This is Not a Love Story (10 page)

Oh God, what have they done to him?

He closes his puffy eyes as I tentatively trace my fingers over his bruised nose, his sore eyebrows, his tearstained, swollen cheekbones. I don’t want to hurt him, but this isn’t enough. His lips are torn but so, so soft.

“Remee,” he says hoarsely, my name vibrating against my fingertips.

I can feel his heart beating against my chest, and I press closer. There is no way I am going to run from him, even if that night in the flat was just the work of my imagination. I have to let him know how I feel. I have to
feel
.

We are alive.

“Show me you’re real,” he whispers shakily, his eyes still squeezed shut tight. It almost feels like he’s kissing my fingertips as he speaks, and then he does. Oh so hesitantly, he kisses them, and in less than a heartbeat I replace my fingertips with my mouth and press my lips as gently as I can against his.

How have I never dared do this? What did I think was so hard?

We stand unmoving by the side of the windy road, hearts hammering, lips pressed but not really kissing, arms wrapped tight, too terrified to move in case this is all fantasy, all make-believe, all wishful thinking.

Tentatively, I move my mouth against his. I feel so close to him. His breath warm on my face. I open my eyes and pull back a millimeter. I want him to follow me, and he does. He grazes my cheek with his, with the slight stubble that he shaves religiously whenever he can, but he doesn’t kiss me.

Does he want this? Does he want me? Does it matter as long as he’s here, however miraculous that seems right now?

His hand slides up my back to stroke my neck. I can feel his fingers brushing against my somewhat longer hair, exploring it. Exploring me. Pulling me closer. He opens his eyes, and we press our foreheads together, just breathing each other in. Then, gently cupping the back of my head, he nudges my nose with his, lowers his eyelashes, and suddenly brushes his open mouth against mine, again and again, so almost kissing, so teasing, so close I can taste him.

We’re so involved, we don’t hear the car pull up beside us, and the sound of the horn makes us both jump apart in shock.

Wide-eyed, Julian grabs me and spins around, away from the headlights, and waves his hand behind him in a gesture I know means
give us a minute
.

“Cassey! Fuck.” He lays his head against my shoulder, breathing heavily. “She brought me here from the hospital.”

I push away from his tight embrace.

Hospital? Why were you in hospital?
I sign, panicked.

Fuck, I’m so stupid, getting carried away in all this want and relief, and he’s hurt. I can see he’s hurt.

Warm fingers brush away my pathetic, hot tears.

“I’m okay… I just hit my head a bit hard, and I needed a few stitches.” Cautiously, he tips his head down so I can see a jagged line of bloody red running an awfully long way over the top of his skull. His hair has been shaved away in haphazard lines. Hesitantly, my fingers hover over the cut. “Here too.” And he lifts the bundle of jumpers he’s wearing and shows me the dressing wrapped around his chest and stomach, already stained a terrifying dark blackish red. But it’s his arm that looks the worst, just above his wrist, the whole shape of it lumpy and distorted with swelling and stiff metal staples.

Holding me must have hurt like hell.

“They need to dress this, and I got a bit of an infection in the bite on my stomach, so I need to have these antibiotics from a drip in my arm for a few hours. I kind of discharged myself when Cassey told me what happened when she found you earlier.” Now Julian’s voice becomes so quiet I have to lean in close to hear him, and I end up resting my forehead beneath his chin like I always do. “I figured you thought something had happened to me, and I was scared for you. I mean, if it was you, I… I was just so scared, Remee, every awful day I was scared because I wasn’t with you. I’ve missed you so much.” He bites back a sob and kisses the top of my head, strokes his hand tenderly up and down my neck. “I’ve got to talk to the police, and I should go back into hospital for a while, just to get sorted out, but only if you’ll come with me? I don’t want to go anywhere if I’m not with you.”

Where else does he think I’m going to go but with him?
I take his good hand and pull him toward the steamed-up car.

