Chapter 30
30
JONATHAN
T he entire world is the howling gray and branches slamming against each other. I stumble through the trees, my clothes soaked through, limbs numb with cold. Keep going.
When I flew from the house all I could think was to get away and to get away fast. My legs carried me out the door in a blind panic towards Angus’s cottage and the car. All I could think was that Zane was right all along, that it was Scottish prison or worse for me unless I escaped.
But the storm picked up as I hit the forest, and now I’m hopelessly lost. And blind. Thick rain against my glasses completely obscured my vision, so I tucked them into my pocket, but now my eyes sting as I squint into the gray. Keep going.
I slip and the ground comes up to meet me. I tumble—in mud, in stones, in leaves, down an embankment, over and over, until I thud against a large tree, neck snapping back, skull thumping. Pain lances down my neck and I pull myself inwards, dazed, trembling hard, teeth chattering together. My suitcase is gone. It was ripped out of my hand.
I need to keep going . I can’t stay here. I’ll freeze to death. I know I need to get up. But my limbs are uncooperative. I push down into the icy mud and try to get my feet under me. Slip. Try again. But my extremities are so cold I can’t feel whether I’m injured. I fall again and glass crunches in my pocket.
No! No, no, no…
My glasses are broken. The glass shattered, the frames twisted. I hug my knees to my chest and let out a helpless sound.
Something answers. Far off in the distance.
Is it my name? Or is it that same ghostly call I hear at night; the thing that could be nothing, could be Lloyd, could be me losing my mind?
Jonathan…
I manage to push off the ground and pull myself up against the tree trunk. The rough bark cuts into my palms, a vague sting against the cold.
Jonathan!
I stumble towards the voice. It’s all I have to go on in this world of howling gray. It grows further and further away. Like that nightmare where I’m trying to get to Dad. Or a siren luring me to my death.
Jonathan!
I see it, through the trees. A hulking figure. I struggle towards it, trying to shout, my words torn away by the storm. My feet catch in something and I fall back to my knees. It’s one of my blazers. My clothing is scattered across the forest floor, blowing up against the trees and snagged on branches.
But now the figure isn’t heading away. It’s coming towards me. A navy-blue blur. There’s only one person that size, one person it could be. Adam. Adam was searching for me. Despite what I did, he wanted to find me.
He sees me and picks up speed, crashing through the forest until he’s pulling me to my feet. Why is he here? He’s unzipping his jacket, he’s closing it around me. I’m pressed to his body, cocooned in down with his chest against my cheek. He hates me. I broke his trust. But he’s so warm and his arms are holding me, tight and protective.
“It’s okay,” he says against my hair, somehow audible above the storm. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”
I melt against him, a sob building in my chest. “Adam. Adam, I’m sorry.”
He slides his hand to the back of my neck, cradles my head. I can feel him sigh. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
Rain lashes against us. I can’t stop shaking. I can’t speak. I’m so cold. But he’s here. He’s holding me. And the jagged terrible thing, that icicle of hurt and guilt that had lodged itself in my heart, melts.
Adam lifts me into his arms and carries me back to the house, holding me close. I cling to him. Everything is loud and cold and painful except for him.
“I’ve got him!” he calls to someone.
“Oh my god! Is he hurt?” Ray.
“I don’t know! He’s freezing!”
Then we’re inside. The warmth stings and prickles my skin. Adam takes me straight to the kitchen and sets me down in front of the fire. He strips off my drenched coat and falls to his knees in front of me, enclosing my frozen hands in his large, warm ones.
He looks up into my eyes, his brow furrowed with concern. “Are you hurt?”
“I… I hit my head. My glasses are broken.”
“Shit.” He brushes my hair out of my eyes, gaze roving over my face.
“Adam, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t, Belle. You don’t need to.” He shakes his head. “I could have handled that any number of ways other than the way I did. Fuck. You really scared me. Us.”
At the last word he glances over my shoulder.
Ray appears at my other side. “Oh pumpkin pie, look at you! Your lips are blue. I’ll make you something hot to drink.”
