They left by the front door.
It had taken less than twenty minutes.
Nikolas felt more had changed between them in that fraction of an hour than in the whole decade they’d known each other.
§ § §
Ben refused to answer any questions as they made their way back to where Nikolas had left the car. He kept an unnecessary hold on Nikolas’s upper arm—Nikolas wasn’t sure whether Ben thought he needed assistance or restraint—then Ben pushed him toward the vehicle. “Can you drive?”
“Since I was eight.”
Ben ignored him and glanced around. “Go straight home. I need to retrieve my bike.”
Nikolas nodded again. His neck was getting stiff from all the agreeing he’d been doing recently. It saved him from having to speak though. Ben didn’t seem to like his silence, however. He was seized again, both upper arms in a painfully strong grip and then he was shaken. “I mean it. Straight home.”
Nikolas didn’t need to repeat his useful mime. The shaking was doing it for him.
He stood bemused as Ben Rider-Mikkelsen effortlessly vaulted a six-foot wall and disappeared into the darkness of the park behind them.
§ § §
Nikolas had many questions.
When they were home, at the kitchen table, tea inevitably between them, he asked the first and most important. “What did he tell you?”
Ben looked up from his cup, and Nikolas watched him lie. “Nothing.” It was inconceivable; Ben never lied to him, but what truly astonished Nikolas was that Ben knew he understood it was a lie. He didn’t even bother to make it convincing. He even gave Nikolas a tiny challenging flick of his eyebrow as if to tempt him to call him on it and added, “Nothing you need to know.” He was announcing…solidarity. They were as one in this as they were as one in everything, apparently.
Nikolas had a feeling that Stefan and Anatoly would never be mentioned between them again.
Quite what they were going to talk about was a mystery to him.
He was living with a stranger.
Everything he’d thought lately about Ben was a distortion. He’d seen only the easy-going, happy to love and be loved, slightly vain, very spoilt boyfriend he’d created.
Whereas all this time, Ben had been exactly what he’d always been. What he’d been when Nikolas had first seen him in an interrogation room, smirking as his torturers had beaten him, pissed on him, pretended to fuck him. He’d laughed, told bad jokes and spat in their faces when they’d released him.
He’d seen someone who was his equal. His match. His twin.
Nikolas had seen Ben as the missing half of himself.
With Ben, he was…whole.
Everything now shifted, tilted, realigned perfectly. He began to smile.
Ben was studying him closely, a slight grin just ghosting across his face.
Ben apparently knew exactly what he was thinking.
§ § §
Nikolas lived in a dream state for the next two weeks, anaesthetised, literally, by pills supplied by Andrea Gillian—more legal and useful than those Peyton Garic had given him—and metaphorically on bemusement and confusion.
He had, according to Andrea Gillian upon her return, suffered a separated shoulder due to entirely ripping all the ligaments that held it together. If he’d not been a swimmer, he would have done a great deal more permanent damage. As it was, he couldn’t lift his arm; rotating it at all was agonising. He couldn’t get in or out of bed without assistance. He couldn’t shower or shave. He’d had bullet wounds less painful than this injury. He’d been chained in a hunting shed and frozen near to death and had recovered more quickly. He took the pills and let them wash him away on a sea of foggy numbness.
Two weeks later, Ben told him they were going to Devon.
The words startled him more than they should, but they’d not spoken much since the odd reunion over the body of the man Ben had brutalised and murdered. The more Nikolas had thought on Anatoly’s death, as he’d lain in bed feeling sorry for himself, the more he’d seen in his mind’s eye the evidence of extreme torture, which he hadn’t noticed at the time—given the circumstances.
Whether this was real or a product of his overactive imagination and knowledge of this arcane skill he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t ask either. Ben had been absent a great deal during the two weeks, there to help him with the physical things he couldn’t manage, but very busy, apparently. He’d not told him where he’d been or what he was occupied with, and Nikolas sensed Ben wouldn’t tell him about Anatoly either. Ben seemed to be letting him know only what he needed to hear. He was happy, for once, to let this be. He wondered if an ordinary relationship would have led to sympathetic questions about Stefan. Hugs, kisses, healing sex…He’d got a slap, crushed ribs and lies.
