“What do I get to decide then?”
“I don’t know. Whatever you want.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t know that either. You never told me.”
“Maybe I don’t know either.”
“Or maybe you do, and you’re afraid of it.”
“Maybe.” Gus turned off the A road and into the next town over from Rushmere. Big houses and quaint cottages lined the streets, and he pulled up outside one with a skip on the driveway.
He cut the engine, and the sudden quiet smothered us. “But it doesn’t matter what I’m afraid of, or what scares you so much about who you think I am. Whatever this mess between us is, we have to forget about it. Luke needs you. It’ll break him if you leave again.”
“This isn’t about Luke.”
“Yes, it is. It has to be. So if we can’t get past this, maybe it’s my turn to pack up and leave.”
He got out of the van.
I followed and trailed him up the drive to the cottage that was mid renovation. “What? You can’t leave.”
“Why not? Everyone else did.”
“Yeah. And look where it got us. More screwed up than a fucking soap opera. Gus, it doesn’t have to be like this. Look, I’m sorry I ruined everything. I shouldn’t have read your messages, and I shouldn’t have made assumptions about what they meant without talking to you first, but that’s on me. It’s not a reflection of how I see you, and it doesn’t have to mean I broke it forever.”
“You didn’t break it. It was unworkable from the start. Think about it: you’re as fucked-up as I am, and so is your family. Our family. How was anything good ever going to come from that?”
“You don’t think we had anything good?”
Gus unlocked the rustic front door to the cottage. He kicked it open, leaving a boot mark in the peeling paint. “I think we could’ve done, if we were different people living different lives, but we’re not, so what’s the point?”
He let the door swing shut in my face. It locked itself, leaving me trapped outside, and the irony was fucking biblical.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gus
We worked on the cottage all week. For the first few days, Billy hovered close by, perhaps waiting for me to come to my senses, or maybe because he knew I felt like throwing myself off the edge, and he wanted to catch me.
But by the third day, he’d given up waiting for me to break. He kept his back to me, worked like a demon, and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. I felt the loss of his watchful gaze as much as I mourned his absence from my bed. Billy was a lifestyle I’d come to rely on. He was strong and brave and funny and kind. There was no one else I wanted to spend my days with.
Even like this, I felt lucky.
But still, by the end of the week, despite the nice weather, I was relieved when the job drew me off the roof and into the dusty attic of the cottage. Away from Billy, I could breathe. For a little while, at least, until the nerves in my skull began to protest at overuse, and the headache I’d wrestled with all week came back full force.
Irritated, I perched in the loft hatch and rubbed my eyes. I felt knackered and hungover, which was annoying, as I’d resisted the urge to drink my angst away every night in favour of going to bed early. Some nights I’d even managed to fall asleep, though not without a sustained period of being hyperaware of Billy’s every movement around the house, and right now it was hard to recall a time when my life hadn’t revolved around him. How I’d ever shared a bed with anyone else or done simple things like shopping or eating without thinking about him.
He was still thinking about me. Every morning he bought me breakfast and left it on the van seat between us. I think it made him laugh that I couldn’t resist eating whatever he produced, even if I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, but the joke had been on him this morning. My sausage bap was still where he’d left it. For some reason I wasn’t hungry. In fact, the mere thought of food made my stomach twist, and that distressed me more than just about anything.
Except the fact that I’d committed myself to never sleeping with Billy again. That was off the scale. I’d never get over it. And perhaps that was why my body was rebelling. A biological protest.
“Are you done up there?”
I stopped rubbing my eyes and blinked down at Billy. He was standing at the top of the stairs, face a study in the apathy he’d adopted when he wasn’t buying me breakfast. “What?”
“Are you done? It’s five o’clock.”
How the hell was it five o’clock? The last time I’d checked my phone it had been barely lunchtime. I glanced into the attic and at the roof beams I still needed to adjust. One was obstructed by the ancient boiler the gas men were ripping out next week. The plan had been to wait for them, but Billy had worked faster on the exterior than I’d anticipated. If I finished the beams we wouldn’t have to come back on Monday.
Wrapping the job up seemed like a closure we both desperately needed. “I’m going to finish the beams. You go if you want.”
“You’re not coming?”
“No.”
I started to climb back into the attic, but a wave of dizziness hit me. The boards I’d laid out in the loft tilted, and white spots danced in front of my eyes. I still wasn’t hungry, but skipping breakfast was starting to feel like the worst idea I’d ever had.
Second only to destroying my friendship with Billy.
I sat back down.
He was still glowering at me hard enough to make my churning stomach turn over again. I forced myself to meet his stormy gaze. “What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Because you’re being a weirdo.”
“What else is new?”
“I mean even more than usual.”
“It’s not weird to want to get this job done so we can move on next week. I don’t know about you, but I could do without hoofing it out here every morning when we’ve got jobs stacked up in Rushmere.”
Billy’s eyebrow ticked up, but his expression remained otherwise impassive until he let loose a world-weary sigh. “I’m gonna get the bus. Have fun wanking over your beams or whatever it is you’re really doing up there.”
