Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ALEXANDER
The headache I couldn’t shift continued to pound behind my eyes. It was a ridiculous idea to keep staring at the computer, and the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to stop was pissing me off even more.
The noise in the living room was calming down; I’d only heard the quiet rumble of male voices for a while which told me she had gone to bed.
My pulse throbbed in my temple.
“Knock, knock.”
Fucking Seb.
“Knocking is an action. If you’re saying it you’re doing it wrong.” My voice was a growl.
“Pleased to see your mood is on the up.” The scratch of a dragged chair only served to piss me off more.
“Seb, not now.”
The shift of air told me he’d flopped into the armchair that now faced me. The guy could make himself comfortable anywhere.
“You’re no fun.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” I let my head fall back against the chair and the pounding intensified. “Fucking hell!”
I didn’t need to open my eyes to know Seb was leaning forwards; I could sense him inside my personal space.
“Seb, there are a million different people who would beg for you to get all up inside their space, but you know that I am not one of them.”
He huffed and a hand landed softly on my knee. “Come on, brother. What can I do to help?”
One of my eyes creaked open and I looked at him, the picture of sincerity, my lips lifted with my small snarl and he simply smiled.
“Your eternal optimism and positive outlook are a cause of great irritation for me, you know that?”
He nodded. “Part of the reason I’ve cultivated it so.”
I couldn’t help the small huff of laughter. “Funny.”
“I know.” His hand clapped on my leg once before he released me. “So, are we talking family, property, legal? What’s up?”
“All the above?”
“Hmm.” He lifted a glass I hadn’t seen him bring in, tilting it in offering but I simply shook my head. I rarely drank, not with Ben in the house. It didn’t help him.
“The orangery at the manor is still missing half the glass, so the storm will be wreaking havoc through the property. Ben’s both thriving and deteriorating, how is that even possible, Seb? And then there’s the new bill.”
“The bill?” he sought confirmation.
“National Service Care Transition Act.”
“Ah, I see.”
Seb would see, he was aware of it, and how hard I was working on anything that could be done to try to roadblock it.
“It won’t be long. Seb, there was nothing I could do.”
He ran his thumb over the cut of his jaw, measuring his reply. I knew I was pretty close to flying off the handle, and Seb, being as he was, wouldn’t want to accelerate it.
“You know, even people in the political system wouldn’t be able to block it. It doesn’t matter who your family is, or was. You weren’t blocking the bill.”
My hands fisted on the wooden arms of my chair, Seb observed the action carefully.
“Even if you’d followed in Mr Cavendish’s footsteps, Alex, you’d never have stopped it,” he repeated his sentiments.
“Fred. Jesus, Seb. You’ve been around this family for years, even he told you to call him Fred.”
Seb shrugged, ignoring me. “You could go public with your disapproval. Social media and the news, it could drive a wave of scrutiny at a minimum.”
At my scowl he continued. “But it won’t stop it from happening, Alex. And it isn’t your job to stop it, anyway.”
He was wrong.
I folded over. Elbows propped against my knees, pressing my knuckles into my eyes – as if the pressure could force the headache to abate.
“It’ll destabilise him,” I voiced the honest truth eating away at me.
Seb waited at the hitch in my voice until my rage calmed to painful despondence.
“For a short while, yes. But we are all here, and he will pull through.”
“As if anyone with Ben’s history, all of their histories, needs to be reminded that the system doesn’t care. National service, Seb! What sort of system that claims to prioritise ‘the family unit’ forces all children in care into the armed forces when they age out with nowhere else to go?”
“A system built on lies?” he offered.
I groaned. A system built on fucking lies.
“As his doctor, and his friend,” Seb carried on.
I looked at him expectantly.
“And whatever else,” he confirmed. I nodded, returning to driving knuckles into my eyes while he spoke. “I will help him through it. Yes, it’ll bring back the trauma, the abandonment issues.”
