Chapter 14
Fourteen
River’s relief in knowing they’d have the house to themselves again when they got back was only slightly dimmed by the awareness that its location was no longer a secret.
He wasn’t sure he agreed with Newt about Max being the one to leak it.
Dila was putting all those shots of them together online so why would Max think his actual address needed to be revealed?
Not that the press would publish it. If they did, or made him findable, River would sue.
He was more concerned about the sender of the hate mail.
But concerned enough to move? If the role in Kaden’s Monster actually happened, and he really thought it might, then he’d not be in the UK for around four months.
Max believed the role would lead to more work in the States and he’d hinted that River might be better to buy a place over there.
So maybe Max had leaked it in an attempt to persuade him to sell up here. River didn’t know what to think. It hurt to think. Except about one thing. One person. Newt. He’d persuade Newt to come with him to the States. There. That was solved. River exhaled.
“This car is so great,” Newt said. “My brother…”
“What?”
Newt didn’t talk about his family. Well, nor did River, but he wanted to know more about Newt’s.
“Brother?” River asked.
“I have two brothers. Sean is nine years older than me. He’s the seagull chaser. Phelan is seven years older. My sister Rathnait is three years younger than me. What about you?”
River shook his head.
“Everyone in my family loved cars except me. When you’ve been made to spend your weekends washing and polishing them, hoovering inside until not a speck of dust remains, when all I wanted to do was lie on my bed with a book…
I came to loathe them. But cars were my father’s business.
Probably still are. Phelan bought me a book about the Aston Martin for my fourteenth birthday.
I think he wanted it really.” Newt chuckled.
“I’d have been happier with a book about clocks or the Romans. ”
“You like clocks?”
“Any timepiece. They’re so intricate. Beautiful inside.”
“Go to Gren…it…hmm…to see?”
“Greenwich?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
River took a deep breath. “Let’s go…to…Greenwich…tomorrow to…see clocks.”
“Wow. Well done!”
“We can go?”
“We could get the train from Sevenoaks. I can park there. Not the Aston. You’d need your mask all the time. Or a scarf.”
“Okay.”
Newt smiled at him. River was pleased he’d found something that Newt wanted to do.
“Already been?” River asked.
“No. You?”
“Once. I was eight. School.”
“A school trip?”
River nodded.
“We never went anywhere interesting like that.”
“Not…inter…esting.”
Newt laughed. “Eight’s young to be interested in clocks. So what would you like to eat tonight?”
“Thai.”
“I’ve never had Thai food.”
How had Newt never had Thai food?
“Is it hard to cook? Shall we call in at a supermarket?”
They passed an Aldi on the way back from Dymchurch and River went in with him, mask in place.
He’d never been in an Aldi. Newt googled a few recipes and read the names of the dishes out to River.
It took them a while, but they got all the ingredients they needed for a massaman chicken curry and bought a packet of coconut rice to share between them.
“Want to drive back?” Newt asked.
“No. Talk.”
“You can’t drive and talk at the same time?”
“Yes, but…”
Newt drove. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Why don’t…family?” River knew that wasn’t right but he figured Newt would know what he meant.
“Something happened when I was seventeen. They…let me down and I never saw them again.”
“Something?”
“Yes, something.”
“What?”
“Can you remember more about the fall?”
Oh. River got the message. Newt didn’t want to talk about it.
“Remember not wanting…to climb.” He hadn’t remembered that for a long while and still questioned whether it was a memory or an assumption. River hated heights, so maybe he’d turned that fear into a memory.
“You had a stunt double.”
“Barney. He was sick.” River had learned much later, once his understanding came back, that Barney had a stomach upset.
“Did anyone check that he really was sick?”
“Max said M…Malik did.”
“Barney must have felt guilty that you fell and not him.”
Now the idea that Barney might not have been sick was in his head, River began to wonder.
“Why didn’t Malik climb?”
“Didn’t look right. Small. Wrong…build. Barney tall, thin…blond like me.”
“You must have been so scared when you woke to find yourself in hospital.”
He’d been freaked out every time he woke. And every time he did, his first thought had been So I’m not dead yet then. “Scared. Confused. Pain.”
“It’s almost the worst-case scenario. The worst being dead. But being hurt and not being able to understand why, what had happened, what was going to happen, that would be frightening.”
