25. Chapter 25

25

T hey led Alfie out a few hours later.

Not through the front of the court, but the back, where a white van was waiting.

He shivered with sweat and nerves, and his face felt tight from dried tears.

He didn't speak.

Even when the officers asked him questions, he kept his lips pressed in a line.

His rumpled shirt flapped in the wind. His tie and belt were quickly removed by one of the police officers so he couldn't try to kill himself.

He hadn't thought of that in the holding cell.

Alfie ducked his head at the flashing lights of the press and stared at the heels of the man leading him out.

He barely registered the reporters when he'd gone in hours before, numb to the singe of camera flashes and the swirling barrage of noise.

On the way out, the constant piercing light irritated his raw red eyes, and the shouts from the journalists were a fierce wind flicking up the sea.

They were angry, and as he stood there, he realised they reminded him of a storm.

The crash and the flash assaulted his senses.

It was a storm of his own making, and it wanted to punish him, shipwreck him and never allow him to surface again.

He already felt like he'd drowned.

A prison escort officer opened the door of the van and beckoned Alfie inside. He stepped up, turned around and settled on the seat inside a small cubicle.

Then the door was slammed to conceal him.

He was spared the skull-splinting white light from the cameras, but he could still hear the roar and pulse of the angry public.

The van vibrated into life, and they pulled slowly away from the court.

Fists struck the side of the vehicle, people were rocking it, and Alfie heard the curses from the officers onboard.

He stared down at his cuffed hands, then closed his eyes. The slaps and shouts faded. The van bounced and swayed as it began its journey to the prison. Although Larkwood was the closest to both his home address and the court, they'd opted to send him to one farther away. He didn't want to see his colleagues' looks of disappointment and disgust, and the judge was unconvinced they would treat him the same as everyone else.

Blackhall was where he was heading, a long drive across the country to drag out the inevitable. He closed his eyes, tried to zone out.

It felt like hours passed.

The van took a turn, and Alfie's shoulder hit one side of the cubicle, then the other side. He was tossed around in the small space, gritting his teeth as pain flared in both of his shoulders.

A screw who slept with a prisoner. He wasn't going to get out of the prison system unscarred, mentally by the prison officers and physically by the prisoners.

The van hit a bump, and Alfie's arse jumped off the seat. He grimaced at the dull throb of pain at his hip and scrunched his eyes tighter. Suddenly, his shoulder and hip both struck the side of the cabin and knocked the air from his chest. He grunted and opened his eyes once he realised the van had stopped.

It didn't seem like a long enough journey, and he listened intently to the noises outside the van. There was shouting and thumps to the van, slams of doors, and then suddenly the one in front of him was wrenched open. A masked figure reached inside, and he resisted as much as he could, but his cuffed hands were grabbed and pulled. The only parts visible on the figure were his dark-brown eyes and his tattooed hands.

He was a man; Alfie could tell by his size and his roughened hands.

"What…what are you doing?" Alfie yelped.

The man dragged him from the van and hurried him across the road. Alfie tripped but managed to stay on his feet.

"Inside," the man said, flicking his chin out at the trunk of a car.

Alfie shook his head and looked left and right up the road, but there were no cars about, other than the one he was shoved towards. The man struck the trunk with his fist, and Alfie turned back to him with wide eyes.

"I'm not getting in there."

He tried to pull free, scrapped his heels on the road in his desire to escape, but the man was strong and yanked painfully on his cuffs. The trunk of the car popped open, and he was bundled inside.

Alfie tried to get back out, but the lid came down fast and he had to duck to avoid it.

"Who are you?"

There was no answer.

He curled in the foetal position and waited. He was being kidnapped by a man he had never seen before, one with crazed brown eyes and tattooed hands. The car jolted, and the engine purred. Alfie braced his bound hands against the side of the car as they took off.

More turns, more bumps in the road.

Alfie's face rubbed on the rough interior of the car, and he picked up the smell of mud and earth. He spent longer in the car than in the prison van, and when the wheels screeched, Alfie gritted his teeth as he winced. They didn't collide with anything but slowed to a stop on what sounded like gravel.

