Jayden took a hitching breath and swallowed against tears.
“Scott,” Darren said quietly.
“Like fuck,” Scott said, standing. He couldn’t have been more than two inches taller than Darren—and therefore Jayden as well—but he somehow loomed, the dark expression on his face threatening. “Where the fuck have you been?” he snarled.
“Scott!”
He worked his jaw, and Jayden glowered back, affronted by the attitude. “Where were you?” he sniped and edged around him to snag his chair and pull it right up to the head of the bed.
“Scott, just give us ten minutes, Jesus Christ,” Darren muttered, rubbing the heel of his hand tiredly across his eyes.
Scott huffed and turned on his heel, storming out like a stroppy teenager, and Jayden promptly forgot all about him, folding himself up into the chair and fisting his hands into the sheets. “I…” he said and bit his lip.
“Rachel called you.”
“Yes,” Jayden said and took a shaky breath. “So did you. Last night.”
Darren grimaced.
“I…” Jayden shook his head. “Shit, Darren, I don’t know what to say.”
Darren shrugged wordlessly and eyed Jayden’s hands. He looked so oddly normal, and so off at the same time, and Jayden hesitated a moment before slipping a hand over Darren’s and squeezing his fingers.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered lowly, and Darren shook his head. “No, I am. I am sorry. I…I should have answered the phone.”
“You didn’t know.”
“You never call me,” Jayden whispered. “And I should have…been there. Earlier. And I’m…I’m sorry, for…for everything that’s happened since…since.”
“Since I started work and you went to Cambridge,” Darren muttered.
“Yes,” Jayden murmured. He started rubbing Darren’s fingers, trying to push warmth into them. They were cool—well, they were always cool, it was in bed that Darren turned into a radiator—and he didn’t like it. It seemed too close to…to what could have happened. “What…”
He wanted to ask what they were meant to do now. He wanted to ask how they were supposed to handle this. He wanted to ask what Darren needed, even if he didn’t really know, and what this meant for them, that it had happened at all. And yet he couldn’t force the words out, couldn’t push them past his teeth and say them, couldn’t do anything but hold that huge hand and try not to cry.
“Jayden…”
He shook his head. “I should have answered the phone.”
Darren didn’t say anything, and Jayden took a deep breath.
“We’ll sort this out,” he promised and dared to glance up. He then wished he hadn’t, because Darren looked so shattered, like all the lights were out, and Jayden had to look away again. “We’ll sort it out,” he promised Darren’s knuckles instead.
“I don’t know if I can, Jayden.”
Jayden’s heart clenched violently, his chest burning for a brief and dizzying moment, then he squeezed Darren’s hand in both of his again and said, “We can try. Come home with me for a bit, and just…I’ve missed you. We don’t…we don’t do so well apart, do we?”
“Apparently not,” Darren said dryly, and Jayden managed a little laugh that didn’t sound like how he felt: like crying, like panicking, like shaking him and screaming for an answer as to why, exactly, as to what he’d been thinking…!
“I…” he started, about to ask permission, for God’s sake, then gave up on the words and lifted himself onto the very edge of the bed, wrapping his arms around Darren’s neck and burying his face into his collarbone. He smelled of hospital and sweat, the tart edges of vomit and a thin overlay of cheap shower gel that said he’d bought a new bottle recently and used too much as usual. But Jayden didn’t care: he was warmer in the shoulder and neck, and there was a sluggish pulse in the artery, and he hugged back—a little stiffly, but he did, and he hadn’t…hadn’t managed it, he was still here, and…
The tears welled up, Jayden’s throat closed, and he heaved once before the first sob broke free. Darren tightened his grip and murmured, “Don’t,” quietly, but it was no use, and Jayden didn’t want to stop anyway. He didn’t know what would help, what would make Darren stop being ill, but he’d always tried to not upset Jayden and maybe it would work for a little time, just in the short term, until Jayden could work this out? Until they could work it out, and fix whatever had crumbled between them? Right?