Four sets of eyes blink at the sudden light and peer a little anxiously at us as I open the door. Phillippe hops into the front next to Cassey, and Julian and I squeeze in the back next to Gem and a very tired-looking Joel.

And it’s me everyone is peering anxiously at, not poor battered Julian, who I’m trying not to crush, when all I desperately want to do is crawl in his lap.

Me.

A little embarrassed, I nod at everyone.
I’m okay.
Really I am. Now.

I smile at Joel, who closes his eyes and leans against Gem’s chest.

Cassey gives me a meaningful look but seems satisfied enough to start the engine.

A thin strip of gray lights up the horizon, and I realize I haven’t slept in two days. Right now I feel as though I could stay awake forever.

Julian grips my hand tightly in his, lets his head fall against my shoulder, and we go.

C
ASSEY
DROPS
us at the hospital in the pale dawn light, blue-gray shadows washing over everything.

With one arm around Julian’s waist to hold him up, I sign
thank you
through the open car window. All four of them look hollow-eyed and exhausted from searching for me all night. I can’t really believe they did that.

I promise Cassey I’ll get Julian to call her when he’s discharged so she can pick us up, and she drives away.

We walk through the hissing doors, looking for reception. The bright, sterile fluorescent lights along the ceiling make me blink and cover my eyes, and at first I’m not really sure which way to go, but the glass-paneled reception booth is hard to miss. Julian leans heavily against me and speaks to the receptionist through a microphone. He’s so pained and tired now I’m scared he’s going to pass out.

They
must
see that.

But, no, what they see are two desperate homeless kids stumbling drunk-like through reception with nothing to do but hang around the place. And, they dispassionately inform us, Julian lost his bed when he discharged himself, so now we will have to wait in Accident and Emergency for him to be assessed again before he can see a doctor.

I pull him toward a row of uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs in the virtually empty waiting room and shift them around so he can lie with his head in my lap.

Worn out, I lean back, relief running through me like adrenaline at the feel of him, so warm, his body such a perfect solid weight against mine. With splayed fingers I stroke through what’s left of his soft golden hair, and I’m filled with so much tenderness I think I might burst apart.

T
HE
WAITING
room is beginning to get busy when Julian is finally taken through to a curtain-drawn cubicle and examined. I stay with him and help him as he undresses and puts on the pale hospital gown. He is so thin and terribly bruised from head to foot, but he moves into my touch every time my fingers brush his skin
—
just his shoulder or his back as I fasten his gown
—
and I know he’s trying to tell me something, something I’m all too willing to hear
now
, something I can’t believe I didn’t work out before, the way his body is calling to mine.

His eyes never leave me the whole time they’re pushing needles into his skin and wrapping his wounds in gauze.

“I’m so tired, Remee,” he whispers after the nurses have set up his drip and left.

It’s okay
, I sign. I kneel on the floor and cup his face between my hands, brushing away stray tears with my thumbs.

I long to ask him what happened, but I know now isn’t the right time.

“Could you just…?” he whispers, closing his eyes against the words.

He doesn’t need to ask. I climb on the bed next to him and pull him close.

“I’m sorry I’m…,” he starts to say, but I hold my fingers against his lips to stop the words.

The painkillers he was given must work quickly as he falls asleep startlingly fast, his chest rising and falling deep and slow under my arm. I know I won’t sleep, not yet, not here, the both of us so vulnerable.

Thankfully they don’t move him up to a ward, and I stay curled protectively around his sleeping form for hours until the antibiotics have finished draining into him.

When a nurse eventually comes back to check on him, the clamor of the hospital is in full swing. She’s busy, she has no time, and with one swift move she whips the IV out and startles Julian awake, causing him to moan in pain.

I glower at her. I understand the hurry, but why the fuck can’t she be more considerate?

“There’s a detective outside wanting to talk to you. I’ll send her in, shall I?”

Julian blinks sleepily and turns in my arms, brows furrowed.
Where the fuck am I?

And I have to bury my face in his shoulder and grip him tight.
God, I love him.

