Chapter 31

ROWAN

I don't have a name for what fills me after talking with Ed and Pasha. Or for what empties in a gush of years-old poison in the same practice room where I first locked away my feelings. I still don't have words for what I drum out when the others leave me with only Liam left to keep watch and listen.

I'm angry, yet weak with relief at the same time.

Thankful, but furious.

I'm loud, and I should feel liberated, right? I'm also soaked through with sweat I shower off with a soldier standing guard outside my old bathroom. One who knows me well enough to ask, "Not done drumming yet, Row?"

I'm not, and it's a blast from the past to pick up where I left off while wearing clothes I last wore as a teenager. I'm in jeans and a band T-shirt when I pick up my sticks again and get back to processing.

Because that's what this is, isn't it?

Like Charles promised, I'm getting physical while mentally rewiring, or starting to at least, and Liam helps with that.

My pace slows as I tune into what relays through my headphones—Liam sits in a soundproofed studio booth, turning page after page of a workbook I once avoided. I'm grateful I brought it with me when he reaches a section that helps to make sense of why I couldn't see myself clearly for so long.

"FOG keeps people stuck in shit situations." I guess he's paraphrasing. "Fear, obligation, and guilt. Huh." He's quiet for long enough that my drumsticks find the edge of a cymbal, my agitated tings accelerating until he says, "The fear part comes from your gut. Something isn't right. You instinctively know it but can't pinpoint what feels off, and not being able to trust your own judgement is frightening." He meets my gaze through the glass. "Sound familiar?"

I bang and crash some more, then stop to say, "Yes."

He turns more pages, but I can fill in the obligation part without him paraphrasing for me. "People with power lied. Made up bullshit." Thank fuck for Pasha's eavesdropping. "They said I owed them. And I did what I was told because…"

Liam's next murmur fills a much longer silence. "There's no rush. I got all the time in the world to wait for you to figure yourself out, Row. I'm just saying it must have been a mind-fuck. Waking up with no idea how you got to bed, then have someone tell you that you'd done private stuff in public? With strangers you didn't remember and who photographed you without you knowing? Who maybe videoed you as well?"

That final threat was when I'd caved. Crumpled. Fell until I landed somewhere safe in Cornwall.

Liam neatly summarises. "That's messed up, Row. Telling you that you owed them for paying off some wanker with a camera? Didn't matter that they fabricated that shit. You had to deal with not being sure you'd even said yes."

"I wouldn't have." I clutch my sticks like Teo has so often. "I wasn't even out." Another surprise that made coming back here as a student impossible to deal with. Now there are posters in the common room signposting the way to all kinds of support. "I wouldn't wish that on anyone not ready for it and stuck in a school full of boys."

Liam waits for my next clash of cymbals to settle, headphones still on even while he winces. "All of that with no one to talk to?" He gestures around us. "You thought you'd burned your bridges here? That you couldn't ask for your stepdad's help during the contest?"

I nod. Shrug. Nod again. "I didn't know how. Not after wanting to leave so badly."

"And you didn't have anyone else while all that was happening?" He touches something on the workbook page he reads from. "A support network?"

"That was always music. Afterwards?" I shrug again. "My stepdad made one for me."

That's a recent realisation. Maybe I sound guilty. Liam only points at the image on my band T-shirt where a prism shows white light splitting. "You expect any of your colourful kids to deal with shit like that all on their own?" He chuffs and turns more pages while I drum my way through that question, although these beats are far less frantic.

All I know is that guilt kept me in check, and that's what I can't let Cameron struggle with later when he trades places with Liam, although Cameron faces his regret head-on.

"Sorry I called you a tosser."

It's surprisingly easy to smile at the photo he holds against the glass. There I am, smiling back and untouched by dart holes, which is why he's sorry.

"I could have said right away that they never aimed their darts at you."

All the contestants in this photo are undamaged. Ed and Pasha only obliterated the people who pulled all of our strings, and getting to see this evidence of a fight response in action? It's what I need to see to know this isn't over between me and people who have zero power over me now.

"I'll fight back until they're sorry."

I say that to an empty practice room, then I fight some more for Teo when we're alone together and he takes a turn with the sound booth headphones. I start by pointing a stick at the electronic drum kit I've set up for him complete with a loop pedal. "Teo, before we switch sides, can I quickly check something?"

"About the equipment?" He surveys this studio setup, running a fingertip along the monitors Glynn Harber is missing, along midis and equalisers my stepdad gave me my own key to this room to access.

"No." I swallow, but I'm done with doubting my instincts. "I want to check something about you."

"Me?" Here he goes, clutching his drumstick defences, ones he'll never need against me. I tell him why, right here where my own musical solution to feeling bad turned into a problem too big for me to handle.

"Nothing used to matter but making my audition perfect. I practised every spare second. That's how you feel now, right? Nothing else matters but getting your audition perfect for this one uni application?"