He preferred their kind of love.
So now, “Get up. We’re going to Devon,” alarmed him.
He turned in the bed, wincing at the pain. How could it still hurt so much? He wondered briefly if Andrea Gillian had lied to him—if Ben had told her to. That in fact he’d done a great deal more damage to his back pulling Ben and the old dog out of the mud than they’d admitted to him. He wouldn’t put this past Ben now. He wouldn’t put anything past Ben.
“Why?”
“Because.”
When he got downstairs, limping, leaning on the banister, Ben took one look at him, shook his head, and demanded, “Go change. You look like shit.”
Nikolas considered his old jeans and T-shirt and meekly returned upstairs.
Shaved, hair styled, dressed in his favourite bespoke suit and hand-stitched linen shirt, he did feel more himself, despite the hour and a half it had taken him to achieve this level of perfection. He took a deep breath and stretched. Then regretted this and doubled over with a small, uncharacteristic whimper. “Fucking hell!”
He felt a hand on his arm. Restraint? Help? He still couldn’t decide.
Ben was considering them both in the full-length mirror.
Nikolas joined him in the scrutiny.
No one would have taken them for twins, that was for sure. Certainly when they were indulging in their favourite activity—not that they’d been doing that for many days as he’d been unable to even turn over to sleep let alone to be fucked—they wouldn’t appear to be two halves of the same person. But they were. He knew this now. He snorted faintly at the thought of them in bed…twins…and knew a similar thought had ghosted through Ben’s mind. Ben appeared more able to repress his irreverent side, and nothing of his expression gave him away. Nikolas knew though.
He stared at Ben’s reflection. Thirty-five years old two months ago. He had turned forty-seven this year, but for a moment it appeared to Nikolas as if he were the younger of the two. But then would he not always now see his face in the mirror as Stefan’s? That last moment, when he’d drawn his son to him and kissed into his blond, Mikkelsen hair, Stefan had thought his father was giving him a loving embrace. He’d not told Ben this. Would never tell Ben. But whatever lies or truths Anatoly had told Stefan, the boy had wanted his father to love him, and when Nikolas had seized him and hugged him, he’d thought he was finally being offered the love he craved.
Not telling Ben this wasn’t a lie to keep him from the shit of his life. Ben was there, swimming alongside him—always had been, apparently. Nikolas needed Ben to swim free, therefore, unencumbered by additional burdens.
One day, he might pull them both from this darkness.
Ben seemed pleased with how they looked for some reason. He handed Nikolas his beautiful watch, then strapped it on for him.
“Okay, you’re good to go.”
Nikolas, in his drugged, confused state, wondered for a moment if he’d died and was being taken to his own funeral. Then he remembered he’d died many years ago.
Ben narrowed his eyes, knowingly. “Pain meds don’t mix with coke.”
Nikolas’s brows rose, but he didn’t deny it. He’d been fuelled on more than righteous fury
, alcohol, and pain meds when he’d invaded Anatoly’s house as well. He straightened and didn’t let his wince show. “I need to tell Peyton we’re leaving.”
“Peyton’s gone.”
Nikolas froze. He felt as if he’d been told a life raft had been stolen. He felt sick. Ben grabbed his arm again and began to steer him out of the door. “Not for good.”
Nikolas began to ask, “Where is—?”
“Shut up.”
Nikolas didn’t ask again.
He slept most of the drive to Devon. He’d forgotten his dislocated ankle, on the more immediate pain from his back and shoulder, but that had been ripped apart by the leather strap as well. Stefan’s body had apparently survived the strain intact, his hadn’t. Perhaps the dead always survived better than the living.
Lying in bed for two weeks, he’d not really noticed the ankle. Walking to the car, even with Ben’s assistance, he did. He wondered idly how he’d managed to help carry Radulf’s hundred pound plus bulk across the moors to the house. He made a mental note to ask the dog. No one else was telling him anything.