“The episodes?” I asked, knowing I didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Most likely, yes. The armed forces are a hellscape for a person with Ben’s neurodivergence, mix that with his C-PTSD.
He’ll hit a bump, for sure. But you aren’t giving him credit where it’s due.
His life will never be about avoiding triggers entirely.
You know that, Alex. It’s about how easily he can recover from them. ”
I groaned. This was something I would never get to grips with, Seb’s tone told me he knew that, but still I argued. “I need to protect him from it.”
“And that’s your trauma, Alex.”
I whipped up as if he’d slapped me.
“Don’t play na?ve. Between your mother’s death and your father’s decline into the bottle. You picked up too many pieces.”
I groaned, a sharp prickling behind my eyes. It’s the headache.
“Alex.” Seb shifted to the edge of his seat. “You cannot carry people’s pain for them.”
I shook my head at him, that wasn’t true.
“Don’t make me say it again.” His voice was a command, a side I rarely saw from the puppy-dog that was Seb. “You can only sit with them and offer a safe space.”
I rolled my lip between my teeth, bearing down into it until the pain distracted me.
“You are Benji’s safe space, and you offer one to Eli, and Ellie.
And Matty, Dan, Val, and all the others at the home who come to work with you on the manor.
Instead of spending money on the property you pay them, you’re trying to give them skills, a nest egg.
Anything to try to secure some kind of future for them.
” He listed these things back like they were virtues.
I coughed at the emotion and anger clogging my throat.
“Stop lashing yourself over things you can’t control.” He sat back and gave me his best ‘you idiot’ glare.
“You think you’re so smart.” Internally I conceded that he was but like fuck would I tell him.
“I know I’m so smart, because my honorary family paid a small fortune to put me through medical school. Ben wasn’t the only person your lot took in. I just don’t have the surname.”
I frowned at him.
“Good job too. Saves a shit-ton of explaining about Ben and my relationship.” He wiggled his brows.
I snorted at that and didn’t reply, as entertained as I was uncomfortable.
He was right about everything else. But knowing and feeling were completely different things. I knew what he said was true, but it didn’t change how I felt.
“So, what else can I help you with, Mr Cavendish?” Seb interrupted my pouting.
“Cute.” I huffed. “The manor needs sealing as soon as possible. There are more storms on the way but I can’t get there.”
“Lie.”
I glowered at him and continued. “And by my calculations, I’ll run out of money, save for running the cottage, in about two months. Well before the manor is repaired.”
“Hmm.” Seb rubbed his chin in thought.
Got him. He wouldn’t be able to offer a quick solution to that one so easily.
“Money’s simpler than you’d like to admit.” He didn’t even really pause, the fucker. “Grants and such exist for restoration of landmark properties.”
“They can shove their money; I’ll die before I take a penny from the government.” My growl had him moving straight on.
“Then there’s work? Plenty of opportunities exist for the eldest son of Frederick Cavendish.
You know as well as I do that politics was a low bar for your father, a passion project at the easiest end of your family’s influence.
And you don’t even have to do that. Minimum effort, maximum return.
A book perhaps, you are the poster child of ‘when a linchpin of government oppression sees the error of their ways’. ”
“I’m not washing my family’s dirty laundry in public,” I rejected him outright.
“Fuck. Prostitution then?” Seb’s smile was filth.
“Nice.” I smothered my snort. “Can you stop trying to get into my boxers, Sebastian?”
“What?” Seb’s face was the picture of innocence.
“With a body like that you’d have the manor up and running in weeks.
” His wink had me pursing my lips to keep the laughter at bay.
“Well, don’t ever let anyone tell you that you don’t make things so much harder than they need to be.
Fuck off to the manor for a few days then, Ben and I will take good care of Killer. ”
My good humour immediately died. “She needs to go.”
His eyes rolled and my headache throbbed. “She wants to, and you aren’t helping.”
“So, you’ve told me.” I recalled our last conversation, actually the last several conversations.
