For all he knew, Leo looked at everyone like that, but that oddly painful notion did nothing to calm the roiling in his belly.
“So, what do you do in the parks around here on a Friday night? Back home, we get stoned and break stuff.”
Charlie chanced a glance at Leo. He rarely mentioned the life he must’ve had before him and Lila came to Heyton, and he’d never referred to Swindon as home before. In fact, Charlie reckoned he’d never heard Leo use the word at all. “Um, some of the girls smoke puff. I’d rather have beer, though. Smoking’s for skanks.”
Leo took the dig with the insolent smirk that drove Charlie crazy in so many conflicting ways. “Where do you get beer from? Do you nick it from Reg?”
“What? No! House rules mean no stealing, remember? Fuck that. We buy it from the SPAR shop. Jess’s sister works in there. Can’t tonight, though. Haven’t got any money.”
“I’ve got a tenner.” Leo pulled out a Velcro wallet Charlie hadn’t seen before.
“Arsenal? Where’d you get that?”
“Andy gave it to me.”
Ah. That made sense. Leo still avoided Reg like the plague, but he didn’t seem to mind Andy.
“Come on, then,” Leo said. “Let’s get some cans.”
Turned out Leo’s idea of cans was the biggest bottle of cheap rum they could find. Bev, Jess’s sister, eyed them dubiously as Leo handed over his crumpled tenner, and Charlie couldn’t blame her. Rum? Really? He didn’t know about Leo, but he had a feeling that two swigs from that ominous-looking bottle would have him puking in the bushes with the WKD girls from Old Farm Park. And what about Leo?
Charlie swallowed thickly. Hard-core drinking was probably on the list of sins that could get Leo sent away. “Are you sure you want that?” he asked when they were back on the street, the bottle safely hidden in Leo’s coat.
“It’s booze, innit?” Leo’s tone was playful, but when he met Charlie’s gaze, his eyes had dulled, like they often did when Reg tried to engage him. “Fuck this shit. I wanna get smashed.”
Despite the unease prickling his neck, Charlie knew better than to argue, and they walked the rest of the way to the park in silence, side by side, arms swinging just a hairsbreadth away from each other. At the park entrance, an icy wind whistled through the trees. Charlie shivered. Leo glanced at him. “Cold?”
“Nope.” Charlie shoved his hands in his pockets. “Come on. The girls are waiting by the splash park.”
Leo snorted. “Bloody girls.”
“Suit yourself. Stoners hang under the bandstand.”
Charlie set off across the muddy football pitch. He figured Leo would drift away to find Wayne and his gang of twats, so a hand on his arm caught him off guard a few moments later.
“Which girls are you meeting again? Jess and Lucy?”
“You really give a shit?”
Leo shrugged. “Not particularly. I don’t like girls.”
Charlie tripped over his own feet. “You don’t like girls?”
“They’re annoying, all that fucking staring and cackling. Don’t know how you spend so much time with them.”
Because it’s easier than pretending to be one of the boys. “I grew up with Fliss, remember? No one’s as annoying as her.”
Leo’s reply was cut off by a shout from somewhere in the darkness. Charlie stared in the direction it had come from as three figures emerged from the gloom. Jess, Lucy, and Lucy’s cousin Meg surrounded them, grinning at Charlie and eyeing Leo with a speculative interest that reminded Charlie of a gang of feral cats he’d once seen on holiday.
He kicked Jess and shot her a meaningful glare. “All right?”
Jess’s grin widened as she artfully avoided his gaze. “And then some. Hi, Leo.”
Leo grunted and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket.
If Jess was bothered by Leo’s flat response, she didn’t show it. Instead, she winked and threaded her arm through Charlie’s. “Come on. Let’s go find Maria. She’s got some vodka.”
Charlie suppressed a sigh. Vodka, rum, weed—apparently however the night panned out, he’d be carrying someone home.
An hour or so later, his money was on Lucy, who was slumped against him, giggling at whatever Jess was mouthing to her behind her hand. Daft twats.
