Chapter Twenty-Five
Tom
Tom should have found a way to stop him.
He couldn’t stop pacing. All morning he had tried to hold it together for Leila, smiling, saying reassuring things. He had tried to act as if this was a day like any other, even as Callum was driving away, even as Tom and Leila packed up to leave and walked the ten miles to the bus stop with their remaining money. But Leila had disappeared into another room with a book a while ago, and Tom’s ability to maintain the semblance of calm had vanished along with her.
What was happening to Callum right now? Had he shown his father the pictures? Had his father believed his story?
Was he already on a plane to London?
Was he even still alive?
Images flooded his mind—images of Callum bleeding out in the depths of the factory where Leila had been held prisoner. Images of his body tossed carelessly into the river. Images of him lying cold and still, like that horrible picture they had taken of Leila in the early hours of the morning.
Tom paced mechanically through the unfamiliar house, unable to stop moving, unable to quiet the energy rushing through him. His mind screamed at him to use that energy to go after Callum, to save him before it was too late, but if he did that, Callum’s sacrifice would be for nothing. So all he could do was pace.
He had only been inside this house once before, a couple of months ago, at Aidan and Liam’s housewarming party. Back then it still had the aura of newness on it, everything bright and clean and sterile, with the smell of fresh paint and the sense that Aidan and Liam’s furniture didn’t quite belong there yet. Now it looked more like a home—a used coffee mug sitting on the table here, a half-finished book facedown on the arm of the couch there. But it held none of the comfort that Tom found in his own home, the tidy simplicity that Tom had always taken for granted until Callum had pointed it out to him. This house held the careless clutter of two lives, neither of them his. And every glimpse of Aidan’s textbooks or Liam’s legal files, every picture of Aidan and Liam smiling and making gooey eyes at each other, reminded Tom that he was intruding on Aidan’s new life in the exact way he had tried so hard to avoid.
This was the last place he wanted to be. But there had been nowhere else for him and Leila to go. It wouldn’t have been safe to stay at the retreat, they couldn’t risk going to Carrie yet, Tom’s house was out of the question, and they didn’t have the money for a motel. So in the end, Tom had called Aidan and said he needed a place to stay for the night.
He had avoided giving Aidan an explanation, claiming he was in too much of a hurry. He had warned Aidan of the danger—it wouldn’t have been fair to him otherwise—but only in the simplest terms. Even that had been enough to nearly convince Aidan to skip his classes for the day and come home; it had taken all Tom’s persuasive powers to convince him that it wasn’t necessary. In the end, Aidan had told him where to find the spare key, in exchange for the promise of a full explanation later. At the time it felt like he had managed to avoid the thing he most feared—Aidan’s pity, Aidan’s worry, Aidan’s realization that now Tom was the broken one—but now more than half the day had disappeared, and the time to give Aidan that explanation was fast approaching. Liam had just taken on a high-profile case for his law firm and would probably be at work until long after Tom was asleep—off saving the world, as Aidan liked to say—but Aidan had recently started going to school full-time, and he had said his classes today only ran until mid-afternoon.
Tom’s restless feet led him back into the kitchen, and to the sight of meat and vegetables and various spices strewn across the countertops. That bit of mess was his own doing. He had planned to cook dinner for Aidan and Liam, so that he could at least pretend he was still the one taking care of Aidan instead of the other way around. (You used to value honesty, a voice in the back of his mind had briefly admonished him, before the storm of his thoughts had swept it away.) He had chosen ingredients from the refrigerator and the cabinets, he had pulled everything out onto the counters, and then he had ended up in the next room with no memory of what he had been doing. He looked down at the things he had chosen, but could no longer remember what he had meant to do with them. With sharp motions that made the clock on the wall shake, he began opening doors and shoving everything back where it belonged. At least nothing had been sitting out long enough to spoil.
As he picked up a carton of eggs—and what on earth had he been planning to do with eggs?—the room disappeared as he found himself back in the cabin, watching Callum break an imaginary egg into his bowl of pancake batter.
The memory changed, and now he was in bed, struggling to hold back his climax as Callum’s mouth encircled his cock.
Then he was outside the factory, watching two stone-faced men shove a struggling Callum into a waiting car. This one wasn’t a memory—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
Then Callum was gone, and Tom was sitting in a new house just like his old one. Five years had passed. Ten. Fifteen. Wrinkles grew on his face, his carefully ordered life moved forward as steadily and predictably as the endless ticking of the clock, and he was alone. Callum was nothing more than a faded memory, a face he could no longer picture.
A sharp burst of pain in his hand brought him back to Aidan’s kitchen. His hand had tightened around the carton of eggs until one of the eggs inside had broken. A bit of eggshell had sliced into his finger, tinting the goopy mess red with his blood.
He tried to scrape out the broken egg and salvage the rest, but the goo clung stubbornly to the carton, and the red of his blood wouldn’t disappear no matter how hard he scrubbed at it. In fact, it seemed to be getting worse. He looked down at his hand and saw that it was still bleeding. Right—he hadn’t done anything about the cut yet. He wrapped a bandage around his finger and moved the unbroken eggs into another container. One more thing he would need to explain to Aidan.
He couldn’t go on this way. He would be no good to Leila if he couldn’t manage to quiet his mind and steady his thoughts. Especially now, when it was all up to him—there was no Callum anymore to help him make plans, or to gently bring him back when his mind started spiraling. He tried to shove away the thought of Callum as he forced himself to stop his restless movement and sit still on Aidan’s couch. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breath.
Breathe in. And there was Callum, sitting beside him, his face caught in a laugh as he roasted a hot dog over the campfire.
