Give Yourself Away (21 page)

“That smell?”

March nodded and rubbed Caleb’s knuckles with his thumb. “Yep. I think Liam killed him.

“Once I discovered it wasn’t you, I tried even harder to find you because I knew if Liam had wanted you dead, he’d have left you in that house. I don’t know if he thought I was still in there, but once he understood he wasn’t going to be able to find me quickly, he had no choice but to destroy as much evidence as he could and run.

“So after the remains were identified, I knew he’d taken you somewhere. Another house. My mum and dad understood why I needed to search. I spent weekend after weekend cycling around the countryside with my dad, looking for you, for Liam, for places you might be, but when I started to bunk off school to do it on my own, they put their foot down. They were scared for me, worried Liam would snatch me again.

“But I looked. I never forgot.”

He looked for me. He kept our promises.
A lump grew in Caleb’s throat.

“You think I didn’t look? That I forgot you?” March whispered. “I could never forget you. I spent every minute missing you, thinking about you, worrying about you. I put signs on lampposts. I worked with a police artist to make a sketch of Liam. Everyone thought you were dead, that it would be too risky for Liam to keep you.”

“Liam wore a wig. Under that shaggy blond mop, he had short, dark hair. The moustache was fake. So was the scar. I hardly recognized him when he showed me what he really looked like. He seemed to turn into someone different to the shy, shambling guy who’d offered us those rods. More confident, bigger.”

“My dad told me the police were deluged with calls. Every lunatic in the country had something to say. The press were relentless for a while, but then someone else took the front page and people began to forget. You and Liam had disappeared into thin air.”

Caleb shuddered.

“I never really stopped looking,” March said. “I couldn’t make myself stop. I didn’t want to stop. If I stopped, it meant I was giving up on you. I could never do that. I came back here to work, knowing I was fucking torturing myself, but I felt closest to you here. I suppose I thought that if there was the slightest chance you’d managed to escape, you’d come back here…to find me. I hoped.”

“I hoped too.”

March squeezed his hand. “I don’t understand why you didn’t find me when you got free.”

“I tried.” But not hard enough. Though he had his reasons. Rather, one reason. Jasim.

They stared at each other and Caleb thought March was trying to see the boy he’d once been because that was what Caleb was doing. March’s dark eyes. That look in them.
Oh fuck.

“It should have been me,” March said. “We had a plan. You weren’t supposed to be the one who stayed. I felt so fucking guilty. I was angry with you.” He groaned. “I was such a mess after it happened. I felt guilty because I was safe and you weren’t. I felt guilty because I was unhappy and I knew it was nothing compared to what I thought you were going through. I felt guilty because, eventually, I allowed myself to give up hope of finding you. Though never entirely.”

Caleb squeezed March’s fingers. “He liked me best. He loved my eyes. I knew I could distract him more easily than you. It was our only chance. I had to do it.”

“I was so pissed off with you when you stripped off and stepped into that shower.”

“You did the right thing.”

March shook his head. “I did the only thing I could and I’ve hated myself for it every fucking day since.”

“And punishing yourself too? Is that why you hadn’t come out as gay? Hadn’t found someone to love? Hadn’t wanted to
be
loved?”

“I had someone to love and I lost him,” March whispered. “After you’d gone, there was a hole in my heart I didn’t want to fill. I wanted you and I couldn’t have you. If I couldn’t have you, I didn’t want anyone.”

“Oh God, March.”

“Where have you been? The longer you were missing, the more people assumed you were dead.”

“Did you?” Caleb’s voice seemed tiny.

“I told you, no, but…” March hesitated, “…after my dad died, I was on the verge of falling apart. I couldn’t sleep. I’d lost two people I loved. I was afraid of being closed in. All I wanted to do was cycle around looking for you, knocking on the doors of random houses. My mum eventually had enough and took me out of the country. It was to stop me looking, make me forget, keep me safe. I never forgot. But…” he sucked in a breath and his cheeks twitched, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper, “…I didn’t want him to be hurting you. Part of me wanted you to be dead.”

March rubbed Caleb’s forearm with his thumb.

“I knew you’d look for me.” Caleb managed a small smile. “We were the Jedis.”

