Jayden frowned. “Is it a bad day?”
“Not like that.”
“Okay,” Jayden caved. “Mum would like to see you anyway. She’s been asking about you. And we can—okay, I can watch a film while you sleep off this stupid surprise of yours. And only if Scott will come and get you, because there is no fucking way you are walking home, and definitely not through that park.”
Darren smiled and nodded; the moment he pulled himself off the boot, Jayden wound an arm around his waist and helped him into the back seat. The car smelled like it had been cleaned to within an inch of its life, and Scott grinned back at them from the front seat.
“Guess who gets violently carsick when he’s high on painkillers?” he asked cheerfully.
“Shut your face or I’ll do it again,” Darren threatened, fumbling with his seatbelt.
“You have more to puke?” Scott asked and started the engine. “Where we headed?”
“Attlee Road,” Jayden said. “Can you come and get him later?”
“No problem, I got the week off.” Scott shrugged. “Word to the wise though, Jayden, don’t feed him anything heavier than, like, Rich Tea biscuits. And don’t let him near milk, you don’t want to see milk once it’s been thrown up.”
Darren, head back and eyes closed, pulled a face. Jayden grinned and squeezed his hand lightly. “I’m not going to puke,” Darren said quietly. “They gave me codeine to get me home. I don’t like codeine.”
“I don’t like it either,” Scott said. “I had to pay the guy at the petrol station like twenty quid to clean my baby out.”
Darren kicked the back of Scott’s seat in a sudden, sharp motion, and Jayden snickered. Darren’s hand was cool in his, and he pushed a thumb into the pulse point on his wrist, the faint flicker barely detectable over the movement of the car.
“Fourteen,” he supplied as the car peeled into Attlee Road—a distance too short to drive normally, but one Jayden doubted Darren was capable of just yet. “Thanks, Scott.”
“No worries. Give me a ring when he’s ready to come home—or, you know, if he’s not,” and Scott’s grin was reminiscent of the dangerous smirk Darren had worn winding up Canning all those months ago. “You need a hand getting him inside?”
“Piss off,” Darren said sharply, and Jayden laughed.
“I don’t think so,” he said, fumbling for his keys. Regardless of the banter, he didn’t fall to notice that Scott’s car didn’t move an inch until Jayden had opened the front door and Darren was in the hall. When it did, it peeled away slowly, almost hesitantly.
“He’s been hovering,” Darren said.
“I can’t blame him.” Jayden dropped his keys on the table. “Mum!”
No answer.
“They must still be at work,” Jayden said and shrugged. “Well. I’ve been going straight to the hospital from school. I’d better text Mum and tell her we’re home. C’mon, let’s go to my room. If you fall asleep on my bed, you’ll be more comfortable.”
The fact that Darren didn’t argue with him said it all, and Jayden wasted no time in getting Darren down to his T-shirt and boxers and into the bed. There was still a thick layer of gauze over the shoulder, protecting the wound and keeping the shoulder blade tight to his back, and Jayden caught a glimpse of the violently pink scab, quickly turning to scar tissue, tucked into the jut of Darren’s hip. It was hideous; Jayden swallowed against the hot nausea in the pit of his stomach.
“I’m all right,” Darren said, catching his wrist as he settled. “You promised me a film I could ignore.”
Jayden shook his head, stripping down to his own underwear, and rummaging for some jogging bottoms. “No, I just…” He wriggled into them and slid under the sheets with Darren. “Come here,” he whispered, tugging until they lay face-to-face, heads on the same pillow, his right hand loosely clasping Darren’s left between their chests. “Is this okay?”
Darren gave him a bemused look. “Not your kinkiest idea.”
“Oh, shut up,” Jayden said, exasperated. “You don’t get to be a bitch right now.”
Darren looked offended.
“I nearly lost you,” Jayden said flatly. “Scott called me in the middle of the night asking if you’d stayed here, and then he said you never went home, and it was two in the morning before the police called your mum saying you’d been attacked, and…You don’t know how close it was, Darren. You nearly bled to death, and…and I beat up Ben Canning.”
