Charlie could only nod and fight against the image of Reg half dragging Leo from his arms and carrying him into the hospital. There’d been nothing behind Leo’s vacant stare. Nothing behind the chill of his freezing skin. Charlie had honestly believed he’d never see him again, and he’d cried on Fliss’s shoulder the whole way home.
“Leo’s still poorly,” Kate said, casting a glance at Lila. “The antibiotics he was given for his arm have made him quite sick. But he’s on the mend, physically, and he’ll be ready to be discharged tomorrow.”
Physically. The word resonated more than any other Kate had ever uttered at a family meeting. Charlie sat up straighter in his seat, and so did Fliss. Andy poured himself another mug of tea, as though bracing himself, and asked the question Charlie couldn’t articulate.
“So his arm’s gonna be okay. What about the rest of it? Are we talking PTSD, or some shit? Something else?”
“You’re spot on, actually,” Reg said. “Which has come as a relief to Kate and I. A diagnosis is a good starting point for recovery, and the hospital psychiatrist agrees that there’s much that can be done to help Leo.”
“Done by who?” Charlie wanted to slap his hands over his mouth and shove the words back in, because he wasn’t ready for Reg’s gentle headshake, or the tearful regret in Kate’s eyes. But he fought the urge to flee the room and raised his chin in defiance, digging in to fight in Leo’s corner. “Who’s going to help him, Dad? Because you promised him we would.”
“I did, Charlie, but things have changed since then. Leo has deteriorated despite the efforts we’ve all made to care for him.”
“But you didn’t know what was wrong with him,” Fliss said. “Surely it will be easier now.”
“Nothing we do from here is going to be easy.” Kate leaned forward, her hands reaching out for all of them. “But—” her gaze flickered to Reg before she seemed to make a decision. “Reg and I have decided that we’d like to bring Leo home tomorrow. What do you all think?”
“That you should’ve said that in the first place.” Fliss spoke before Charlie could. “We love Leo. There’s no way that any of us would’ve agreed to you doing anything else. Right, guys?”
She looked to Andy and Charlie, who both nodded.
“Damn straight,” Andy said. “We’ve come this far, though I don’t live here, so Charlie should speak before me.”
Abruptly, all eyes were on Charlie. He gulped and nodded again, fervently this time, like the felt dog Andy had in the back of his car. “Leo needs to come home, Mum. Where else would he go?”
They all knew the answer to that: emergency foster care or a group home. Kate blanched and shook her head. “If we can agree, we’ll bring him back tomorrow, but Charlie, you spend a lot of time with Leo, so it’s only fair that we warn you that his recovery might prove disruptive.”
Charlie rolled his eyes, couldn’t help it. “Mum, he already keeps me up half the night with his nightmares and insomnia, and I don’t care. I love him, okay? And I want him to come home.”
He pushed his chair back and finally gave in to the urge to escape to his bedroom. He’d spent days anticipating this conversation, and the relief of it being over was too much. Leo was coming home, and Charlie couldn’t bloody wait.
Shame Fliss felt the need to invade his much-needed privacy mere moments after he’d shut his bedroom door.
“You know you have to tell them, don’t you?”
“Tell who what?”
Fliss rolled her eyes and leaned on the closed door. “Don’t give me that nonsense. I’ve kept quiet until now because it’s none of my business, but PTSD is serious, Charlie. Mum and Dad need to know everything if they’re going to help Leo—including about the little cuddle party you two have got going on. What if it goes tits up, Leo gets upset, and they don’t know why?”
“I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Liar.”
“I don’t,” Charlie insisted, opening his wardrobe to hide the flush burning his cheeks.
“Want me to spell it out?”
“Piss off.” Charlie grabbed a T-shirt and pulled the one he was wearing over his head, replacing it with the clean one. “Can’t you annoy Andy for a while instead of me? It must be his turn.”
“Andy isn’t wearing Leo’s clothes.”
