Freddie
They stop outside the building from four until eight, and thank god I moved my car at twelve.
It’s a few streets away, parked parallel to the curb where there’s no pavement but there is a painted white line.
Whatever that means. I’ve been driving since I was eighteen, and it shames me to admit I have no clue.
Liam would know.
It’s grim, but I’m thankful for it now.
Ryker and Liam couldn’t see me.
All they saw was a reflection of the sky.
When the day winds down, I hide in the toilets and wait for Stephen to lock up. He might pause at the front doors and wait for me, but the car park will thin out, and he’ll realise my car has gone.
He’ll think he missed me, then he’ll speed down the road in his freshly waxed Porsche to get home.
Ryker calls again, but I let it go to voicemail. I’ve got missed calls and messages from both of them, but I’m not ready for our talk yet. I need to be sure I’m alone for the night.
I didn’t move my car just so Ryker and Liam would believe I’d gone; I did it so Stephen would be unaware I’m staying here too.
He’ll grow suspicious if he arrives early tomorrow and my car is in the same spot.
I’ll fetch it tomorrow morning, and drive into the car park after him giving the illusion I went home for the night.
Right now, the canteen upstairs is my home.
When I moved the car earlier, I also grabbed a few bits from the shops. A blanket, eye mask, and an air freshener, the glass type where wooden sticks poke from the top.
I stay in the locker room for an hour before easing the door open to check no one’s here. There’s a faint buzz from the lights, but nothing else. Even so, I sneak upstairs to the canteen, holding my breath and darting glances over my shoulder.
I relax once I’m inside, and although it’s early, I arrange my cot for the night. The duvets and pillows in the supermarket had been tempting, but I would’ve struggled to get them inside the building without someone noticing.
People would talk, and now I know I’m not in Stephen’s firing line, I don’t want to throw him a gun and tell him to shoot me.
I rip open the air freshener, then drag a table close to stand it on. It chases away the lingering scent of a thousand lunches and helps me relax. I eat a sandwich I bought earlier, then down a bottle of orange juice with the hope it will give me enough energy for the conversations ahead.
It’s nine thirty when I lie down with my rucksack as a pillow and accept Ryker’s call.
“Freddie,” he says, and his relief comes through the phone loud and clear. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him, but the way he said my name has knocked me off-kilter and there’s a waver to my voice.
“Freddie . . .”
“I swear I’m fine,” I say.
“You weren’t at work.”
I was . . . I was at work. They just didn’t realise how sneaky I can be.
“No, I left early.”
Ryker blows a breath down the phone. “Where are you staying? We’ll come get you—”
“No,” I blurt. “I’m good here.”
“Where is here?” Liam growls.
“I’ve put you on speaker,” Ryker says, as if I didn’t already realise from the thunder masquerading as his brother. It’s a good job I’ve known him most of my life. I’ve got used to translating the sound of furious storm clouds.
“I don’t want to tell you,” I answer them honestly. “I said we’d talk, but I never said it would be face to face.”
“Arsehole,” Liam says.
I widen my eyes, and feeling braver without Liam’s glare, I reply, “You need to wash your mouth out.”
“Nah,” Ryker says. “He won’t do that. He says he can still taste you.”
My lips pop as I aim a “wow” at the ceiling.
“Too much?” Ryker asks, but I can tell he’s smiling, and I am too. I shake my head, not in denial, but in a, “Oh Ryker” way.
“You’re right . . . we need to talk, but the past two times we’ve tried, we’ve got . . . distracted and I didn’t want to risk a third.”
Tense seconds tick by, then Ryker speaks again. “Because you don’t like those distractions?”
When I see them, I get angry, and everything heightens, until I reach the point I want to shove them away. But then they grab me, they pull me in, manhandle me, take control, and that’s new and exciting and my body reacts.
Both Ryker and Liam know exactly what to do with that reaction.
Words like gay and straight lose any meaning, and it’s need, desire, and pleasure that take over, and I prefer them to the hurt.
But it’s not how it should be, whatever this is.
Whatever we are, we need to fix the broken foundations of us first.
“Freddie?” Ryker whispers.
“I like the distraction,” I say. “I like it a lot.” I scrunch my brow,.“At least, I like it so far.”
“Okay,” Ryker says softly. “That’s good. That’s real good. We’ll never make you do anything you don’t want to do. You know that, right? You can say no, and we’ll stop.”
“I know,” I reply, and I do know that. “But I’m angry, and I’m hurt, and that . . . distraction is confusing right now. We need to talk.”