Charlie sighed and tuned them out, scanning the dark park, squinting at the scattered groups huddled on the grass, illuminated by the glow of phone screens and whatever they were smoking. Wayne Murphy’s group usually hung around by the basketball court, but Charlie couldn’t see that far, let alone tell if Leo—who’d long since grown bored with the girls and wandered off—was with them.
“Earth to Charlie?” Lucy waved her hand in front of his face. “What are you staring at?”
“Hmm? Oh, nothing.”
Lucy lost interest fast, but Charlie’s fixation with the most distant hooded group remained. His gaze fell on a figure at the edge, the only one not holding a phone. Leo had one, but his solitary ways meant he rarely used it.
Agitation burned in Charlie’s veins. Suddenly, he had to be sure the lonely figure was Leo.
He scrambled to his feet. The girls, preoccupied with their vodka, paid him no heed until he stepped over them.
Jess caught his arm. “Where are you going?”
Charlie shook her off. “To find Leo. He, um, has my house key.”
It was a plausible explanation. She let him go, and he set off across the park. As he got closer to the group by the basketball court, the wind picked up again. He shivered, wishing he’d worn his other jacket, and pulled his hood up, smirking at the irony. I’ll fit right in over there.
“Charlie?”
Charlie jumped and whirled around. Leo was behind him, half-empty rum bottle in one hand, a fat joint in the other. “Okay?”
Leo raised an eyebrow. “Was gonna ask you the same thing. You look like you’re on your way to off someone.”
“Seriously?”
“Why not?” Leo shrugged and offered a lopsided grin that suggested he was probably as trashed as he’d planned. “You’re dressed all black and shit. Like an assassin.”
“Don’t know what assassins you’ve ever seen. And my shoes are blue.”
Leo snorted. “Like I can even see them. Dark, innit?”
Charlie let it go. He’d spent most of the evening talking in circles with pissed-up girls. He couldn’t be arsed to do it with Leo. “What are you doing on your own? Thought you’d be over there with the knobheads.”
“Knobheads? You mean Wayne? You’re a bit of a twat about him, you know. He’s sound.”
It was Charlie’s turn to snort. “You only think that because he gives you weed.”
“Howd’ya know that?”
“Because Reg doesn’t give you enough money to buy your own.”
Leo fixed Charlie with a sphinx-like stare. “I meant how do you know I smoke weed, but I guess the bifta in my hand gives me away, eh?”
“A little.” Charlie chanced a grin. “And Fliss told me too. Nothing gets past her.”
“So she keeps telling me. Anyway, what are you doing, bowling across the park? I thought you’d be living it up with your gang of birds.”
“Got bored. Thought I’d come and find you.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Live in the same house, don’t we?” Charlie shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Leo had a way of making him feel like the biggest idiot in the world. He’d set off to find him with no plans for what he’d say when he did, and he had an inkling Leo somehow knew it. “Um, anyway. I should probably get back.”
Leo moved close enough for Charlie to smell the rum on his breath. “Fuck that. Let’s go for a walk.”
Charlie trailed Leo to the disused railway line that ran parallel to the far side of the park. Leo didn’t say much, but then he rarely did. They climbed over the wooden gate, and Leo gazed around and took a seat on an old bench. “This place is messed up.”
“Nah, it’s just ol
d. Haven’t been any trains through here since the seventies.”
“I don’t mean that.”
Charlie drifted to the bench and dropped down beside Leo. “What do you mean, then?”
“Dunno.” Leo took a swig from the rum bottle and offered it to Charlie, rolling his eyes when Charlie waved it away. “This town, I s’pose. You’re all so fucking normal.”
“Normal?”
“Yeah. Life happens here. Nothing good, nothing bad. It’s boring.”
Charlie laughed. “What did you expect? Tsunamis and nuclear war?”
“Piss off. Nah, I reckon I just thought it would be . . . something, you know?”
Charlie didn’t know, but he said nothing, hoping that perhaps, for once, Leo would elaborate. And it seemed the rum had granted him his wish. Leo stretched his legs and let out the kind of whooshing sigh that told Charlie he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Swindon was shit, but I knew it like the back of my hand. This place is like another planet.”
