by Tilly Delane
“You’re awake,” I whisper, hopefully.
“Hmmm,” he answers sleepily, his tongue still toying with my fingers.
I gently extract them from his mouth and run the pad of my thumb along the bridge of his nose.
“Hmm, that’s nice,” he mutters.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did.”
“Funny.”
“What’s your question? And can I go back to sleep if I answer correctly?”
“Which do you prefer to be called, George or Diego?”
His eyes flutter open at that and immediately scrunch up in thought.
“I dunno. George is my father’s name and he’s a cunt. But it’s also what Silas and Sheena call me, so that makes up for it. Diego means ‘supplanter’. My mum gave me that name, because my dad wouldn’t let her call me Diablo.”
“Your mother wanted to name you devil?”
He shuts his eyes on a nod.
“Yup.”
“Why?!?”
He lifts his hand up and cups the back of my neck to draw me down to him, until his mouth lands just below my jugular and he starts nibbling on the skin below my pulse.
“Because, baby girl, before I feasted on beautiful Polish women, I ate my twin.”
I push against his restraint to look back down at him with raised eyebrows.
“Well, that’s kind of gross,” I say, laughing, and let my eyes roam over his body with interest. “So you got like a third eye or an extra pinkie somewhere? Isn’t that what normally happens when twins merge in the mother’s belly?”
The expression in his eyes changes to disbelief.
“What?”
“Genetic chimerism it’s called, right? Is that why you have two names? You’re really two people?” I tease him. “Like in King’s The Dark Half?”
I can tell I’ve lost him, and then remember too late that he doesn’t read.
He frowns and I can tell he’s getting angry.
Feeling insecure will do that to people.
Ooops.
I hop on top of him, cradle his head in my hands and lower my face to his.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and try to kiss him, but he holds me off.
“It’s not funny,” he says sternly. “My mother hates me because there were supposed to be two of us, but she only got one. And no, I am not a chimera. I didn’t eat my twin, really. That’s just what she claims. According to my nan, she had a bog-standard miscarriage. Of one. But she’s spent her life convincing herself it was the wrong one and it was my fault.”
He searches my eyes, trying to convey how deeply that hurts, and my heart bleeds for the boy I see. The boy that wasn’t good enough. Whose mother rejected him because her body couldn’t hold on to two lives. I stroke his forehead and I feel his anger dissipate a little.
“Then your mother is stupid,” I tell him softly. “She should have been grateful that she managed to keep at least one of you. I’m grateful she managed to hang on to you.”
I try again to kiss him, and this time he lets me.
Relief washes over me as soon as his lips meet mine, and I make a mental note not to be so flippant around him anymore.
What starts as an apologetic, gentle meeting of mouths soon turns heated and after a few minutes, he rolls me onto my back. He withdraws and braces his arms beside my head.
“What do you want to call me?” he asks, and the return to the original question tells me we’re good. I reach up to run my fingers through his beard.
“Diego,” I say with conviction.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because your mother might have given you that name out of, what is the word, spite, but you made him. You built him. He’s yours.”
My words spark a fire in his eyes I haven’t seen before.
He growls before his mouth crashes down on mine, and seconds later he is buried inside me again.
I’ve never been appreciation-fucked before but, boy, is it good.
I don’t think I will ever get enough of the feel of this man.
Diego
The second time we wake it is afternoon and we’re surrounded by a trio of amused faces. Silas, Grace and Sheena clearly all came back on the same train and are standing in a semicircle around the bed, looking at our tangled bodies.
The grins on their faces tell me that they’re having an absolute field day with this.
As soon as I realise what exactly it is they are staring at, I draw the blanket up to cover Kalina’s naked butt ─ and my junk. Kalina is lying face down across my chest, so she was mostly covered, but they got a good eyeful of my best bit.
My very happy best bit.
Sheena laughs.
“Too late, boy. But don’t worry, ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before.” She pauses before she delivers her punchline. “But last time, it was a lot smaller.”
She turns towards the door to the tune of Silas groaning.
“Stop making it weird, Mum.”
