Chapter Twenty

They 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. 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 press when he went 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 red raw eyes, and the shouts from the journalists were a fierce wind flicking up the sea. They were angry, and as he stood there, he realized they reminded him of a storm. The crash and the flash assaulting his senses. The storm was from his making, and it wanted to punish him, shipwreck him and never allow him to surface in civilized society.

A police officer opened the door of the van and beckoned Alfie inside. He stepped up, turned around, and settled on the seat. Then the door was slammed to conceal him. He was spared the skull splinting white light, 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.

Alfie stared down at his cuffed hands, then closed his eyes. He felt the van bounce and sway as it made the journey to the prison. Although Larkwood was the closest to both his home address and the court, they 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.

The car took a turn, and Alfie’s shoulder hit one side of the small cabin, then the other side. He was tossed around in the small space and it reminded him of the hold on a ship. With the lightning flashing and wind rushing, he had taken refuge in the bottom of the vessel. He would stay down there with his eyes shut and outwait the storm.

He wished he could stay in the small box forever, not be tossed to the sharks at the other end of the voyage. A screw who slept with a prisoner. He wasn’t going to get out of the prison system unscarred, mentally by the guards and physically by the inmates.

The van hit a bump, and Alfie’s arse jumped off the seat. He grimaced at the flare 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 realized the van had stopped.

It didn’t seem 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 wretched open. A masked figure reached inside, and he resisted as much as he could, but his hands were grabbed and pulled. The only parts visible on the figure’s face were his dark brown eyes and his tattooed hands. He was a man, Alfie could tell by his size and his roughened hands.

“What are you doing?” Alfie yelped.

The man dragged him across the road and flicked his chin out at the trunk of the car. Alfie shook his head and looked left and right up the deserted road. The man struck the trunk with his fist, and Alfie turned back to him with wide eyes.

“No, 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. He curled in the fetal position and waited. He was being kidnapped by a man he had never seen before, one with crazed brown eyes and tattooed hands.

More turns, more bumps in the road. Alfie’s face rubbed on the bristly 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 braced himself for impact. 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, and he laughed softly. “There’s my Freshman.”

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

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

Alfie didn’t bother taking in his surroundings. The first thing he did was slam his cuffed hands into Nate’s nose.

Arms wrapped around him and tugged him away. The masked man with the brown eyes tightened his grip until Alfie could barely breathe.

Alfie’s feet crunched on gravel, and he flashed a look at his surroundings. It looked a lot like a farmyard, but an unused one, with a barn with a caved in roof, and a house ridden with Ivy.

Nate bowed over with his hands cupping his face, and blood dribbled through the cracks in his fingers.

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?”

Nate shook his head. “No, let him go.”

“But he just—”

“I said let him go. Get the van ready.”

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

Nate studied him and bunched his eyebrows together. He held his hands up in surrender, releasing the streams of vibrant red from his nose. “I deserve that.”

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

Nate closed his eyes. “I had to. I couldn’t fix you. You would’ve died if I took you with me.”

“Your escape plan, it could’ve killed me. Then you abandoned me, and I got arrested because of you.”

Nate opened his eyes. They lost their intensity with the red more dominant on his chin and t-shirt. “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. Gave 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. I would have vanished and not bothered you again. You weren’t supposed to be in the car. You weren’t supposed to get hurt, and I couldn’t leave you there. 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 sunk his teeth into the traitorous flesh.

Nate winced on his behalf and took a step forward, but Alfie waved him back.

“Then you dumped me.”

Nate scrunched his face. “Only a doctor could help you, not me, and I thought after a few weeks, month, 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 now because of them I’ve lost everything. My home, my possessions, my job, my best friend. My future is gone.”

“You still have me, but I’m not going to force you to come with me. If you want to hand yourself in and do the time, or go it alone, it’s fine, but I really want you to come with me, Alfie.”

His eyes slid shut at the sound of his name, and he gasped softly. Gravelly footsteps came closer, and the presence of Nate made him shiver. Alfie opened his eyes and stared into Nate’s blues ones. For the first time, they lacked confidence, and there was no predatory expression creasing his eyes and lifting his lips. He looked worried as he waited for Alfie to answer.

“I hate you,” Alfie whispered.

Nate shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

Those were the words he’d been desperate to hear, and his skin tingled. The suffocating feel in his head lessened. The numbness he protected himself with dispersed, and he could feel the wind through his hair, the tears on his cheeks, and the smell of earth around him. He lowered his head. “I want to hate you.”

Nate snorted softly. “Now that, 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, and only him.

“Say you choose me, and we’ll go, right now.”

Alfie licked his lips but kept his eyes firmly shut. “Where would we go?”

“Anywhere.”

Alfie frowned and tried to shake his head, but Nate gripped him with both hands and stopped him.

“How?” Alfie murmured.

“I have money, and anything is possible with a lot of money when people fear your name.”

“What if we get caught?”

“Not going to happen. I want you, Alfie. Say you want me too.”

Alfie opened his eyes and locked gazes with Nate. There was still uncertainty swirling in his irises, and a line dented the skin at the top of his nose. Alfie noticed Nate’s hands were twitching slightly, and his breath was leaving his nose in short, sharp pants. He seemed afraid, and Nate’s throat flexed with an uncomfortable swallow.

“I hate you, but I want you more.”

Nate snorted, then leaned forward and touched his blood coated lips to Alfie’s. He pulled away and rested their foreheads together. His arms circled Alfie’s back and coaxed him into a hug.

Alfie moved stiffly at first, then melted into the embrace with his bound hands sandwiched between them. He closed his eyes, and breathed hard though his nose, past the smell of blood, to Nate. The warm protective scent of Nate.

“Now, we’ve got to go,” Nate said, taking a step back.

Alfie nodded and lifted his cuffed hands. “You think you could remove these?”

Nate hummed, the crude murmur he made when thinking of sex. “I can. Later, but once we get to my place, I want to have a little fun with you cuffed up like that. Is that okay?”

Alfie nodded, then hooked his hands over Nate’s head and around his neck. “More than okay.”

Nate’s arms circled around his back again. “I’ve got you, Freshman, and I’m not letting you go.”

Alfie kissed past the taste of blood, until the intoxicating cocktail of Nate made him buzz. He stood on his tiptoes to prolong the kiss, and Nate seemed just as desperate to continue. Their tongue’s brushed, and Alfie’s surrendering moans escaped him. Nate drew back and turned his attention to Alfie’s neck. He bared it and shivered at each light pinch of teeth. They broke apart at the sound of a horn and Nate glared at the van.

There were two seats next to the driver in the front, but Nate led him to the back and they both climbed inside.

“I want you, Alfie, and I need to have you now,” Nate said bluntly, and they were the sweetest words Alfie had ever heard.

The End