Chapter Thirty
A splash and a startled sound drew Austin’s attention to the corner as he entered the room. Liam was in a bath.
“At least you’re washing yourself this time.” Austin shut the door. He eyed the dozens of glowing rocks scattered around the room, erasing any trace of shadow. They’d encroached upon the estate like an infestation.
“What happened to your throat?” The water sloshed as Liam twisted to study Austin.
“I hurt it. But it’s fine now.” Austin leaned against the edge of the tub. “Do you enjoy getting dragged across the ocean?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then stop doing it. Tristan was meant to drop you home, not bring you back.”
Liam ignored the remark, studying Austin’s throat.
“Tristan cleaned it,” Austin said. “He runs a troop of men who are constantly getting hurt. I’m sure he knows how to take care of a scrape.” He’d personally brought Austin cream for his sore muscles when he’d first arrived and knew how to clean the sand out of his gills. “What are you doing?”
Liam was awkwardly leaning forward, shielding his front. He fixed Austin with a flat look, and Austin snorted. He pulled the bathing screen over to block the fire and sat on the couch, lifting his feet to bake his soles in its warmth.
Water pattered on the ground as Liam got out of the tub. “You know,” Liam said in a gruff tone, “that you aren’t meant to live with a new boyfriend until you’ve known them at least six months.”
Austin frowned at the fire. “What?”
“It’s a dating rule.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“It’s the most important dating rule.” Liam crossed the room to the dresser. “Visits and sleepovers are fine, but you shouldn’t be living together until you’ve known each other longer. Ask Tammy if you don’t believe me, or look it up when we’re home.”
Austin scowled. “Cottage,” he corrected.
“What?”
“It’s my cottage, not ‘home’.”
“Right,” Liam said. “Google it when we’re cottage.”
Austin growled, aggrieved. Liam joined him on the couch, wearing what again looked like something belonging to Inx. A book dug into Austin’s thigh as he moved over to make room for Liam. Austin moved his leg, automatically reading the cover even as Liam quickly covered it with his hand.
“What’s that?”
Guilt and discomfort hung in the air. Liam studied Austin’s expression before sighing and moving his hand. “I’ve been reading. To make sure I’m doing the right thing, or at least, not doing the wrong thing.” He gestured vaguely to Austin.
Confusion filled Austin. “Why would this help…with that?”
Complex PTSD was stamped across the book cover in bold blue print.
“Trauma, Austin,” Liam replied, steady.
Liam thought that Austin was a meek little bunny, traumatised by Cessair’s upbringing? Liam thought that deep down, he was actually soft and sweet? Never, Austin thought. I have never been soft or sweet with him. With anyone. Only when it was a performed act, with a purpose.
“I’m not weak.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Austin challenged. “I have never curled up in a corner and cried. I have never run and hidden”—one could make an argument he did that all the time—“I have never—never—” Offended, he couldn’t quite think of what else traumatised people did.
Gary’s skin was hot and sweaty beneath Austin’s palms. “I killed someone. I ruined him with my voice.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed. Austin had never told him about Gary. He stubbornly met Liam’s gaze and let him see the truth of the statement in his eyes.
“I bet I can tell you the exact day it happened.”
The challenge surprised Austin. He couldn’t remember where Liam had been at the time. He knew he hadn’t been caught.
Liam took his hesitation as agreement. “When the academic year ended after your first year at boarding school, they brought you back to the lab. They’d run out of samples while you were at school. Deep tissue samples they couldn’t take while you were going to classes. They took them then.”
Austin went still.
Liam ducked his head, breathing out hard. “At first, they let you out for a few supervised hours at a time to watch Connor from a distance. After you tried to burn down Sam’s boat, they didn’t let you out again for weeks. And inside the lab, they’d—”
“Stop.”
Liam stopped.
Austin leapt up and paced the length of the room, trying to push those memories to the far recesses of his mind. Let them all stay buried.
“The first week of August, they got the last of the samples and let you out as a reward. You weren’t okay. That’s when.”
Austin’s breathing went shallow.
“You won’t feel like this forever,” Liam promised.
“Who are you to promise me anything?” Austin whirled on him, furious. “A useless, insipid fucking guard! A nobody! The worst of what happened to me happened under your watch, and what did you do to help?”
Liam had risen to his feet. Now he rocked back on his heels, but the pain that flashed across his face had nothing to do with Austin’s voice. It had everything to do with the words Austin was hurling at him like knives.
Hurt. Then. Crushing guilt. Liam looked as though he might crumble beneath the weight of it.
“You’ve been better the past few weeks,” Liam said, ignoring, as he always did, Austin’s viciousness. Ignoring, as he always did, the way Austin hurt him. “Haven’t you?”
Austin stopped pacing. He hadn’t been mistaken or confused. He’d never used his ability on Liam.
“You’re going to let me hurt you forever because you feel guilty?” Austin’s voice came out hollow.
“No.”
“Where is the line, then? Let me cross it now, and you can leave for good.”