“We do,” Ryker says. “But first, we’ve got to tell you something.”
My grip on the phone tightens. “What?”
“We drove over to your place today and spoke to Keegan.”
I fling myself upright. “You did what?”
“Well, I spoke to Keegan. Liam did his usual and acted like a caveman—”
“What the hell were you doing there?”
Ryker sighs. “We collected your things . . . clothes mostly. They’re at our place waiting for you.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Lots of reasons.”
I narrow my eyes. “Tell me three.”
“Three? You don’t play fair at all.”
“Ryker.”
“Okay, okay,” he breathes. “One, your stuff is at ours now, so you’ll have to come over soon. Two, you’re spared having to walk back into that bedroom. Three, Liam doesn’t lose his shit over the thought of you going there and being seduced by Keegan.”
“I’d never go back,” I say.
My words sound cold to my own ears.
“I’ve told him that, but you know Liam. He’s a pessimistic bastar—ouch!”
“You deserve that pinch,” Liam murmurs.
Ryker tuts. “That’s going to bruise.”
I touch the ones he left on my skin, then stroke the fading rash from Liam.
They both marked me. With everything that’s happened with us the past few days, I hadn’t thought much about Keegan.
The hurt and shock are still there, but I realise they’d been there before I’d walked in on her with her stepbrother.
Ever since my dad, things had changed. Not only the way she saw me, but the way I saw her.
I reverted back to my childlike self, but instead of doing everything in my power to make my mum happy after my dad left, it was Keegan I wanted to please.
It was Keegan who kept saying it was fine with a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes and resumed texting on her phone, shutting me out.
And in a last-ditch effort to save what we were, I opened up to her in a way I never have with anyone else, but rather than comfort me, she belittled my experience, explained it away and made me feel like a pathetic attention seeker, just like he had.
“Freddie . . . Keegan told me about your dad. I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry we weren’t there for you—”
“I wasn’t expecting it.” The words leap from my mouth.
“I walked in and he was sitting at the table grinning at me.” I close my eyes and old memories fill my mind.
“It took me back. It was like Keegan was my mum, under his spell. I told him I never wanted to see him again at Mum’s funeral, and I meant it, but he was there .
. . in my kitchen, smiling at Keegan, complimenting her cooking, bad-mouthing you.
I lost my mum to him a hundred times. Even when she was dying, she kept asking me to make sure he was at her funeral, to not let my grudge stop him being there. ”
A belt wraps around my lungs. It slithers as it tightens, every constricting notch clicking into place with a jolt that accelerates my heart.
It flutters at my throat, and it shakes my stomach.
But it’s not the worst of it. The worst is the way my diaphragm spasms. A deep ache grows in the centre of my chest, and I try to breathe around it, but it’s squashing my lungs.
My lips part, and I desperately want to tell them where I am.
I need them to come get to me before I’m unable to breathe, but all that escapes is a gasp.
“Freddie?”
I’m going to suffocate. My lungs suck and stick together. They won’t fill at all. I see flashes in my eyes, and my vision darkens at the edges, tunnelling, it’s tunnelling, and I search for the soup stain as I clutch the back of a chair.
Ryker shushes down the phone, and it helps. I drag in a breath, but it’s shallow.
“It’s okay,” Ryker says. “You’re safe. We’re here.”
I wish they were, but I tricked them. It was stupid. Now I’m alone, and it feels like . . . it feels like I’m dying. I’m dying and there’s no one here. The canteen stretches and the door seems so far away.
A fat hot tear rolls down my cheek.
“Deep breaths.”
I can’t. I can’t take them. The air only gets as far as the lump in my throat.
“You can do it, babe. Slow it down for me, listen to me, do as I do.”
Ryker breathes down the phone for me, and I try my best to copy him. My eyes stream, and my face feels too hot and too full of blood. This has happened before, a long time ago, and I was okay, but I don’t think I will be this time. I think I’m going to—
“Easy,” Liam says. “Do as Ryker does.”
Ryker’s still exaggerating his breathing as Liam talks. They’re both there.
I take in a breath, and the burn in my lungs eases a little.
Ryker must hear the change, and he says, “That’s it, babe. You’re doing great.”
I take another gulp of air, then another.
My lungs open, the walls unstick as more air gets through, forcing them to inflate.
I match Ryker breath for breath, and then I’m breathing normally again.
Still shaky, still fearful, but I’m breathing.
I wipe the wet trails on my face. It’s more slapping that wiping, and of course they hear the harsh way I clean myself up.
“Please don’t hurt yourself,” Ryker says in a pained whine.