“What do you know?” he snapped at Scott, and Scott’s face twisted.
“Not much,” he said and this had to be ‘Jeff’ or ‘Father’, the man that insisted on Darren playing that stupid bloody awful violin. And Jayden was frankly startled by what he saw.
He’d never so much as seen a picture of him. There were no family shots on Facebook that included either of Darren’s parents. There hadn’t been any pictures he’d seen in the house of anyone at all. And he had built up Darren’s father, in his mind, to some suave, Italian-esque man with perfectly coiffed hair and a three-thousand pound, tailor-made suit. He would have a loud voice, a booming laugh, a swagger.
The man that had come down the corridor was nothing like that.
In short, he was entirely unimpressive. He had a big nose with glasses perched precariously on the end. He had half a head of wispy fair hair, aggressively receding, and the same watery blue eyes as his six-year-old daughter. The suit was definitely not tailored, and was probably more Marks and Spencer than Saville Row. Although his posture was ramrod straight, he wasn’t tall enough to make it impressive or intimidating, and his face was a blank mask of absolutely nothing.
The sight of that emptiness was chilling, and Jayden leaned away from him on impulse. His only son was in the hospital, maybe dying, having been mugged and maybe by the morning murdered, and there was nothing in this man’s face.
“Who the devil are you two?”
The voice matched a little better. A deep, intensely plummy sort of voice. Maybe not as loud or domineering as Jayden had imagined, but at least it fit what Darren had told him about ‘Father.’
“That’s Jayden,” Scott said. “Darren was at his house earlier.”
“I see.”
Dad glowered up at the man, not bothering to stand and introduce himself. Mum would have done, but Dad had been winding Jayden up about his ‘posh as’ boyfriend ever since he’d come out, and the intense dislike for this Etonian-accented, cheap-suit-wearing man was plain on his face.
“You can go,” Mr. Peace said dismissively, turning away from them. “This is a family matter.”
“Your kid’s been in my house enough damn times that we think of him as family,” Dad snapped, and Mr. Peace turned back to puff up like a bullfrog.
“Jeff, fucking drop it,” Scott snarled, and Jayden started. He couldn’t imagine Darren speaking to his father like that; he hadn’t imagined that Scott would either. From the red hue to Mr. Peace’s face, it wasn’t the first time. “They went out looking for him at bloody midnight. If he’s not at school or in bed, he’s at Jayden’s. He has a right to know what’s going on.”
“It’s called a phone,” Mr. Peace said coldly. “This is a family matter, Scott. I will not have strangers meddling in our affairs.”
“They’re only strangers because you haven’t got the first fucking clue what your son is fucking doing with his life!” Scott bellowed.
The room temporarily paused. Scott’s voice was powerful; it smashed through the waiting room, bouncing off the tiles and lights, and in its wake hung a short, startled silence.
“Jayden.”
Dad’s hand was coaxing him up. “Dad, no!”
“Jayden, the prick’s right,” Dad said, so calmly that it seemed to take a minute for Mr. Peace to realise he’d been insulted. “Darren’s family need a little time right now, and we’re all whacked. You can call Scott in the morning; Darren’s safe for now, and you’re not going to be able to see him until he’s in recovery anyway.”
“But Dad…”
“No,” Dad said firmly. “Come on. Scott will call in the morning with any news, won’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Scott said, his voice dropping effortlessly into the same kind of respectful meekness that occasionally coloured the way Darren would speak to Jayden’s father. “Soon as I know anything, I’ll pass it on.”
Mr. Peace looked furious with that decision, but it let Jayden stand shakily under Dad’s insistence.
“Don’t wait until the morning,” he begged.
“Soon as,” Scott repeated, and Jayden finally let Dad lead him back the corridor to the doors.
His chest hurt; he felt as though his heart had been torn out, stapled to the hospital walls, and was being left behind.
Chapter 29
It was the worst weekend of Jayden’s entire life.
Scott didn’t call on Saturday; ringing him let Jayden listen to voicemail and nothing else. He didn’t dare ring the house, and ringing the hospital just got him a nurse who refused to give any detail whatsoever to a non-family member.