Damn. Charlie looked down at the T-shirt he’d mindlessly slipped on. It was Leo’s. Of course it was. “What do you want from me? To pay you to shut the hell up? To keep your mouth shut?”
“What do you think this is? A bloody soap opera?” Fliss let out an exasperated sigh. “Charlie, I’m not trying to ruin your life. I’m just warning you that Mum and Dad need to know that you and Leo are, uh, seeing each other. They could get in a lot of trouble if social services found out first. And Leo needs us, remember? How would you feel if they took him away?”
Of all the things Charlie had spent the last few days worrying about, never once had he considered that. “They couldn’t do that, could they?”
“They could if they thought you and Leo were up to anything inappropriate while you were sneaking across the landing every night.”
The fading flush in Charlie cheeks returned full force, incinerating his skin from within. “We haven’t done anything.”
Fliss shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if you have. It’s the suspicion that will screw things up.”
“But—” Charlie’s brain worked overtime, trying to push aside the embarrassment burning a path through every vein. “If I tell Mum and Dad, they won’t let Leo come home.”
“Yes, they will.”
“No, they won’t. He’ll have nowhere to sleep if they won’t let him sleep so close to my room anymore.”
“He will if I move out. He can have my room.”
“But—”
“Stop saying but. You sound like a moron.”
“But—” Charlie searched for a coherent sentence to prove Fliss wrong “—where would you go?”
“Andy has a spare room.”
“You hate Andy’s house.”
“Only because it smells of stale garlic. He’s got a wicked stereo system, and he works early shifts six days a week. I’d never see him.”
But . . . Charlie stopped himself just in time and allowed Fliss’s bombshell to take root in his whirling mind. His head told him that Fliss leaving home would be the best thing in the world—Christ, how many times had he wished her away?—but his heart was heavy. For better or worse, Fliss was his sister, and life without her was unthinkable. “I don’t want you to move out.”
“Why not? It’s not like it wouldn’t have happened eventually anyway.”
“Mum won’t let you.”
“I’m twenty, Charlie. Not fifteen.”
Fliss had a point, and the more Charlie thought about it, the more her moving in with Andy made sense. He was always moaning that he didn’t like living alone—or leaving his delinquent cat to its own devices when he was out. If Kate and Reg could live with Charlie and Leo residing on separate floors of the house, Fliss’s solution was perfect.
The only problem was that it was built on an assumption that Charlie had no right to make. Charlie’s own misgivings about confessing to Kate and Reg aside, he had no idea how Leo would feel about it. And, duh, it’s not like he ever agreed to be your bloody boyfriend. Get real, loser.
Charlie tried to silence the pessimistic devil on his shoulder, but it was hard, and even without the bullshit that came with that, there was something else—something that mattered more than anything: Leo.
Leo was still so unwell, and revealing his sexuality alongside Charlie’s, to a family he still barely knew, probably wasn’t high on his list of priorities. If it was on there at all.
Charlie shook his head slowly, trying to clear it. “Please don’t tell Mum and Dad.”
“I’m not going to. You are.”
“I can’t. Not without talking to Leo first. He might not want to be with me when he comes home anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because I want everyone to be happy. Makes my life easier.”
“Nothing about this is easy.” Charlie echoed Kate’s earlier words with little conscious thought and dropped his head into his hands. Perhaps Fliss was right and he did need to tell Kate and Reg about him and Leo, but with Leo so poorly, and his absence a giant crater in Charlie’s soul, where the hell would he start?
Mum, Dad, I’ve got something to tell you . . .
Leo let his head loll against the car window, only half listening to Reg as he spoke about what would happen when they finally got home. It was as much as his tired brain would allow, especially after the doctor had given him a pill to “ward off any anxiety you may have about leaving the hospital.”
The pill had done little to ease the tense knot in his chest, but Leo couldn’t deny that the drowsy buzz behind his eyes felt good—soothing—and the cool glass against his aching head felt even better.
“I don’t know if you’ll be able to go back to school anytime soon,” Reg said.