So Jayden cried, let out the shaky panic that had lodged itself in his chest the minute he’d heard Rachel crying on the phone, and clung hard to the gown they’d given Darren to wear. It was scratchy and it smelled weird, and he didn’t care, because behind it was Darren’s heart, somewhere, and it was beating, and he could feel it, and Darren was hugging him back and breathing something indistinct and…
And if it killed him, Jayden was going to make this okay. He was. He wasn’t taking this, he wasn’t walking away from this, because he’d forgotten somewhere along the line just how okay everything was when it was just them, no matter what else the world threw at them, or even what Darren’s own mind threw at them—they had always been better, together, and if Jayden had to jack in everything to be with Darren, he’d do it, because, really, there wasn’t another way. This had been the other way, and look how it had turned out. In a hospital, in a stupid gown, and with Scott prowling at the bay entrance like a pissed-off grizzly bear and…
“I didn’t think your brother could do scary,” Jayden suddenly mumbled in an inappropriate flash of gallows humour, and Darren made a soft noise.
“He’s…not pleased with me.”
“Neither am I,” Jayden confessed, sitting back a little and taking both of Darren’s hands, rubbing his thumbs over the prominent knuckles. Familiar hands, despite the last year. “But you’re not…you know. Rachel couldn’t tell me much, so…this is better than I feared.”
Darren said nothing, watching Jayden with wary eyes.
“When are you…leaving?” Jayden tried, an appropriate phrase failing to materialise.
“Today,” Darren said. “I’m fine now. Drugs have worn off enough, and I’m not waiting long enough for them to section me or find a psychiatrist to crack my head open.”
“So…where are we going?”
Darren raised his eyebrows. “We?”
“Well, I’m coming too,” Jayden said. Maybe he should have asked, maybe there was some handbook somewhere to how to handle your boyfriend when he’d tried to kill himself, but…but he didn’t care, suddenly, because he was going with him, and if Darren thought he was going anywhere without Jayden for at least the next month…
“Scott wants me to go back to his.”
Jayden chewed on his lip. “You don’t want to?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I guess not,” Jayden murmured lowly, thinking. Darren and Scott got on, but in a superficial sort of way. Darren tended to find Scott irritating, and Jayden could…sort of see it. Scott was the kind of guy who didn’t get something, and would never get something, but would keep poking it in the hope of understanding it, and Darren didn’t react well to that, he needed to be…
Well, not left alone, obviously not, but…left. To be.
Jayden waited, very deliberately, until the thump of boots on tiles said that Scott had had enough, and he returned with a cup of tea and the same scowl with which he left—and then Jayden said, as Scott plonked the tea on the side, “I told Darren he should come home with me.”
Scott just snorted.
“Problem?” Darren asked coldly.
“I’ve told you what you’re doing,” Scott snapped.
“You don’t tell me shit,” Darren snarled, the exhausted lines in his face beginning to twist into anger. He was always quick to flare up on the tail end of a moody day, and Jayden had learned to avoid provoking him; as it was, he slipped unnoticed out of the cubicle as the argument fired up, already fumbling for his phone.
He knew how to handl
e one Peace, and he was settling into the familiarity of it again. Scott wasn’t that scary, not compared to his younger brother, and Jayden had wrapped his defiance around Darren’s hand in there. He’d spent too long ducking out of facing up to all of this, and he wasn’t going to bow now, not here.
Darren couldn’t go home. Go home, with his parents in the middle of a divorce and both of them seeming to think there was absolutely nothing wrong with their son, mentally speaking? (Mr. Peace still seemed to be tuning him out ever since Jayden had outed him in another hospital, a few years and a few miles away from this one.) But he could come home with Jayden, surely? They could sort it out, and Darren could get better, and Mum would completely smother him and…how could it hurt him? How could it not help, to be just covered up in love? Mum adored Darren, she always had, and Dad liked him in his gruff way and Darren was actually good with gruff, he was a bit that way inclined himself, so…
The house phone rang out; Jayden switched to Mum’s mobile, and silently prayed to the halogen light above his head, or the nurse giving the ruckus dirty looks and puffing herself up ready to tackle it. Please answer, please answer, please…
“Darling! This is a nice surprise!” Mum trilled in his ear.