She throws him a coquettish look over her shoulder.
“Nothing weird about this, baby. Like everybody else in this house, I’ve been rooting for those two to shack up for months. If, as a side benefit, I get a glimpse of a damn fine penis on a damn fine man, that I didn’t give birth to, I’m not complaining.”
“Muuum!” he wails, while Grace doubles over and generally looks like she is pissing herself with silent laughter.
She pulls her phone out of her back pocket. Presumably to take a snap.
“I’m going to go make some tea if anyone wants some,” Sheena says as she moves out of the room and down the hallway. “I’ll be in the kitchen, burning toast.”
While this exchange is going on, Kalina starts burrowing deeper into my left pec. I can feel from the sudden heat on my skin that her face is flaming.
“Guys,” I plead with Grace and Silas. “Come on, give the lady some privacy.”
Kalina giggles against my nipple and says something of which I only understand a muffled ‘no lady’.
Silas doesn’t move an inch but just looks at us, kind of critically but also pleased.
“You took her for breakfast?”
I nod.
“And I wanted to take her for dinner,” I say defensively. “But she bought me Thai instead.”
For some inexplicable reason, that makes him happy, and I get treated to one of Silas’ rare real smiles.
“Cool,” he says.
With my attention on him, I hadn’t noticed that Grace wasn’t taking a picture at all.
She is video calling someone.
“Hey,” a woman’s voice on the other side of the screen answers. “What’s up?”
It’s an American’s voice.
“You’re calling Raven?” I ask her indignantly.
Raven is Rowan’s brand-new American girlfriend ─ I can’t decide if I’m bucking a trend here by deviating from bagging a Yank or hopping on the bandwagon with another foreigner. Raven and Rowan are currently somewhere near Phoenix in deepest, darkest Arizona. They went there to help Raven’s old foster parents out in their group home, after her foster dad broke his ankle.
Grace grins at me and shrugs unapologetically.
“Only ‘cause I know Rowan doesn’t pick up if you try to video chat,” she says to me over the top of the phone then gazes back to Raven on her screen. “Is Rowan with you?”
“Sure thing. Is everything okay?”
I can hear the worry in Raven’s voice. She only stayed with Sheena, Silas and Grace for about a week after Rowan brought himself a nurse back from rehab, but that’s the Sheena and Silas effect. Those two fucking grow on you like a cancer in five seconds flat.
“Yeah, all fine,” Grace reassures her. “Just need to show him something.”
Before I can cotton on to what’s coming next, the person on the other side has clearly changed, because Grace turns the camera on Kalina and me and I catch a glimpse of a shirtless, sweating Rowan, looking confused.
“You owe me a hundred bucks, Ro,” Grace shouts as she pans over me and my increasingly giggling girl.
“Why? Who is that girl?” Rowan asks.
Kalina pulls the blanket tighter around her, so her tits are covered when she lifts herself off my chest and turns to the camera to give Rowan a little wave.
“Hi, big guy, how are you?”
I feel a little pinch of jealousy when she says that. Compared to Silas, I’m lean, compared to Rowan, I’m fucking scrawny. The guy is like a fucking oak tree or something. As if she can feel my hurt, Kalina turns away from the phone to kiss my chest, right above my heart.
“You bleached your hair, pixie-girl,” Rowan says. “You look weird.”
On the little screen, Rowan looks from her to me, and then his dark eyes scrunch up.
“Is that my bed, Benson? You better clean that shit up properly. I don’t wanna come home to sleep on your spunk.”
Before I can retort, Silas has suddenly grabbed Grace’s phone, in a move so fast we are all reminded of why his fighter name is The Snake. He plonks himself down on the chair by the desk with his shoulder to us, to talk to his brother.
“You’re coming home?” he asks hopefully, and in a matter of only two minutes, a second stab of jealousy goes through my gut.
“Yeah. We’ve been talking about it. I’m tired of deserts and cactuses, or is it cacti? Whatever too many of those fuckers are called,” Rowan answers, his baritone sounding as tired as he claims to be. “I want to see some green. I want to breathe without getting a lungful of dust. I want shorter vowels. I’m homesick already. I know it’s pathetic, but I am. And Raven feels like she only just got to meet you lot. I think she misses Grace’s cocktails and your cooking.”
