Give Yourself Away (22 page)

March released a shaky breath. “How come you didn’t know any of this? You could have looked on the Internet.”

“I didn’t even know what the Internet was.”

“But you learned.”

“Yes.”

March knew there was something Caleb wasn’t telling him. “How did you get away from Liam? Did the police find you? How did you manage to keep it out of the papers?”

“The police don’t know I’m free.”

March pulled back, his eyes wide with shock. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t want to be in the papers or gawked at on TV. I didn’t want to be known as ‘the boy in the cellar’ or whatever stupid name they’d come up with. I didn’t want people speculating on what Liam did, whether I enjoyed it, bonded with him, loved him. I worried what people would say. I wanted an ordinary life, to get a job, find someone to love and just…live. So I reinvented myself and started over again. A new name, and new eyes for a new world.”

March knew he wasn’t hearing everything, but he was scared to push too hard, too soon. “Twelve years and you just started again?”

“What choice did I have?”

The bleakness in Caleb’s voice bit into his gut. Would Caleb tell him everything?
Do I want him to?
He couldn’t believe Caleb hadn’t gone to the police.

“Is Liam the one who attacked the guys you’ve been with?”

“He’s dead.”

Thank fuck for that. But… “Sure?”

Caleb’s hesitation worried him. “I saw his body. It’s not him behind the attacks.”

“Did you kill him?” March asked, unsure what he wanted Caleb’s answer to be, if he wanted to know the truth.

“In a way.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Before March could ask Caleb what he meant by “in a way”, Caleb kissed him. He hadn’t expected it and March’s slight flinch sent Caleb skittering from the bed. March leapt after him and pinned him against the wall, his forearms resting on either side of Caleb’s head.

“Sorry.” Caleb kept his gaze down.

“No,” March said. “You do not apologize to me.”

Caleb slowly raised his head. “It’s okay if you don’t want me now. Anyone would find it hard to accept the things I did…was forced to do.”

March gaped at him. “Why wouldn’t I want you? Christ, I wanted you when you were eleven years old, though I’d never have touched you. Seeing you, having you here is like all my Christmases and birthdays have come at once. I am so…happy I could fucking burst. Except guilt is eating me up.”

The raw need in Caleb’s eyes almost broke March’s heart.

“You wanted me when I was eleven?” Caleb asked. “Then how could you not know you’re gay now?”

March exhaled. “I did know. You got the wrong end of the stick and I let you. I was in denial. I think it was guilt. I felt guilty for thinking about you in that way when I was fourteen, more guilt piled on because you’d stayed and I’d escaped. The weight of it grew when I finally accepted I wasn’t going to find you, that if I didn’t stop looking I was going to drive myself mad. I feel pathetic saying it fucked me up when I know you had to deal with far worse, but it did. My life had turned upside down. If you weren’t there, I didn’t want anyone, not even as a friend.”

“But everyone liked you.”

“But I no longer liked them. I didn’t want friends anymore. I didn’t want anyone. If I had feelings about a guy, I suppressed them. But once I saw you…maybe my subconscious made the connection that I couldn’t. You were the trigger to make me accept what I am. I was floundering and you saved me. If I hadn’t been the one to pull you from the water, if I hadn’t been on call…Christ. This is the way it should be. Me and you. Together finally.”
And if I have my way, forever.

“I’m broken,” Caleb whispered.

“No you’re not. You’re brave and strong.”

Caleb gave a half laugh. “I think you might be confusing me with you.”

March shook his head. “I’m not sure I could have survived what you did. I nearly didn’t survive anyway.” He lifted one arm from the wall and turned his wrist to show Caleb.

Shivers ran riot over his skin as he remembered that night. “My mother found me lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood. My dad was dead. Something else that was my fault. If you were dead, then I wanted to be dead too. Apparently you have to slice down your arm to make sure. Just as well I didn’t know.”

“Oh shit.” Caleb rubbed the scar with his thumb then kissed it.

“Did you ever try to kill yourself?”

“I wasn’t brave enough.”

“The braver thing was to stay alive.” March stared at him, still struggling to believe this was happening. “I can’t get my head around what twelve years of… How did you cope when you got out? All the things we have now that we didn’t have then? How can you bear to let anyone touch you? How can you bear to let me touch you?”

Caleb’s jaw twitched. “I coped because the alternative was retreating into myself, and after twelve years of that, I’d had enough. I emerged hooked on drugs and I didn’t even know what they were. Probably just as well.

“I was scared of my shadow, scared of the dark, scared of the light. I found it hard to talk to people, to even pass the time of day. There were long periods when I didn’t speak at all. I had to practice talking by asking strangers the time, just to get used to the sound of my voice. I didn’t know how to have a conversation about ordinary things.”