Breathe out. Callum again, holding him back as he tried to punch the goon that had come after them one more time.
Breathe in. Callum on their first night together, trembling in his arms.
Breathe out. Callum’s body lying on a concrete floor, still and cold.
His breath caught, quickened, disappeared from his awareness. He lurched up from the couch. In the next moment, he found himself back in the kitchen again, opening the liquor cabinet beside the sink. A drink had helped him before, at the cabin, when he couldn’t sleep. Maybe it would help again.
Only it hadn’t helped. Callum had been the one to help him, and only after Tom had made a mess of things himself by drinking half the bottle and babbling about things that should have been kept private. He still couldn’t remember much of that night, but he thought he remembered Callum’s patient voice soothing him to sleep.
That wouldn’t be happening anymore.
He didn’t realize he was holding a bottle in his hand. Not until he hurled it at the wall and watched it shatter.
Shards of glass sprayed across the kitchen as red wine streaked the wall like an abstract painting. An animal scream echoed through the room. His own?
He stared blankly at the scene in front of him. Helpless rage pounded like a heartbeat through his veins.
The echo of his scream turned into the soft padding of footsteps. He turned to see Leila peering around the corner, her eyes large, her face white.
Tom watched her face change as she began to figure out what happened. First the fear as her gaze darted around the room for the enemies that must have found them. Confusion when she saw no one but Tom. Then growing realization, and a new kind of fear. Fear of him.
This was the thing he had feared, so many years ago. This was what had made him abandon Carrie and his unborn child—the knowledge that he couldn’t be the father he wanted to be, that he couldn’t be there for his child the way she deserved, that someday she would look at him with fear in her eyes. He had run, and he had changed, and he had become a person his daughter could be proud of, but in the end he hadn’t been able to outrun the truth he had seen that night.
“Leila—” he stammered. “I—” His voice didn’t sound like his own.
And then another sound interrupted his feeble attempts at an explanation. The creak of the front door opening.
Aidan couldn’t be back yet. It was too early. But Aidan had said mid-afternoon, and the clock above the stove told him it was already half past three.
“Tom?” Aidan called. “Are you here?” The door closed, and Aidan paused. “Why the hell does the house smell like wine?”
Aidan’s footsteps started towards him. No, towards them—because unless Tom stepped out of the kitchen now, Aidan would see Leila first, and that would make his explanation that much more difficult. But the restless drive to move had drained out of him all at once, leaving him frozen in place as Aidan approached.
Leila looked over her shoulder toward the voice, then back to Tom. He’s safe, Tom wanted to assure her, but the knowledge that Leila didn’t even see Tom as safe right now closed his throat before he could speak.
He heard, rather than saw, the moment Aidan spotted Leila. The footsteps stopped. “Who are you,” he asked, his voice pure bewilderment, “and what are you doing in my house?”
Without answering, Leila edged into the kitchen, keeping clear of the bits of broken bottle. Tom let out his breath a little as Leila moved closer to him, apparently still trusting him to protect her despite everything. Aidan followed—and stopped short as he took in the scene in front of him. Tom tried to see it through Aidan’s eyes. The floor peppered with glass shards; the wine dripping down the wall; the neck of the bottle, still intact, lying in the center of the room. And against the far wall, Tom, disheveled and wild-eyed, with an unfamiliar child half-hiding behind him.
At this point, Leila was actually the easiest part to explain. Tom found his voice as he gestured to Leila. “Aidan,” he said, “I’d like you to meet my daughter.”
It didn’t take as long to explain the situation as Tom had thought it would. But then, giving the actual explanation hadn’t been the part Tom dreaded—it was what would come after. In the silence after he was done telling his story, he waited for the pity and concern to show up in Aidan’s eyes.
But it didn’t happen. Instead, Aidan, looked… angry.
“Why the f—” Aidan glanced at Leila and started over. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“You’ve been dealing with your own stuff for so long,” said Tom. “Now you finally have a chance to be happy. I didn’t want to—”
“I’m not going to let you finish that sentence,” Aidan interrupted, “because that’s a terrible excuse and you know it.”
“You’ve always known I would be there whenever you needed me,” said Tom. “I made sure of that. I didn’t want that to change. And…” He hesitated, suddenly unable to look Aidan in the eye. “I didn’t want you to look at me differently when you found out I wasn’t as untouchable as you thought.”
Aidan gave a sharp laugh. “Are you kidding? It’s a relief knowing there’s a human in there after all.” Abruptly, his voice turned serious. “We’ve been there for each other. That’s the deal between us—it always has been. And you broke that when you kept me out of this. Everything you’ve done for me over the years, and you didn’t even give me the chance to pay you back.”
Tom opened his mouth to argue. Aidan didn’t let him. “But that changes now,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. His tone left no room for disagreement. “Go save this guy of yours. Your daughter will be safe with me.” As Tom tried to object again, Aidan shook his head. “Don’t, Tom. Just don’t. This doesn’t even come close to repaying everything you’ve done for me, so how about not being an idiot and letting me help you for once?”
Here was another of his fears come to life—Aidan forced to step up to help him, when Tom should have been the one doing the helping. But looking at the expression on Aidan’s face, all Tom could do was swallow his pride.
When Tom spoke, it was to raise a different objection. “I’m supposed to be dead. If I go after Callum, and just one of his father’s people realizes who I am, everything he did will be for nothing.” He shook his head. “Callum would know what to do. He would have a plan.”
He didn’t realize he had said the last part aloud until Aidan answered. “So ask yourself what Callum would do,” said Aidan. “And then do it.”