Alfie readied himself to leap up at the man and lash out with his bound hands, but when the trunk opened, it wasn't the brown eyes that greeted him but deep-blue ones.

Wrinkles formed around Nate's eyes as his lips lifted in a smile.

He laughed softly. "There's my Freshman."

Alfie's eyes widened, and his mouth fell open unflatteringly.

Nate snorted and reached inside to scoop him up. He held Alfie with ease, then lowered his feet to the ground, steadying him as Alfie swayed.

Alfie didn't trust what was in front of him, didn't know whether it was real.

"Breathe," Nate commanded.

Alfie gasped in a breath as reality settled. He ached, his eyes stung, and the wind blew against his neck.

If he could feel, then that meant Nate was real.

Nate was real.

Nate had left him.

Alfie didn't bother taking in his surroundings. He slammed his cuffed hands into Nate's nose with all the strength he possessed. It wasn't much, but it did the job. Nate howled, clutching his face, and blood leaked through his fingers.

Arms wrapped around Alfie and tugged him away. The masked man with the brown eyes tightened his grip until Alfie could barely breathe, then there was someone else.

A woman, who went to Nate's aid, placing her hand on his back as he stooped forward.

Alfie couldn't hear what they were saying. All he could hear was blood rushing in his ears. His feet were dragged over gravel, and he glanced around. The place he'd been driven to looked like a farm, but an unused one, with a barn with a caved-in roof and a house riddled with ivy.

Nate shrugged off the woman's concern and marched towards Alfie.

Alfie's attention snapped back to him, but he didn't feel guilty. He was glad Nate's eyes watered, and his nose ran with blood.

"You want me to knock him out?" the man with the tattoos asked.

Nate shook his head. "No, let him go."

"But he just—"

"I said let him go!" Nate heaved.

The coil around Alfie's chest vanished, and he gulped at the air, awkwardly rubbing his sore ribs with his elbow.

"Get the van ready," Nate snapped.

He studied Alfie and bunched his eyebrows together. He held his hands up in surrender; blood ran from his palms. "I deserved that."

"You le—left me," Alfie gasped, hating the hitch in his voice but unable to help it. "You left me."

Nate closed his eyes. "I had to."

"You said you would take care of me, and you… I shouldn't… I shouldn't have let you in. I shouldn't have believed you."

"I couldn't fix you. You would've died if I took you with me."

"Your escape plan, it almost killed me."

"You were never supposed to be in that car."

"You abandoned me." Alfie wiped the tears on his cheeks with his cuffed hands. "I got arrested. They sentenced me to three years."

Nate opened his eyes. They'd lost their intensity with the red more dominant on his chin and T-shirt, but they sought a connection with Alfie and he found he couldn't look away. "That wasn't supposed to be how it went."

Alfie shook his head and blinked back the sting in his eyes. "Then tell me."

"I would've escaped, then sent you a message. Given you the option of joining me, but if you decided to stay at Larkwood, carry on working as a prison officer, I would've let you."

"No."

"What do you mean no?"

"I wanted you to want me."

"I did. I do."

"I didn't want the option of not being with you."

Nate shook his head. "It would've been selfish of me to have assumed you—"

"Then I want you to be selfish. You…you took me, and then you dumped me."

"You weren't supposed to get hurt, and I couldn't leave you in the car like that. I couldn't see you like that. I couldn't ignore you calling out for me, so I took you."

Alfie's lip quivered, and he sank his teeth in to stop it. Nate winced on his behalf and took a step forward, but Alfie waved him back.

"You. Dumped. Me."

Nate scrunched his face. "Only a doctor could help you, not me, and I thought after a few weeks, a month maybe, I'd be able to get a message to you, but then you were arrested, and I knew they'd be monitoring your house. I didn't leave anything in my cell that linked us together. I swear it."

Alfie dropped his gaze and nodded at the ground. "I kept the sketch, and the post-its, and voicemails."