His nod is wary and so familiar that I verbally backtrack through my timeline. "I couldn't see my drivers then, but I can now. Maybe ask yourself if there's anything else driving you, because if this particular course feels like your only option, I promise you it isn't. Please just think about that first."

Silence stretches until Teo finally tells me, "I have been thinking, Mr. Byrn."

"Yes?"

"Yeah. Been doing that nonstop since it all kicked off in the playground. You know, when you said this wasn't what I really wanted." His fleeting gaze is bruised and avoidant. I hate being responsible for that until he blurts, "Did you know about my sister?"

He tells me about a sports coach. About the grooming no one noticed for years. About what finding out did to his whole family, and about his own violent reaction.

"Now Leonie's training to be a doctor, so that's a happy ending, right, sir?"

His gaze rises, this time connecting with mine, and here's what Luke would call a payoff—a page turned in a mental workbook—and after everything that's happened, the trust behind his next question makes building this bridge worth it.

"So why can't I quit thinking that more bad things will happen? You know, to someone else I love if I'm not right there to stop it."

I'm not saying I have answers for him, but he's opened a door. You better believe I'll walk through it with him. "Mr. Lawson will know. Want to ask him together?"

Teo doesn't say yes.

He doesn't say no either. He takes a seat at my kit and drums forever, but that's okay.

Like Liam, I can wait until he's ready.

Some clocks never stop ticking,do they?

Luke needs to get back to Glynn Harber by evening. Liam's demolition deadline won't wait either. Not when he's already behind schedule and that deadline is a domino holding up a long line of others. At least this time I get to say goodbye on the front steps of this school instead of running away, and I can nod after my stepdad extends a hand and asks, "I'll see you again soon?"

"Very soon, Dad." I grab his hand, but not to shake it. I pull him into a hug that's so hard to end. More than his wedding ring gleams when we do part. I need to blink away blurred vision to watch his waving silhouette in a rearview mirror, only I don't travel in a minibus painted with a True Grit logo. I drive my own car with a yawning Liam beside me, following that minibus until we reach an M5 junction. That's where his hand on my thigh squeezes. "Take the next exit, Row?"

"To Devon?"

"Yeah." He's tired, but here's some true grit of his own. "If I'm gonna make up for lost time, I'll definitely need a demolition crew who know what they're doing. Who can work fast and safely."

Of course, he knows where to find one.

The drive is scenic as the sun dips lower, although I can't say I pay attention to views featuring deer and Exmoor ponies instead of Cornish granite. I'm too busy listening to Liam work through some fog of his own.

"The lads will all be at Matt's place today, catching up before the family meetup tomorrow." His voice drops. "At least, all of them will be there apart from Twin One." His silence doesn't last long. "Benji." He almost sighs a name he's mentioned before. "His twin Blake wasn't part of our brick."

"Brick?"

Liam squeezes my thigh again. "Forces lingo. It means that Blake wasn't part of our half section like Benji was. He wasn't ever stationed with us. I don't know if that was deliberate, you know, because?—"

"They were related?"

"Twins means more than being related, doesn't it?" Here's a textbook example of fear. "I ended what started in the womb for them, didn't I?" Obligation and guilt quickly follow. "Of course, I kept my distance after what I cost Blake. I had to, especially when I knew something was up the day Benji got buried under rubble. Felt it right here, Row."

I glance across to see his free hand rub his stomach. His next touch rises to his ear.

"Thought I heard something. Didn't trust my hearing, so I kept digging until Benji came back to get me. I got to walk away. He didn't."

He's quiet then.

I don't rush him. I can't after he sat through me drumming for so long. His processing is so much quieter than mine until I drive through a seaside village where I park outside a pair of cottages. He speaks up then. "Matt and I bought these together years back. I keep telling him he can have my share. Finish the rebuild without me."

One side is renovated, pretty, the other a stalled work in progress partially shrouded by scaffolding and construction netting. He studies it from the passenger seat while letting me know he read a postscript I added to the letter I gave to another soldier.

"You asked Ed how he got his crew to help build that garden after he left the army. Because you knew a soldier who was all alone and still hurting, and who needed help from someone who'd worn the same boots as him. You sent him to find me. Do you know what he told me when he did?"

I can guess. Liam paraphrases again, this time reminding me of what is printed on the final page of that workbook.

"That the stupidest prize is struggling alone when I have other options." He draws in a long, slow breath. "That having a network makes all the difference."

It has for me, twice, just along the coast from here in a school and hidden away with a farming family in Ireland. We'll have to wait to rebuild Liam's—Matt doesn't answer Liam's knock on his door.

"His van's gone. They'll be surfing. Probably won't be back until it's too dark to see the rocks." I know him well enough now to hear this as an endearment. "Bunch of muppets."