“A boring planet?”
Leo snorted. “Yep. Everywhere’s boring, ’cept my head.”
The words were muttered, and slightly slurred, but Charlie heard them like Leo had yelled them in his ear. He slid closer, hoping Leo would look at him, so he’d know for sure that he had no hope of ever knowing what Leo was thinking.
But Leo didn’t look at him, so Charlie braved a tentative hand on his back. “There’s still time for you to like this town. You haven’t been here very long.”
“Doesn’t feel that way. Doesn’t feel like anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fucked if I know.” Leo sighed and leaned back on the bench, but he didn’t shrug away from Charlie’s hand. “I don’t know much anymore.”
An eerie silence crept over them, enveloping them. For a long moment, Charlie welcomed it, like it could seep into Leo and absorb the pain he was trying so hard to mask with apathy. But it didn’t work. Leo trembled, then exhaled with a stuttered gasp, and Charlie pulled Leo into his arms.
Leo fell sideways against him. Charlie wished Leo would cry, but Leo didn’t cry. He lay slack in Charlie’s loose embrace and stared up at the stars. “How did you know they really wanted you?”
“Hmm?” Charlie shifted. His chin touched Leo’s hair. It tickled, and smelled of Leo—of smoke and rum—and the soft drizzle that had begun to moisten the heavy air around them. “You mean Mum and—uh—Kate and Reg?”
“Yeah.”
“Because they didn’t have to want me. They could’ve left me for someone else, or given me back any time things got rough, like the first couple who tried to adopt me.”
Leo turned his head and fixed Charlie with a stare that suddenly didn’t feel empty. A loaded gaze that pierced Charlie’s soul and shook his bones. Warmth filled Charlie’s veins, and an invisible chord drew him closer. Leo moved too, and then their lips touched . . . brushed against each other, gently at first, but then harder, like it meant something Charlie didn’t quite understand, until, wide-eyed, Leo pulled away.
“What— What the fuck was that?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.” Charlie wrenched himself free and stumbled off the bench. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Charlie—”
“No! Don’t say it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Charlie backed away, then turned and fled, running across the park, his stomach in his mouth, churning and roiling, as humiliation and shame smothered him until he couldn’t take another step.
Oh God.
What have I done?
Charlie sank to his knees on the wet grass. Silence once again enveloped him, but it was different this time. Without the sullen warmth of Leo beside him, it suffocated him like a fog of broken dreams.
He’d kissed Leo.
He’d kissed Leo, his vulnerable and messed-up foster brother who’d never given him any indication that he even liked boys that way, let alone liked Charlie that way.
The hate the year-eleven boys had thrown at him the day Leo had arrived echoed in his brain: “Backs to the wall. Faggy Charlie might jump ya.”
Had they seen it all along? That it had only been a matter of time before he threw himself at someone who didn’t want him?
Why, why, why?
What the fuck did I do? Dad had warned him that Leo’s behaviour could get him sent away, but this?
God no. I can’t be the reason he—
A harsh chuckle cut Charlie’s thoughts dead. He blinked and squinted in the direction it had come from. Four familiar smirking faces greeted him. Shit. In his hurry to escape, he hadn’t noticed the very same group of year elevens lurking by the skate ramps, a gang of no-good lads that even Wayne Murphy had the sense to avoid.
Darren Stroud got up. “Watcha doing over here?”
“Nothing.” Charlie got up too and shoved his hands in his pockets. Was he going to get decked now? Did he care?
Not really.
“Why don’t you come and do nothing with us, then? It’s fun, boys, innit?”
Charlie shook his head. The lads at Darren’s back sniggered, and Darren’s grin widened to reveal a set of crooked, brown teeth that would be rotten by the time he hit twenty. “What about this, eh? Want some of this, emo boy?”
Darren opened his hand. Two pills sat, ghostlike, in his palm. Charlie stared at them. “I’m not an emo.”
“Yeah? Prove it, faggy-boy.”
Prove it? Piss off. Charlie resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but the harder he stared at the pills, the more the urge faded, and instead, a different energy swept over him. A compulsion that fought the lingering, burning sensation of Leo’s lips on his. A compulsion that fought every instinct Charlie had ever known.