We all grin at that. While Grace sits down at the bottom end of our bed to carry on listening in to what Rowan is saying, I go fishing for my briefs. I shuffle them on awkwardly under what little cover Kalina has left me with as Rowan continues.
“Her dad is much better and, actually, one of their other grown-up foster kids is coming home to help in a few days, so it’s not like we’d be leaving them in the lurch. We just have to convince Halosan that it’s safe for Raven to go back to England now, rather than wait for Rothman’s trial. But honestly, I don’t think there is any direct danger from the Rothman family or their company. I don’t know if you’ve been following this, but it looks like they’ve all turned against each other in a bid to come out individually unscathed. Charming bunch they are. And Frank is their favourite sacrificial lamb. He deserves it, that fucker.”
I hear in the tone of Rowan’s voice that he’d still happily break Frank Rothman’s neck, given half a chance. And I’m pretty sure it’s more to do with the fact that the therapist tried to fuck Raven without her consent than with the fact that Rothman was personally responsible for the death of one of Rowan’s rehab cohorts, because Rothman was putting clients on an unsanctioned drugs trial for his family’s company. While the guy who died wasn’t exactly Rowan’s favourite buddy, Rowan is fiercely protective of the little black-haired rockabilly punk, who happened to be his allocated nurse at the Halosan clinic in Dorset where it all happened. He’s very much a ‘you touch her, you die’ kind of guy.
I look at the girl next to me, and I know how he feels. I’m the least brave of the three of us. I train and I will spar with Silas, but I’ve never put myself in the ring. Call me a pussy, but I don’t like getting hurt. They used to nickname me The Roadrunner because I’d punch and leg it out of the danger zone. But if anyone threatened Kalina, I wouldn’t care how much bigger they were. I’d stand my ground and take every blow coming my way, fighting to the death for her. It’s a weirdly empowering feeling and it makes me gather her to me and plant a noisy kiss on the top of her head.
“So get that arsehole out of my bed. I’ll need it,” Rowan says to Silas by way of ringing off, but suddenly I remember something, and I make a gesture to Silas to stop him from hanging up.
Silas frowns at me then back at the screen.
“Hang on, the arsehole wants a word, I think.”
He gets up and brings me the phone. Because it’s Grace’s, it’s got a cutesy case with glitter and shit and for a second, it hits me that this is the fucking perfect opportunity to have this chat. I doubt anyone’s tapping into Grace’s and Raven’s phones yet.
“Hang on a sec,” I tell Rowan before I look around the room.
I’m torn between sending the girls out, which would come across as massively chauvinistic and sending all of them out, which would make Silas suspicious that I’m going to get his brother into trouble. Wouldn’t be the first time. Grace catches my eye, throws up her hands and gets up off the bed.
“I don’t wanna know,” she states. “Just don’t get my man in trouble, Benson, and we’re good.”
Her delivery is first class threatening. She’s clearly been hanging with Sheena too long.
On the upside, she leaves on her own accord, pulling Silas down for a quick, possessive kiss on her way out, to remind him to stay good. I don’t blame her. She thought she’d seen him die once this year already. That was plenty enough for her. And she’s a good girl.
“I do want to know,” Kalina says resolutely, and sits up cross-legged, wrapping the whole of the blanket around her.
I hold her gaze for a second.
She is challenging me.
Either I let her in, completely, or we’re over before we’ve begun.
“Diego,” she says, and the way she stretches the word tells me everything. “I do want to know.”
“Is there something specific I’m waiting for here?” Rowan asks, mildly irritated. “Or were you just finding it hard to say goodbye, lover?”
I look over to Silas and find the same question in his eyes, so I clear my throat and decide to trust. It’s not like I’m making Kalina an accessory to a crime. Yet.
“I wanted to ask you about something. Mid-May, when you were staying with us at the mansion, Goran says he took you to a dog-fighting thing and you ended up beating the guy who ran it to within an inch of his life.”
