Dirty Angel-BarbaraElsborg (30 page)

“Making me come in my pants, then cleaning me up. No one…”

Aden huffed.

“For being a friend, for listening to me,” Brody whispered. “For caring.”

Aden turned to look at him.

“Sunset.” Brody tugged him up. “Going to be a good one.”

They sat side by side, hand in hand. The sun was illuminating the clouds, painting them shades of yellow, orange and red, the rest of the sky stained by some exotic mixed up purple pigment.

“It looks as though the sun’s going to drown in the sea,” Brody said. “When I was a kid, I used to think it actually went into the water.”

Aden hadn’t sat and watched a sunset for years. They squinted as the sun slid below the horizon, the colours intensifying before they finally faded.

“Wow,” Aden whispered.

“I like being with you,” Brody said.

Aden turned to look at him. “I don’t
mind
being with you.”

That earned him a thump.

Aden put his hand in his pocket, pulled out the feathers and held them out to Brody.

“Where did they come from? Some magic trick?”

Aden shook his head. He let the feathers go and they fluttered off into the dunes. “Check my pockets. Jeans and coat.”

Brody pulled out two more feathers and gave Aden a quizzical look.

“Sure there’s no more?” Aden asked.

“Yeah.”

“Let them go.”

The feathers disappeared over the dunes.

“Check my pockets again,” Aden said.

Brody pulled out another two feathers. “Wow, that’s brilliant. How do you do it?”

“I wish I knew.”

Brody didn’t push him. “Well, I’m impressed. That’s some party trick.”

Brody arrived at work to find the film crew unloading their equipment from their van. He slipped past them into the building and made straight for the coffee. Rita was just taking off her coat.

“Want a drink?” Brody asked.

“Please. You on your own today?”

“He’s at work.” Brody had barely woken when Aden had rolled out of bed to go and help with the horses. Until it was time for Brody to get up, he’d lain there thinking of a way to persuade Aden to stay and come up with nothing he felt would work. Des couldn’t afford to pay him and Aden deserved a better job than mucking out stables.

“It was good last night,” Rita said.

Brody blinked.

“The TV. Didn’t you watch?”

“I forgot.”

She laughed. “You can get it on catch up.”

“I didn’t say anything stupid, did I?”

“No more than usual.”

“Ha ha.”

“Aden was good with the animals yesterday,” Rita said.

“He was.” Surprisingly good.

“Henrik can’t—”

“Henrik can’t what?” Henrik walked into the staff area with Odin, his dog, beside him.

“You can’t believe the change in Odin.” Rita tickled the dog’s head.

“True.” Henrik nodded for Brody to follow him.

“Want a coffee?” Brody asked.

“No thanks.”

He took his drink into Henrik’s office and dropped onto a chair. Odin put his massive head on Brody’s knee and stared up at him. “No biscuits, sorry.”

Odin snorted and settled his lanky frame on the floor next to Henrik.

“He’s better,” Henrik said.

“Yeah, he is. That’s the first time in ages he’s put his head on my lap.”

“Not just better. Cured.”

“Cured?” Brody frowned. “But… Are you sure?”

Odin had developed dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle where the walls of the heart thinned and caused progressive heart failure. There was no cure.

“I did an ECG,” Henrik said. “There’s no sign of a problem.”

“But…”

Henrik inhaled. “I know. It’s impossible. He showed all the symptoms: fluid in the lungs, chronic malaise, coughing, loss of appetite
. Look at him. He’s okay, but he can’t be.”

“Want me to run a few tests? Double check?”

Henrik nodded. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but something happened here yesterday morning and not just to Odin. I had several animals brought into the consulting room that had nothing wrong with them. Usually owners delay too long, not come in when there’s nothing the matter. We were only open for emergencies but I had more time wasters in one morning than I get in a month. Not only that but some of the animals we kept in are fine to go home. Wounds have healed abnormally fast. A couple of dogs I hadn’t expected to be perky for days are jumping up at the bars like puppies. Did you notice anything with your cases?”

“I had a rabbit that was supposed to have broken its leg. It was fine. A dog that couldn’t walk but when its owner put it down, it trotted across the consulting room wagging its tail. Yeah. Five cases where nothing was the matter.”