“Hmm?” Leo lifted his head.
Reg smiled slightly, before his expression became characteristically grave again. “I’m talking about school, Leo. It’s important.”
School was the last thing on Leo’s mind, but he’d come to realise in recent days that listening to Reg talk about boring stuff that didn’t matter was kind of nice. Like watching a film you’d seen a hundred times over. “Did I get expelled?”
“The school hasn’t decided what to do with you yet.”
“What about the police?”
“Darren Stroud’s family decided not to press charges, but I’d imagine the police will want to talk to you anyway.” Reg’s lips pressed into a thin line. Leo sat up straighter. Until now, Reg had given little indication of his feelings on what Leo had done to Darren Stroud. Was that about to change?
A flicker of fear dampened the medication-mellowed fire in his gut, but then he remembered the many hours he’d lost to Reg’s voice over the last few days and the flicker went away. If Reg was angry, it was only because he cared. “You’re family, Leo. Whatever happens, we’ll take care of you.”
It was nothing that Reg hadn’t said from the start, and perhaps it was the medication, but somehow, Leo had come to believe him. “What are you pissed off about?” Leo asked. “Do you want them to press charges so I get what I deserve?”
“It’s not for me to decide what you deserve, but no . . . it’s not that I want you to be prosecuted. I’m more concerned with the fact that the other boy’s parents weren’t that interested in what had happened to their son. I shouldn’t tell you this, but the school had to accompany him to the hospital and the police brought him home.”
Guilt was an emotion that Leo was familiar with, though he found it hard to apply to Darren Stroud, especially when he thought of Charlie—beautiful, innocent Charlie, dancing through Heyton, off his tits on dodgy pills.
Dennis’s face flashed into Leo’s mind, stronger and clearer than even Charlie’s. Leo shuddered and closed his eyes. The doctors at the hospital had told him that the PTSD was probably in part responsible for what he’d done to Darren Stroud, but all the pills in the world couldn’t convince him that he wasn’t a fistfight away from becoming Dennis.
“Leo.” Reg’s voice was insistent. “Come on, now. If the police pursue a case, it’s unlikely that you’d serve a custodial sentence. It’s more likely that a judge would insist on you getting the treatment you’ll be having anyway.”
“Treatment?”
“Treatment, therapy, assistance. It’s all semantics, really.”
“I literally have no idea what you’re on about.”
Reg smiled properly this time. “They’re just words, son. All that matters now is getting you better, but you know that most of that will fall on you, don’t you? No one can feel things for you, which is a shame.”
“Is it?”
“Well, yes and no. I dread to think how many children Kate would have taken the pain and suffering from, if it were possible.”
“I’d do it for Lila.”
“I know you would. And so will she when she’s old enough to process everything you’ve both been through.”
Leo absorbed Reg’s words with a nod and then let his head return to its love affair with the window. It was odd to be communicating so easily with Reg when he’d spent so long avoiding him, but the shift between them had happened sometime between Leo kicking in Darren Stroud and waking up in a horribly familiar hospital, and he was too tired to fight it. Reg was here, and so was Leo, and apparently that wasn’t changing anytime soon.
Sometime later, Leo woke up to Reg gently shaking him.
“We’re home, son.”
Son. That shit was still annoying. Damn it, just call me Leo. But the prospect of seeing Lila—and Charlie—distracted Leo from even scowling in Reg’s direction. He rubbed his face and pushed his matted curls from his forehead, hoping his glassy eyes and haggard appearance wouldn’t frighten Lila. “Do I look okay?”
“Of course you do, though I reckon Kate will try and feed you the moment you get in.” Reg got out of the car and was somehow at Leo’s door in the blink of an eye. He opened it, then helped Leo out before he could protest. “When you get inside, go wherever you’re most comfortable. We’ll bring Lila to you if she’s not already there.”
But Reg’s offer proved unnecessary, because Lila was exactly where Leo knew she would be—perched on the living room windowsill, counting his steps until he reached her.