The detective is a tall and faintly androgynous woman in a businesslike black trouser suit. She introduces herself as Tessa Sandersen and wants me to step outside for a minute so she can talk to Julian alone. Julian links his fingers through mine and determinedly shakes his head. No.

“Name?” She sighs, reluctantly pulling out a small tape recorder and looking over in my direction.

Julian glances at me, silently checking I’m okay with this, before saying “Romeo Danilov.”

I love the way he says my name. It’s not right, not the way my mother would spit the word out, but that just makes me love how he says it all the more. Because he tries so hard to get it right for me. He tries so hard to get everything right.

“Can Romeo not speak for himself?”

“No.”

I’m mute
, I write on my pad and show it to her.

“Oh.” And I can see it already, that weird, misplaced, motherly concern.

She certainly wasn’t looking at me like this a moment ago.

And then she asks, “Romeo, were you the one who gave us the tip-off about Vidal and Malik?”

I nod and feel Julian’s eyes on me. He’s probably just shocked I went to the police. I kind of am too.

“Well, Romeo, it’s doubtful your friend would be here right now if it wasn’t for you. We should get quite a few convictions out of this case if we’re lucky.”

Now she turns to Julian.

“Your statement is really important, Julian. Shall we start at the beginning?”

Julian nods, and I want to hop back on the bed with him and hold him in my arms. But I just squeeze his hand tightly and stare at the floor.

First he tells her about the squat and what happened in the white house, about Malik and Vidal, stuff I know, stuff I lived through with him.

“So the morning of the fifth, what happened?”

“I can’t remember everything clearly. It’s hazy. I think they drugged us. I remember being shaken awake and told to come outside. I didn’t want to go, but Malik dragged me. He had a dog. It was still dark. There were probably about twelve of us on the walkway, and I don’t know how many of
them
, but they all had dogs. They led us out of the block in a line. If anyone stopped, they got hit or kicked. There was a dark-colored van parked near the entrance, and they started to force us inside. I tried to run, but my legs wouldn’t work properly. I was punched a few times and thrown in the back with everyone else. They drove for hours. Everything was black in the back of the van, so we couldn’t see where we were going or even if it was light outside. We had made a plan to escape when they opened the doors, there were more of us than them, we were going to overwhelm them. But when the van stopped, they threw something in the back that smelled so bad we couldn’t breathe and pulled us out one by one. I was dragged into a yard with another kid. The place looked like some sort of factory, and there were caravans everywhere. I didn’t feel so groggy anymore, so I managed to take whoever was holding me by surprise and run, and that was when they….”

He pauses, closing his eyes, his breathing suddenly ragged. I pull our linked hands up to my face and rub my lips against his grazed knuckles.

“You’re doing really well, Julian,” Tessa says gently.

“…that was when they let the dogs go,” he says in a rush and releases my hand to pull his gown to the side, exposing the dressing on his stomach and holding out his bandaged arm. Tessa produces a small camera from her pocket and takes a couple of pictures.

“I’m going to have to take some more pictures of your injuries but without the dressings, maybe in a week or so?

“Okay.”

“Do you want to take a break for a minute? Or do you want to carry on?”

“I just want to get this over with,” he says quietly.

I can’t stand not being close to him anymore so I stand up and edge myself onto the bed. The whole side of his body pushes back against mine, and I know I’m not imagining any of this.

Tessa raises her eyebrows but doesn’t say anything.

“They tried to get me to work. I don’t know what it was they wanted me to do, but I couldn’t even make it to the factory door, I was in so much pain. After a day or two, they just left me alone in this stinking caravan. No one brought me food or water or anything. I slept a lot. I wasn’t in pain when I was sleeping. The first thing I knew about the police raid was when I heard voices shouting for everyone to get out of the caravans or they would torch them. I don’t know how I got out, but when I did, I was grabbed and shoved into a van again and driven away fast. The van was still moving when they pushed me out of it.”