Chapter Eight Pass the Baton
Chapter Eight
Pass the Baton
Jude didn’t sleep.
Didn’t dare.
How could he, with Callum sprawled across his sofa as if he owned the place?
The man had barely moved. He woke to piss, eat whatever was in the fridge, then crashed again as if it were his home.
Jude flinched at every footstep, every creak of floorboards.
Every shift in the air telling him Callum was awake. That he was there.
And while the man slept, Jude sat rigid at the kitchen table, laptop open, fingers numb against the keys. He scrolled through every record he could find about his release. Court listings, release registers, local news.
What he found, what little there was, made his stomach drop.
Callum was a free man. Sentence served. No parole.
No licence. No conditions. No one was watching him.
There was no probation officer to call, no system to flag his name.
Because on paper, there was nothing to monitor.
And even if there had been, Jude wouldn’t have factored in.
He’d never existed in the context of Callum Reid’s world.
Not officially. Not in any report. Just a ghost that never made it into the paperwork.
Which meant Callum wasn’t a risk. Not to anyone but him.
Not on anyone’s radar.
Not anyone’s problem.
Except Jude’s.
He could apply for a restraining order now, of course. Tell the truth. Dig up that past, drag it through the courts. But that would mean explaining everything. How he’d fled the scene of a crime, left a man bleeding, kept quiet when he should have screamed. How he’d survived by disappearing.
And as a teacher? That confession would destroy him. One police report, one whisper of a “history,” and it would all be gone. The life he’d built. The job. The safety.
He spent the entire weekend holding his breath. Swallowing his heartbeat. Pretending not to exist too loudly while the devil from his past lounged beneath his throw blanket, on his cushions, as if the years between them had been nothing but a pause.
Callum hadn’t left.
He lingered through the flat like rot. Invasive. Inevitable.
Jude had heard a couple of calls. Low murmurs from behind the bathroom door.
Fragments he wasn’t meant to catch. Mentions of someone “dragging their feet,” of “money still on the table.” It sounded as though Callum was waiting for payment.
For what, Jude didn’t dare guess. He told himself it didn’t matter.
Prison debts, old favours, new hands. Whatever it was, it wasn’t his concern.
All he wanted was for them to pay him—so Callum would go.
But each time the phone rang, and that clipped, dangerous tone slid into Callum’s voice, Jude’s stomach went cold. Whoever was keeping him waiting wouldn’t stay faceless for long. And when Callum grew frustrated, when his temper curdled, he always needed somewhere to release it. On someone.
And Jude was right there.
Waiting.
His lamb to the slaughter.
Fuck…he was back there again. Flinching at shadows. Second-guessing the sound of his own breath.
When Monday morning came, and Callum was dead asleep on the sofa, Jude was almost grateful.
Grateful for the brief reprieve. The chance to slip out quietly, lock the door behind him, and pretend, for a few precious hours, that his life wasn’t imploding.
That everything was normal. And if Callum had been awake, he might have even told him not to go in.
And in all honesty, Jude wasn’t sure he’d have the mental strength to disobey him.
Walking into work felt almost suicidal. But he had to. It was the one thing he could still control. The one thread of his old life left to hold onto. If he could keep this, then maybe, when everything else inevitably collapsed, he might still have something worth saving.
At school, he tried to carry on as if nothing had changed.
Kept his voice even, smiled where expected.
But the walls felt tighter. Corridors louder.
Every glance like scrutiny. Every laugh aimed at him.
As if the students knew. Had figured out that he didn’t belong.
That he was a fraud standing at the front of the classroom, barely holding himself together.
He skipped the staffroom entirely, afraid if someone asked how his weekend had been, he might actually answer.
And he avoided Warren.
So much for all that.
Teaching felt impossible. Words blurred on worksheets. Lessons dragged. Every second was spent keeping his breathing even, his hands from shaking. And when the final bell shrieked through the halls, Jude felt two things at once—relief that it was over, and dread.
Because now he had to go home.
Chairs scraped. Bags zipped. Half the class was at the door when Jude raised his voice enough to catch them.
“Don’t forget to revise the Weimar topics. Timeline, key legislation, and who stabbed whom in the back. It will come up in the mock.”
A few groaned. One muttered something about him being a tyrant.
Jude didn’t rise to it. He watched them funnel out, a blur of blazers and restless energy, then exhaled.
When the room finally emptied, he slumped into his chair, the legs screeching across the linoleum as if they resented the weight.