“We need to get you out of these clothes.” Adam says. He starts unbuttoning my collar, then stops himself. “Can you manage?”
I fumble with the buttons. My hands are still shaking, the tips of my fingers are numb. He watches me struggle for a few seconds before taking over. As soon as the buttons are dealt with, his hands slip under my shirt. He helps my stiff arms out of the sleeves and slides the muddy, wrecked shirt from my shoulders. I’m exposed to him. Pale, scrawny, weak. I fold my arms in front of my chest in a vain attempt to cover myself.
He shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. Unlike mine, it’s obviously designed for this weather, the inside is still warm with his body heat. I pull it tight around myself and at once I am enveloped in Adam ; I’m walking through the woods, I’m picking out presents for the children, I’m sitting in the dark with a mug of wine while he confesses his fears. It’s too much. My eyes well with tears.
“How long did you know? About me?” My throat aches.
“We don’t have to talk about that now,” his voice is low and calm.
“I was never— it was never—” I want to tell him that everything between us was real, but I don’t know how to without defining ‘us’. It’s nothing tangible after all. It’s just something bright; a delicate and sparkling thing that I unearthed where I expected to find only coal.
His hand is on my face again and my breath catches as he strokes down my cheek. “I knew from the start, Belle. We all did. We interviewed your old man.”
“You never said anything.”
“I did. Sort of. In my own way.”
Realization dawns. “That fight on my first day. It wasn’t about the games. You… you must have thought I was a complete charlatan, incapable of teaching them.”
“I was worried.”
“But you let me stay.”
“Selfish reasons. I didn’t want the bad press.”
His features are all soft focus now I’ve lost my specs. They’re hard to read.
“And,” he adds, glancing down, “I realized pretty quickly that you were exactly what the kids needed. I wanted you to stay.”
Before I can respond, Ray appears at my side again. “Here, sweetness.” I blink up at him. He’s offering me a mug. “Tea just the way you like it. Drink up.”
The tea is heaven sent, warming me from the inside. I manage to take a few steady breaths. “I didn’t know the storm would get that bad. I’m so sorry you had to come looking for me.”
Ray squeezes my shoulder. “It’s not your fault. Weather can change on a dime up here.”
Footsteps enter the kitchen and I tense, suddenly fearing that the children might see me like this. I know before I look over my shoulder at the blur by the doorway that the steps are too heavy to be theirs.
“What’s going on?” Geoff asks.
“Jonathan got caught out in the storm,” Ray says.
“Hey, can you get him some dry clothes?” Adam asks. “There should be some in the laundry.”
My clothes… I feel nauseous. They’re gone. My eyes fill with tears again.
Adam tilts my chin up. His face is close enough to mine that I can see him searching my gaze, trying to read what’s upset me. I’m too embarrassed to say anything. His thumb brushes against my bottom lip and my stomach lurches.
“I found this,” Geoff says, suddenly close. I jerk back from Adam and Geoff thrusts a dark blue mass of fabric at me. “Think it’s yours?”
I can’t make out his expression, but his voice sounds pissed. My fingers close on the fabric and I immediately know it’s not mine. It’s cashmere. One of Adam’s jumpers. One I’ve admired and longed to touch. Any other time, I may have been amused by the irony.
Adam takes my tea while I unwrap myself from his jacket and pull the jumper over my head. I’m aware of Geoff’s eyes on me as I do so.
“What were you doing out there anyway?” he asks.
Ray answers for me. “The Beast here frightened the bejesus out of him and sent him fleeing.”
I sink down into myself. Geoff laughs and my insides shrivel as renewed shame washes through me. Scrawny, crying, cowardly.
“You see, Teach. This is what I mean,” Geoff says. “This would never happen if you were an alpha.”
“What the fuck did you just say?” Adam asks.
I flinch, but Geoff seems immune. “Stand down, Beast. It’s just a joke.”
“No one’s laughing.”