Mum took the day off work; Dad had to go in anyway, but offered Jayden a hug before he went, which he hadn’t done since Jayden was about nine. “It’ll be fine, kid,” he’d said gruffly before letting him go, and Jayden had wanted to cry.
Mum had suggested they go out; Jayden vetoed it, in case Scott called the house again instead of his mobile, and he spent the morning sitting in the kitchen with his study papers for the St. John’s scholarship, desperately trying to remember why any of this was important when Darren was in the hospital and maybe dying.
It was Sunday morning when Scott finally did call, and only then to apologise for the delay and suggest that Jayden come up to the hospital.
“Don’t expect much,” he warned. “Mother’s…pissed.”
Jayden hadn’t cared.
He had gotten Mum to go with him, this time. Maybe Mum would be able to score some points with the Peaces that Dad wouldn’t, especially after the way he’d insulted Mr. Peace on Friday night. Which Jayden was totally in favour of because Darren’s father was a prick, but it might also damage his chances of getting to see Darren, and…
He just really, really had to see him.
The hospital was quiet on Sundays. Scott met them at the main entrance, looking haggard and unshaven.
“He’s hanging in there,” he said instantly, and Jayden’s chest tightened until he felt breathless. “One of the wounds is infected. He’s got, like, a huge fever. The doc says if the fever breaks and he fights it off, he’ll be fine. Eventually.”
“And will he?”
Scott’s face cracked into a weary smile. “Yeah,” he said, and shrugged. “Darren’s a tough little shit. Sorry, ma’am,” he suddenly added, looking to Mum and holding out a hand. “Sorry, I'm Scott. I’m Darren’s brother.”
“Olivia Phillips,” Mum said. “But Livvy will do fine, Scott. Or Ollie.”
They chattered over Jayden’s shoulder in the lift on the way up to the ward, but Jayden ignored them. Let Scott charm his mother; let his mother decide that Darren had one nice family member. He didn’t care. He just needed to see Darren, to know that he was going to be all right, to know what had really happened. To know that he was going to be okay.
To get past his fucking parents, the thought morphed into, as the lift doors opened and spat them out into the intensive care unit. Mr. Peace was visible at the far end of the long, long corridor, speaking on his mobile phone. A woman was talking to a doctor, arms folded and stance belligerent, suited despite the fact that it was a Sunday.
“…in the strongest possible terms!” the woman was snapping. She wasn’t quite shouting, but it was a close thing, and as they got closer, Jayden could match the steely, cold expression on her angular face with Darren’s snotty one when facing up to Canning.
Mrs. Peace was the feminine version of both of her sons. She was unmistakably Darren’s mother, even if Jayden hadn’t so much as seen a photo of her before. Elegant, lithe, and graceful, she cut a perfect figure in a very expensive suit. Her hair was a cropped nest of oddly neat curls, a rich deep brown, and far tidier than Jayden had imagined. She had blue eyes behind her glasses, like Scott, but the straight nose and independent eyebrows of her younger son.
Jayden disliked her on sight.
“Mother,” Scott interrupted. “Are you and Jeff going now?”
Going?
“In a moment,” sh
e said briskly. “Once I have had it noted that I am not happy with this decision.”
“What decision?” Jayden interrupted.
Mrs. Peace raised an eyebrow at him and folded her arms. “Who are you?” she snapped.
“That’s Jayden,” Scott said, shaking his head at Jayden minutely.
“Jayden,” she echoed, and her eyes narrowed. “The boy Darren was visiting. Before.”
“Yes.”
“My son has been attacked, suffered through emergency surgery, has nearly died, and is in the care of incompetent medical staff, because he has been visiting a comprehensive boy?”
Jayden bristled; Scott bristled faster. “Jayden’s a mate,” he snapped. “Just because he doesn’t go to St. John’s doesn’t mean Darren can’t fucking visit him. It’s nothing to do with Jayden that this happened!”
“Except that he would never normally have been in Catterley Lane Park!” Mrs. Peace snapped, never taking her eyes off Jayden. It was terrifying; he could feel his heart in his throat, and he shrank back against Mum in the face of her towering rage.