“It was. Better off dead. Wished I was.”
Newt glanced at him. “I’m not surprised you thought that. I’m glad that feeling went away.”
It had taken a while. Getting his understanding back had been a turning point.
“Did you ever read that Diving Bell and the Butterfly book?”
“Saw film.”
“The French guy had a massive stroke that left him only able to blink his left eye. It must have been absolutely terrifying.”
“I thought…if I…if can’t talk, can’t read, can’t understand… No life.”
“And no way to kill yourself.”
River nodded. “How you…?”
“How did I know that’s what you were thinking?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’d feel like that too. But you can understand, you can speak and you’re learning to read again. You’re getting your life back.”
River wanted everything back. Now.
“Do you believe in an afterlife?” Newt asked.
“Hea…ven? Clowns? Shit!” He groaned. “Clouds… Bouncer at pearl-ee gates? No.”
Newt shuddered. “If there are clowns in Heaven, I’m opting out.”
“Me too.”
“A bouncer in the clouds doesn’t seem very practical, does it? If you’re not going to be let in, what happens then? You just plummet? Is part of the punishment having Heaven in front of you, then your name not being on the list for a happy ever after?”
“Why…torment…in hell? Dare…Hmm…Devil should be…happy. Has…bad guys down there. Not tor…Hmm…torture them. Praise them.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
River managed to talk about several things before they got back. Not fluently, and he got words wrong sometimes, but he felt more…normal. Newt was easy to talk to. He didn’t rush him, he made him laugh, made him laugh at himself.
They cooked together and shared a bottle of beer that Dila’s cook appeared to have accidentally left. River didn’t miss not having alcohol. He’d never been a big drinker, but he’d liked the occasional glass of wine or a cocktail. Newt left more beer in his glass than he’d drunk.
“Don’t like it?” River asked.
“Not much. The curry was delicious.”
River wondered why he’d let him pour it if he didn’t like beer.
Newt had been back and forth to the utility room to see to the washing and had remade the beds.
River wished he had someone to do all that work for him.
He had better things he wanted to do with Newt.
He wondered about asking Newt to look up Dila, see what she’d posted and what the response was, but really, did he care?
Newt moved all his things out of the room over the garage back to his bedroom, which was where River wanted him to be.
Each time Newt went off to do something, River had taken off an item of clothing.
Then Newt started to do the same until River was naked, and Newt was only wearing boxers.
Then he wasn’t. He was on his knees in front of River.
The whisper of Newt’s breath over his cock sent shivers rippling through River’s body.
“Fuck my mouth,” Newt whispered.
Everything inside River clenched. It was a miracle he didn’t come right there and then. He threaded his fingers in Newt’s hair and with his other hand, he guided his cock past Newt’s lips. One sloppy suck was enough to set fire racing down River’s veins.
“Oh…Oh…” Words would have failed him anyway but the heat and warmth of Newt’s mouth were perfect to drive sense out of his skull.
Little by little, with each dip of his head, Newt took more of him in until the tip of River’s cock touched his throat. Newt choked a little and pulled back, a string of saliva and precome linking them until he licked his lips. He looked up at River and smiled.
“More,” River whispered, staring into Newt’s beautiful green eyes.
Newt stretched his lips around him and sucked slowly, moving backwards and forwards. River could feel Newt’s tongue caressing him, sliding over the head of his cock, then around the top, into the slit. Oh fuck… Newt pulled off again to grab air.
“You’re big.”
River rolled his eyes. “You have…small mouth.”
Newt chuckled. “Take charge.”
River shifted his hips faster, his dick making shallow strokes over Newt’s tongue. Fuck! He was fighting to cope with the way the nerve endings in his cock were flaring with every slide between Newt’s lips, but it was impossible. He was gasping, groaning, grunting…
Newt was making noises too, throaty purrs and occasional gagging that wound River tighter.
When Newt grabbed River’s backside and pulled his arse cheeks open as he tugged him close, River couldn’t believe there was so much of himself in Newt’s mouth.
He kept jerking his hips, losing himself in the pleasure of it, until he remembered Newt needed to breathe.
One inhalation and then River was thrusting again, deep and hard, over and over, and it was mind-blowingly good.
Right until Newt slipped the tip of one finger over River’s hole, then it was even better. River’s knees shook.