Nikolas woke to an elbow in his ribs just as they passed Exeter. It was late morning and hot, an unexpected Indian summer in October that had passed him by as he’d lain in the bed, doped and depressed.
He ran a hand through his hair, his fringe annoying him as it always did. Stefan’s hair had been more like Nika’s. Odd, when you thought about it.
They passed through the old gateposts.
The last time they’d come through them they’d been racing to a fire. He’d thought they’d all be dead: Emmy, Babushka, Miles, Enid. Dead because of him, his insistence that Ben live a life outside his shadows, out of the sewer. Well, now he was in it with him. At least he’d achieved that.
Nikolas frowned as they drove along the ridgeline. The valley where the house stood was bathed in sunshine, the autumn colours of the trees intense, adding mellow warmth to the view.
“Cars.”
Ben grunted at Nikolas’s coherent comment.
Nikolas would have turned around to assess the large number of vehicles in front of their house, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t turn anything, not even his neck. He’d hurt that too, apparently. Who knew when? When he’d snapped Stefan’s maybe.
Ben pulled up behind all the other cars and climbed out. He came around to open Nikolas’s door, like a chauffeur. Best looking chauffeur in the world. Nikolas snorted at his own joke, but decided not to remind Ben of the illegal topping up he’d been doing to his drugs. He eased to standing and was about to ask about the vehicles once more when he saw Emilia and her grandmother coming out of the house.
Suddenly, it seemed as if there were people everywhere, all in bright apparel and making noise—laughing and kissing him. Not his funeral then.
But it was a party of some kind.
He couldn’t work it out.
He searched for Ben with his eyes and found him.
Ben was watching him.
Nikolas kept his gaze for a moment then limped a little way away to the cover of one of the huge rhododendron bushes.
Ben followed.
Ben wrapped his arms around him, despite there being so many people still milling around. Nikolas was beginning to make sense of the sea of faces. The moron, Tim, Kate’s mother and father. He frowned. Ingrid Peterson…? A young man he recognised with a young woman and a baby…?
“We can have both, Nik.” Nikolas switched his focus back to Ben in his arms.
“Huh?”
Ben smiled. It was the first genuine one for a long time, and it reached his eyes, lit them up, reached beyond the darkness and just took it away. “You were right. About everything. But you’re wrong, too. About everything. This is just as real. Do you recognise everyone?”
Nikolas opened his mouth to say no, but then he did recognise the young man. “Samuel? Samuel Terry?”
Ben laughed. “And his new wife and baby.”
“And that’s…”
“Rafi Hakim, the teacher from the school in Afghanistan with two of his ex-girls—now at Oxford studying to be doctors, thanks to you.”
Two men holding hands came toward them. Nikolas took a step back. John embraced him, then Mark. They rejoined their hands and began to rag Nikolas about his dislike of public displays of affection. Nikolas hadn’t seen these men since they’d attended an unusual gay therapy course together. Since he’d almost lost Ben—again. John spotted the tor and began to explain Dartmoor geology to Mark who only gave Ben and Nikolas an eye roll and dragged his partner off toward the alcohol.
Bemused, reeling, Nikolas saw children. “Who…?”
“Some of the boys from the orphanage in Moscow. Jackson got his old firm to arrange for them to fly over.”
“What—?”
“They’re all here for you. Because you’ve saved their lives, made their lives.”
“There’s Tim.”
Ben smirked. “Changed their lives anyway.”
Nikolas snorted when he saw a familiar figure emerge from the house. “Peyton Garic? Fuck me.”
“He was actually the most difficult to get here—and there’s someone who struggled all the way from the Philippines.”
“Really?”
Ben smirked. “No. Joke. And something is missing, too. The monitors have all gone, the cameras. You were right, but you were so wrong. We’ll keep the darkness at bay together. With this.” He flicked his gaze to the children running around chasing balloons, to the horses in the paddock, flicking their manes and tails to get noticed and join in the fun, to the adults chatting and standing in groups admiring the beauty of the place, enjoying the sunshine.