The compulsion won.
Charlie swiped the pills and swallowed them dry. They stuck in his throat, jagged and bitter, but he forced them down. Then he found Darren’s gaze and shrugged. “Thanks for the drugs, dickhead.”
What did I do? What did I do?
Leo sank back down on the bench as Charlie disappeared into the misty night. His heart screamed at him to follow, to pull Charlie back to him and kiss him again. To tell him, perhaps without words, that everything was going to be okay. But his heavy legs, hindered by too much rum and the cloud of hopelessness that was beginning to feel like his constant companion, wouldn’t obey.
He brought a shaking hand to his mouth and traced his tingling lips with his fingertip. They felt raw and burned with the best kind of heat, but something was off.
Charlie’s never done that before.
Leo tugged on his hair, knowing with a stomach-churning certainty that he was right. He’d recognised the fear in Charlie’s eyes, because he’d seen it in his own, reflecting back at him the first time he’d snogged Lee McKensie after football training last year. The first time he’d truly realised that he didn’t look at his friends the same way they looked at him.
Cold winter drizzle seeped into Leo’s skin. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. The terror he’d felt that day had stayed with him a long time before real nightmares had taken its place. I don’t want Charlie to feel like that. I lo—
“Leo!”
Leo jerked upright. His head spun. In his haze, he hadn’t noticed it dropping to his knees. Someone shouted his name again, and then Wayne appeared out of the darkness, puffing laboured breaths of steam into the frosty air.
“Leo, mate. You gotta come with me. Your brother’s dropped a bunch of disco biscuits.”
“What?” Leo jumped up and sprinted across the park, leaving Wayne far behind. Disco biscuits. Leo knew the term all too well, but as the trees flew past, he held on to the faint hope that the posh kids in Heyton called their mandy pills something else.
But that hope was obliterated the moment he rounded the front of the cricket pavilion. He saw Lucy first, then Jess, both of them on their knees, bent over Charlie who was curled in a ball on the cold ground.
Leo bounded up the steps and pushe
d them aside. “What the fuck happened?”
“We don’t know.” Jess elbowed her way back to Charlie and pulled on his hood, trying to uncover his face. “We found him like this. Wayne said he took some pills from Darren Stroud.”
“Who?” Leo looked around, but there was no one close by except Wayne, who was hovering at the edge of the grass.
“Darren Stroud,” Jess repeated. “One of the year-eleven scumbags. Do you think he spiked Charlie’s drink? Charlie doesn’t do drugs. He never has.”
“But he wasn’t drinking either,” Lucy said. “He said he didn’t have any money.”
Leo’s stomach churned. He’d been the one with cash, and he’d spent it on rum he’d known Charlie wouldn’t drink. Was this his fault? Had Charlie boshed a load of beans because Leo had been too selfish to share a few beers with him?
Lucy dropped her head. “What’s that, Charlie, babe? Did you say something?”
Charlie abruptly uncurled himself. He straightened his legs and caught Leo’s shin with a bruising kick as he scrambled to his feet. “Stop crawling on me.”
“No one’s crawling on you.” Leo stood and held out his hands. “What did you take?”
Charlie stared at Leo’s hands, head tilted to one side, eyes so wide the whites gleamed in the moonlight. Leo thought he hadn’t heard him, but then Charlie laughed a laugh Leo had never heard from him before. “I love you.”
For a brief moment, Leo’s heart felt like it would burst out of his chest, then he realised that Charlie wasn’t looking at him, he was gazing at Jess.
Jess stepped around Leo and took Charlie’s hands. “You bloody idiot. What the hell have you taken?”
“Um . . .” Charlie stared up at the sky and blinked a few times. “Dunno. Do I look mashed?”
“And then some. We need to straighten you out before you go home. Your folks are going to hit the roof if they see you like this.”
Charlie giggled. “Gimme a cuddle.”
Jess obliged, and Leo relaxed a little. His own experiences with X had been less than pleasant, but he’d had some good times too. Good times he could barely remember now.
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