“What’s your problem, Alex? All those kids in care you can’t wait to help, but a woman shows up on your doorstep, clearly in some kind of trouble. And you’re rushing to get rid?”
I hated the way he painted my behaviour. “She’s going to bring attention, and we don’t need that. And she’s affecting Ben. I can see it,” I defended myself.
“Excellent observation skills. Would you say for the better or worse?” Seb had brought his doctor voice out.
I knew what he was getting at.
“Fuck off, Sebastian.”
“Answer the question, Alexander.”
My hands fisted and I fumed. “You think it’s cute now, if he comes to accept her then she leaves, how will that work out?”
Something flashed across Seb’s face before he schooled it. “Then I trust he will cope.”
“Yeah, for sure, the bill, the current glitch in his health, then she comes in and tips it all over and fucks off. Perfect environmental stability.” I glared at him.
“You always see the worst in people, Alex. She cares about Ben, I’ve never seen anyone pick up on his cues so fast and work to accommodate them.”
Jesus, he had a point.
“She’s in his house, it’s the least she could do.” I snatched the drink and took a long sip.
“Be that as it may.” Seb conceded nothing.
“They are looking for her. Far too many people.” I pushed on.
“You know this how?” He snagged the glass back and sipped it slowly.
“Police called. They’ve got vehicles out looking for her, and in this weather. They’re even talking about house calls.”
“Police from Saint Margaret’s? That’s where she’s headed, right?” Seb asked.
I snorted, maybe this would get him. “Led by Metropolitan. Local forces supporting.”
He grimaced.
“Fucking exactly!” I crowed internally that he actually understood the gravity of it all.
Then Seb shrugged.
“You’re kidding me.” I couldn’t believe it.
“Alex, she was definitely running away, so cease your pretence of ignorance.”
My jaw dropped, slowly I recovered.
“If you’re so worried about her, why aren’t you upstairs with her, why are you in here, pissing me off?” I snapped at him.
Seb sighed and shoved his fingers into his hair, ruffling the dark locks into disarray and then dragging his palm over his face, sighing. “The death-throes of self-control?”
“It will hurt Ben.”
“Fucking bullshit!” Seb raised his voice. “Don’t you dare imply I’d hurt Ben, Alex. Fucking hell! What Ben and I have is everything to me. He is the one that won’t ask for all of me, he doesn’t want to commit to it. And you know I’ve been waiting for him to.”
Guilt washed over me and I dipped my head in an apology.
Seb’s anger eased, but he was fidgeting now. I’d pissed off the golden retriever.
“And!” His voice was still raised. Fuck, I’d really pissed him off. “If you’re pretending that you don’t see how Ben reacts to her you’re a goddamned moron, no pretending required.”
He threw back the last of the drink standing and pacing a few steps across the study before returning and grabbing the chair, lifting it with one arm and dropping it exactly where he found it. He was definitely pissed off if he was tidying up after himself.
“I don’t know if your attitude is some kind of playground macho bullshit.
I’ve seen you watching her. I saw your face when I kissed her by the lake.
Then when she brought back the plate from taking food to Ben.
The way your face softens at how Ben smiles at her.
” Seb carefully listed the moments I thought had been private, then I snorted.
He fucking had not. Had my face betrayed me?
“And the way you watch her leave the room. The books you gave her.” Seb rolled off more examples.
My frown was now a snarl.
“Your lies fall flat, brother. The only person believing them is you, and her. Whatever it is that Ben thinks or feels towards her, all that effort you’re putting in to protect his feelings?
It will all be a big fat waste of time when you realise she matters to him and you’re being unkind to her.
Now tell me, you know Benji as well as I do, how do you think that will land? ” Seb delivered his final blow.
My anger slackened at his words. Shit.
“Fucking exactly.” He grabbed his glass and went to leave but turned back to me at the door.
“I love you, brother, but you’re being a fucking dickhead.”
I didn’t have any chance to reply as he stormed from the room, leaving me to stew in the honesty of his words.
Fucking Sebastian.