“Hard to shut you up now.” March cringed.
I’m joking about this?

Caleb rubbed his thumb along March’s jawline. “Don’t start double thinking everything you say. It
is
hard to shut me up now. I went from hardly talking at all to chattering all the time. I struggled to find that balance that comes naturally to most people. Still do.”

“I don’t want to upset—”

“Then just be you. That’s all I want.”

March tried to smile.

“I saw a psychologist for a while,” Caleb said. “I didn’t tell him everything, just that I’d suffered long-term abuse as a child. That my dad hit me and my mum let him. He gave me coping mechanisms, ways to deal with my panic attacks—flicking an elastic band on my wrist, stuff like that—and he helped me draw up a plan of action to get my life on track. He warned me not to rush into a relationship and I laughed. The thought of anyone touching me made me quake.

“But I wanted to be with someone. I was desperate to find a decent man, someone the opposite of Liam, but I had to stick to one-night stands. When I let myself try for more with Simon, it was too soon. I didn’t know how to handle his jealousy. I didn’t know how to handle
him
.

“After he died, that was when I went back to one-night stands with anonymous men and I liked that better. I could pretend they wanted me for more than sex, pretend they loved me just for those snatched minutes or hours. But what was important to me was that they let me go. They didn’t make me do anything. They expected nothing of me, most of them not even my phone number.

“Don’t get the idea that I slept around, I didn’t, but sometimes I needed to be held. It was nearly three years before I risked my heart again on Mike. Another mistake. Maybe I’m too damaged to be with anyone.”

“That’s not true. You are incredible,” March said. “You’re a survivor. I think you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.” He panicked at the thought of Caleb walking away.

“I was a weedy, gay eleven-year-old in love with a fourteen-year-old I thought was oblivious to how I felt, though sometimes when you looked me I wondered if you knew. I adored the ground you walked on, clichéd as that sounds. I survived because of you. You kept me going when I began to fall. Even when I gave up believing you’d find me, when I finally accepted you were dead, my memories of you stayed in my heart, and the little flame of hope that thinking of you gave me was never entirely extinguished.”

March’s heart felt as if it were being squeezed into his throat.

“Liam used me in every way you can imagine and a whole lot more you won’t be able to imagine. Twelve years with the same guy. Longer than a lot of marriages last.” Caleb gave a short laugh.

“When and if you want to tell me what he did, then tell me,” March said. “But I need to understand why you think you killed him. I want to know who’s stalking you. I appreciate how difficult all that might be, so I want you to know that I’m here and that I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait until you’re ready. There’s no pressure. However long it takes.”

He leaned in, pressed his lips against Caleb’s and willed him to respond because he knew this was a tipping point. He’d stay and they’d face this together, or Caleb would run and March would spend the rest of his life trying to find him again.
Tell him.

March pulled back. “Don’t run. Don’t make me spend the rest of my life looking for you. I want to hold you. I need to hold you.”

“I should shower,” Caleb said.

“Mine’s bigger.”

Caleb slid his hand onto March’s cock. “I think you’ll find mine is.”

A laugh burst from March’s throat. “In your dreams.”

March dropped his arms and Caleb pushed his fingers into March’s hands. “Show me how much bigger yours is,” Caleb said. “Obviously I’m talking about the shower.”

“Let me start the water running so it’s not cold when we get in.”

He didn’t think Caleb would run. He didn’t want him to, but one thing he knew was that he couldn’t force him to stay. Caleb had to want to be with him or March had to let him go, much as he knew how difficult that would be. He’d told Caleb he’d spend his life looking for him, but he didn’t want to stalk him.

By the time March had shucked off his clothes, the water was hot. He moved around the curved-glass wall and tipped his head up to the flow. When there was still no sign of Caleb after a couple of minutes, he began to worry.

Then the bathroom door opened and Caleb walked in naked, his fingers opening and closing at his sides.

March blinked water out of his eyes. It was the first time he’d seen Caleb naked in the light.

“You sure?” March asked.
Am I crazy? Isn’t this what I wanted?

His already hard cock hardened more at the sight of Caleb coming toward him, all long limbs and fluid grace. He was lean and beautiful. His shoulders weren’t broad, but were in proportion to his narrow waist and trim hips. March stared at him, trying not to let his gaze linger on the puckered scars. He still struggled to get his head around what he’d learned over the last hour.

Caleb opened the shower door and stepped inside, but kept his back to the wall. March reached out and trailed his thumbs down the slight depression between Caleb’s pecs and spread his hands over his ribs. When his fingers drifted to the crease of Caleb’s groin, Caleb’s head fell back against the wall.