The garden we stand in is as cratered as where we shared a first date, only these half-dug trenches don't feature any poppies. They're projects Matt came up with. "To keep me coming back." It turns out there are more good memories here than sad ones. Liam shares several as he lets me inside his half of this building. "Sometimes, if we were all back from different ops at the same time, both twins would help renovate this place with us. Used to wreck my head. Two identical gingers bitching about brickwork in my kitchen? Both finishing each other's sentences while surfing every evening? I could only tell them apart by which one was more or less sunburned."

His voice thickens on a staircase where each tread creaks. I catch the hand he offers and climb them with him to stand at a bedroom window offering what he says is the best view of the sea from this building. If I squint, those distant black dots could be surfers—could be soldiers—could be someone missing a twin as much as Liam.

His hold on my hand tightens. "Once, we were all on Afghan tours at the same time. They'd sit together in the mess, chatting shit about the BritPop! contest or Love Island, both equally sunburnt to hell, and I couldn't have told you which was Blake or Benji."

He turns away from that beach view but keeps facing what he's run from.

"If Benji knew I'd kept my distance? He'd?—"

"Kill you?"

His laugh is a surprise. His eyes shining this much isn't, nor is his voice thickening again. "Yeah, he'd have killed me instead of me killing?—"

I kiss him then, pulling him down so our mouths meet, and for a big man, he surrenders easily—so easily that I can't keep this in. "You spent the last few years feeling guilty for living?"

He nods, eyelashes damply clumping, his gaze the softest silver.

"Liam, if you hadn't survived, I'd still be stuck." I don't mean on a ledge.

His question is still low and careful. "Because?"

"Because I never felt safe. Then you made me feel that, and part of me knew."

"Knew what, Row?" His arms come around me, so fucking protective, even though I'm more than ready to let out this last drop of paralysing poison.

I unbutton his shirt, pressing a palm over where his heart thuds, and wish I felt half as steady as this drumbeat. "I knew that everything I'd believed for years couldn't have happened. You were the first man to make me doubt it. The first man who made me strong enough to face it." His heart skips beats under my palm. Mine does the same against my ribs, but I still have to say this. "The first man for me, full stop."

We kiss again then, and I think he gets it—that he hears what has slowly registered since our first meeting. The only sex that has ever been real for me has been with him. From the very first time in a Porthperrin hotel bed to our last, he's the only person who ever inched my locked door open to let in all the light I needed, and I'm so relieved it was him and not a stranger.

One thing is for certain—he isn't thinking about sad times right now. He's with me. Really with me. Both of his hands cup my jaw like I'm something special and his mouth follows, kisses grazing lower to my T-shirt collar. He pulls it over my head and off to touch the same place on my chest as I did his, and he has to feel my heart thunder. His next breaths are harsher. "You didn't ever…? Not since…?" He guesses correctly. "You didn't trust anyone?"

"I couldn't, not when I couldn't trust myself either. I mean, I wasn't even out, but I did everything in that story straight out the gate? Really? Then there you were, and everything changed. So I'm—" Glad isn't the right word for his loss leading to my gain. Grateful would be better. I settle for saying, "I fell for someone I could trust," and that sums him up, doesn't it? He's always been rock solid, there for me right when I needed saving.

And when I haven't?

He's kept watch while I've saved myself with glitter and a single set of drumsticks, with wooden planks and dried-pea shakers and with so much walking and talking. Liam doesn't need my fear or obligation for any of that. Plus, he'd never ever want it, so expressing this is simple. "I fell for the right man for me, and I don't see that ever changing."

That might be too much too soon. Too heavy. It's not like I have a metric for feeling like this.

He can't think so.

Liam lifts me, making that look easy as well, and I'm learning to trust my judgement, so I go down without a fight, no need to worry when he drops me onto a bed and then covers me with his body.

Our bare chests press together. So do our foreheads after he removes my glasses, and I don't care where they end up. All I care about is him saying, "Love you so much," and I believe it. He also says, "You told me you'd done everything."

I thought I had, but now that Liam's between my spread legs, his mouth by my ear, there's no way my insides have turned liquid like this for anyone else. I'm molten when he whispers, "I would have gone easier on you. Like this."

Now I get to dissolve, melting when his hands roam in a slow reminder of how I once mapped him. He was my canvas the first time we did this, and now I understand why I couldn't stop all that touching. I'd been starved before him. Now I'm greedy.

We get naked in a hurry, and I love all of our physical contrasts. I also love his low and sexy rumble when we're chest-to-chest again. "Would have taken it all so much slower with you." He rolls me over, his cock against the crack of my bare arse, nothing between us apart from this quiet truth. "I'm a lot."

He isn't kidding. He's already made me see stars. Now I want to see more constellations, only he makes a different offer. "You could have done me first if you'd wanted." He drops kiss after kiss on my shoulders, stubble rasping like his voice does. "Do you know if you'd even…"

Like that?