“Mum,” Jayden said, and then his words failed him and like a sudden shot of grief, her warm tones brought the lump in his throat back. Jesus, Darren wasn’t the only one all over the place emotionally. “Mum, I…”
“Jayden? Darling, what’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“I…” Jayden coughed. “I’m…I’m in Southampton.”
“Why—what’s happened, darling? Are you all right? Is Darren?”
“No,” Jayden mumbled and sat down right on the tiles, not bothering to find a chair. “No, I…Mum, can we come and stay? Tonight?”
“Of course you can, sweetheart, you never need to ask, but what’s happened?”
Jayden took a deep breath through his nose and fought back the tears. “Darren tried to kill himself,” he croaked.
A sharp inhalation was his answer.
“He took an overdose,” he whispered, his voice fading away until it was thread-thin and web-delicate. “He…his housemate called me this morning, and he…his brother’s trying to get him to go home, but…”
“No,” Mum said firmly. “He was never happy there, darling. He’ll come here. I’ll make up your room for you. Do you have transport? The trains will cost a fortune, darling, and you might miss the last one if they haven’t released him yet.”
“Scott’s here, and he’ll drive us,” Jayden said, clinging to the practical and trying to brush away everything else, just for the moment. Once they were home…once they were home, they could worry. Once they were home. “Or Leah, she drove me here.” And he’d have to call her in a minute, check what she was doing, if she could go home, but… “Mum, I know…I know you don’t like it, but I…he’s got to stay in my room with me, Mum, I can’t just…I can’t…”
“I know, darling, it’s all right,” Mum soothed, her voice warm like a hug over the line. He wanted, fiercely and desperately, to hug her. In the lonely light of the hospital corridor, he felt like a little kid again, like a hug would solve everything.
Only it wouldn’t. There was no solving this.
“You come as soon as you can,” she said gently. “And if you need Dad to come out and get you, he will. You know he will.”
Jayden took a deep breath and stood up. “I know,” he said, swallowing hard. “I’ll…I’ll spring Darren now and…and we’ll come soon.”
“Tell him we love him,” Mum commanded.
“Will, Mum. Love you.”
“And you, darling. Be safe.”
He hung up. The nurse had broken up the ruckus, but when he steeled himself and marched back into the ward, Scott was looming at the side of the bed, arms folded, and Darren was staring blindly out of the window, face almost haggard with exhaustion, stress, and the dark tendrils wrapped around his brain. Illness. Illness.
“We’re going to Mum’s,” he said to the cubicle at large, and Scott’s scowl deepened. Darren stared at him blankly, and Jayden bit down fiercely on the lip that threatened to shake at the sheer emptiness in his face, reaching out to take a hand gingerly. Darren didn’t hold back. “We’re going home,” he repeated and looked to Scott. “It’s best. Better than your parents' house.”
“Excuse me?” Scott snarled.
“Scott.” And Darren’s fingers contracted lightly in Jayden’s. “Shut up. I’m going to the Phillips’.”
Scott’s scowl deepened momentarily once more, cutting a groove into his forehead, then he sighed heavily and snapped, “Fine. But I’m fucking driving.”
Chapter 29
It was after dark by the time Scott’s hideously orange car turned into Attlee Road.
Springing Darren from the hospital had been dishearteningly easy: the nurses didn’t care to keep him, and no doctor ever materialised to explain what the damage had been. Darren admitted that, given that one nurse kept calling him Dean, he wasn’t convinced they knew who he was.
Leah had hugged Jayden goodbye and taken the opportunity to drop in on her sister in Bristol, promising to sort out the college necessities for him the next morning. Jayden had never hugged a girl so hard in his life and never been so grateful for her. He made a mental note not to ever forget what she’d done for him, and find out from Tim her favourite lager and buy her a case.