“Christ. The clues were there the moment we met and we missed them.”

“You not liking ice cream and wanting to be a chocolate taster.”

March chuckled. “Those cones in the cycling proficiency test. The time travel thing.”

“If I hadn’t seen those photos…would I ever have known? That’s the first time I’ve seen the boy I was.” He gulped. “I remember you trying to stop that gull grabbing the ice cream out of your mum’s hand.”

“That was the day I got three holes in one at the crazy golf. I was just hitting them wild and you were so careful, lining the shots up.”

“And you got double my score,” Caleb said. “Freaky bastard.”

They smiled at each other.

“I was sure that if I ever did see you again, I’d recognize you at once,” March said. “I feel…ashamed I didn’t know, and yet there was something that pulled me to you.”

“The tide.”

March gave a choked laugh.

“But I didn’t recognize you either. If I’d known your middle name was March, I might have realized in the cave. It’s not exactly common.”

“Plus your eyes. Fuck it, Caleb. If I’d seen the real color of your eyes. If I hadn’t had those pictures on the wall—”

“We’d have known,” Caleb insisted. “All it would have taken was the mention of my name. Or I would have seduced Baxter out of you.”

March laughed. “You were…so perfect. Your smile. The way you looked at me when I stood up for you, as if… Fuck it, now you’re even more gorgeous.”

March put his hand around the back of Caleb’s neck and pulled him so their foreheads rested together. They sat in silence for a few minutes until March let him go. Caleb wondered if March had been taking in what had happened to him. Caleb didn’t want to talk about it, but he knew the next question March would ask.

“When did you get away? How? Did you persuade the police not to tell anyone?”

“I didn’t get away for a long time.”

Caleb watched as March frowned, beginning to work things out.

“Jesus Christ.” March pressed his fist to his mouth, then dropped his hand. “You wouldn’t talk about any farther back than four years. He had you twelve years? Oh fuck, fuck.”

Caleb couldn’t say “don’t worry, it wasn’t that bad”. Couldn’t say anything because it
had
been that bad, but March never had to know
how
bad, in case he didn’t want him anymore.

“Liam was the one who homeschooled you?”

Caleb gave a short laugh. “Liam didn’t teach me anything, apart from how fucked up some guys are and the A to Z of gay sex.” Caleb didn’t miss March’s wince. “He gave me plenty of books. Schoolbooks. The right ones for my age. I didn’t realize at the time, didn’t put two and two together, but he was getting them from a school. The room he held me in was part of a boarding school where he was the caretaker.

“I read everything he gave me. Some books several times. I didn’t have a TV. I taught myself as best I could. Maths, English, history, geography. I structured my time like a school day. I gave up with chemistry and physics and languages. I memorized a pub-quiz book and tested myself—the reason I can babble trivia. I even learned the rules of a load of sports I was never likely to play. I had an insatiable need to learn about everything. I taught myself ballet. I think that did more than anything to keep me sane.”

“You never told me you wanted to be a dancer.”

“I thought you’d laugh at me.”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Didn’t matter. There was no money for it, no time. Ironic that I had plenty of time to practice when I was with Liam. He encouraged me because it kept my body slim and young. He even bought me a dancer’s belt, a sort of padded thong, because he said I looked… Yeah, well. How did you get out of the house?”

March clasped Caleb’s hand. “Let’s go into my room and lie down while we talk.”

Caleb allowed himself to be pulled up and March tugged him across the landing.

Is it different now? Does he still want me? What’s he thinking?

Now Caleb was recovering from the shock, he wondered if this was his reward for all that had happened. He’d wanted Baxter so much back then, and here he was, more than a friend, exactly what he’d dreamed of.

They lay face to face on March’s bed, with March clutching his hand.

March took a deep breath. “After Liam dragged you downstairs then went looking for me, I couldn’t find a way out of the house. Once I’d spoken to you in the cellar, I heard him coming back and I ran upstairs and hid in the attic. There was a small door into the eaves and I crawled behind a chimney breast. I heard him walk into the room on the other side of the plasterboard. The next thing I heard was the sound of liquid sloshing.