“Okay.”
“You’re really not coming?”
“No. I told you. I want to finish this.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to come home?”
“Where else would I go?”
Malevolence sharpened Billy’s gaze. “Is that a real question?” But his expression melted the moment the words left his soft lips. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Cos we seem to have lost track of each other, and I don’t mean the freaky stuff we did in your bed.”
If what I felt for Billy was as simple as wanting to fuck him again, maybe the ache in my chest wouldn’t have been there. Perhaps I’d have been able to breathe when I looked at him, and the promise I was about to make wouldn’t have to be kept. “Look, just leave me alone for a bit, okay? I’ll get my shit together, and we can talk later, when I get home.”
Billy made a noise low in his throat as if he knew the prospect of me getting myself together was a million miles away. He turned on his heel, stomped downstairs, and slammed the front door. I half expected him to get in the van and sulk until I was done. I peeked through the landing window, hoping for a miracle, but he was already walking away.
I watched him disappear around the corner, my pulse stuttering with every step he took away from me. Fingernails scraped my heart, and my chest literally ached for him. What the hell was I doing? We couldn’t be lovers, we’d proved that already, but this was killing me, and I knew him well enough to know his blank stare was hiding a riot.
<
br /> Billy was angry, and hurt, and more than that, he was lonely. Before we’d set a grenade beneath us, I’d been the only soul he’d talk to for days. Now I’d taken it away from him because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants.
He’s got Luke, though. That’s the point. He doesn’t need you. But my heart called bullshit, and for the umpteenth time that day, I felt like I could puke. Head spinning, I lowered myself out of the loft hatch and crouched on the exposed floorboards, sucking in deep breaths that went nowhere. I reached out to steady myself but somehow missed the floor, and I fell forward, cracking my head on the banister.
Super. Anything else you wanna throw at me? There was no reply from whatever monster inside me was trying to ruin my day for good. I pulled myself together and slumped against the banister, rubbing the sore spot on my temple. It hurt more than it should’ve done, and blinding pain took root behind my eyes.
I took another deep breath and resigned myself to the fact that I was probably done working for the day, and tried to recall how long ago Billy had left. The buses round here were sporadic at best. There was every chance he hadn’t gone anywhere yet...if I was thinking of the right place. All at once, I could barely remember where I was.
With fumbling hands, I fished my phone from my pocket and tapped at the screen. Nothing happened. Either my phone was dead, or I could no longer feel my hands.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Billy
I hated that fucking cottage. Every day, I felt sick just looking at it, and even with Gus hardly talking to me, I couldn’t wait to get in the van and leave.
Taking the bus home was a trip. At least, it would’ve been if the damn thing showed up.
Newsflash: it didn’t, and I contemplated returning to Gus for all of three seconds before I figured walking a mile to the next village would be more fun.
Second newsflash: it wasn’t. And the bus itself was even less of a party, just me and an old guy singing Lionel Richie songs to himself, while the bus called at every obscure stop known to man. It would’ve been quicker to walk, but I was committed and too stubborn to get off and lose the pocket change I’d paid for my lonely seat at the back.
So I stayed on the bus and stewed over the week from hell I’d just lived through. If you could call creeping through life in total silence living. Maybe it would’ve been easier if Gus had seemed happy about it, but he was so far from happy I had an anxiety attack every time I looked at him, and the worst bit about it was I knew it was all my fault. He’d told me a hundred years ago that the two of us together would be too complicated to ever work, and it turned out he was right, even if his idea of a complication was easily fixed by me calling my brother to apologise. Or at least fixing his gate.
But I’d already fixed the gate and promised Luke I’d meet him later. He knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I’d promised him, and finally we were in a place where he believed me. It was only Gus I couldn’t reach.
The bus dropped me at the wrong end of Rushmere. I walked home past Mia’s florist shop, and the insurance offices Barry Keane owned. He was in the window and spotted me as I crossed the road. He scowled and turned away, but his glare held nowhere near enough fire for a man who’d lost his dog and believed me responsible. I imagined all the horrible things I’d do to him if our positions were reversed, if he’d taken Grey from me, and it kept me occupied the rest of the way back to Gus’s empty house.
Disappointment weighed me down as I let myself in. Somehow I’d convinced myself he’d have beaten me there. That he’d be waiting for me with the sunny grin I missed so much. But he wasn’t there, and Grey was too busy sleeping to give a shit that I needed some attention. He rolled over, flicking his tail, the cat equivalent of his middle finger.
I took the hint and retreated to the shower. Then I lingered on the landing, transfixed by Gus’s closed bedroom door. The sight of it moved me in ways I couldn’t begin to describe, and my stomach gave an uncomfortable flip. Gus wanted to talk when he got home, but what if that meant his door was closed forever? As in, he didn’t care if I left town or not, he wanted me gone from his house?