Liam’s lips pressed hard together, whitening under the pressure. He forced them open and said, as if the words had to be dragged out of him, “I love you.”
Austin’s mind stalled completely.
Liam made a helpless gesture in Austin’s direction.
“My parents were absolute bastards, I never got along with my brother, and to be honest, kids have always kind of disgusted me. You, too. You were such a terror. But, God help me, something went wrong in my brain because everything you did was somehow cute.”
“Cute,” Austin repeated flatly.
“If you being a little terror was enough to change that, I wouldn’t have cared about you in the first place.
” Liam forged on. “I do feel guilty, and I’ll probably carry that with me for the rest of my life.
I should have helped sooner. I should have done whatever I had to do to get you away from Cessair. ”
“You would have lost,” Austin said. “He would have killed you, and I would be alone.” And likely Cessair would still be alive. Cessair was gone because of many factors at play aboard the Infinite that night. Liam’s role in taking out Rick, the mean guard with two German Shepherds, was no small one.
Austin’s body moved instinctively. He moved back into Liam’s orbit, shoving his ear to his chest as he wrapped his arms around him. He focused on the thudding of Liam’s heart. Too fast, but strong.
Liam, stiff and awkward as last time, rubbed Austin’s shoulder.
“Nobody else understands what he was,” Austin said after a long silence. “I saw it in Connor’s face the last time we talked. He didn’t get it.”
“Connor never had to experience him.” Liam’s voice dropped. “Neither did I.”
A thought had occurred to Austin; the longer he was in Tristan’s estate, the more he gained control of his voice and the way it affected people.
“I think I could have stopped him,” Austin admitted.
“I used to think my voice didn’t work on him, that he had no heart for me to influence.
But now, I don’t think that’s true.” That worm on the beach hardly had anything like affection or empathy for Austin to twist, yet he’d seized control of the thing anyway with one simple, sharp command.
“I was too scared to strike out at him.”
“I could have shot him,” Liam offered in return, quietly, guilty.
Liam’s heart gradually settled, and his arms relaxed into a more natural hold. The fire burned through its logs and began to die down.
“They like me here,” Austin said.
Liam’s chest swelled as he drew in a deep breath. “I can tell.”
“Not just Tristan,” Austin added.
“I know.”
“If I move back to the cottage, then I won’t get to see them. They can’t cross the ocean the way Tristan can.”
“You can visit. You have that tail now. Or is it uncomfortable to use?”
“I’ve only changed the once. It wasn’t uncomfortable then.”
Liam let out a thoughtful hum. “And you’re set on Tristan?”
“Do you like him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Austin tightened his arms on Liam in warning.
“You don’t need my approval; you can date whoever you like.”
Tighter.
Liam grunted.
“He seems alright.”
Austin drew in a deep, deep breath. Let it out slowly, relaxing his arms. “You can stay,” he said. “In Ireland. In the cottage. With me.”
Liam’s heart kicked up.
Boom, boom, boom.
Yes, yes, yes.
“Alright,” Liam said. A great relief flooded through Austin.
“Are you, like…my dad?” Austin muttered into Liam’s shirt.
“Excuse me?”
Austin’s face burned at Liam’s tone. “You’re the right age, and—”
“Excuse me?” For the first time in his life, Austin heard genuine emotion in Liam’s voice. He peeled back and was astounded to see Liam staring at him, offended. Austin was so amazed at the display of emotion that he forgot to be upset by Liam’s rejection.
“How old do you think I am?”
Austin stared up. Even with the blue glows, things like fine lines and smaller details were hard for him to pick out. There was no substitute for true daylight. “Aren’t you like…mid…forties?”
“Mid-forties?”
“Fifty?”
“I’m just gone thirty-two!” Liam looked down at himself, but then his gaze flicked up, and he narrowed his eyes at Austin. He wasn’t meeting his eyes so much as studying them.
Austin was doing the math. Liam had to have been twenty? Twenty-one? When he started at the lab. That was far younger than Austin had thought.
“Given that I wasn’t fathering any kids when I was eleven, no, I’m not, like, your dad. I’m, like…”
“An older brother,” Austin supplied, and immediately loved the idea. Connor got to have a brother who loved him. Now, so did Austin.
“Let’s go then,” Austin said, stepping back. Surprise flashed across Liam’s face, his hand darting up to his ear.
“Your voice,” he said, surprised.
“It can feel nice. If I’m feeling nice,” Austin added with a coy smile. “I want to burn those files.” He stretched out the kinks in his spine as he strode toward the door.
Liam followed with a dry, “Glad I took a bath.” He grabbed the book and put it in a plastic sheath, neat stitching declaring it completely waterproof.
Tristan was on the couch reading his book on sirens when Austin entered. Austin draped himself over the back of the couch and wrapped his arms around Tristan, pressing his cheek to Tristan’s. “Can you carry Liam over for me?” he asked sweetly.
Tristan shut the book and hummed as he rubbed his cheek against Austin’s in return. “Of course.”