“And on that note,” Ray says cheerfully, “I think the two of us should be going.” Their blur moves off to Geoff’s side, shepherding him away. “Geoff, I need your help in this direction.”
“Fuck off. I’m leaving.” He heads towards the door. “Enjoy whatever the hell this is.”
His footfalls echo as he heads out of the kitchen and back across the hall. Ray starts to follow.
“Ray, wait.” My voice still sounds weak and raspy. Ray’s blurry form pauses. “Can you check in on the children please? And make sure Lily-Iris knows not to let them come down here? I don’t want them to…” see me like this. “Maybe you can tell them I’m not feeling well?”
“Of course, angel. You get nice and toasty warm now.”
Then I’m alone with Adam. Close and quiet.
At length, he speaks,“Your father… you said he’s…?”
This is the last thing I want to talk about, but I owe him an explanation. “Yes. Brain tumor. But he needed the money, so he was going to come here anyway. And I couldn’t let him. If something happened…” I swallow, looking anywhere but at Adam’s face. “Last year he went on a field trip with Zane’s class. They were in London when he had the seizure. Help was right there. But here…”
I let the sentence trail, and Adam finishes for me, “we’re isolated.”
“I’d have no way of knowing if something happened. He’d have no way of getting help. I’m fully aware that this was a bullshit plan. That’s what Zane called it. But if I could just make it here, it meant he couldn’t. Not without exposing me. And he’d be forced to stay home, where it’s safe .”
I’m shivering once more and Adam wraps his jacket around me again. “You should probably take off your pants too.”
I flush, the heat in my face almost welcome. Now doesn’t feel like the time to quip about the different meaning of ‘pants’ in British English.
My trousers are muddy and cut up, cold and clinging to me. Adam’s jumper is large enough to preserve my modesty. I tug off my shoes and wriggle out of my trousers, all too aware of my pale legs and my skinned knees.
He takes the trousers and goes through the pockets, carefully extracting pieces of glass, bent wire, a pen, the pager I forgot about and the library key.
“It was a bullshit plan,” he murmurs. “But a courageous one.”
“I’m so sorry. I should have come clean earlier.”
“Belle, stop.” He sets aside the contents of my pockets. “Please stop apologizing. I’m the one who should be begging for forgiveness for the way I acted. I was… hurt, scared but also…” His eyes focus on the floor between us. “Embarrassed. No one else knows I live like that.”
His voice is so small.
“I think they do,” I say softly. “Inside at least.” Desolate, broken, incomplete, abandoned.
Adam’s breath catches.
“Sorry,” I say again, before he can respond. I feel sleepy, my mind buzzing with echoes of the storm, my limbs heavy with exhaustion and skin purpling with new bruises. “Do you think I can go to bed?”
Adam hums. “Adrenaline wearing off?”
“Must be.”
“Could also be a concussion. I’d rather not leave you alone.” He rises and offers me his hand to help me stand.
My legs feel leaden but I’m steady on my feet, I don’t really need the supportive arm around my waist, but I don’t protest it either. He guides me out of the kitchen, away from the blissful heat of the fire.
I hesitate at the foot of the stairs. “I— If the children see me?—”
But he guides me past the stairs. “Don’t worry about that.”
We go down the darkened passage to the heavy library doors, which he opens with my key. I think this is our destination, but he leads me past the reading area. My eyelids are heavy, and it feels a little like I’m already in a dream when he reveals the secret doorway and helps me up the steep stairs into his bedroom.
He’s taking me to his bedroom.
I find myself holding my breath as we exit the narrow servant’s passage. I’m still hoping that his room is complete, if not decorated. That it’s at least warm and clean like the children’s. But even without my glasses, it’s immediately clear this isn’t the case. My heart cracks at the sight of the space. It’s an empty shell. The antithesis of everything one would expect the master bedroom of such a grand house to be. Rain-dim patterns play across the old wooden floorboards. Even though there are rolls of plastic-wrapped wallpaper piled against the far wall, the walls are bare, gray plaster. A chandelier lies on its side, covered in dust, near the center of the room, like something left by an opera ghost. And, saddest of all, is the unmade bed. A king-sized mattress on a bare base. The thick down duvet is as gray as the walls, tossed haphazardly across only one side of the bed.