“You look perfect. You feel perfect,” March said.

He ran his thumbs up and down the delicate skin on the inside of Caleb’s hips and then around to clasp Caleb’s butt.

“I’m not,” Caleb whispered, his hair dripping down his face.

“Not what?” March’s thought process had come unraveled.

“Perfect.”

“You are to me. You’re the boy I lost. The man I want.” March leaned in and kissed him.

A choked moan escaped from Caleb’s throat and March swallowed it. He ground himself against Caleb, fucking his mouth with his tongue, then let Caleb do the same. March licked Caleb’s throat, blinking as the water splashed his face.

Caleb would show him his back, he just had to let him do it in his own time and not push. He nibbled along Caleb’s collarbone and bent to lave his nipple, loving the way it hardened in his mouth, loving the way Caleb’s dick twitched in his hand.

March felt as if he’d die if he lost him again.
I don’t want to be like Liam. There
is
a difference. I won’t make Caleb do anything he doesn’t want.

The water beat at March’s back as they kissed. March couldn’t stop kissing him, pulling at Caleb’s lips with his teeth, soothing with his tongue until they broke apart to breathe.

“All along it was you,” March said. “I just didn’t know it. All these years, confused about what I wanted, and it was because I was waiting for you.” March stroked Caleb’s face. “I think I might have waited forever. It didn’t feel right until now. You make it right. Your beautiful body, your mind, everything that makes you, you.”

“Not beautiful.” Caleb took a deep breath, closed his eyes and turned to the wall.

March’s throat closed and he clenched his fists. Caleb’s back was smothered in ugly writing, ugly words. Thick black letters ran into each other, crisscrossing his skin.

Liam. Fuck my arse. Liam. Fuck me. Liam. MY slut. MY cocksucker. MY cunt. Liam. Fuck me harder. Liam. I love Liam’s cock. Liam. Mine. Mine. MINE.

Caleb began to shake, and March covered the words as he pressed himself against Caleb, wrapped his arms around him and crossed them over his chest. Caleb shuddered as he cried and March struggled to find the right thing to say.

That fucking bastard.
March wished Liam weren’t dead so that he could kill him.

“Sssh,” March whispered. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

It seemed a long time before Caleb stopped shaking. Only when he had, did March let him go and that was just to reach for the shower gel to wash him. Caleb kept his head down, his face to the wall. March wished he could wash away the words on Caleb’s back, but he had to settle for covering them with suds.

“Now do you understand why I wanted to keep my T-shirt on? You want to stare at what’s on my back when you fuck me? No one would.”

“Did you ever go to see someone about removing these?” March asked.

Caleb shook his head. “I looked it up online. It sounded like it would take years, but I’d be left with a faint image, and that means what Liam wrote would still be visible. But…even the thought of asking someone, showing them…”

Not hard to guess why Caleb hadn’t wanted to expose his back to anyone, but at some point, March would go with him to a skin specialist and see if anything could be done.

He’d finished washing Caleb before he realized how low the guy’s shoulders had sunk, how still he was, how he was doing all he could to avoid looking at March. March tugged him out of the shower and dried them both. He wanted to reassure Caleb, but he was afraid of not striking the right balance and sounding as if he didn’t care when he did. If he talked about taking Caleb to a laser treatment center, it could seem as if the tattoos bothered him—and they did, but—
Oh fuck, say something.

March turned Caleb so that he was facing him, though Caleb’s attention was fixed on the floor.

“We’ll go to see a tattoo removal specialist together and see what they say. If it takes years, then it takes years. Maybe you’ll need another tattoo to cover what remains. My face or a vase of flowers or a clump of grass or something.”

He caught sight of Caleb’s lips twitching.

“You gave yourself away there,” March said. “That’s what you really want, isn’t it? The grass.”

“Or a puppy.”

March laughed, relief lightening his heart.

“Not so perfect, am I?” Caleb lifted his head and stared straight at him.

“You are to me.”

Caleb’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. “I try not to think about it anymore. I imagine my life as a book and me ripping out those chapters. Except the rest doesn’t make sense without them because what happened will always be a part of me.”

Oh, Caleb.
“How did you cope?”

“I did whatever I had to do. I even tried praying. I didn’t think my prayers had been answered, but now I’m not so sure.”

The look in his eyes made March’s heart ache.

“You saw my panic attack,” Caleb said. “That still happens sometimes. Like I’m being suffocated by fear. I’m not emotionally stable. I’m not sure I ever will be. I think everything is fine and then it’s not. I can never get those years back. That’s why I’m super cautious now. I’m scared of losing the time I have left. I can’t look back and wish I’d taken a different path because there was no different path. Now, I have to make every day count.”