Nikolas was about to speak. He had no idea what he was going to say, but something caught his eye. Someone coming toward him.
He blinked.
Ben was observing him carefully.
Nikolas tried to still his expression but couldn’t. Molly Rose was walking toward him—wobbling. She’d have fallen except for the grip she had in Radulf’s fur. It was hard to tell who was escorting whom. When the odd pair, the blind and the tottering, reached them, Nikolas bent down and picked the baby up.
He gasped in pain and a familiar voice chastised, “You shouldn’t do that with a bad back. You should always bend your legs to lift things.”
Nikolas turned carefully to find a small inquisitor studying him.
Miles Toogood held open his arms for Molly and, bemused, Nikolas passed her over. “Bad backs can be very dangerous for someone your age. And Granny said it’s time. You’re both to come.”
“Time?”
Ben had his hand on Nikolas’s arm again, a firm grip. Nikolas was very sure that now it was wholly restraint. Ben murmured into Nikolas’s ear, “I wanted to do it in the chapel, but I didn’t think you’d be able to walk that far, so we’re doing it here on the lawns.”
Nikolas felt a cold chill wash over him.
His head swum, and without Ben’s hold he’d have staggered.
He knew what Ben meant, and it was so bad that everything that had happened in the last few weeks paled into insignificance.
This was worse even than killing his own son.
He closed his eyes. It didn’t help, but it allowed him to form the words in his mind to tell Ben—that, no, he wasn’t going to be part of a commitment ceremony in front of all these people. Things had changed, but they hadn’t changed that much. But saying so at such a time, with all these people here that Ben had gathered to witness this moment, would break everything apart again. Ben had swum for a shaft of sunlight and wanted him to join him. Nikolas was a creature born of darkness and didn’t have the courage.
He swallowed and opened his eyes, and once again the maddeningly intense green stare was fixed upon him. Then Ben rolled his eyes and smirked. “Moron. Molly’s christening. Officially Molly Rose Rider-Mikkelsen from today.”
Nikolas huffed and pursed his lips, easing away from Ben’s grasp. “I knew that.”
; They formed a circle around Samuel Terry—who was now an ordained Baptist minister—the huge group of people Ben had gathered together in two weeks to celebrate his daughter’s life, and, privately, his life with Nikolas.
Only when the formal ceremony was over and they were all eating and drinking and enjoying watching the children play did Ben find Nikolas again and lead him to one side. “Are you up to a walk?”
“No.”
Ben made him go anyway.
They included Radulf. He was one of them.
It took Nikolas a great deal longer to reach the bog this time than it had before, but they made it eventually, and Ben eased him to sitting with his back against the tree stump.
It was hot, a rare Dartmoor autumn of golden grass and dark shadows from the tor.
They studied the mud together, picturing what lay beneath its deceptive, dry cracks.
Ben suddenly delved in his pocket and then flipped something over to Nikolas, which he caught in one hand. His left. His mind was slow, not his reflexes. Only when he opened his fist did he see what it was.
It wasn’t the ring he’d pictured for himself—something made of purest gold, with intricate, detailed engraving, something to match the quality and expense of his watch. He held it up. It looked like something hammered out from a—
“It was the bullet in your leg I dug out when we first came to the old house.”
“You kept it?”
“I did. Got a local metalworker to make it. Put it on.”
Nikolas did. It fit okay. No, it fit perfectly. He grinned at the anachronism of the rough tarnished copper and the gold of his watch and held up his spread fingers, admiring it. Then he caught Ben around the neck, pulling him close, kissing into his hair.
“Thank you.”
Ben nodded.
He knew exactly what he was being thanked for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Nikolas was very grateful at the end of that long day to discover that Ben wasn’t as good at planning and organising as he was. Many people had nowhere to stay and had to find their own accommodation locally. No plans had been made for the evening, no entertainments laid on.
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