Henrik scratched behind Odin’s ears. “The nurses are talking among themselves about the animals that were in overnight. I’ve asked them not to. I don’t want the TV crew picking up on an idea that miracles happened here. There has to be an explanation, but I don’t know what it is.” He looked at Odin. “I’m just grateful.”

Brody pushed to his feet. “I’ll take Odin and check him out. Here, Odin.”

The dog went straight to Brody.

“Where did Aden come from?” Henrik asked.

“Deptford.” He didn’t think that was quite what Henrik meant but Brody didn’t know any more than that.

“He seems a nice guy.”

“Yeah, he is.” Despite his claim not to be. “That reminds me, I need to tell you something. My ex, a guy called Matthew Frazer-Hamilton, is an ex for a reason. Apart from thinking this job was perfect, I came here to get away from him, but Matt turned up at my cottage the other day. Twice. He’s not listening to me telling him to get lost. It’s possible he might come to the practice, and cause trouble. Whatever he tells you is likely to be a lie.” Actually, it might not be. “I’d appreciate it if he was not allowed to stay on the premises.”

“What does he want?”

“To convince me to give him another chance. That’s not going to happen.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to talk to him? Reason with him? Make him see there’s no point pursuing you?”

Brody caught the change in tone and got the message. “I didn’t string you along.”

“No, but you let me hope.”

That was your fault, not mine.
“I wasn’t in a good place when I came here, Henrik. It was hard enough to hold myself together for work. Matt is persistent and persuasive. We’ve had an on-off relationship for thir…a lot of years. I found it hard to break away from him. It’s over as far as I’m concerned.”

“You should still talk to him.”

Brody gritted his teeth and took Odin out of the room. He part wished he’d not said anything. It made him realise how pointless it would be going to the police. They’d think it was just a lover’s quarrel, even if he told them about Matt trying to kill Aden. There was no proof.

He ran the tests he could do within the practice and Odin was fine. Maybe the only word
was
miracle. Brody had seen the results when Henrik first diagnosed cardiomyopathy and agreed with him. It wasn’t possible Odin’s heart could have recovered. The only conclusion had to be that they’d both misdiagnosed the problem. Maybe it had been pneumonia, or some other severe pulmonary problem—hypertension, an embolism. Brody closed his eyes and stretched as he thought of things it might have been. Hyperthyroidism? Odin hadn’t gained weight which would be a sign of the latter. His coat looked fine too, shiny, but they had to have missed something. He took a blood sample to send to a specialist lab.

When he led Odin back out to the reception, where he usually spent the day behind the counter, there seemed to be an abnormally large number of people waiting. The TV crew were talking to them. Brody narrowed his eyes and retreated to his consulting room.

Aden went back to the cottage at lunchtime, glad to find Brody had locked the door. He used the key he’d been given, slipped inside, took off his boots and coat, and headed straight for the kitchen. After he’d made himself a coffee and a cheese sandwich, he sat at the table with Brody’s iPad and Googled Matthew Frazer-Hamilton.

It wasn’t hard to find stuff. The wanker had won awards for his teaching. Inspirational, innovative, exciting. Words used to describe his lessons. There was nothing negative about him at all, which was disappointing. The last teaching post Aden could trace was at a school in Sheffield. He found a photo of the guy with his wife and their youngest child at a charity event. Another of him receiving one of his awards. A bit more searching and Aden uncovered where they lived. A check of the BT online phone book and he had their home number.

What
was
hard was coming up with a way to get rid of the guy for good apart from the obvious—cut him up and dump him at sea. Yeah, well that wasn’t going to happen. He could threaten to tell his school, his wife, his kids, the police about his relationship with a fourteen year old, but it wasn’t Aden’s story to tell.

Had the teacher really left his wife or just said he had? It was possible Brody wasn’t the only kid he’d seduced, but something told Aden he was. If the guy had been into barely pubescent teenagers, he’d have left Brody well behind by now, and probably been caught, but that wasn’t the case. Brody was his obsession.

Aden chewed his sandwich thinking about what Raphael had said, that he had
to come to understand what love was, to believe in it, feel it, offer it.
His finger hovered over the exit button before he typed three words into the Google search box.

