Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ALEX
The Uber dropped me off outside Kit’s house.
Every call I made, every message I left had gone unanswered.
He’d been away with work, again, for a couple of days, and had warned me he’d be just as run off his feet when he got back, but this silence…
It had left me edgy and nervous. Something wasn’t right.
All the curtains were pulled tight, giving the place a closed off vibe, but as I made my way along the short path to the front door, a tiny chink showed a faint light.
I pressed the doorbell and waited. No hallway light came on, no obscured silhouette approached the door.
I stepped back, just in time to see the curtain twitch and the briefest glimpse of Kit. What the fuck was going on?
“Kit? Answer the door,” I shouted as I pressed my finger to the bell again, keeping it there. “I know you’re in. If you don’t open this door, I’ll kick it in.”
Next door a face appeared at the living room window, shooting back when I glared.
Kit’s door opened a crack and a security chain stretched across the narrow opening, through which Kit peered out at me from a dark hallway.
All my irritation at being left out in the freezing rain evaporated, as worry thundered through me. Something was very, very wrong.
“Kit? What’s going on? For god’s sake, let me in.”
“I’m not feeling very well. Go home, Alex. I’ll—I’ll call you in a couple of days.” He went to close the door but I shoved it hard using all my weight. The cheap chain broke and Kit gasped as I pushed my way in and slammed the door behind me.
I felt for the light switch, flooding the hallway with light.
Dark shadows stained the skin beneath his eyes, the whites of which were veiny and bloodshot.
He was naturally pale, but his skin had an unhealthy pallor, and the hair I liked to run through my fingers was unkempt and greasy; a light stubble darkened his jaw.
My heart rate was going through the roof as panic grabbed hold of me.
“What the hell’s wrong? Are you ill? I’ll get you a doctor.” I fumbled for my phone. I knew who I could call, and he’d be here with no questions asked.
“No. I don’t need a doctor.”
My stomach cramped as realisation crawled up my spine.
He knew.
He knew about me, about who and what I was.
There was only one way he could have found out.
“Kit…” My voice was no more than a shaky whisper. I went to touch him, but he stepped out of reach.
“I got home. I was tired and soaked through. All I wanted was to talk to you, hear your voice. But instead I found him.”
Kit swung round on his heel and I raced after him as he disappeared into the living room.
A bottle of wine sat on the coffee table and Kit sloshed some into a glass, gulping it back as though it were tap water.
“What did he tell you?”
“Is it true?” he said, not answering my question, stepping up to me so close I could smell his wine tainted breath. I hesitated, the smallest of beats, but it was all that was needed.
Kit rubbed his forehead as his eyes scrunched closed.
The glass fell from his other hand, unheeded.
“I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing.
I kept telling myself he was lying, or it was some gross and filthy exaggeration.
Because he hates me, because he wants me gone, because he can’t stand the thought that you might turn your back on him. ”
“Kit, please just—” He hit my arms away as I reached out for him.
“I’ve been sitting here, going over and over and over everything he said.
Telling myself he was lying, was playing some vicious, warped mind game.
I lost count of how many times I picked up my phone to call you, wanting to hear your voice, wanting you to tell me it was all lies.
But I couldn’t make the call, because every time I tried I lost my nerve because I couldn’t bear it if he was telling me the truth.
Was he?” Kit’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“He called you both pimps and drug pushers. Is that true? Was Kelvin telling me the truth about who and what you are?”
“I couldn’t tell you everything. You’d have walked away from me, and I couldn’t—”
“And you think I’m not going to do that now?”
I reared back from the sudden flare of heat and fury in Kit’s voice. “Don’t. No, please don’t do that.”
He slumped down onto the sofa and stared in front of him, his burst of white hot anger gone.
He looked tired and ill and all I wanted was to wrap him in my arms. I didn’t, because I was a coward, scared to death he’d push me away and turn aside in disgust; I couldn’t face that even if I knew it was what I deserved.
“So it’s true.” He turned to look at me, his gaze as hollow as his voice.
I lowered myself on to the sofa, wanting so much to reach out to him, the fear of his rejection holding me back. “Kit, please, give me a chance to—”
“To what? Try and justify it all? How can you justify lies, Alex? Because you’ve lied about who you really are, under all the gloss.
You lied when you said I was safe from Kelvin, yet that piece of shit you call your friend broke into my house, this house.
He didn’t ring the bell, not this time, because he was in here, waiting for me when I got back from work. ”
“What?” Intimidation. Kelvin could do it with just a look, but he was capable of so much more. Fury rose up in me, my body trembled with it. My instinct, primal and vicious, was to attack, to hit him hard with everything I had, so hard he’d never get up again.
