Chapter Twenty-five
DOMINIC
I woke up cold. For one disorientating second I thought I was still outside on the hillside, rain soaking through me and mud beneath my bare feet. Then I registered the duvet that’d slipped off my shoulders, and Ben’s scent everywhere.
Except Ben himself wasn’t there. The space beside me was cold.
“Ben?”
Nothing. I shoved myself upright too fast, dizziness rolling unpleasantly through me.
I reached for the bedside lamp and switched it on.
The room beyond the bed lay dim and quiet, shadows pooled heavily in the corners.
Opening the door, I saw the landing light was off, with no line of brightness under the bathroom door. But the records room…
I pushed open the door to find Ben sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor surrounded by loose files and folders, hair sticking up in several directions like he’d repeatedly shoved frustrated hands through it. And in his hands—
My stomach dropped. That fucking piece of paper.
For one awful moment I couldn’t breathe properly. Shame hit first, sharp and instinctive. Then anger right behind it. Of course he was reading it again. Of course he was, now that he knew. Gold flickered in my vision.
Ben looked up as he became aware of me in the doorway, and his expression changed to one I couldn’t read. “Dominic.”
I folded my arms across my chest before I could stop myself. “Bit of late-night reading?”
His eyes widened slightly, and then I recognised his expression. He looked guilty.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted.
I laughed once under my breath. “And revisiting my deeply humiliating childhood was the obvious solution?”
Anger flashed across his face, and when he met my eyes, he was red-hot with fury.
“Dominic,” he said, very carefully, “I was trying to decide whether to burn it.”
Everything inside me stopped. Even the constant restless hum beneath my skin that never entirely disappeared. I stared at him.
Ben looked back down at the paper in his hands, expression tightening. “I know I shouldn’t,” he said quietly. “They’re records. They matter. But I keep reading this bloody thing, trying to understand how anyone thought this was acceptable, and I can’t do it.”
His fingers tightened slightly on the page.
“It’s not the full truth of what happened,” he said, his voice vibrating with anger. “It’s those in power justifying their choices and making sure theirs are the voices future generations hear.”
“You were really considering burning it?” My throat was tight all of a sudden.
Ben gave a frustrated little sigh and dragged a hand through his already disastrous hair. “I still am.”
Despite everything, something close to laughter threatened to break free. “You’re a terrible historian.”
“Yes, well, apparently I draw the line at letting emotionally damaging propaganda pretend to be neutral reporting.”
A rough sound escaped me at those words, and Ben’s expression softened instantly.
“I always thought…” My voice got stuck unexpectedly for a second. “I know my father thinks I’m unstable. He’s told me enough times. But reading it like that.” I laughed once quietly, without humour. “Christ.”
Ben stayed very still, watching me carefully.
“It makes it sound,” I said eventually, staring somewhere over his shoulder, “like there was nothing else worth writing down.”
Ben’s expression sharpened instantly. “No,” he said fiercely. “It makes them sound frightened of a heartbroken child and utterly lacking in empathy.”
And there it was again. That unbearable thing he’d been doing—taking the story I’d lived with my entire life and turning it sideways until it looked like something else.
I sat down beside him before my legs gave out on me completely. And when Ben reached for me, I let him.
“They spied on me,” I said at last, from where my head was resting on his shoulder. “The Vaughans. I never knew. I thought—I thought they liked me.”
And God, I sounded like a little kid. As if being liked was the most important thing in the world.
“Who were they?” Ben asked. “Were they kind to you?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, I think so. Distant family members, so distant I’d never met them.
But now I know why he chose them.” My voice roughened.
“They lived in this farmhouse in the middle of absolutely nowhere, meaning I couldn’t be a threat to anyone else.
And Mr Vaughan… He used to be a probation officer.
He was used to assessing the truth of someone rather than what they wanted him to see.
Spotting the likelihood of re-offending.
” I swallowed painfully. “And if I’d lost control completely, he was big enough to take me down. ”
“Fuck.” It sounded as if it tore Ben’s throat on the way out. “Dominic…”
He didn’t finish, and I didn’t know what he’d been going to say. Instead, he combed his fingers through my hair, repetitive and soothing. The feeling tugged at something inside me. Almost like a memory.
“Rhodri sent me birthday presents, and he’d call me,” I said after a while.
I didn’t know if I was trying to defend Rhodri from Ben’s judgement, or if I was trying to convince myself it hadn’t been so bad.
Because it hadn’t, not until I’d seen it written down.
“Look, I get that I’m volatile, difficult, whatever you want to call it.
I get that people have reasons for...” I broke off.
“For thinking there’s something wrong with me. ”
He made a protesting sound and his shoulder rose under my jaw, which was kind of uncomfortable. I grumbled, and he dropped it again.
“There is nothing wrong with you,” he declared.
I wasn’t so sure about that. But God, I wanted to believe him.
I had no idea how long we sat there on the floor, but I eventually realised I was cold again, wearing only boxers while Ben had appropriated my robe. I was also falling asleep against his warm solidity as his fingers combed through my hair.
“Bed,” I said, reluctantly removing myself from him and standing up. He followed me, groaning as he climbed stiffly to his feet.
He looked down at the paper he was still clutching, and his jaw tightened.
“You don’t need to burn it,” I said, and shrugged a little jerkily. “It happened. Isn’t that what records are? No one knows the true story behind anything, just the basic events. So, leave it.”
He looked at me, a question in his eyes.
“I mean it,” I told him. And, to my surprise, I did.
The moment I’d found that piece of paper, I’d have happily destroyed it, if I’d thought to.
If anyone had asked me before I’d come into the records room just now, I’d have wanted it burned as if it had never existed.
But the thing was, Ben was willing to do it.
Ben, who revered records like no one I’d ever known, who was all about accuracy and completeness, had been willing to do that for me. And somehow, that knowledge was enough.
Also, I didn’t want to be responsible for him having some kind of historian meltdown for the rest of his life every time he thought of what he’d done.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s fucking freezing.”
He put the sheet down on the table, and looked somewhat helplessly at the mess of papers on the floor.
“No,” I said firmly. “Boyfriend beats historian at this time of night. Leave them.”
The dawning delight on his face was almost enough to stop me freezing to death. And later, when we held one another under the covers—to which I’d added two very thick blankets—warmth filled me that had nothing to do with the temperature of the house.