What is love?
Seven hundred and forty-five million results. Approximately. He groaned. After reading a few of the entries he was no wiser.

Maybe love wasn’t something that could be defined. He knew there were lots of kinds of love. Did every mother take one look at her newborn and love them? Aden’s mother hadn’t, but he’d seen the love Karen and Des had for their boys, that need to cherish, nurture and protect, their horror when they thought Jamie had died.

Aden understood that sort of love. If he’d had a child he’d have loved it. The bleak reality of his early years had left him keenly aware of what he was missing out on. Not that he’d ever have a kid but if he did, he’d have done all he could to be the perfect parent. And when people grew old and infirm, that love was returned by their kids. Or should be. Aden was glad his parents were dead. It saved him even having to think about what they were doing.

He took a sip of his coffee. Then there was love for pets and pets for their owners. Could animals love? He thought they could. Dogs in particular. Aden was fond of Captain. He worried about him, didn’t want him to go to someone who didn’t take care of him. He didn’t love the horse, though caring for anything was a novelty.

Plus people loved their countries, their religion, even those fucking terrorists who’d killed him in a misguided faith that their path was the only true one. Complete and absolute devotion to their cause, a willingness to destroy anyone who threatened their beliefs and even those who didn’t, but were indirectly perceived to. Aden got
those sorts of love.

The tricky one was romantic love. A man and woman, two men, two women, maybe add a third or fourth in there, mix it up a bit. He’d had threesomes, but had never felt that filled a particular need in him. Hot sex had to be part of love, didn’t it? That rush of desire when you saw or touched or even thought about the other person. But according to Google that period of intense passion didn’t last. Aden only had to think about Brody and his cock reacted. Hard to imagine a time when the pair of them fucking wouldn’t set his pulse racing. Well, maybe he could. Less than three weeks and they’d be apart and he wouldn’t have a pulse anymore. His throat thickened and he swallowed at the sensation, but it didn’t shift.

He read on.

Love was thinking about someone when you weren’t with them.

Aden did that. He was thinking about Brody now, doing a worthwhile job, making people’s pets better. Would Aden still think about him when they were apart? Would Dante let him keep those memories? Unlikely. Maybe if Aden tried to act as though he didn’t care about the guy, but Dante would see through it. Maybe it would be more of a punishment if he remembered Brody, thought about what could have been.
Shit.

He kept reading.

Love was wanting to do stuff together, fun stuff, but also a willingness to do dirty and boring things. Wanting that to continue forever.

Aden liked it when he and Brody cooperated. They’d cooked side by side last night and it had been fun, feeding and teasing each other. Doing the laundry had made them both laugh, pretending their jeans were getting it on, and then they’d got it on. Brody against the wall, Aden fucking him hard. But nothing was forever, not in Aden’s case.

Love was about being open and honest. Offering your heart and trusting it wouldn’t be broken.

Aden hadn’t been open and honest. He’d not told Brody everything. How could he? Aden’s heart was a wizened, sad little organ skulking behind his ribs. You couldn’t break something that had never been given a chance to grow. And that wasn’t just the fault of his parents, it was his fault too. Sleeping around, avoiding commitment, never allowing anyone the chance to get to know him. Aden had convinced himself it was the better way because it kept him safe.

I was scared. I
am
scared.
He gulped. He’d been different with Brody, he knew that. Aden was unused to spending so much time with anyone. He felt as if his world had expanded like a balloon, was still expanding and now he worried what would happen when it popped. Brody had opened Aden’s eyes to so much. But love? He’d not known the guy five minutes. There was no such thing as love at first sight. Not unless you were in a fairytale.

The teacher had been in Brody’s life since he was fourteen. Maybe off and on but all those years… He’d followed Brody, eventually left his wife and kids—if that was true—and was prepared to do anything for the man he was in love with. Love or obsession?

Aden Googled
what is the difference between obsession and love
. Twenty-five million hits.
What turns love into obsession?
Two and half million. The more Aden read, the more he saw the difference. This had gone on so long between Brody and the teacher, without any admission by the older guy that what he felt was excessive, that Aden couldn’t see how he stood a chance of convincing Matt to leave Brody alone. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.