“That’s not Jayden’s fault!” Scott shouted.
“And what, exactly, are you even doing here?” Mrs. Peace demanded, overriding her eldest with effortless determination. On second thoughts, she did have Darren’s eyes, just the wrong colour. They could see right through Jayden just the same way.
“I wanted to see him,” Jayden managed.
“I don’t think so,” came the icy response. “You’ve done quite enough.”
“Mother!”
Jayden saw red. Done quite enough? He hadn’t done anything. This wasn’t his fault! Mum had offered Darren a lift home, and Darren had said no and gone anyway! It wasn’t Jayden’s fault! He hadn’t…he’d never have let him go if he’d known!
“He is no fit state to be receiving friends, Scott!”
“I’m not his friend!” Jayden exploded. “I’m his boyfriend!”
The silence was icier than the North Pole. Scott dropped his gaze; Mrs. Peace focused all that frozen energy on Jayden, something churning in her eyes. Mum’s hand was warm and so, so welcome on his shoulder, and he took a fortifying breath.
“Excuse me?” Mrs. Peace said coldly.
“I’m his boyfriend,” Jayden repeated.
Silently, Scott moved around to stand at Jayden’s shoulder, a heavy and solid presence that Jayden felt in dire need of at that moment.
“I want you gone,” Mrs. Peace said quietly.
“Jayden’s staying right here. He’s got just as much right to be here as you. He’s certainly been there when Darren’s needed him more than you have.”
“I have always supported all three of you,” she snapped, but her eyes were vacant.
“Yeah, thanks for the allowance as a kid,” Scott said. “But you’re not there for him—for any of us—or you wouldn’t be asking who Jayden is or why Darren was out late. You’d be getting coffee and settling in to wait here instead of rushing off to your fucking dinner appointment and calling Aunt Ella. You’d have called Jayden yourselves.”
He wrapped a huge hand over Jayden’s shoulder and squeezed, but Jayden felt sick nonetheless. He’d just outed Darren, to a mother who was now staring at him like she’d never seen a teenage boy before.
“I don’t know everything going on in Darren’s head, but I’m not stupid,” Scott said quietly, staring intently at his mother. “He’s not been right for years, Mother. But you and Jeff are too wrapped up in work and the stock market and teacher’s reports and that fucking violin to notice.”
“I have a gay son,” she said, her voice almost disappearing into the polished corridor, and the non-sequitur said it all.
“It’s not so very different from having a straight one,” Jayden’s Mum put in gently, her hand still rubbing in circles on Jayden’s spine. “Less concerns about becoming a grandmother too young, I suppose, but that’s about all.”
“This might not even matter,” Scott said sharply, and Jayden bit his lip, shivery with the reminder of exactly why they were having this row here. “You really think Darren having a boyfriend is top of the agenda right now?”
Mr. Peace had returned; he formed a narrow wall of furious disregard with his wife, his jaw clenched tightly.
“I think you ought to go,” he said. Scott sighed heavily, his shoulders dropping.
“But…”
“Jayden,” Scott interrupted and shook his head. “Go.”
Jayden felt like crying. Shaking apart. Crying some more. Hitting something. Anything, but then Mum’s hands were guiding him back towards the lifts. As the doors closed, the first tears escaped, and she pulled him close in a hug.
“Oh, darling,” she murmured, but didn’t say anything else. He clung to her and cried, just for a moment, and wished desperately that Darren’s family were different.
His phone buzzed in his pocket as they reached the ground floor, and he blinked away the tears to find a text from Scott. Wait in the cafe, their leaving soon so ill tell u when u can come back up. sorry about all this shit.
Mum read it, nodded once, and took him off towards the cafe, murmuring about a drink and a snack. “Horrible people,” she said decidedly as they sat down. “Especially her. What a horrible, horrible woman.”
“I’ve never met them,” Jayden croaked.
“I rather gathered that, darling.” Mum squeezed his wrist. “At least his brother’s a nice boy. Are they stepbrothers or…”
“Half,” Jayden croaked. “Yeah. I guess I have to stand up for his sister, too, she’s only six.”