He scooped her down with his good arm and embraced her as tightly as he could manage. Whispered words were on his lips, even though she’d never hear them. “I’m here, kiddo. I’m sorry.”
Lila squeezed him fiercely, then pulled away, her face marred by the innocent confusion Leo’s heart could never take. “Are you okay?” she signed.
“I am now.”
“I’m hungry.”
“What’s new?”
There was movement behind them. Leo whirled around, still clutching Lila, and disappointment hit him like a punch to the gut as Kate chanced a hopeful smile with her plate of sandwiches that she set on the coffee table.
“I’ve brought you lunch,” she signed to Lila.
“Where’s Charlie?” Leo blurted, and then wanted to smack himself as something inscrutable flickered in Kate’s eyes.
“He’s at school,” she said. “It’s Monday, remember?”
Leo had stopped caring what day of the week it was a long time ago. School often felt like the bane of his life, but before Charlie, weekends had brought a nightmare all of their own. But it’s not like that anymore. You trust Reg now, don’t you?
Did he? Do I?
Reg came into the living room. He smiled at Lila, and then met Leo’s eyes with a steady gaze that stirred nothing in Leo—demanded nothing. A kindly stare that reminded him only of his empty stomach.
Leo stepped forward and took a sandwich from the plate. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Kate said, her features brightening with a cautious delight that made Leo wonder what sort of git he’d been the last time she’d seen him. “I’ll fetch some drinks, then we’ll leave you to it.”
And of course she made good on her promise. Leo was coming to realise that she and Reg always did.
Later that afternoon, after way too many games of Mouse Trap and Uno, Leo fell asleep on the couch while Lila watched Despicable Me on the iPad. Nasty dreams had plagued him for years, but the antibiotic-induced illusions weren’t so bad. He was quite happily playing football with duck-billed unicorns when Kate woke him sometime later.
“Teatime,” she said. “And medicine time.”
She dropped an antibiotic into his palm, along with the final dose of pills from the psychiatrist. S
omehow, Reg had wangled him a stay of execution on any more until “other options” had been explored, whatever that meant.
Leo swallowed the pills, knowing he’d miss the numbing buzz of the sedative, and sat up slowly, flexing his tender arm, loosening the muscles that had stiffened while he slept. He searched automatically for Lila. She was already at the table, eagerly filling her plate in a way that warmed Leo from the inside out. This is her home. And then guilt hit him hard, like it had so many times since his faculties had returned to him in the hospital. Reg had promised him that whatever happened, he and Kate would always look after Lila, but that didn’t make up for how close Leo had come to abruptly exiting her life.
“Come on, love,” Kate prompted. “Do you need a hand up?”
“No, thanks.” Leo could stand, and he did, with barely a wobble as he scanned the room once more, for Charlie this time, an odd mixture of anticipation and nerves churning in his stomach.
But Charlie was nowhere in sight, and pride kept Leo from asking for him again as he drifted to the table. He took his seat next to Lila and stared at a groove in the wood as Kate bustled around with lasagne and garlic bread. Fliss appeared opposite, ignoring him entirely, which was strangely comforting. But still no Charlie.
Come on, come on. Leo counted the cherry tomatoes in the salad until heated fingers finally grazed his good wrist and Charlie dropped into the seat beside him.
“Hi.”
Leo swallowed thickly. “Hi.”
“Okay?”
“Um . . . yeah?”
“Good, ’cause you look like shit.”
“Language, Charlie,” Reg cautioned, but there was a smile in his eyes that lightened the air.
Leo smiled too, and for a fleeting moment, the world seemed as right as it could be.
Somehow, he made it through dinner without falling into Charlie’s arms. When it was over, he picked up the nearest plate, eager to get the table cleared as quickly as possible.
Fliss pried it from his tingling fingers. “I’ve got this. Mum’s bathing Lila. Go upstairs and rest.”
Leo didn’t need telling twice, he glanced at Charlie and then fled his room, praying Charlie would follow.
Finding Home Page 14