"You shouldn't have done that—"

"I know that! But they made me feel cared for, and I didn't want to destroy them, permanently delete them from my life, and even if I had been smarter and got rid of it all, they still captured me going into your cell on CCTV."

"What?"

"They'd installed new cameras. And now, because of them, I've lost everything. My home, my possessions, my job, my best friend. My future is gone."

"It isn't.

"It is Nate." He held up his cuffed hands. "I'm a prisoner."

"I said I'd take care of you, and I meant it. Leaving you like that on the road, injured, and reaching for me, it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I hated myself, and I've been waiting for an opportunity to get you back."

"You used your nana's death to escape?"

Nate nodded. "I did. So we'd have a future, so I'd be able to look after you, and you could have the luxury of dreaming. I let you down." He took a step nearer. "But I won't again."

"How could this ever work?" Alfie asked, glancing around. "We'll both be wanted criminals."

Nate smiled. "It'll work." He gestured to the man and woman standing near the barn. "They're going to get us out of here. Get us abroad."

"Then what?"

Nate's smile climbed higher. "You don't need to worry about that. I've got it all sorted. All you've got to do is come with me."

"Is it true?" Alfie looked away from Nate's eyes. "Is the reason you killed them true?"

"Yes."

Alfie shut his eyes. He'd never know for certain, but his heart wanted to believe.

The gravel crunched under Nate's shoes as he approached. His presence made Alfie shiver. He opened his eyes and stared into Nate's blue ones. For the first time, Nate's lacked confidence, and there was no predatory expression creasing his eyes and lifting his lips in that smug smile.

"Even if it was a lie…" Alfie began.

"It's not," Nate insisted.

"Even if it was… I'm too far gone on you."

Nate's smile was blinding. "I know."

"I hate you," Alfie whispered with no heat.

Nate shook his head. "No, you don't."

Those were the words he'd been desperate to hear, and his skin tingled. The suffocating feeling in his chest eased.

Alfie inhaled a deep breath, then took his time letting it go.

"I want to hate you."

The numbness he protected himself with dispersed, and he stumbled, falling forward on weak knees.

Nate caught him.

"Now that," Nate murmured, "I do believe, but you don't, you won't, you can't."

Alfie closed his eyes at the feel of soft fingers on his face. Nate lifted his chin, and the ghost of his breath tickled Alfie's lips. His heart fluttered back to life after lying dormant for months, and his head grew dizzy in his need for Nate.

"Was I…" Alfie's voice trailed off.

"Were you?"

Alfie's heart hurt. "A back-up plan? If you wouldn't have got out the way you did, would you have used me?"

"I'd never have used you like that."

"I want to believe you—"

"You can. It's the truth. I escaped for you."

"I hate you," Alfie repeated from before, "but I want you more."

Nate snorted, then tipped Alfie back in his arms. He touched his blood-coated lips to Alfie's in a soft press, then pulled away to rest their foreheads together.

Alfie closed his eyes and breathed hard through his nose, past the smell of blood, to Nate.

The warm, protective scent of Nate.

He leaned back to wipe his cuffed hands beneath Nate's nose, cleaning as much of the blood as he could away before lifting onto his tiptoes.

Alfie kissed past the taste of blood, until the intoxicating cocktail of Nate made him buzz. Their tongues brushed, and Alfie's surrendering moan vibrated between them. He turned his head, and Nate latched his lips on to Alfie's neck, kissing and sucking.

Nate used his teeth. Alfie quivered at the gentle pinch. Then sighed at the soothing press of Nate's tongue against the sting.

They broke apart at the sound of a horn, and Nate glanced at the waiting van.

"We've got to go."

Alfie lifted his cuffed hands. "Can you remove these?"

Nate hummed. "I will. Soon…"

Alfie lifted his bound hands over Nate's head and hooked them around his neck.

"Trust me, Freshman. I'm going to take care of you," Nate murmured. "I promise."

And Alfie believed him.