Chapter Thirteen
Tom
Tom would have liked to say that his phone woke him, but if he was honest with himself, he had to admit he hadn’t actually been sleeping. More like staring at the ceiling, listening to the soft noises of the trees outside as he waited for sleep to find him and steal all his thoughts away for a while.
He dug his phone out from under his pillow. It was Aidan calling. Tom had left him a message yesterday asking him to put up a sign on the shop door saying they were closed for the week. He hadn’t wanted to involve Aidan in any of this, but as the only person with a spare key, Aidan had been the only choice. Between this and the thing with the police, Aidan was no doubt calling him looking for an explanation. And Tom owed him one.
He imagined answering the phone and telling Aidan everything. He heard the note of pity in Aidan’s voice as the other man processed the fact that Tom had been secretly missing his daughter all these years. He heard his own futile protests as Aidan insisted on coming up here to help him, not thinking about the danger, not thinking about school and Liam and all the other responsibilities of the new life he had worked so hard to build for himself.
Tom let the phone ring until it went to voicemail.
He scrolled through his notifications. That made three voicemails, all from Aidan.
With a twinge of guilt, Tom deleted them all. He could explain everything to Aidan when this was all over. When Callum’s family was no longer after him. When Leila was safe.
When he had figured out what to do about Carrie.
Sleep wasn’t going to happen. Not now. He got up and walked down the hallway, careful to step as lightly as possible to keep the floorboards from creaking. Callum’s door was open a crack, and Tom peered in to see him sprawled across his bed, one arm flung over his eyes. He was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. Tom hastily looked away.
He eased the next door open until he could see Leila. She was curled on her side, all the tension on her face gone. He hadn’t realized how much stress she had been carrying until now, when he saw how profoundly the absence of it transformed her. She looked like a painting, an artist’s idealized depiction of childhood. She looked like someone who had never seen any of the terrible things the world had to offer.
He wished he could make that into a reality.
Leila still smelled of smoke and burned hot dogs, and Tom smiled slightly at the memory. For a couple of hours, it had felt like they were on some strange vacation instead of on the run. The world had almost felt safe.
How long could they really stay safe here?
Accept what comes, he told himself, but the words felt meaningless by now. How could he accept the possibility of his daughter falling back into the hands of the Syndicate? Or going back to whatever awaited her at home with Carrie?
He left the room and closed the door as gently as he had opened it. He padded out to the kitchen. He would get himself a drink of water, and sit outside and meditate for a while, and then maybe he would be able to sleep.
He opened the cabinet next to the sink, expecting to find glasses. Instead he found bottles—some half full, some barely touched, a couple with only a few sips left. Cheap red wine, mostly, no doubt all turned to vinegar by now, but there was a half-bottle of vodka in the corner.
This had to have belonged to Callum’s mother, back when Callum’s family used to come here.
As the seconds went by, Tom realized that he hadn’t closed the cabinet yet. And that he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
After he had left the army, he had started drinking again. But he hadn’t had a drink since that black day a few weeks later when he had almost let himself lose everything he had gained during those years. He’d seen a choice in front of him—whether to be the man he had been or the one he wanted to be. He almost hadn’t made the right choice.
It had been Aidan who saved him. He had been staring at his still-red scars in the bathroom mirror, wondering why he had bothered to try to change his life in the first place. Everything he had accomplished, everything he had become, and it had ended with the same helplessness that had driven him there in the first place, the same sick knowledge that he was responsible for someone else’s pain. Their captors had wanted Aidan to use his skills for their benefit, and when he had refused, they had used the other members of his team as tools for changing his mind. Tom only remembered flashes of the hours they had spent dribbling acid down his face just so Aidan could watch the damage being done. He had tried not to react, but he had seen Aidan slowly breaking down in front of him anyway. He couldn’t stop it. Eventually he couldn’t even stop his own screams.
Aidan had blamed himself afterward. But Tom had never held his friend responsible—or himself, or anyone else. To him, it had simply felt inevitable. That helplessness, that loss of control. Wasn’t that what everything came down to, in the end?
That was what was in his mind the day he walked away. It was what was in his mind the day he stood in front of that mirror. And then he had gotten the call from Aidan. He had been at a police station three states away in the aftermath of a bar fight, barely able to talk through the alcohol and his broken nose—and out of all the people he could have called, he had, for some reason, chosen Tom.
That was the day Tom decided to put away his old self for good, and live up to Aidan’s vision of him.
He had kept every aspect of his life under strict control since then. He rose at dawn every morning to run, even last winter when the snow had come up to his knees. He ate simple food, prepared well. He meditated for an hour every night before bed. And he didn’t drink.
But the life he had built for himself had already fallen apart. He only had to look at where he was to see that. A single drink couldn’t do any more damage than the Syndicate had already done.
He opened up the rest of the cabinets until he found the glasses, then poured himself a little of the vodka. Not too much. Just enough.
He hesitated, holding the glass in front of him. He had never exactly had a drinking problem, not even back before the military, back in his life’s lowest point. He and Carrie used to indulge too much, both of them, but that was more a symptom of the dysfunction between them than anything else. It had never felt like something he couldn’t live without. But giving it up had meant something to him—it had felt like a symbol of his taking control of himself and his life. And if he started drinking again now… well, that would mean something too.
Just one drink, to help him sleep. Maybe then he could get a real night’s rest.
He took a sip—and doubled over coughing a second later. It had been too long. He had forgotten how it felt—the burn as it went down, the way the fumes hit his nose from the inside a second later.
The second sip was easier. The third, easier still.
He shouldn’t be doing this, he reflected as he drained the glass. But there were a lot of things he shouldn’t have done.
He shouldn’t have promised Leila he could keep her safe. Even after this threat was behind them, he would still be sending her back to the dubious safety of her mother.
He shouldn’t have spent that time talking with Callum before dinner. If weaknesses were at issue here, he had found his in Callum. God, the man didn’t even know how hard to resist he was—that gentleness born of true innocence, not naiveté but genuine goodness, combined with the inner strength he wasn’t even aware he possessed. He could have become the criminal his father had always wanted him to be, and instead he had given up everything and put his life at risk to save someone he didn’t even know.
Tom was certain Callum had no idea how much Tom wanted to kiss him again, just to see if he tasted as sweet the second time. Or how much he wanted to find out whether what lay underneath his clothes lived up to his imagination. He wanted to know what Callum’s hands felt like on his skin—would his touch be soft and slow, or desperate and insistent? If Leila hadn’t been there this evening, if there hadn’t been the chance that she could come back with another armful of firewood at any moment, Tom didn’t know what might have happened.
He poured himself another glass.