40. Dan
DAN
“Dan, love, what’s wrong?”
I took one look at my mum’s face, and I just…crumpled. Tears burned my eyes, falling down my face unchecked, and it was fucking ridiculous. I hadn’t cried like this since I was a child. My heart felt as if it was ripping itself out of my chest, and I couldn’t breathe through the pain.
I couldn’t. Fucking. Breathe.
“Dan? Dan! Neil!”
My mum’s voice came from so far away. Was I imagining it? I closed my eyes, letting myself crumble.
Strong arms caught me, and I was dimly aware of a low voice speaking in my ear, although I couldn’t make out the words.
“Shhh. It’s okay, darling.” Gentle fingers stroked through my hair, and another, much larger hand closed over the top of my trembling one.
I blinked, rubbing at my eyes, and took a deep, shuddering breath.
I was on the huge sofa in the Hoyton lounge with my mum on one side, cuddling me into her while she continued her soothing strokes through my hair, and my uncle on the other side, his bruised face full of concern.
“It hurts too much.” My lip trembled, my eyes stinging all over again. “I can’t make it stop.”
“Who hurt you? I will kill them.” Neil’s expression turned murderous. “Give me a name.”
“No. Please.” I rubbed at my chest. “It’s not— Keys. Passenger seat.”
Neil exchanged glances with my mum over the top of my head, and then he carefully fished my car keys from my pocket.
Picking up his phone, he tapped at the screen, and a few moments later, the call connected.
“Sid? Make sure no one disturbs us. We’re in the lounge.
Get the team on orange alert. We might have a situation, and we might need to mobilise on short notice.
” Ending the call, he squeezed my hand. “I’ll be back in a minute. ”
When he was gone, my mum pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “What do you need?”
“I need it to stop hurting,” I whispered, rubbing at my chest. “Why does it hurt so much?”
“Oh, love.” She pulled me closer, and I didn’t even care about the awkward angle, given that I was much taller than her. I was just a boy who needed his mum to make it all better.
“I-I don’t understand why it hurts so much. I hated him. He hated me. I knew who his family was, and I knew that he was never going to choose m-me over them.” Tears obscured my vision again.
My mum inhaled sharply. “I take it you’re talking about Lincoln Bellingham?”
My head shot up, and I scrubbed at my eyes until my vision cleared, sucking in deep, shuddering breaths. “H-how?”
She sighed. “Oh, Dan. There’s no one else you could possibly be talking about.”
“How?” I repeated.
“Dan, love.” Shaking her head, she sighed again. “You’ve—” She cut herself off as the door opened, my uncle reappearing with a sheaf of papers.
The papers I’d taken from Lincoln’s room.
“Right.” Neil’s expression was grim. “I need to pay a visit to Michael Bellingham.” He crossed the room, crouching down in front of me, and his voice gentled. “Can you tell me where you got these?”
“L-Linc— Bellingham’s uni apartment,” I croaked. “T-there’s a photo I took too. He had—” I inhaled another shuddering breath. “He had a whole fucking file on us.”
“Show me.”
Unlocking my phone, I handed it to him, and he swore under his breath as he studied the photo I’d taken of Lincoln’s laptop screen.
“See?” Rubbing at my chest again, I did my best to breathe through the waves of betrayal that were suffocating me. My heart felt like it was cracking down the middle. How could one human withstand this kind of pain? The kind of pain a doctor couldn’t heal?
“I see. Listen, Dan, I don’t…I don’t have an explanation for you, not yet.
But I promise I’m going to get to the bottom of this.
I need to speak with Lincoln’s uncle, and in the meantime, I want you to stay here.
Maybe give Ryker and Jay a heads-up, get them to come over, if you feel up to it, or go back to the hockey house and be with the rest of your friends.
Do not, under any circumstances, speak to Lincoln until I’ve spoken to Mike. ”
“You don’t have to worry about that. I’m never fucking speaking to him again.
” Fresh pain tore through my body as the full reality of the past few hours hit me, and I gasped for breath, barely aware of Neil leaving the room as I stabbed at my phone screen until I had Lincoln Bellingham blocked in every single place.