“When he left, I crawled out. He’d thrown petrol everywhere. If he’d lit it then, I’d have died, but he started the fire on the ground floor. Even so, by the time I reached the next floor down, the stairs were in flames. I bolted from one bedroom to another. Too high to jump from a window, but I had no choice.

“I stood on the sill and threw myself at a pine tree. I tumbled through the branches as I fell and they slowed my fall. I hit the ground hard and was cut and bruised. I couldn’t believe I was alive.

“The house was an inferno. Smoke and flames pouring from the doors and windows, and the sound…it was like a beast roaring. I tried to drag away everything he’d stacked against that cellar window, but some of it was too heavy. Stone slabs I couldn’t shift. And it was so hot. Smoke spiraled through the gaps and I knew if you were in there, you were probably unconscious. I ran around screaming for you until I had no voice left.” He took a deep breath.

“Then I backed away, and sat and watched the house burn. That was the worst moment of my life, thinking you were in there and I couldn’t do a thing. I thought I’d killed you because I ran and left you behind.”

Caleb took his hand. “He’d put tape on my mouth, tied me up and stuffed me inside a sleeping bag in his van. I heard a roaring sound as he drove away, but I had no idea he’d set fire to the house until he showed me the newspaper cutting. Until then, I thought you’d gotten away, that you’d rescue me.” He smiled. “I had to wait a long time until you swam into that cave.”

March wanted to wrap himself around Caleb and never let him out of his sight. If he hadn’t leapt from the tree, if he hadn’t leapt from the boat… It was as if the reason for his innate recklessness had just been revealed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t see Liam for what he was,” March said. “I could only think about those fucking fishing rods, and you didn’t even like fishing.”

Caleb squeezed his fingers. “Liam taking us was not your fault.”

“I’m three years older than you. I should have known better. I’m sorry I got you into that mess, sorry I couldn’t get you out of it.” The guilt that had gnawed at him all these years had somehow just grown worse.

“I wouldn’t rather have been dead. Especially now we’ve found each other.”

March groaned. “Where did he take you?”

“To somewhere he’d been preparing when he wasn’t with us. Big room with a bathroom. No windows but more comfortable. Heating. A disused part of a Somerset boarding school. Seems strange now to think that not so far away there were boys my own age living normal lives while I danced and Liam—”

“And you stayed there all that time?”

Caleb nodded.

“Twelve fucking years? Did he never let you out?”

“In the last few months I was held, yes, but only after he’d drugged me.”

“The food.”

Caleb nodded. “He didn’t dope the food much when I was younger. There was no need. But as I grew older and stronger, he gave me sedatives before he—” He pulled at his hair. “How did my parents handle my disappearance? I know my dad died in a car crash. I know my mum killed herself. Was it because of me?”

“I don’t know.” March chewed his lip. “She didn’t cope well without your dad. Ah shit. Maybe you don’t know all of it.”

“What?”

“Your mum and dad didn’t like all the media attention. I think they…they thought you were dead, that Liam had assaulted you and killed you because it was too risky to keep you alive.”

“Great,” Caleb muttered.

“In a way it was easier to think you were dead because the alternative…” March swallowed hard. “But when your dad died, he was with my father. They were looking for you and there was an accident.”

Caleb groaned. “Was my dad driving?”

March nodded.

“Oh God.”

“It was my fault,” March whispered. “My parents were out when I answered a call from a reporter who said there’d been a sighting of you in Bridgwater. I wanted to find you myself, wanted to be the fucking hero, wanted my face to be the first one you saw. I called your dad and asked if he’d take me to the town and he said yes.

“But my dad came home before your dad arrived, and though I pleaded, my dad wouldn’t let me go. Instead, to make me happy, he went. They were speeding; the car flipped and was hit by a truck. They both died at the scene.”

“Oh God, your lovely father. Shit. Had my dad been drinking?”

March nodded. “A blood test said so, but he didn’t seem drunk when I saw him. It was still my fault. If I hadn’t pleaded with him, he—”

“Not your fault,” Caleb said. “No one’s to blame for any of this except Liam and my dad for being a drunken idiot.”

“But—”

Caleb put his finger on March’s lips. “I didn’t mind as much as I thought I would about my parents. It made it easier somehow to start all over again, but I minded about you.”