“Poor thing, with that for a mother,” Mum said and turned up her nose. “No wonder the poor boy’s so…unsettled.” That was one way to put it. “Well, when you see him, you tell him that he can expect a hug from me next time he’s over. Which he will be. Don’t let that awful woman drive any wedges between you.”
Jayden chuckled wetly. “Oh, God, no, I don’t think Darren’s actually listened to his mum in, like, ten years or something. He just kind of ignores her. I think.” Or at least, it was his father he always complained about.
It was another twenty minutes before Scott summoned him with another text, and Jayden felt jittery on the way back up in the lift, despite Mum’s hand in the small of his back. He felt unnerved by Mrs. Peace’s shouting, rattled by their open hostility, and mortified that he’d dropped that bomb on them. Darren was going to kill him. If Mrs. Peace didn’t hire out an assassin or something and kill him first, because the look on her face had totally said that she was willing to at least think about it…
“Sorry,” was the first thing out of Scott’s mouth. “I feel totally embarrassed about that. I’m sorry. I should say, she’s really not that bad, mostly. She just gets pissed when she’s stressed, and you have to admit, it’s been a bad weekend.”
Mum nodded tightly; Jayden just looked past him and said, “I need to see Darren.”
“Um, it’s only two at a time, so…”
“I’ll wait here, darling,” Mum squeezed his shoulder. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” Jayden croaked and pushed the horrible episode out of his head. Darren filled the gap. Darren, Darren, Darren.
Scott led him through into a small bay, divided by curtains drawn around shielded beds. He plucked apart the closest set and breezed through, and Jayden hesitated at the cloth threshold, heart in his mouth.
“Oh, God,” he croaked.
Darren looked…white, and small, and somehow fragile. His hair was limp and greasy; there was a tube under his nose, and a huge, ugly port in the back of his hand, and two IV lines, and a beeping heart monitor keeping time. His left shoulder was twice its real size in bandaging, and the chart at the end of the bed was fat with scribbled notes…
But the monitor was beeping. He was breathing on his own. He was dead to the entire universe, but he was alive, and Jayden breathed shakily and let Scott guide him into a seat.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered and reach
ed out to tentatively take the hand curled limply on Darren’s stomach. It was hot to the touch. “Darren?”
“He’s out of it,” Scott said lowly. “Hasn’t woken up since he was brought in.”
They settled in on either side of the bed, Jayden holding Darren’s hand and Scott leaning his elbows on the mattress. “I’ll get hell,” he murmured lowly. “Mother’s not thick, she’ll know I let you in here. But nothing can come between her and lunch with the county councillor.”
Jayden scowled. He knew if he were in that bed, there’d be no force in the world that would prise Mum away from the hospital.
“Don’t let her get to you,” Scott advised. “She’ll come around in the end. A gay son, that’s a business gold mine in her industry. She’ll score huge points for diversity off it.”
“That’s not right,” Jayden said lowly.
“No,” Scott agreed. He paused and chuckled lowly. “I guess this is when I give you the whole hurt-him-and-die speech.”
“Isn’t that your dad’s job?”
Scott’s face twisted. Like Darren’s eye-roll, but somehow more intense. Harder. There was a lot more dislike in the expression. “Jeff’s not exactly Father of the Year. Unless he’s playing the violin or the piano, Jeff doesn’t even notice if Darren’s in the house at all.”
“They…don’t like each other?”
Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not that they don’t, it’s just…Jeff isn’t the type of guy who should ever have been anyone’s old man. He’s not built for it. He treated Darren like an adult from when he could walk and talk. He’s never…you have a dad?”
“Yeah. Well. Stepdad, but he’s my dad anyway.” Jayden just couldn’t imagine calling Dad ‘Colin.’ To hear Scott say Jeff…he couldn’t have been four by the time Darren’s parents got married. Not if he was nineteen. He might not even have been three. So hear him say Jeff instead of Dad—okay, Father—was weird, and Jayden hated it.
“And your old man, he do things with you? Take you to the park and football and read to you and patch up your knees when you skinned them, all of that? Yell at you for not eating your peas, and sneak you ice-cream when your mum’s not looking?”
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