Milo (Finding Home #2)

Prologue

Until you’re ready to leave, Lo, and not a second before.

FIVE YEARS AGO

Milo

I stand in the kitchen looking down at the mess of broken glass and the sluggish trail of red wine that’s oozing from the shards like a bloody stream.

My palms sweat, and I wipe them down the legs of the expensive black trousers he’d insisted I wear today.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the shiny stainless-steel fridge and spare a split second to worry about the size of my arse in them, which had been the subject of his latest lecture.

Then I go back to fretting over the bottle of wine I just broke.

“What the fuck?” comes the explosive voice from the doorway and I can’t stop the flinch that runs through my body. I wish I could, but the memory of the last time I broke something in his expensive flat is painful.

My boyfriend, Thomas, comes further into the room.

He’s dressed in skinny black jeans and a black V-neck t-shirt, the neckline so low I can practically see his ribs.

With his golden hair shining he looks like an angel, but the way he can’t disguise how pleased he is by my cowardly reaction is very far from angelic.

“What the hell have you done now?” he mutters, kicking the mess of glass to the side near the kitchen cupboard where I presume I’ll be expected to clean it up later. “Can’t you do anything properly?”

“I’m s-s-sorry,” I mutter, feeling the words at the back of my throat like a massive lump that I can’t swallow or spit out. They’re just there, taunting me while I stutter.

“Oh, are y-y-you?” he taunts. “How s-s-sorry are you, Milo?”

“I’ll c-c-clean it up,” I manage to get out, bending to pick up the bigger shards of glass. He moves suddenly and I flinch again and then gasp as the forgotten glass bites into my palm. I look down dumbly to see the slice white against my skin for a brief second before blood starts to seep out.

“Shit!” he says, managing to sound both aggrieved and yet in some way horribly fond.

“You can’t do anything, can you? Come here, sweetheart.

Let me clean it up.” I pull my hand back from his grasp and he tuts disapprovingly.

“Come on, Milo. The guests will be here soon. I haven’t got time for this display of petulance.

You and I both know that you won’t clean it properly.

Then you’ll get an infection and we’ll be at casualty before we know it.

I haven’t got the energy to waste on that performance. ”

He looks me up and down dismissively. “At least you’re wearing what I suggested this time so you look at least halfway decent.” He scowls at my hair, which at his request has been cut short. “You can get more cut off next time though. It’s getting disgustingly out of control again.”

He sighs in a long-suffering manner and I fight the impulse to apologise. “I really don’t know why it’s always me having to tell you what to do, Milo. You’re so bloody hopeless. Like a fucking amoeba with no thoughts of your own. Happy to wallow around while I pay for everything.”

He reaches out and pulls a loose strand of my hair. It’s quick and surprisingly painful as is the vicious look on his face. “Get it all cut off,” he mutters.

I try to pull back, but his grip on my hair tightens and it brings tears to my eyes.

“I d-d-don’t …” I pause and take a deep breath the way my old speech therapist had told me to do and feel the now customary panic when it doesn’t work and my voice won’t come.

Shit! What if this is permanent now? What if I’ve brought it back and it won’t leave?

Despite the panic, I force my words out like I’m taking an axe to them. “I don’t want t-t-to …”

“Don’t want me t-t-to do what, you fucking imbecile?

Help you? Well, excuse me for caring. Really, Milo, I don’t know why the fuck I put up with your useless stammering incompetence.

You used to be good in bed but even that’s gone.

” He lets go of my hair and looks me up and down dismissively.

“Gone the way of your l-l-looks and b-b-b-brain, I suppose.”

“What the fuck is going on in here?”

The deep voice didn’t come from me. We both spin around, and I gape at the sight of Niall in the doorway.

My older brother’s best friend stands there in jeans and a navy V-neck jumper, his blond hair messy and dishevelled around a face that at first showed disbelief but is now pretty quickly moving into absolute rage.

He looks extraordinarily bright at this moment, like he’s under a spotlight, and I feel an intense pull towards him because he represents home and safety and everything that’s been missing from my life since I met Thomas and at his behest abandoned everyone.

I want to move towards him so desperately but I can’t make my feet move, so I do what I’ve learned through many hard and painful lessons over the last two years. I merge into the background and try to disappear. I’ve found that it’s frighteningly easy to vanish from your own life.