“That may or may not have occurred. Though if something like that did occur, then I’d say that is a vastly exaggerated statement. I’d say that the hypothetical cunt we’re talking about could have got off worse, since last I heard, he didn’t have any permanent damage. I’d also say that that’s a crying shame.”
He’s walking while he’s talking, and I realise that he’s moving into a landscape of varying shades of brown, away from any other people. Away from Raven. He stops somewhere and sits down on a rock.
“Why? Friend of yours?” he asks, and I realise he still has issues making the split in his head between me and my father.
It’s a recurring issue people have, and it fucks me right off.
“Don’t be a cunt. You know I’m not into that shit. It’s just fucking wrong.”
He nods, and I can see he believes me.
“So why the question?”
“Well, I was thinking. Occurs to me that around the same time that incident may or may not have occurred, Cormac O’Brien spent a few days in hospital because someone beat him up, you see. There aren’t a lot of people big enough to put Cormac in A&E, and there aren’t many people who Goran is afraid enough of not to snitch on. Just saying.”
On screen, I can only see Rowan’s face and shoulders, covered in tattoos that are already baking in the Arizona mid-morning sun, but from the jerky movements off camera, I can tell he is angrily kicking at the dirt. We might have been fighting over the same guy’s top spot for years and we might not be best mates, but when it comes to animal cruelty, Rowan and I have an accord.
He sighs and looks back into the camera.
“Okay, I didn’t get to see an actual fight. Otherwise, I would have torched the fucking place. Goran took me to Cormac’s house ─ if you wanna call it that ─ because, I don’t know, I think he wanted to buddy up or something. I had no idea where we were going
, or what for, or to whom. I mean, I’d only just got back into town after how many years? When I left Brighton, Cormac was still a kid. Just one of Cecil’s thousand and one bastards, you know. I had no idea. But when we got there, Cormac was all over me. Needy, like. I think he is missing Callum. I mean, they were always together when we were kids, remember? Like Laurel and Hardy. Well, if Laurel was a creepy cunt and Hardy was a giant idiot. I think it hit him hard when Callum got sent down. And I got the feeling he doesn’t get many visitors out there, you know. Like, even his father doesn’t really want to touch him with a bargepole ‘cause he’s so fucking dumb. I got the feeling Cecil set him up out there in the sticks, so he isn’t constantly reminded of the fact that that numbskull originated in his balls. Anyway, for whatever reason, Cormac was super happy to see me and then he showed me his kennels and started insisting that he wanted to show me two of his dogs fight each other. I kept trying to tell him I didn’t want any part of it, but he just didn’t listen. The guy seriously has only one brain cell. So in the end, I made him listen with my fists. I called a cab and left Goran there to pick up the pieces. I reported Cormac to the RSPCA as soon as somebody answered their fucking phone the next day, but they did fuck all. When I chased it up, they said they’d sent officers to the property, but there hadn’t been any dogs there. I’m guessing Goran or Cecil or somebody went and cleared them out that night. I’m gonna ask you again now, why are we talking about this?”
“Callum’s out,” I answer, and Silas who was sitting at the desk, listening with his head down, looks up at me.
He knows how much I hate Callum.
He knows why.
Nuts is buried in the back garden of this very house.
Back when Cecil and Callum and Dad had got tired of laughing at me and left me behind with the body of my furry friend, I gathered up what was left of him, each piece I could find, wrapped him in my shirt and I brought him here. We weren’t even that close at the time. Silas had moved from the old neighbourhood to Shoreham and got a brother to replace me. I had moved from the old neighbourhood to Woodland Drive and was going up in the world. But it never crossed my mind to take Nuts’ body anywhere else. I didn’t even think about it, just followed my homing beacon and came to the only person I trusted. Thankfully, Rowan wasn’t in that day. I think he was training. But Silas was here. He helped me bury the cat, held me while I cried my eyes out, never mentioned it again, and a month later spent his entire pocket money on a hazelnut tree to plant on top. That’s Silas.