My heart couldn’t fathom those words ever leaving his mouth without the kindness that had made me fall so fucking hard for him, but the prospect of him letting me down gently scared me far more than the ridiculous notion that he’d kick my sad self to the kerb. But as I stared at his bedroom door, dripping water all over his carpet, I felt more than fear.
I crossed the landing and opened the door. His bedroom was empty, and his bed looked like no one had slept in it for a year. A breeze fluttered through his vented window, shuffling the muscle man magazines he kept on his chest of drawers. The pages rose and fell in slow motion, and a sickening sense of foreboding washed over me.
Questioning my sanity, I backed out of his room, returned to my own, and mechanically got dressed. I’d left my phone downstairs. With Luke on his way home from the port, and Gus maintaining radio silence, I expected a blank screen, but I’d missed a call from Gus. And he’d sent me a message.
Gus: com bjmk
Frowning, I scanned the nonsense he’d sent me again, searching for acronyms and hidden meanings I might’ve missed the first time, but came up blank. I called him back, once, twice, three times, but his phone rang and rang, not even clicking through to his voicemail.
He doesn’t have voicemail, remember? The cold call messages annoy him too much.
I’d laughed when he’d told me that. Then I’d nearly cried in the bathroom when he’d drunkenly admitted on the way home from Luke’s barbecue that every unknown missed call had given him hope it was Mia telling him she was coming home, and he’d grown tired of the certainty that she wasn’t.
I knew how that felt, and I searched for that sadness now, anything to ease the rush of anxiety building in my chest, but it didn’t seem to matter how many times I told myself to calm the fuck down, irrational panic swamped me. Gus had never sent me a message that made no sense, and he wasn’t the kind of dude who drunk dialled or sat on his phone. Sometimes he forgot I wasn’t French, but only when I had his dick in my mouth, and there was nothing pleasurable about the cold flush that rattled through me now.
Something’s wrong.
No, it wasn’t. There was a rational explanation for everything Gus did. He wasn’t an impulsive drama queen like me, and perhaps that was his problem—he thought too much, and angsted too hard over shit that wasn’t his fault.
But my layman’s analysis of his mental health wasn’t enough to distract me from the agitation fast taking hold of my brain. I paced the kitchen, and then the hallways where I’d see and hear the van the second Gus came home. But what if he didn’t come home? What if he stayed out all night like he did before? I was beyond worrying about him hooking up with other people, but the prospect of waiting up all night for relief that never came drove me out of the front door.
I was halfway down the drive before I remembered my shoes.
Cursing, I went back for them, and my phone, and called Gus again while I jogged to the bus stop. It rang and rang, until it cut off. Then I called him back to an automated message telling me his number was unavailable.
The finality of it kicked any common sense I had left entirely under the approaching bus.
I threw a handful of coins at the driver and hurried to the back of the bus where I’d get the best view of the traffic on the other side of the road. There was only one way to the next town over. If Gus drove past, I’d see him. But even if he didn’t, the chances of me rocking up to an empty cottage were pretty fucking high.
Didn’t stop me pressing my face to the glass and cataloguing every vehicle that zoomed past the rumbling bus. None of them were Luke’s van, though, and by the time the bus pulled into the stop nearest the cottage—its final stop of the day—I was losing light. If Gus wasn’t here, I’d be walking home in the dark.
If he was, I
had some explaining to do. Either way, I scrambled off the bus and ran the short distance to the broken-down cottage we’d been working on all week. The driveway was tucked behind a thick hedge, shielding it from the road. The fading light cast a shadow across the gravel, and at first it looked empty, but as I got closer, the gunmetal grey van glinted beneath the flickering streetlamp.
Gus was still here.
I flew up the drive and hammered on the front door. It was locked, as usual, and I thumped it hard enough to shake the hinges, but he didn’t come.
Maybe he’s not here. Maybe someone picked him up.
But my gut knew they hadn’t. Gus drove everywhere, so he had the freedom to dip any time he got flighty.
Tell you that, did he? Of course he hadn’t. But he didn’t need to. I knew him.
I fucking loved him.
The realisation wasn’t as shocking as it might’ve been without the old door standing between us. It was already marked by mine and Gus’s combined bad moods. I booted it, leaving more scars in the peeling paint. The doorframe cracked. I kicked the door again, but somehow it held.
Desperation and real fear bubbled up my throat. I let out a growl of frustration and looked around for something to throw at the window before I remembered the back door.
I dashed around the cottage to the gate. Overgrown brambles were compacted in the garden, blocking the path to another ancient door. I trampled through them to the moss-covered patio. The back door was rickety and held shut by a Yale lock that was too rusted to pick with a bank card. I kicked at it, over and over, until it flew open and clattered against the wall behind it, shattering the glass.
The noise was deafening. If Gus was inside, he’d have heard me by now, but as I crushed broken glass beneath my feet, there was no sound from inside, and every nerve in my body told me something was horribly wrong.
I charged through the cottage and up the stairs. The loft hatch was open, and beneath it, Gus lay motionless on the bare wood floor.
Unforgotten (Forgiven) Page 19