“You what?”
“He started in at me about being some faggy emo kid because I’d been so miserable lately, and I shoved him back and beat him up. I got suspended for three days,” Jayden blurted out. “And I didn’t care because then Scott called saying you were getting better, and then you woke up—and okay, you said you don’t remember that but I do. I was there. And you were completely out of it—like, proper drugged up to your eyebrows and talking complete gibberish, but you…I came in and I held your hand and you smiled. You knew me, and you smiled at me, and it was just…”
Darren wormed his hand free and slid his arm over Jayden’s shoulder, beckoning. “Come here.”
“Darren, no, your shoulder…”
“Is fine. You threw yourself on me in the car park and I didn’t collapse. Come here.”
Jayden went. He pressed his face into Darren’s neck, desperate to avoid that vicious miss under the bandages, and wound his arms around the safe strip of his waist, below the wasted shoulder and above the swollen hip…
“Ssh,” Darren whispered, carding his fingers loosely through his hair, and Jayden realised he was crying.
“I was so fucking scared,” he whispered, and then gave up on talking altogether, curling further into the hug and letting go on control. Darren had seen a lot worse than a few tears, after all, and Jayden let rip, sobbing until his chest ached with it, crying until all the panic had unwound its cold grip and let him go—crying because, really, Darren was here, lying with him in the not-quite-wide-enough expanses of his bed, and the stupid cowardly stupid bastard that had stolen his phone hadn’t done it. Hadn’t…hadn’t…
“I’m all right,” Darren murmured, soft and low, like he could read Jayden’s mind, and so sure of what to say. So certain…
“I love you,” Jayden croaked, scrubbing the tears away with the heel of his hand. “I fucking love you, you know that? I thought you were going to die and I never said I love you.”
“You kind of did.”
“When?” Jayden challenged.
“Loads of times. Texts and things,” Darren said. “And you once said you were a little bit in love with me. I figure if you’re still here after all this shit, it’s more than a little bit.”
Jayden smiled tearfully, stroking his fingers in absent patterns over Darren’s shoulder. “Definitely more than a little bit,” he breathed.
“And maybe I love you a little bit, too.”
“Just a little bit?”
“Let’s not get carried away here.”
Jayden laughed wetly, kissing the damp T-shirt under his cheek and twining their fingers together again. “One day, you’ll talk about your feelings.”
“I do,” Darren protested. “Just not the sappy ones. I’m not a romance novel.”
“Pity.” Jayden dared to pinch him, and Darren squirmed away with a breathless laugh that was three parts humour, one part discomfort. “I do, you know. I mean it. Darren, I mean it, I love you.”
Darren stroked his fingers through Jayden’s hair, disturbing the stiff spray, and for once, his face was completely open.
“I know…I know that this might not last, because we’re at school and we’re sixteen and we’re both going to go off to uni one day, but…I love you. Right now, I love you, I love you more than anything, and…you know, I just felt so stupid when you were in the hospital, because…I mean, I nearly broke up with you when you told me about the depression. I meant to, you just looked so beautiful in Milzani’s that I couldn’t, but I meant to, and then…”
“I don’t blame you,” Darren murmured lowly.
“I do,” Jayden whispered. “Because when you woke up and smiled at me, it was…I’d go through hell and back for you. I wanted to hurt the guy who did that to you, really hurt him, you know? And I love you. I do. I really, really do.”
Darren tilted his head, dropping a small, fleeting kiss to the edges of Jayden’s lips. “I love you too,” he murmured, like a secret, and Jayden cut off the flow of words with a smile and a returning press of lips.
“Love you,” he repeated, then took a deep breath and scrubbed the last of the tears away. He’d said it. Darren knew, he’d said it, and it was going to be okay. They were going to be okay. “Are you…did they give you any more medication?”
“Finish off the antibiotics. Painkillers if it gets too bad.”
“Do you have them with you?”
“Why?”
“I kind of want to talk you into staying the night.”
