Growing and Kissing (33 page)

He stopped for a moment, staring off into the darkness. “She wanted to take us into the cult. They had these...camps, where followers could live. And those places...I didn’t know at the time, but I heard things later...they
do things
to people in there. Even to children. Bad shit.”

“Jesus,” I breathed.

He wrapped his arms around me and pressed me in tight to him, running a hand down my back from shoulder to ass. We were both naked, but it didn’t feel sexual—we were way beyond that, now. It felt like he was stroking me for comfort, to reassure himself that there was another person there in the blackness. “So us kids: our mum’s telling us she’s going to take us all off to paradise, our dad’s trying to explain that she’s not well—because he still loved her, he loved her through all of this. And our mum’s saying he’s evil, that he’s trying to trick us. This went on for
weeks.”

I clung to him, rubbing his shoulders and upper arms, letting him know I was there for him. I thought of a young Sean, terrified and confused, and I’ve never wanted a time machine so much.

“Eventually, my mum realizes she’s going to lose—she’s not going to get custody, if they split and it goes to court. So she takes Bradan, one of my brothers, and she delivers him—she
fucking delivers him—
to the cult, knowing that he’s going to be separated from her, maybe forever. She actually believes she’s doing the right thing, she thinks the cult can raise him better than she can herself. That’s how strongly they controlled her.” He started to speak again, but his voice broke on the first word and he stopped.

He doesn’t want to cry
I pressed myself as hard as I could against his chest, feeling his lungs fill and empty as he struggled for control. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

“Do you know why Bradan?” he asked, his voice bitter. “Why she took him first, separately?”

I shook my head.

“Because they asked for him. Because they’d questioned her for hours about all her kids. Seen photos. They knew his personality, his talents. They picked him out and ordered her to bring him to them. That’s the sort of people they are.”

“Oh my God…”

“Then she comes back home to get the rest of us. She’s going to take us all with her to one of the camps and then, most likely, the cult would gradually split us up and find...
uses
for all of us. Only that never happens. Because, when she arrives home, my dad’s there.”

And now I saw it coming towards me like a freight train. I squeezed my eyes closed.

“They have a screaming row, right in front of us. My mum’s out of her mind, by this point—she genuinely believes she’s saving us, can’t believe the cult would ever hurt us. My dad...he’s already lost one son, he knows he might never see Bradan again. Now he’s about to lose his whole family. He loves her—that never changed—but he can’t let her take us.

So they get into a fight, us kids are trying to stop them, half of us are crying. My mum grabs a kitchen knife—” His arms tightened around me. “My dad wrestled with her. He didn’t want to do it. If it had been just him, I don’t think he would have done it—he would have let her kill him, rather than hurt her. But he knew that if he was gone, there’d be no one to save us kids. They fought and fought...and finally he slammed her down on the floor and she hit her head. And that was it. We all saw it happen.”

I clung to him like a child...but in that moment, I wanted it to be the other way around. I wanted to be like a mom to him, to comfort him.

“Afterwards...it was fucking chaos. They hauled my dad off for murder.”

I tilted my head up and blinked up at him. “
What?
But...the cult!”

“Turns out the cult had a lot of friends in high places, from local police all the way up to judges. At the trial, they made out that my dad was this violent, drunken Irishman—he’d had one beer, that day—and that my mum had been trying to get us away from him. The cult was barely mentioned. My dad got twenty years: he’s still in prison now.”

“What about Bradan?”

“We were trying to tell everyone the cult had taken him, but no one believed us. They split us up: I was the youngest so I got put in foster care in the US. Everyone got different treatment and it happened
fast.
We mostly lost touch. I know Aedan went back to Ireland and lived there for a while. Carrick was older so he managed to slip away and go on the run until he was old enough to look after himself....” Sean sighed. “It was a mess. The only one I know about for sure is Kian: he went into the military. He’s in Washington, now.”

Jesus.
I knew what it was like to lose both parents, but at least Kayley and I had had each other.

“
We
were a mess, too,” Sean told me. “I mean, some of us sided with my dad, some with my mum, the whole thing just tore us apart. We loved each other but...seeing the others just reminded us. That’s why we don’t talk.”

“What happened to you, in foster care?”

“I ended up with this pretty well-off couple who couldn’t have kids of their own. The woman was okay, but the man...he wanted his own kids. Called me a little Irish shit when she wasn’t around. Then, when he’d had a bad day, he’d take it out on me. Punching me, hitting me. I was a clumsy kid, worse when I was scared, so I’d break stuff. He hated that.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Those scars are cigarette burns. He used to get me to take my shirt off and kneel down facing away from him while he sat in his armchair. I used to think it was so I couldn’t see the cigarette coming, to make it worse. But now I think it was because he couldn’t look me in the face while he did it. The fuckin’ coward. He told me over and over I wasn’t good for anything apart from wrecking stuff—that’s what I’d done, he said, wrecked his life. You hear that enough times, you start to believe it.”