I don't. Know, that is.

He doesn't miss my indecision. "We can find out together. Now if you want." He lifts up so I can roll onto my back. "Or later." We're face-to-face again. "Or never. Whatever you want, Row."

It's another no-hurry,no-worry promise. Another of his you're-safe,I've-got-you whispers, and I have to kiss him. I don't know how long we do that for. All I know is that his weight on me is amazing. Our cocks rub against each other, each slide increasingly fluid and heated, each driving thrust shoving me higher up the bed, closer to where he finds some slick, and then it's all so good that I can't keep my groans in. I breathe even faster when he shifts down the bed again to suck me.

I clutch his hair as he does that, but his fingers clench too, only into the meat of my arse, which he lifts, and I don't care if he leaves bruises on a phoenix that once meant freedom to me. Now all I want is for him to keep tilting me up, to keep mouthing at my balls, to keep licking me open. Each flick of his tongue is as electric as the first time I felt it. Each long, slow, wet stroke pulling a low tone from me. That must be a signal he has no problem hearing—his tongue stabs, making way for a finger.

If I were standing, I'd go up on tiptoes at that thick invasion, at this sudden fullness that I know is only a prelude. And whatever low-pitched tone his mouth dragged from me before pitches sharply higher. He licks again, and all I feel is heaven. I'm spreading my wings and flying, and it's all down to Liam.

He wrecks me with the kind of focus that means my cock drools. He must taste that when he sucks me again with two fingers deep inside me. His pleased rumble is intense. So is the attention he pays my prostate while his tongue finds a spot under the head of my dick that has me disintegrating.

Pleasure puts me back together and makes the room whirl. I've done that on the end of a rope with him already, so this spin doesn't scare me. Neither does his strength when he shifts me again, this time rolling us over so I'm on top of all his broadness.

"I would have let you choose, Row." He does now, leaning sideways to grab a square packet. Then he waits, those big hands light on my hips as I make my own decision. I glove him up, then let gravity do the rest to help him breach me. I shudder, almost falling.

He's got me.

I've got him too, and here's more of that strength—he sits up and brings me with him to the headboard so his back is against pillows. We kiss then, and that's even better. He thrusts up each time I sink down, and I'm greedy all over again, clutching his shoulders first, then his chest, my fingers spasming. He's just as grabby, his hold on one of my hips turning tight, his other hand roaming my chest roughly.

Sweat runs into my eyes, which sting for the second time today as I ride him for what feels like forever, Liam showing me how our first time would have been if he'd known he was my one and only. And this does feel like a do-over, with his tongue in my mouth and my climax just out of reach but building with each slow grind and each hard thrust.

I've never needed to come more. I try to get a hand between us, but Liam reads me all over again, and I'm all for consent like I last saw printed on a common-room poster, but his guttural, "Ready?" is no preparation for all the fuel he has left in his tank igniting. For what he's held back until now.

I shout and my cock spurts. Liam touches that spatter on his belly.

"Yeah?"

Each line of his face I'd thought was taut already? Each rocky, acute angle? He shows me more and keeps going until I shout again, almost crushed by his arms tightening as he comes too, but that's okay. I don't let him go either once we're under the sheets together.

I can't, not for ages, as the sun dips lower and Liam's pattern-tracing on my belly slows, then stops. The whole world could for all the attention I pay it. I'm busy composing a new song written for two, a duet I can already hear soar without a moorland tor to amplify it.

Eventually I do stir.

Liam doesn't. He's out for the count, sleeping like a baby, so I leave him.

I can't find my glasses, but I do find the shower, and take one. Take the stairs too, without breaking my neck, and find the kitchen, where tea brews while I squint at a fridge-side photo montage. Matt is easy to find, even if his hair is short instead of shaggy in these images from dusty places I can only guess at. I want to see a lot more of the laughing version of Liam I also spot in photo after photo. I also seek out redheads.

There's only one shot of two gingers together.

I study that until I hear movement, so I carry two mugs of tea back up that creaking staircase.

Liam's still out for the count. The noise is from outside. I open the window to a hazy view of a pink and orange sunset and to a blur I guess must be a van full of returned Royal Engineers who spot me bare-chested.

That's enough ammo for Matt to shout, "Sexy, you dirty dog. You brought your lost lamb home?"

I'm not about to tip out headfirst. Liam's strong arm bands me, his sure hand sliding my glasses back where they belong, and so much comes into focus.

Matt's wetsuit hangs at his waist like the first time I saw him. His hair is still surf-wet. Water flicks as he tips his head back and howls, and I can't keep a laugh in, but neither can the smiling sunburnt redhead with him.

And Liam?

Man, if I do ever perform a second song in public, I hope it's as happy as him.