“Not sure Scott’s going to be up for that,” Darren murmured. “We can try later, if you want.”
Downstairs, there was the scrape of metal, and then the front door slammed. “Mum’s home,” Jayden said, pressing another kiss to the corner of Darren’s mouth. “Stay here. Go to sleep if you want, I’ll be right back. Um, you want anything?”
“I’d kill for a glass of some real, actual, legit orange juice,” Darren admitted.
“The kind with bits?”
“God yes.”
Jayden grinned and kissed his forehead. “Coming right up.”
He donned a T-shirt and pulled the door to behind him. He wasn’t stupid; Darren had been flagging since school ended, and he’d probably be asleep by the time Jayden went back upstairs. And it was the best thing for him. Maybe he could persuade Scott to leave him here if Darren was already asleep. There was no way he could be carried with his hip still hurting like it was. (Plus, of course, Jayden was pretty sure that lack of a height difference between Darren and his brother would make it bloody difficult for Scott to carry him in the first place.)
Mum was in the kitchen by the time Jayden stole downstairs. She jumped when he padded into the room, whirling on him with a teaspoon, and thankfully managed to arrest the movement before…well, hitting him with a teaspoon.
“Jayden!” she cried. “I thought…I thought you’d be up at the hospital, darling.”
“Darren got released this morning,” Jayden said. “He’s upstairs.”
“He’s upstairs?” Mum said. “But…darling, he should be at home. Resting.”
“He’s resting here,” Jayden said. “He came to school to meet me. His brother brought him in the car!” he added hastily. “And then it was either I went back to his or he came here, and his parents are still kind of uncomfortable with me, so he came here.”
Mum mellowed. He’d known she would. She hadn’t stopped pulling faces whenever he mentioned Darren’s family since…well. Since. “Well,” she said. “You will call them, if he decides to spend the night. And I’ll set up the camp-bed in your room, because you are not sleeping in the same bed, darling, not until he’s better. Is he still taking any drugs? And what can he eat? He’ll have to have something for dinner, darling.”
“I can call Scott and check,” Jayden offered. “I think Darren’s going to sleep for a bit first, though. He was…pretty wiped out.”
She let him go to pour out the requested glass of orange juice, and followed him back upstairs, pausing in the doorway of his bedroom while Jayden put the glass on his bedside table. Darren was completely gone, not stirring an inch when Jayden dragged the sheets higher over his shoulders, and he turned back around to Mum wearing a teary expression.
“Mum?”
“Oh, come here,” she said and held out her arms. Jayden hesitated before walking into the hug, hooking his chin over her shoulder. Without her heels, she felt surprisingly short, and her hair tickled his face in a floaty sort of way. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” she murmured, hugging him tightly. “You’ve dealt so well with all of this, and…You know, you’re still my sweet little boy, but you’ve become such a good young man, and…I’m just very proud of you, Jayden.”
Jayden swallowed against the lump in his throat and ducked his head to prop his cheek on her shoulder. “Love you too, Mum,” he mumbled. Hopefully, Darren was way, way under, or Jayden would hear about this for the next month. Or year.
“Right.” She let him go and stepped back. “You call his brother—Scott, was it? You call Scott about any dietary needs, and get him to bring any medication round if it’s needed, and I’ll start dinner about six. No funny business up here.”
“Yeah, right, because Darren’s so up to it, Mum.”
“Cheeky,” she scolded, but shut the door on them for the first time.
Chapter 34
It arrived in the middle of June.
It was a Monday. Jayden had finished his final exams; Darren had reorganised his own, joining the resits at the end of the summer offered by the exam boards, and they had fallen into a pattern of Darren coming over to sit in the Phillips kitchen to study, and Jayden sitting with him and helping when he could, or working his hand and arm through the physiotherapy exercises when he couldn’t.