If I attempted that, I’d come out the loser.
There were other ways I could, and would, get to Kelvin.
My hands turned to fists as I willed my hot fury to turn to cold.
“He scared me.” Kit had curled into the corner of the sofa, as though retreating to a safe place.
Again, I wanted to reach out to touch, and again I forced myself not to.
“I thought I’d been scared when he turned up out of the blue that first time, but that was child’s play in comparison.
He frightened the fucking life out of me.
When he told me to sit that’s what I did because I was so afraid of what he might have done to me if I didn’t.
He sat at my kitchen table and told me about your dirty, filthy business, and at the end of it I felt dirty too because I’d let you touch me. ”
“Don’t say that, Kit, don’t—”
“I knew you weren’t telling me everything.
I thought you’d glossed over your experiences, that maybe you couldn’t bring yourself to tell me it all.
And I got it, I really did. My heart broke for you, Alex, it damn well broke, because what happened to you never, ever should have.
But I’m not stupid. I came to the conclusion pretty quick that there was more going on, that no doubt sometimes things weren’t perhaps strictly legal.
Clubs and bars, they’re going through a tough time so you’ve got to be ruthless, maybe even skirt the edge of the law. But I never got anywhere close, did I?”
“I couldn’t tell you about me, what and who I’d become.” I leant towards him, wanting to touch, but knowing he’d push me away. “I couldn’t, Kit, especially after you told me what happened to you and why you went to Thailand.”
“Don’t you dare use my past as an excuse to lie by omission.
” His face had gone whiter, if that was even possible, as he glared at me, his breathing loud as his chest heaved.
“So you’re a pimp, are you? Because that’s what Kelvin says you are.
What about parties, you know, the ones where trafficked boys cry in corners, covered in bruises and bite marks?
” His eyes were on mine, intense and unwavering, and ready to see through me.
“We do run parties, but nothing like you experienced. Christ, Kit, you have to believe me.” But why should he?
Why would he want to believe anything I told him?
“Kit, listen to me. Please. Nobody’s forced, everybody who takes part volunteers.
We make sure nothing gets out of hand. And we don’t ever deal in trafficked boys.
Ever.” My stomach turned over. As Kelvin had pushed for us to talk to Aksoy, to dip our toes into that foetid cesspit, I’d pushed back harder. “I would never allow that.”
“Bit late for a conscience, wouldn’t you say? But he would, wouldn’t he? Kelvin wouldn’t think twice. He seems to call the shots, so why wouldn’t you follow suit?”
“It’s not like that.” But wasn’t it? Kelvin had always called the shots. Sometimes I’d resisted, but mostly not. I’d been pulled into a life I hadn’t made too much of an attempt to resist, as I’d hung onto Kelvin’s coat tails.
Kit started to turn away from me. Without thinking, I grabbed him and jerked him around to look at me.
“Get off me! Get off me and just fucking go. I never want to see or hear from you again.”
He fought hard, his anger and disgust with me giving him strength but my fear, the fear of losing him, gave me more.
“You listened to Kelvin, now listen to me,” I ground out as I pushed him hard into the corner of the sofa. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I would if it was the only way he’d listen. I’d fought dirty for so much of my life, but it’d never mattered more than it did then.
“What we built, we did it to survive.”
“There are other ways to survive, Alex, other ways to live. You don’t have to be a pimp or a drug pusher.” Kit launched himself at me, but anticipating the move I caught his wrists and forced them down. Kit gasped as he winced in pain.
“Kit, I don’t want to hurt you, but you’ve got to listen to me,” I shouted into his face.
For the first time ever, as he stared at me, his eyes were huge with fear. It made me feel sick as much as it knocked all the strength from me, and I sagged back into the sofa and covered my face with my hands.
“Just listen to me, then make your mind up. But just give me this chance and then, if you want to walk away…” I couldn’t finish, because a future without Kit in it was nothing but darkness.
The sofa shifted as he got up and my head snapped up, my heart pounding. He wasn’t giving me the chance…
He went to the kitchen, and flipped the switch on the kettle.
As I watched him drop tea bags into two mugs, hysteria built within me.
Tea, he was making tea. My world was falling apart, what I would say next would either destroy it for good or patch it up, but whatever, it’d be done with a cup of tea.
In silence he put a mug in front of me, and retook his place on the sofa, eyeing me warily over the rim of his own mug.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes, and then I want you to leave. Fuck knows why I’m giving them to you because you don’t deserve them.”
Fifteen minutes. It was a lifeline I’d cling to with every ounce of my strength.