Niall

The phone rings as I cross the road. I look down at the display and connect the call. “What do you want, Gideon?”

My best friend hesitates and then laughs. “How do you know I want anything?”

“It’s like a sixth sense. Soon I’ll be seeing dead people and sleeping in a tent on the floor.”

“Well, at least I have all my own hair in this scenario, which cannot be said for Bruce Willis. And I know very well that if that tent was in the middle of a wet, muddy field, you’d be ecstatic.”

I smile. No one knows me better than him. “I repeat, what do you want?”

“It’s Milo.”

I frown as I catch a note in his voice. “What’s up with him?”

“I can’t get hold of him.”

“Well, that’s not surprising. You were only saying the other day how he’s living his best life with his new man.”

“Yes, but normally he’ll answer his phone. I’ve been ringing him for three days now and haven’t managed to get him.”

He sighs, and my pulse picks up. “Do you think there’s anything wrong?”

The hesitation on the other end of the line confirms it, and my grip on my phone tightens as I think of Gideon’s little brother.

He’s sweet and dreamy and, despite having a bad stutter when he was little, he’s surprisingly sparky if pushed.

He’s as dear to me as my own brothers, and the thought of anything happening to him makes me feel a bit sick.

“You’re not telling me something,” I say with the certainty of someone who knows him inside out. “What is it?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. It’s just this boyfriend.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing on paper. He’s a successful artist, good-looking bloke, and well off. He just …”

“What?”

“He pings my buttons,” he mutters, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “He’s very controlling. When I met him, he absolutely monopolized the conversation and wouldn’t let Milo get a word in edgeways.”

“How was Milo with that?”

“Accepting. Too accepting.” He pauses. “You and I both know that although he stuttered as a kid, he’s an opinionated little bugger underneath the shyness.

” I smile because Milo’s ability to wind up Gideon when he was little was very endearing.

The smile dies as he keeps talking. “And he put him down all the time. Subtle little digs that I soon put a stop to, but I didn’t like the way Milo reacted. ”

“How was that?”

He pauses. “He didn’t react, if that doesn’t sound too weird. It was like he was so used to someone talking to him like shit that it hardly registered anymore.”

“What do you want?” I say slowly. “I know it’s something, Gideon. It’s the only time you ring me.”

There’s a silence on the other end of the phone, but I know he’ll ignore the barb of anger in my tone. He always does. Finally, he speaks, and I was right. His tone is even and logical. “I need you to go round to the flat.”

“ Really ? That’s not going to go down too well.”

“See how it goes. Just check up on him and let me know how things are. I’m stuck in Romania and I’ll get the fucking sack if I decide to leave the set. The director’s already got it in for me.”

“Could that be anything to do with the cheery warmth of your personality?” I murmur, hearing him laugh.

I exhale loudly, feeling the sting of wanting to hurt him riding me under the skin.

“So, you want me to leave the bloke I’ve got lined up for tonight and go to a complete stranger’s flat and try to assess the state of your family’s dirty laundry? ”

“Please,” he says. “For me.”

This always works and he bloody knows it, and for a wild moment I want to reach through the phone and throttle him. Then I remember Milo and I know I can’t. He’s as much my little brother as he is Gideon’s.

“Okay, I’ll do it. Shoot me the address.”

An hour later I stand outside the place where Milo is living. I look up and whistle. If his boyfriend’s got a place here, he must have some money because property in Chelsea isn’t cheap.

I try the front door and look around when I find it locked.

Spying a rack of brass buttons next to little labels, I search for the name Thomas Dawley, but before I can press it the door opens and a lady appears holding the leads of four very lively Chihuahuas.

Seizing the chance while she’s distracted, I hold the door open for her and then slip inside the building.

Inside the lobby, it’s hushed and smells of floor polish and the scent from a huge vase of gardenias.

There’s a concierge desk but it’s empty with the seat pushed back as if the occupant has just gone somewhere, so I make straight for the bank of lifts.

They whisk me upstairs with the quiet hush that money buys.

Perish the thought that the machinery might disturb the wealthy people’s minds.

I find the door of Milo’s apartment easily and go to knock but pause as I hear raised voices from inside. I lean closer to the door, but when I rest my hand against the wood it falls open as it’s on the latch.