when they convert them, so they can pack us in like sardines.”

Dex touched the banister. It was smooth and flawless, like the big high slide in the play park at Kilkenny Castle—the play park he and his cousins had used to break into in the dead of night before his da had sent him away.

“I’m not expecting you to sleep with me, Dex. I just want you to know you can… if you want to.”

“Do you want me to?” Dex took his hand from the banister and turned away from the shiny metal steps. Seb was closer than he’d thought, and it seemed natural to lean against him.

Seb held him a moment, then released him and stepped away. “I do, but more than that, I want you to be comfortable. Maybe we could switch some nights. You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I don’t want to sleep in your bed without you.”

Seb raised an eyebrow but said nothing, and the silence crept over Dex like a wave. He put a foot on the bottom step. Nothing bad happened. No one came rushing down or shoved him to his knees. Seb didn’t suddenly morph into a raging monster.

Behind him, Seb laughed. “Do you want me to go first?”

It was a ridiculous concession, but one that turned out to be valid. Seb preceded him up the stairs, and after that, it seemed easy to follow him….

“A
RE
YOU
trying to tell me I’m fat?”

Dex watched Seb amble around the room and get himself ready for bed. “Eh?”

Seb gestured at Dex and the way he was lying, curled up at the top of the mattress with his head barely on the pillow. “You can have more space than that, mate.”

Dex chewed the inside of his mouth and uncurled his legs. The bed was huge, and he felt lost, like he didn’t know how to behave. Silly, really, considering he’d shared a bed with Seb before.

He muffled his sigh with a cough. Things had seemed different back then. He’d climbed into Seb’s bed that night believing he’d never see him again, and somehow, it had seemed easier that way. Now… this was something Seb wanted him to do every night, and Dex simply didn’t know how.

Seb slid into the bed. He rolled onto his side and fiddled with the duvet until it was covering them both to his liking. Dex watched him, curious. The duvet was thick and white… like a marshmallow, but it felt as light as air.

Weird.

Seb turned out the light. Darkness swallowed him, and for a long moment, he was invisible. Dex blinked and scooted across the bed like a lizard. He found Seb’s chest and clung to him like he’d been gone for a year.

“I could get used to this.” Seb chuckled softly and kissed Dex’s hair. He wrapped him in an embrace that felt like the sun on an early summer morning. “Feels right.”

Dex pressed closer, shoved his head under Seb’s arm. Yeah, it felt right, but it felt like a dream, and the trouble with dreams was he always woke up.

V
OICES
ROUSED
Dex from his catatonic doze. He listened, unmoving, for a moment, waiting for the familiar roar of Braden or Mikey’s sardonic grumble, but the shouts echoing around the deserted farmland were new. New and
loud
. For the first time in days, fear crept into Dex’s hazily detached, Seb-filled world. Pain flared, and he shivered. He hadn’t noticed the cold for a while, but he was still shirtless and dressed only in his dirty jeans.

The voices got louder and grew in number. Dex counted two, four, six before he lost track. He curled his battered body tighter, cradling his wrist, and tried to make himself as small as possible. Braden was out there somewhere, and he’d come for him for sure. There was nothing Braden liked more than an audience.

The ground beneath the van rumbled. A vehicle passed by, its engine deep and low, like a lorry or a pickup truck. Dex held his breath, as if it would stop whoever was out there from wrenching open the van door.

An earsplitting crack pierced the air.
Gunfire
. A few months ago, he’d have thought it the sound of a backfiring car, but he knew better now. Cora’s deadened eyes flashed into his mind and terror clawed at him.

Outside, all hell broke loose. Shouting, pounding footsteps, and barking dogs. More vehicles came. Someone screamed, yelled out in pain like an animal caught in a trap.

The wail was primal and resonant, and it touched every nerve in Dex’s body like a spark to a fuse. He turned his head and vomited bile. What were they going to do? Open the van doors and shoot his bloody head off? A few hours ago, he thought he didn’t care, but he did… God, he did. He didn’t want to die in the back of a stinking van, illiterate and worthless. He didn’t want to die without ever telling Seb he thought he loved him.

Love. Seb. The two words were made for each other. Dex had written them down once, side by side on a paper napkin, just to see if he could. The result was mixed, but the tingling in his chest had remained for days. He hadn’t known what it meant at the time, but he knew now.

I love you, Seb. I love you and I want to come home…. I want to come back to the restaurant, learn to read, and let Moses shout at me as much as he wants.

Home. Another word that used to mean nothing, but with Seb, it had come to mean everything. Everything and nothing at all if Dex died right here. Would Seb ever know? Probably not. He’d taken the time to care for Dex on a level Dex hadn’t known existed, but in reality, Seb knew nothing about Dex. He didn’t even know his name.

He doesn’t know who I am.

More gunshots whistled through the air. Some were light, like the pop of an air rifle, and sounded far, far away, but others shook the ground, whizzing through Dex’s veins like every bullet would surely explode in his brain. He heard cracks, thuds, and shouts. Then periods of silence so long he felt like he’d imagined the noise to begin with. It sounded like a war zone. Perhaps it was. Perhaps Mikey had turned his rambling mutiny into something that mattered.

A bullet pierced the van and lodged in the dented metal by Dex’s foot. He stared at it, absently wondering what it would feel like when the end came… when the bullet with his name on it blasted into his body. Would it hurt? Maybe not, if it hit the right place. Perhaps he should cut his losses and climb out of the van. Give himself up and ask them to kill him. For the first time, it occurred to him he’d never checked to see if the doors were locked.

You don’t have to do everything I say.
Don’t move.
It’s up to you.
Stay.
You choose.
Down.
Whatever you want
. Quiet.

What do you want, Dex?

Dex bit down on his fist and screamed.

Twenty-Four

“B
LOODY
HELL
.
This one’s alive.”

The voice was so deep and gentle it could’ve been Seb. The palm of a large hand came to rest on Dex’s forehead, and two fingers touched his neck. Smaller hands grasped his wrist. Someone screamed.

Daylight flooded the van. More voices came, men and women. More men. Dex stared up at them, powerless to act on the terror coursing through him. He was frozen, trapped inside his own body, and unable to stop the new faces from doing with him as they pleased.