Darren had had to borrow Jayden’s spare clothes that he’d brought down from Cambridge. The jeans were fine, really, there wasn’t much height difference between them, but Darren was broader in the shoulders by a considerable margin, and so eventually he had had to forgo a shirt and borrow the green hoodie to wear in the car. He had then promptly fallen asleep before they’d left Southampton, and had looked so vulnerable, buried in the green fabric, that Jayden had been unable to resist and gently pulled him in until Darren’s head fell onto his shoulder, and he slept against Jayden’s arm.
Ideally it was about an hour and a half from Southampton back home, but they hit rush-hour traffic, roadworks, and then an accident ten miles south of their destination, so dusk had just passed when they reached the row of terraced houses, still complete with the rusty bike parts and badly-cut box-sized lawns that Jayden had grown up in. It brought another lump to his throat, to see the warm glow behind the curtains and the door open as Scott put the handbrake on, Mum’s silhouette backlit by the hall light.
Darren was sleepy and had retreated into himself; he submitted to her silent hug, but didn’t reciprocate, and didn’t offer his brother any kind of goodbye. When Mum said, “You know where the shower is, darling, feel free to use anything in the bathroom,” he trudged upstairs with silent obedience.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” Scott said with a heavy tone that was somewhere between threatening and resigned, and didn’t offer any more goodbye than Darren had done, stomping back to his car with hunched shoulders.
Mum shut the door, waylaying Jayden with a hand on his arm. She looked ready to burst, a flowing maternity blouse struggling with the bump that was more like a beach-ball than the football it had been at Christmas. Her hair had grown, and she looked tired, and little older, somehow, than Jayden quite liked to think of her. But she was still Mum, bump notwithstanding, and he hugged her back when she slid her arms around him.
“Oh, darling,” she crooned and kissed the side of his head. He clung, feeling like a little kid. “My poor darling. How are you?”
The question surprised him. “I’m okay,” he mumbled. “Darren…”
“How are you?” Mum persisted. “Darren will need a hot shower and good night’s sleep, and we’ll see what has to be done in the morning. But how are you?”
Jayden swallowed. “I’m…” He didn’t really know. “I don’t know.”
She petted his hair and smiled sympathetically. “Just so you know, nobody knows what to do at times like these. You’re doing just fine.”
“But I haven’t been,” Jayden croaked. “If I had…”
“Darling, no one thing makes Darren the way he is. I’ve seen it too. He builds up to it, and I doubt there’s very much you could have done to defuse him once he hit a certain point.”
Jayden bit his lip and glanced up the stairs. The shower had come on, still as rattling and loud as it had been at Christmas. They’d taken advantage of that once in sixth form, but it had been kind of weird and awkward actually, nothing like in the books that Jayden had got the idea from.
A lot of things weren’t like how he imagined.
“I’m stressed at Cambridge and I’m stressed without him and…it’s not what I imagined, Mum,” he confessed lowly.
She hummed. “Welcome to being an adult, sweetheart.”
He cracked a faint smile, but then it faded. “It’s not even close, Mum. I’m miserable without Darren, and things aren’t the same, and I…I can’t lose him, Mum, but I’m going to if I can’t fix this.”
“Darling.” She cupped his face in both hands. “Listen to me. You have held on to the dream of Cambridge for so long, I think you’ve forgotten that it’s just a dream. If the reality isn’t what you wanted, change your reality. If that means you leave Darren and stay there, then do it. But if that means you leave Cambridge and keep Darren, then you need to consider that too.”
Jayden swallowed. “I…but the fees…”
“Don’t worry about the fees, darling,” Mum consoled. “We’re not destitute. We’ll work something out, even if it means waiting a few more years for another baby.”
Jayden glanced at her belly. “Another one?”
“Oh, your father wants at least two,” Mum said dismissively and kissed his forehead. She had to tilt his head down to reach. “Go on, darling. Look after yourselves, and whatever decision you make, your parents will support you. No matter what. We come without conditions or prior qualifications.”
Jayden sniffed and grinned half-heartedly. “Just as well, Dad doesn’t have any,” he croaked, and she slapped his arm lightly.
The Devil's Trill Sonata Page 23