Chapter 21
It’s been a week of constant doctor’s and therapy appointments since I’ve been home.
Turns out my mother had been hiding some pretty serious medical problems as well as the drinking from me.
Even though Harrison and I have been messaging almost every day, I haven’t told him everything, but I want to.
While I don’t want to burden him with all the guilt I’m feeling, I could really use someone to confide in.
And I have a strange yearning just to hear his voice.
I like all of his tones, from prim and snarky to droll and inquisitive, but most of all, I like when his voice softens and drops a degree lower.
That’s when I know I’m getting the real version of him.
I reach out in the darkness of the room and fumble for my phone on the bedside table.
Tapping the screen, I sigh at the time. It’s too late to call him now.
He’ll be asleep—or he should be since it’s three in the morning.
Although I’m not expecting him to answer until tomorrow, I still tap out a message to him.
Hey, Prickles, I almost called you but realised the time.
You probably won’t pick this message up until the morning, but…
I don’t know, I’ve got so many things going on in my head it feels like I’m drowning.
Guess I could use a friend right now. And if I’m being honest, I miss your voice and your face.
Which is crazy. I’ve only been gone a week…
Ignore me. Probably sound like a stalker.
I hit send, and a few moments later, to my surprise, my phone lights up with an incoming video call. Guess he can’t sleep either.
Hitting the accept button, I watch as Harrison’s face fills the screen, his red hair sticking up in all directions, his head resting against a pillow.
“You’re pretty low-key for a stalker. I mean, you did drive just short of two hundred miles in the opposite direction of where I am.”
I smile and roll onto my side, then rest the phone on the pillow next to me so it almost feels like he’s lying beside me.
“Hi,” I say quietly.
“Hi,” he echoes back, his voice as hushed as mine.
His eyes seem to drift all over my face.
I know what he’s seeing; dark circles under my eyes from too many sleepless nights and an expression of guilt that pretty soon is going to end up permanently etched into my face.
He doesn’t ask if I’m okay; he can see that I’m not.
Instead, he asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”
I draw in a slow breath. For the first time in my life, I want to bare my soul to a man.
“It’s my mam,” I whisper. “She’s a recovering alcoholic. She was dry for sixteen years, but she’s fallen off the wagon this past year.”
“This year?” he mutters, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Would it happen to have started around the time you were hurt?”
One thing I’m learning about Harrison is that he’s incredibly astute. I nod in answer to his question.
“I didn’t know.” I blow out a breath, unloading a little of the shame that’s suffocating me. “How could I have not seen it? I’m a terrible son.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. But even with your psychic gifts, you can’t know everything. They aren’t infallible. Besides, I imagine she’s probably got very good at hiding it if it’s been a long-term issue. Many alcoholics are high functioning—until they’re not.”
“I know,” I reply miserably. “My brain keeps telling me that. I grew up seeing her hide it from everyone. I know what she can be like. But she never hid it from me. I don’t know how I missed the signs.
No, that’s a lie. I do know—I was so busy thinking about myself that I never stopped to think about what seeing me like that put her through. ”
“Tell me about her,” Harrison says softly.
I dig past all the pain and sadness to the good memories.
“When I was very small, Mam would sing to me if I couldn’t sleep.
She’d make these funny little bunny ears with my shoelaces when she was getting me ready for school, and…
and she would cut my sandwiches into different shapes every day so I wouldn’t have to eat the crusts. ”
“You don’t like bread crusts?” A small, sweet smile tugs at his lips.
“Bread, pies, tarts, quiches. If it has a crust, I won’t eat it.” I shudder. “There’s just something about them. They’re weird.”
He chokes out a quiet laugh. “Weird?”
“Okay, it’s me,” I admit with a small smile of my own to match his. “I’m weird.”
“I happen to like your brand of weird,” he replies. “She sounds like a good mum despite what you’ve both been through. Being an alcoholic or a recovering alcoholic doesn’t and shouldn’t define her. It sounds to me like she showed you love in all the ways she could.”
My smile dies, and I release a deep breath. “She gave up for me, you know.”
“The drinking?”
I nod. “It had got so bad by the time I was a teenager. The last time I found her, I was fourteen and she was in a bad state, lying in a pool of vomit. Her skin was grey, her face puffed and bloated from the booze.”
“You called an ambulance? You saved her life?”
I nod again, feeling a burning at the back of my throat and an aching in my eyes.
I rub them tiredly to stop the tears from forming.
“I sat next to her bed in that hospital room and cried. Maybe she saw how much hurt she caused me, or maybe she came so close to dying she scared herself. But by the time she was discharged from hospital, she had entered treatment for alcoholism. It was a lot, but she did it. She put in all the hard work and got dry.”
“What happened to you while she was dealing with all that?”
“I was put into a temporary placement. Bounced around for a few weeks, but they eventually let me stay with Trev.”
“Trev?”
“Our neighbour. We’ve lived next door to him forever.
He was always like a father figure to me.
I was comfortable with him and could talk to him about everything Mam was going through and how I felt, and being next door meant I could be close enough to help with her recovery.
I was there for her every step of the way and was so proud at every single milestone she reached.
All the pain I’d felt in the hospital and then I got to see her come out the other side and be happy–” I break off and close my eyes as the most obvious realisation comes to me.
“You’ve just made the connection, haven’t you?”
“She sat at my bedside in the hospital and cried after I almost died. And when the time came for me to heal, I didn’t allow her to support me the same way I had her.
” I swallow hard. “I shut it all out, including her. It wasn’t just the attack and the physical injuries.
It was the fact that I’d been outed too.
Considering we’re in the twenty-first century, you’d be surprised how many people didn’t want anything to do with me once they found out I was gay.