We’ve exited from a doorway beside a standalone closet and items of clothing lie strewn over and around a chair beside a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Adam mumbles an apology and gathers the clothing quickly into his arms, disappearing into an adjoining room that must be the en suite, but my blurry vision can’t make out any distinct shapes beyond.
“I don’t understand,” I say, as Adam returns. “My room… why don’t you sleep there?” My room is lavish luxury compared to this place.
He avoids my gaze, moving to the bed to shake out the bedding. “That was, uh, Lloyd’s room.”
A fresh chill runs through me and my chest aches like I’m being crushed. All at once I’m whisked back to the pages of Wuthering Heights, to a ghost at a window calling to be let in. Lloyd’s room. The record player, the records, the beautiful decorations, Lily-Iris’s superstitions. I feel stupid for not guessing that sooner.
“You didn’t share a room?” I ask.
“No,” he answers without looking at me. “We would have, when this room was done. I didn’t live here with him. And he didn’t get to decorating this wing.”
I move further into the space, hugging Adam’s coat tightly around myself.
He glances back at me. “You don’t— you don’t have to sleep here. I just want to keep an eye on you. In case you have a concussion.”
“I want to sleep here,” I say, flushing slightly at how the words sound.
Adam doesn’t seem to notice. He pulls the covers aside and I shrug off his coat and climb into his bed. I close my eyes, hoping it’s not too obvious how I breathe in his scent as I rest my cheek on his pillow. Adam tugs off his boots and climbs in beside me. Then he wraps his arms around me.
My stomach swoops and a fresh shot of adrenaline courses through me.
“This okay?” He asks. “It gets pretty cold in here.”
It’s so much more than okay. My heart performs a wild dance behind my ribs. I hum my ascent as I tuck my head against his chest. So warm. So comfortable. Except… except there’s something digging into my hip. I reach down and pull it out from under the covers. A small book that I instantly recognize. In Memoriam A.H.H.
“Oh. Yeah.” Adam takes it from me, sets it down somewhere on his other side, but not before I can see the bookmark. He’s about half way through the slim volume.
“You’re reading it.”
“Yeah… I’ll admit some of it goes over my head.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s good. Relatable. Even when I don’t understand exactly what he’s saying.”
I look up at the high ceiling of this lonely room. “Dark house, by which once more I stand, here in the long unlovely street,” I recite. My speech is already sleep-slurred. “Doors where my heart was, used to beat so quickly. Waiting for a hand. A hand that can be clasp'd no more…”
Adam’s arms tighten around me. “Yeah.”
I let the waves of exhaustion drag me into a deep sleep. It feels like only an instant later that I wake to Adam stroking my cheek.
“Hey, wake up.”
I blink sleepily. “Do you want me to go?’
“No. No, I’m checking on you.” Just a whisper, as if trying not to wake me too much. “How are you feeling? Any numbness? Nausea?”
I shake my head and stretch out, taking stock. “A little stiff.” I’m sore where my body made contact with the ground, which feels like everywhere. But that’s to be expected. “How long was I out?”
“About three hours.”
That can’t be right. I make to sit. “I should go, check on the children.”
“They’re fine. Rest.”
I let my head drop onto his shoulder and shut my eyes again.
“Hey, wake up.”
This time Adam isn’t in bed with me. He has a tray of food—toast with marmalade, tea, a few slices of cheese. Lunch. Did he make it himself? He checks how I’m feeling again and sits beside me while I eat.
“What’s the time?” I ask.
“A little after three.”
It’s both later and earlier than I expect. I feel like I lived a lifetime in the space of the morning.
“I never asked why you were looking for me earlier,” Adam says.
I manage to swallow my bite of toast without choking. “It doesn’t matter.”
Even without the aid of my glasses, I can tell he doesn’t believe me. “It must have been important for you to…”
“Break the rules?” I finish for him.