He dropped his elbows onto the desk then buried his face in his hands.
His heart wouldn’t settle. It skittered in his chest as if trapped.
His nerves were shot. His hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
He was falling apart.
Why was this happening to him? Why now? Why had Callum been let out now?
He already knew the answer to all of it.
“Penance,” he muttered into his hands.
“Huh?”
Jude flinched and looked up.
Slouched in the back row, bag half-zipped, headphones tangled around his fingers, was Alfie Carter.
He hadn’t left with the others. He sat quietly, as if waiting for the storm to pass.
His blazer was new. So was the muteness.
The defiance and bravado from last year had drained out of him, replaced by something smaller. Guarded.
Teacher training kicked in.
Jude stood, walked around the desk, and perched on the edge. “Not heading home yet?”
Alfie shrugged, avoiding eye contact as he fiddled with his headphones. “Waiting for the corridor to clear.”
Jude folded his arms. “You alright?”
“Yeah. Fine. Don’t feel like fighting my way through a crowd. That a crime now?”
“Course not.” Jude tilted his neck. “It’s alright to need quiet.”
Alfie glanced up, their eyes meeting across the classroom. Then, as if he’d been holding the question in all day, he asked, “Do you still wake up thinking you can’t breathe?”
Jude’s chest tightened. Part empathy, part memory. “Yeah,” he said after a pause. “I do.”
Alfie looked around the room, gesturing vaguely at the clean walls, the fresh displays. “It’s weird. Being back. Everything looks… normal. Like nothing ever happened. Like they painted over it and moved on.”
Jude nodded. He knew exactly what he meant. The shiny new displays. The silent hallways. The way people clapped and called them heroes, then carried on as if trauma didn’t leave marks that fresh paint couldn’t touch.
But the fire had left marks. On them both.
And though the official report ruled it accidental, a part of Jude still wondered. Still turned it over in his head late at night. If the fire hadn’t been random. If it hadn’t just happened. If it had been for him. Alfie.
And that, now, was even fiercer. Because it was exactly the kind of thing Callum used to arrange. A scare. A message. Silencing.
He cleared his throat, softened his tone. “Are you seeing anyone?”
Alfie blinked. “What, like… a girlfriend?”
Jude gave a quiet laugh, pushing his glasses up his nose. “No. I meant CAMHS. The mental health support. Or a school counsellor. Anyone you can talk to?”
Alfie shrugged. “My dad sorted something. Some woman. But I dunno… talking’s weird.”
“Sometimes it helps.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Alfie’s eyes narrowed, curious now. “Do you?”
Jude had to give the most honest answer he ever had, “Guess I should take my own advice, shouldn’t I?”
Alfie snorted under his breath.
Jude glanced towards the open classroom door where the corridor beyond had finally fallen quiet, then turned back. “I hear you’ve got a new place lined up.”
“Yeah.” Alfie slung his bag over one shoulder.
“That’ll be good for you. Fresh space. Clean slate.” Jude tilted his head, catching Alfie’s eye. “New family.”
“I ain’t calling Freddie Dad.”
Jude chuckled. “I doubt he’s expecting you to.”
Alfie looked as if he might say something else, but the sharp knock of knuckles on the doorframe interrupted him.
“Mrs Turner.” Jude pushed off the desk, unfolding his arms on instinct.
The Headteacher stepped into the room, followed closely by the last person Jude wanted to deal with right then.
Warren Bailey.
But his stomach flipped all the same. Treacherous and pointless.
Hopeless and ill-timed.
“Could Mr Bailey and I have a word?” Mrs Turner gestured between them.
Jude forced his expression into something polite. “Uh…sure. Of course.”
Warren offered a quiet nod. A smile, too. One that lifted his cheekbones and said he was pleased to see him. Jude couldn’t let himself believe in it.
Alfie mumbled a vague goodbye and headed for the door, shifting awkwardly as Mrs Turner and Warren stepped aside to let him pass.
“Oh—Alfie Carter,” Mrs Turner called after him, her tone softening. “Good to have you back. Looking sharp.”
Alfie didn’t reply.
“Alf?” Jude called after him, not wanting him to leave without something. “Remember what I said, yeah?” Jude lifted his brows, letting him know what they had said was between them only. “About talking.”
Alfie made a non-committal noise, then turned his gaze on Warren, then back to the floor as he shuffled out the door.