Chapter 26
Alfie
“Mrs. Thompson,” I bellow as I enter the house. “Call the stables and ask Bert to saddle Gregor. Stoke the fires, warm the house. Have the cook heat soup and make tea for the little mouse.”
Mrs. Thompson appears at my side, nodding fast and yelling orders to others as fast as I issue them to her.
I look back at her when I reach the stairs.
Her face is a picture. One of panic and concern.
One of knowing and deep understanding. I look into all of those things and nod in answer to the question she hasn’t asked.
“I’ll be back soon,” I tell her. “It won’t take me long to find him.”
She watches silently as I tear up the stairs, not moving until I’ve disappeared from view.
I’m dripping wet, boots caked in mud, but I don’t care.
I cross my bedroom in a hurry, stopping only when the top drawer of my bedside table has been yanked open to expose its contents.
I rummage wildly, throwing items that aren’t what I’m looking for over my shoulder.
I stop moving when I find it.
A small silver blister pack that contains only one tablet. A pale-blue pill. Oval and slightly larger than the tablet I take after my ride every morning.
I slice the foil backing open with my thumbnail and pop the tablet into the palm of my hand.
I look at it, and an old, heavy pang winds around my ribs.
It’s a small thing. A single dosage. A chemical concoction that I’ve sat in this room and fantasized about taking every night for years and years.
Those nights, I held the blister pack in my hand unopened, in pain, unwell, heart aching as I put it back in my drawer.
Now, I bring my hand up and toss the tablet into my mouth, swallowing it roughly without the benefit of water to ease its passage.
I’m out of my rooms and halfway downstairs by the time it’s gone down. I make my way to Jensen’s rooms without anyone stopping me or saying a word. Mrs. Thompson looks on, eyes filled with concern, lips pressed into something that resembles the tiniest of smiles.
Once inside, I close Jensen’s sitting room door and lean against it.
I take stock of myself. My body, my mind.
I feel the same as I always do. Bad. Foggy.
Heavy. I breathe through the worst of the panic and the sickening doubt that questions whether this will even work.
It takes a moment, but I push myself off the door when I’m certain I have the strength required to do so.
I walk to Jensen’s bedroom slowly, like an intruder, and come to a sudden halt when I see his bed. The pain that’s been throbbing in my chest for hours begins to throb.
A nest.
Jensen sleeps in a nest. He sleeps here in a neatly made nest. All by himself.
In a puffy sphere of pillows and blankets that have been arranged just so.
An orderly disorder of soft, warm items that have been positioned to provide him with comfort and security.
Things he needs to feel safe while sleeping in my home. Under my roof.
My throat aches where my neck and jaw meet. He’s been here for months, close to me and needing comfort, and I’ve let him sleep alone.
Angry waves of regret rise up and flood me.
He’s been here. Right here, and I’ve been here too. He’s been alone and lonely, and I’ve let that happen.
A chopped, broken sound seeps out of me as I pick up one of his blankets and lift it to my face.
Nothing.
There’s nothing but cold air and the fluffy scratch of fabric tickling my nose.
I pick up the next blanket, and the next one, and the next one until his neat nest is in disarray and there’s only one blanket I haven’t scented yet.
I hold it in my hands and look out his window as the rain beats down steadily.
Silvery rivulets pour down panes of glass, distorting my view of a landscape I know like the back of my hand.
I don’t move until the air in the room changes. Shades of gray lighten. Thick, heavy air thins and turns golden. Muted colors around me sharpen and become a little more vibrant each time I blink.
I’m dizzy.
Drunk.
Disoriented.
Every time I inhale, the room changes. Edges sharpen.
Curves soften. Particles of dust expand, skipping around the room as the light hits them.
I close my eyes and breathe in through my nose, filling my lungs until my chest aches.
I hold my breath for as long as I can, and when I release it, the room spins.
Yellow light flickers around certain objects, pale pink around others.
Translucent, glitterlike floaters sink slowly to the earth and bounce up again.
An old, brand-new dimension bursts to life around me.
I raise the threadbare blanket I’m holding to my nose, waiting, shaking, before closing my eyes and inhaling again.
The scent that envelops me is distant. Far, far away. A wisp of a thing. A faded notion more than something concrete.
The antidote is working, I’m certain of that. Something is here with me in the room that wasn’t here before, but the suppressant I’ve taken for years still runs through my system. Diluted, but still in me.
What I have isn’t much, but it’s enough. Enough that when I leave Jensen’s room, I follow a filmy mist. A thin, invisible thread. A tattered and torn cord that leads from his room to the orangerie. From the orangerie to outdoors.
I follow it, steps lengthening as I make my way to the stables. Gregor stands, saddled, ears cocked and twitching as he considers me. We haven’t been out in this kind of weather before, so I understand his trepidation.
Fortunately, Gregor is a creature I know better than most, and I know that, like me, he was wild once. I offer him my palm, letting him sense my urgency as I stroke the back of my fingers over a soft velvet muzzle.
He stamps a foreleg and nickers as I mount him. He rears up, throwing a long, high-pitched scream at the sky, and takes off with only the slightest encouragement from me.
I follow the misty film of Jensen’s scent down the road Sid and I traveled earlier. After a mile or so, it veers left, turning off-road toward a clearing in the shrubbery and meandering down the slope to the heart of the valley.