He went quiet for a while, reliving it in his head. “I started building myself up, learned how to fight, so I could fight back. And I did, eventually—he got scared of me and left me alone. I thought I’d won…” He sighed. “But the fucker had messed me up. By then, I thought all I was good for was destroying. Smashing stuff up started to feel good: it let out some anger. At school, I didn’t trust anyone and no one wants to be friends with the scary Irish kid who gets into fights all the time and breaks stuff.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I moved out of their house as soon as I could. Then I just kept scaring people and smashing stuff...only this time, people paid me for it. My foster mum eventually left the bastard. She lives across town.”

I hugged him for long minutes before I asked, “What about Bradan?”

“Some of us tried to track him down—I know I did. But the cult’s fucking impenetrable unless you’re a member. We don’t know if he’s alive or dead.”

“And Kian...you don’t want to see him?”

He ran his hands over my back, massaging the muscles, using the feel of me to calm himself. “I
do,
but...Jesus, you don’t know what it’s like—seeing any of them just makes it all come back.”

I nodded sadly. “When did you get the shamrock tattoo?” I asked quietly.

He reached back between his shoulder blades and fingered it. “Just before we got split up, all us brothers got them. We found a guy who wasn’t bothered that some of us were kids, as long as he got paid, and we all lined up and had it done, one after the other. It was supposed to be a sign that, one day, we’d get what was left of our family back together.”

I closed my eyes, wrapped him tight into my arms and held him there.

Louise

I got back to the apartment by mid-afternoon. I walked into the kitchen, expecting to find stacks of dishes waiting to be loaded into the washer. But every surface was spotless.

“Good, huh?” Kayley said from behind me. She stifled a yawn. “Stacey helped.”

I spun around. And tried not to let my smile falter as I saw how thin she was getting. I’d seen her only the previous morning but now, under the harsh kitchen lights, her cheeks looked hollow. And she looked so
small,
in her clothes, like she’d lost even more weight. Had she looked that ill yesterday?

Or had I just been so focused on the plan that I hadn’t noticed?

I grabbed her and pulled her into my chest, wrapping my arms around her and wanting to keep them there forever. Kayley gave an exaggerated
“Ulp!”
and then, after a few seconds, started to wriggle.
“Must...escape...crushing...ribs…”

I let her go, a little relieved. The old Kayley was still in there. “Thank you for cleaning up,” I told her. “But no more. That’s my job.”

Kayley rolled her eyes. “I’m fourteen,” she reminded me. “I can take care of myself.”

But you shouldn’t have to.
Especially not when she was ill.

“Anyway, how’d it go last night?”

That caught me off guard. “Last night?” She’d been dozing in her room when I’d dressed for the jazz club...hadn’t she?

“I heard you and Stacey talking. And then I got the details out of her when you were gone.” She grinned. “You slept over at his place last night?”

“No!” I swallowed. “It’s not like that!”

“Louise, it’s okay. I’m glad you’re seeing someone.” She grinned. “Is he hot? When can I meet him?”

“Never!” My head was spinning. I’d only just wrapped my head around being with Sean. He was still caught up in crime—that was his life. Maybe I could learn to accept that, but I couldn’t have a guy like that around Kayley. “Look...things are complicated right now.”

She pouted. “Why are you being so mysterious? Why can’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

I sighed. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go thank Stacey for hanging out here all day. Then we can do something fun together.”

So we did. I took her out to a fancy ice cream place and we talked about movies and the vacation we’d take when this was all over and who we’d most like to be shipwrecked with. But she left her ice cream half eaten, her appetite worryingly poor.

That night, after I’d tucked her in, I was just about to leave her when she grabbed my wrist. “Can you stay with me?” she asked. “Just for tonight?” Her voice had suddenly lost that teenage, all-knowing, tone.

She hadn’t asked for that for years. I sat down on the edge of the bed, wracked with guilt.
I’ve been away too much.
“Of course,” I said, my voice cracking. And I stretched out next to her.

I hated lying to her. We’d always been so close and it felt as if all the secrets had driven a wedge between us.
Just hang on,
I thought as I watched her sleep.
Another month. That’s all I need.
Then this whole thing would be over and I could end this double life.

I didn’t know that I was about to run out of time.

September

Sean

The next few weeks passed
fast.
There was so much that needed doing at the mansion, just to make sure the floor didn’t collapse under us or the roof didn’t come down, that I was there all day, every day. Given that, before I met Louise, I’d spent most days sleeping off a sex-and-booze-fueled hangover, it was an adjustment. But, in time, I found I kind of liked seeing mornings.