That Monday, he had been squeezing their interlaced fingers around the rubber ball that Tracy, the physiotherapist, had given Darren in his very first session. Darren’s grip was already miles better, but it wasn’t the recovery that made Jayden work their hands through the exercises with a smile. It was…it was the simplicity of it, sitting here with his boyfriend, and really, being ignored. Darren was focused on his trigonometry. He ignored Jayden’s work, and it was so easy and so trusting, the way he just let Jayden play with his hand, let him put those big, graceful fingers through their motions…
He was here, and he was with Jayden, and Jayden was so engrossed in this perfect, quiet bubble that had seemed so impossible only six months ago, that he never heard Dad coming.
“All right, lads?” He dropped the post onto the table. “Studying again?”
“Yep,” Jayden said. Darren simply nodded.
“What is it this time?”
“Trigonometry,” Darren offered.
Dad snorted. “Never could get none of that fancy maths. You enjoy it?”
“Yes, sir,” Darren said.
“Sir,” Dad said, snorting again, but he looked faintly pleased, and disappeared out the door again with a spring in his step. He had taken the day off, ostensibly to work on the car, but Jayden suspected it was just to hear Darren call him sir and feel important.
Darren pulled his hand away to use the compasses. The motion was still stiff, and the lift of his wrist jerky, but it was stronger than it had been even last week, and Jayden took the time to sift through the post rather than help him. He was getting better. He still couldn’t raise his arm above collarbone-height, and Tracy said he probably never would, but…he was getting better. His grip was getting stronger, his flexibility was almost back, and it didn’t hurt him like it used to. Even if he never regained full use of the shoulder, his hand and lower arm were much better. His writing was nearly legible again. From either hand.
Then Jayden found the letter, and he stopped.
“Oh, God.”
“What?” Darren mumbled.
“I…oh God, Darren, this is it.”
“What’s what?” Darren said, not looking up, so Jayden shoved the thin white envelope, embossed with a dark blue St. John’s stamp, under his nose. “Ah.”
“Yes.”
“So,” Darren dropped his pen and squeezed the rubber ball, “you going to open it?”
Jayden removed the ball and wrapped his hand into Darren’s. “I don’t know.”
He felt sick, all of a sudden. With the attack and the hospital and Darren being so ill and then Darren being so much better and then Tracy and the physio…
It had slipped his mind. It had honestly slipped his mind, paling into insignificance
behind the terror of nearly losing Darren, and then the relief when he hadn’t. It had all seemed so trivial.
It didn’t feel trivial now.
“Oh, God, I don’t want to open it,” Jayden whispered, tracing his fingers over the seal. What if they’d rejected him? What if he’d failed?
…What if he’d passed?
“You’re going to have to eventually,” Darren said evenly.
Jayden squeezed his hand. It was returned almost as powerfully. “What if…”
“If,” Darren interrupted, “they say no, then there’s always next year. You are going to get good grades wherever you do your A-levels, and your writing for Stars is going to get you into a good university with those grades.”
“But St. John’s…I need St. John’s for Cambridge.”
“But you don’t need St. John’s for a good university. It just helps if you want Cambridge,” Darren insisted. “And if they say yes, then you’ve got that chance and you are going to make the best of it because I know you.”
“What do you know?” Jayden whispered.
“I know you’re ridiculously dedicated, and you’ll stop at nothing to get—and keep—what you want,” Darren said quietly, and Jayden flushed lightly, getting the distinct feeling that Darren wasn’t talking about the scholarship.
“I’m nervous,” he admitted.
“You have no reason to be,” Darren said and bounced the rubber ball off his forehead. “Whatever happens, you’re going to be one of those disgustingly successful graduates with a column in a national newspaper and a boyfriend working in the city in ten years.”
“Does the boyfriend have dark, curly hair and amazing green eyes?” Jayden asked, leaning over to drop his head onto Darren’s shoulder and stroke his hand up the inside of his arm. It was nice to be able to do it without the flinch and hiss of pain of the last several weeks.
“Just open your bloody letter,” Darren said, and Jayden laughed, kissing his neck before sitting up and turning it over in his hands. It was thin. Was thin a good thing? “Jayden, seriously. Open it, or I will lose interest and go back to my paper.”
Vivaldi in the Dark Page 29