I breathe in frantically, sniffing loudly and repeatedly as my olfactory region lights up. Gregor gallops at full speed, his trust in me absolute as we chase an invisible trail.
I stop and dismount when the gradient of the slope becomes unsafe for Gregor to tackle.
It’s still raining. A slippery slide of mud and rainwater do their best to slow me, but ahead of me, in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch it, something soft and gentle calls to me.
It’s a flimsy, light thing. Thin and nowhere near as full-bodied as it would be if I were completely free of impairment and the weather wasn’t doing everything in its power to wash it away.
As it is, what I smell is more of a hazy shadow than something with roots in reality.
A call, a dream that takes place in the early hours, when slumber lightens and releases its grip on the conscious mind.
I breathe in and follow it where it leads.
It’s a phantom. A specter. A memory more than a scent.
A distant recollection of four walls and a ceiling.
Warmth and connection. A distant place I visited a long time ago and haven’t been able to find my way back to.
A happy, safe place I’ve missed without knowing it’s what I’ve been missing.
The memory thickens, swirling around my feet and growing clearer.
He’s close. He must be.
“Jensen,” I roar into the fading light. “Jensen!”
There’s a sound in the distance, a squeak I hear over the rain. I narrow my eyes, searching the landscape for something out of place. I see it at last, the rustle of a bramble bush a hundred meters or so away.
My heart thunders, wind whipping my hair into my eyes as I sprint toward him. I move faster than I’ve ever moved before. Faster than I thought I could move.
He’s on the ground, a puddle of a person drenched by the rain and covered in mud. He’s soaked to the bone, teeth chattering from the cold. He’s curled up on his side, leaning against a big, smooth rock with one leg stretched out in front of him.
“I’m fine,” he says before I have time to say anything. “Totally fine. I just…had a little fall, but I’ll be up in a minute. I’m just having a, a rest, but”—his voice wavers—“I’ll be back on my feet any second now.”
He’s pale and trembling visibly. His hair is plastered to his face, and his shirt is see-through and sticking to his chest. There are red rings around his eyes and bright-pink blotches on his cheeks.
He’s been crying.
The little mouse has been crying.
My mouse has been frightened. He’s been all alone, and he’s been crying. My ribs squeeze and the breath is crushed out of me so hard that I can’t work out how to get more air into my lungs. I drop to my knees at his side, reaching for him and cradling him against my chest.
“What happened?” I ask. “Are you injured? Where does it hurt?”
He leans his temple against my sternum, wiping his nose with one hand and then the other.
“My ankle.” He sniffs. “I’m sure it’s nothing, probably just a bruise or something like that. I’ll be okay soon. I only lay down to take my weight off it. I hadn’t given up or anything like that. I was about to get back up.”
I wrap my arms around him as tightly as I can, my fingers finding their way to his neck and caging his precious skull. It’s solid and heavy, and as I hold it, I become aware that I don’t want to let it go.
I don’t want to let him go.
My head dips, lips dusting the whorl on his crown.
The sweet, warm essence that’s intrinsic to him floats around me, landing lightly on my skin.
At first, it’s a gentle caress. An exploration.
Then it’s an assault. It’s an arrow finding the last of my defenses and breaching them.
The way it happens is so jarring, so brutal, that it should hurt, but it doesn’t.
It doesn’t hurt at all. Who and what Jensen is exists around me, outside of me.
And then things inside me light up all at once.
My brain.
My body.
Signals fire. Senses detonate.
The world around me bursts into color.
It’s beautiful.
The most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt.
It’s what I’ve wanted all my life. What I’ve waited for.
What I’ve ached for. I want to enjoy it.
To savor and experience it fully because I know, even now, as it’s happening, that it’s likely to be the best thing that has ever happened to me.
I want it more than I thought I could want anything, but to my surprise, I find there’s something I want more: to get Jensen to safety. To get him home and take care of him.
“Put your arms around me,” I tell him, guiding his hands around my neck. “Hold on. I’m going to pick you up.”
I scoop him up, one arm around his back, the other tucked under his knees, and carry him with ease. There’s a density to his bones that feels right. A weight with a lightness that was made for me.
I whistle for Gregor, and when he gets to us, I have Jensen stand on his good leg, holding on to Gregor for balance, as I mount him.
I lift Jensen easily, sliding my hands under his arms and pulling him carefully onto my lap.
I shrug off my coat, covering him with it to stop the worst of the rain from hitting him as Gregor begins to pick his way home.
Our progress is slow, the beautiful boy in my arms clinging to me as he shivers from the cold. I tuck my coat in around him as tightly as possible, leaving only a tiny gap needed to give him fresh air. His hands grapple with my shirt, fingers clenching as he holds on to me.
“Alfie,” says a small voice from under a shroud of waxed cotton. “You were wrong.”
“Wrong about what?” I ask, amused that he’d choose now, of all times, to point out my failings.
“You were so wrong.” Hands tug gently at my collar, opening it, and a sweet, lovely face nuzzles into my neck. “You don’t smell like sex.”
“Oh no?” I huff a laugh, heart swelling to bursting as I wait for him to tell me that I smell like a carrot or worse. “What do I smell like then?”
“You smell”—he inhales and hums dreamily—“like home.”