Guys I’d known for years, who I’d thought were my friends.
Danny was really the only one who stood by me.
He even came out himself in solidarity, which caused a lot of problems with his own family. ”
“I knew there was a reason I liked him,” Harrison mutters.
“He’s a good man.” I sigh. “I still feel bad that he ended up leaving and changing his job too. No matter how forward we think society has come, it’s not nearly far enough. The intolerance still runs deep.”
“Sam, I’m going to say something now that you might not want to hear.”
I stare at him.
“The world doesn’t revolve around you,” he says firmly but not unkindly.
“Danny made his choices and was prepared to live with the consequences of his actions. Just as your mum made her choices, right or wrong. Guilt is a pointless emotion unless you learn something from it. It’s not there for you to keep punishing yourself for things beyond your control.
Maybe you did shut your mum out, but you did it without realising because you were in too much pain to see hers.
It’s not unforgivable, Sam. You’re there now, aren’t you?
As soon as you knew she needed you, you were straight in the car and driving north even though you didn’t want to set foot anywhere near Leeds. ”
“You make me sound like some kind of martyr, but being in her house, picking up all her belongings, I’m overwhelmed with the psychic readings I keep getting. It’s excruciating to feel her hurt and sadness for me, her disappointment in herself. Her loneliness.”
“Would she move down to London?”
I shake my head. “No, Leeds is her home. She’s lived in this house for over thirty years, and it wouldn’t be fair to move her.
Everything is familiar here, and she does have friends, if she hasn’t managed to alienate them over the past year.
Although I’m pretty sure there’s nothing she could do to lose Trev. ”
“Are they…?” He leaves the question hanging.
“Just between us?” Harrison nods. “He’s been in love with her for as long as I can remember.”
“And she doesn’t feel the same way?”
“Honestly? I don’t think she actually knows. She’s completely oblivious. After the excruciating relationship she had with my father, which was where her drinking problem stems from, I don’t think she can gauge men’s interest in her. She doesn’t see herself worthy of love. She never has.”
“Oh, Sam,” he sighs.
“I know.” I shake my head. “Sometimes I want to bang Mam and Trev’s heads together. At this rate, they’ll both be drawing their pensions before she realises how he feels.”
“You’re lucky my dad’s not there.” Harrison chuckles. “He’d be matchmaking them both to within an inch of their lives.”
“Maybe they need it.” I snort quietly. “Prickles?”
“Yes?”
I finally admit the fear in my heart. “She might be sick. I’m not talking about the drinking. The booze has been masking a lot of pain she’s been in for the past year or so. They’ve been running lots of tests, but they’ve found a mass on her ovary.”
“A tumour?”
“Yes. They don’t know yet if it’s benign, could just be a cyst, but given her age and the fact she’s heading towards menopause anyway, they’re recommending a full hysterectomy.
Either way, they’re going to have to remove it because of its size.
But if she opts for the hysterectomy, it’s a big recovery, especially on top of–”
“The alcoholism recovery?”
“Yeah.” I exhale loudly. “I can’t leave her. It could be months before I’m able to come back to London.”
“Do you think you will?” he asks quietly. “Come back at all?”
“I want to. Leeds feels like I’m wearing clothes a size too small. It doesn’t fit properly anymore. Besides, I have my business—well, whatever I’ll be able to salvage from it. And Danny and Tris are there…and you.”
“I hope you do come back.”
“I will. I just don’t know when.” We watch each other quietly. “Prickles?”
“Yes?” he whispers.
“You know you told me that I quiet something inside you?”
“Yes.”
“You do the same for me,” I admit. “I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I do know I don’t want to lose it.”
“Sam,” he says in that soft tone I like so much, “I’m not going anywhere. You may be miles away for however long it takes, but I’ll still be here for you to talk to whenever you want or need.”
“Thank you.” I smile slowly. “You know that goes both ways right?”
“I know.”
I close my eyes briefly. “I’m so tired,” I mutter. “I just can’t get my brain to shut up long enough to sleep.”
“You know what you need?” Harrison begins, then hesitates. “It’s probably a stupid idea.”
“Tell me, I love stupid ideas.”
He snorts quietly. “When I was younger, when everything got too much and I was overthinking, distraction was key. I needed to give my brain something else to focus on. My dads would read to me, and it was very soothing. I would be so busy following along with the story that I would stop overthinking and drift off to sleep.”
“You going to read to me, Prickles?”
“I told you it was a stupid idea.”
“No, it’s not. I want to lie here and listen to your voice.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“It was your idea. You can’t tease me with the promise of a bedtime story and then not deliver.”
“Fine.” He rolls his eyes. “Wait a minute.”
Suddenly, the view from my screen switches to his bedroom ceiling. He’s obviously laid his phone down and switched on his bedroom lamp. I can hear him get out of bed, then a moment later he reappears, book in hand, and props his phone in such a way that both of his hands can be free.
“What are you going to read?”
“It was one of my favourites from when I was a child,” he says.
Even from here, I can see the gorgeous, warm flush of his cheeks and—“Are those pentagrams on your pyjamas?”
“Shut up,” he says dryly. “Do you want a story or not?”
“I do.” I grin. “What is it?”
“It’s called The Phantom Tollbooth.”
“Oh my god.” A warm feeling spreads through my chest as I watch him plump up his pillow and get comfy. “I remember reading that in school.”
“Did you like it?” he asks curiously.
“It was one of my favourites.”
“Close your eyes, then,” he instructs, but I can’t, not when I can look at him all snuggly in his duvet reading me a story about a boy escaping to a magical world.
I wish, not for the first time tonight, that I was cuddled up next to him, feeling his body heat and breathing in his scent as I drift off to sleep.