Hitting my own profile, I was confronted with countless pictures, many of them uploaded with Lincoln in mind to get a reaction from him. Biting down on my lip, I deactivated my profile. Then another, and another, until I was wiped from existence.
Throwing my phone onto the rug, I turned to my mum, who gave me a sad smile. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. What were you going to say before Neil came in?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything. How about a cup of tea? It always helps.”
“Mum, please don’t change the subject. I can’t… This is really fucking hard for me. How did you know I was talking about L—him?”
“I’m your mum. I know things.” She paused, her hand finding mine. “You’ve been in love with that boy for years.”
“I— What? I’ve always hated him.”
She squeezed my hand. “Perhaps you did, in a way. But it’s always been clear to me that you have very strong feelings for him.”
“That’s a lie!”
“Daniel. He’s been your favourite topic of conversation for years.
Granted, your animosity has always been clear, but the way you’ve always spoken about him, well…
it was obvious, at least to me…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“It’s also clear that things have changed between you recently.
He’s been here at least twice in the past few days, and you allowed him to partake in a sensitive mission.
You have his photos on your bedroom wall. ”
“You snooped in my room!”
“I hoovered your room.”
“Same thing.” I slumped back on the sofa, letting my head fall back as I squeezed my eyes shut.
My voice came out in a whisper. “I’ve messed everything up.
I didn’t make him leave the mission, and now I’ve put everyone in danger.
I-I’m gonna be exiled from the firm, and Neil’s never going to speak to me again. ”
“Has anyone ever mentioned you have a flair for the dramatic?”
I couldn’t breathe. “Th-that’s what his uncle said.”
My mum straightened up. “Lincoln’s uncle? You spoke to him in person?”
“Yeah. Uh…I went to his house. I met his cousin too. Oh, fuck. What if I messed things up for them as well? Fuck!”
“Look at me.” My mum gripped my hand tightly, waiting patiently until I met her gaze. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on yet, but you have not messed anything up. Whatever it is, I promise you, we’ll sort it out. No one is in danger—at least, not any more than we were before, and—”
“I’m going to be—”
“You are not going to be exiled. Honestly, Daniel. We love you. You and Stephen are the most important people in mine and Neil’s lives. You will always come first. Always.”
“O-okay.” I attempted a shaky smile. “I love you too, you know.”
“I know.” She returned my smile.
“But I can’t love him. It’s not possible. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Alright.” Releasing my hand, she rose to her feet. “I think we need a nice cup of tea. What do you say?”
“Yeah.” Closing my eyes again, I pressed my palm to my aching chest. Instead of pushing my feelings about Lincoln away, like I always had done in the past, letting the hate and animosity override everything else, I took a deep breath and let them engulf me.
Distantly, I registered my phone buzzing somewhere on the floor, and my mum picking it up and saying something to whoever was on the other end, but I barely paid it any attention. I was too consumed by my feelings.
This wasn’t love. It couldn’t be. This was hate, twisted into something unrecognisable, like thorns wrapping around my heart and choking the life out of it.
“Drink up. It’ll help.”
I opened my eyes, giving my mum a wobbly smile. It couldn’t be love, could it? If it was love, I didn’t want it. It hurt too much.
My hand shook when I reached for my mug of tea. My entire fucking being was vibrating, overflowing with the truth that was impossible to deny. This was a spinning coin with two sides. One side was hate. One side was love.
I hated Lincoln Bellingham.
I loved Lincoln Bellingham.
And I probably had for a very long time.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered, my lip trembling again. “That’s why it hurts so much. My heart is literally fucking breaking.”
My mum made a pained noise, dropping to the sofa and pulling me into her. “Oh, Daniel. I wish I could make it go away. I know how much it hurts to lose someone you love.”
“Mum.” I held on to her, completely overwhelmed with loss and grief and everything else I hadn’t let myself think about in years, like the fact that I never got to know my dad, and whether he’d be disappointed in me for falling for the son of his enemy.
And, fuck, my enemy. The boy who’d grown into a man who had somehow become the love of my life without me even realising it.
The man who’d called me his baby and kissed me like I meant something to him, then turned around and callously shot me in the back, straight through my rib cage into my heart, shattering it into a million pieces.