He inclines his head slightly.
I stare down at the tray, the carefully arranged meal. He’s right, it was important. But now I need to decide if I can trust him with it. Or if his temper is going to harm Mal. “Do you know why Mal’s adopted family returned him to the system?”
“Reactive attachment disorder.”
He must see from my expression that I have no idea what that means.
“It’s when a child who’s experienced neglect struggles to function in an environment where they are cared for. They tend to be moody, withdrawn, reactionary… difficult to live with. Far from the grateful little angel that some adoptive parents expect.” His mouth twists with scorn. “He had “adjustment issues”, apparently. Made their lives too complicated.”
“That’s all they said, nothing else?”
“Why? Is there something else? Did he do something?” His voice drops a full octave, into that growl. “Did they harm him?”
I know what he means and I shiver, closing my eyes in vain against the horrific image. “Did they do anything physical to him? No. I don’t think so. But I can’t even imagine how traumatic it must be to finally think you’ll be safe and loved and then to be discarded like that. Like a puppy or an ill-fitting pair of shoes.”
Adam nods. I wish I could see clearly. I feel so lost and vulnerable without my glasses. “I want to tell you. As his foster father, of course you should know. But… He trusted me with this. You understand?” And if you react badly… I draw an unsteady breath.
Adam sighs. “Shit.” He rubs his face. “I understand. You don’t want to tell The Beast.”
The marmalade is too sweet on my tongue and too bitter all at once. “I want to tell Adam. That’s why I sought you out after all.”
“And you found The Beast.” He moves the tray so that he can bring his face closer, letting me see his expression plainly, his earnest gaze. “Jonathan, I promise you can trust me with this. With them . I’m not going to hurt them.”
I draw another deep breath. “You said once that you believed in tough love and discipline.”
He takes my hand in his. “Well maybe you’ve changed my mind. What is it, Jonathan? Please tell me.”
My heart swells. I squeeze his hand, choosing trust. “He was hiding something. That’s why he didn’t want you near his bed. It was under the mattress.”
“Yeah?”
This is the difficult part. I brace myself, whispering, “A silver cigarette case.”
His eyes widen in recognition. “He’s been stealing ?”
“No. Yes, but just one thing. Mementos. That’s what he calls them. Just one item from every place he’s lived. You should have seen him,” I insist. “He’s beyond contrite.”
Adam’s frown deepens.
“I’m not sure how or when he took Lloyd’s cigarette case, or why he chose that particular item. I didn’t ask because he told me… he told me that when his adopted parents found his stash, they called the police on him and returned him to the system.”
Adam drops his head into his hands. “Fuuck.”
I forge on. “I’m not sure what to do here.”
“You don’t want to punish him,” Adam states, still covering his face. It’s not a question.
“Hasn’t he been punished enough in his short life?”
Adam sighs again.
“We should probably tell his therapist, right?” I suggest. “And the social worker?”
“The social worker probably knows already but chose to withhold that little fact from me. Fuck.”
What I want to ask is if Adam would have still taken Mal if he’d known. What I say instead is, “He returned it of his own free will.”
“You don’t have to defend him.”
“Someone has to.”
He looks up at me again, features going soft.
You were hired to do a job, Mr. Belle. I’m concerned that you might not be up for it. He once said.
He was right, but not in the way I thought. I was up for teaching them, I was up for dealing with their tantrums and learning challenges. But there’s a knowledge that sits heavy between us now, in his gaze and in my heart. Mal isn’t my son and ultimately his fate isn’t up to me. And that? I’m not sure I’m up for that at all.
“Oh Belle,” Adam says, and he touches my cheek again. Then pulls back quickly, as if catching himself in the act of doing something illicit. “Do you want to go back to sleep?”
I don’t think I could, as exhausted as I still feel. I’m very aware that I’m still in his clothes, probably streaked with mud and dirt. I need to wash before the children see me. “Could I use your shower? It’s fine if you don’t feel comfortable with that.”
“By all means, please.”