by Alie Nolan
WAITING FOR THEM
LITTLE HOLLOW, BOOK 1
ALIE NOLAN
COPYRIGHT
Waiting for Them is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Alie Nolan
Published in the United Kingdom by Alie Nolan.
All rights reversed. This book or any portions therefor may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever with the express written permission of the publishers except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover image: © alonesdj
Book and cover design: Alie Nolan
Editing and proofreading: Ann Attwood
Paperback ISBN: 9798627128436
LOGAN FAMILY
Stanley - Arthur
Vanessa - Stephanie
Alec (His Favorite Player)
Ethan
Grace
Jacob
Caleb (Waiting for Them)
Martin - Lorraine
Matthew (Waiting for Them)
Maxwell
Lola
Harriet
Zachary
James
PROLOGUE
Caleb
Ten Years Ago
It was bonfire night, and the whole Logan family were standing huddled together in the fields surrounding Little Hollow. Stanley—Grandad to everyone else—was further into the field, helping his son, Martin, light fireworks. The Logans had adopted my brother, Jake, and I a few months earlier, but I was still feeling very much like an outsider, despite the entire family’s attempts at reassuring me that our stay at Little Hollow was going to be permanent. I was seventeen—Jake was only nine—and we’d been in foster care for years. We’d stayed in more homes than I could count, and none of those were permanent, so I was having trouble trusting the assurances that this time would be any different—granted they’d actually adopted us, something no one else had ever even attempted.
I wanted the hope I felt to become a reality so badly though, for Jake’s sake more than anything. I’d been taking care of him his whole life, and this was the exact type of family I always wanted him to have.
The type who were truly loving and accepting, where he could feel safe to be himself.
Jake was transgender, and although I had absolutely no problem with who he was—I would always love him more than anyone else on the planet, and nothing would ever change that—we’d previously been placed with two other families who were not as receptive to the idea of Jake being… well… Jake.
We’d been placed in some terrible situations over the years, but none worse than the placement before we’d arrived at Little Hollow and into the care of Vanessa and Stephanie.
The father in our previous placement had insisted on calling Jake by his dead name, using incorrect pronouns, and had forced Jake to wear stereotypically feminine clothes on several occasions—watching my little brother cry his eyes out at being forced to wear a dress had shattered my heart into a million pieces. I’d done everything in my power to stand up to our arsehole foster father, but it hadn’t made much difference. The man had been a drunk and was verbally abusive from the get-go. Luckily only with me though, and never when Jake was around.
Jake had informed me at the age of six that he was a boy, and I loved him and accepted him for exactly who he was. Other people didn’t always like the idea of a child knowing and understanding they were trans at such a young age.
Fuck those people.
Looking around at all the smiling faces of our new family, I could see how incredible Jake’s life would be there. Not only were our new parents a lesbian couple, but Vanessa’s fathers, Stanley and Arthur, were gay too, and a few of my now cousins and siblings were openly LGBTQ+ too. I knew that Jake was safe there, I truly believed that, and nothing in the world could have made me happier.
Past experiences, however, had limited my ability to trust a good thing, and I couldn’t help but feel like it was only a matter of time until the whole thing went tits up.
“You okay?” Matty—Matthew—Logan, Vanessa and Stephanie’s teenage nephew, asked as he came to stand beside me, rubbing his hands together, close to the bonfire flames to warm them up. He smiled sweetly at me, as he edged his body closer to mine.
Matty and I had become close since I’d arrived at Little Hollow, and out of the entire family—minus Jake, obviously—he was the only person I’d formed any type of bond with. Although, my bond with Matty had quickly shifted into something deeper than simply friendship.
I had tried resisting him with every single fibre of my being, and it had been torture.
He was wonderful, and beautiful, and if he wasn’t my newly adopted cousin, I would have given in to my desires and feelings for him long before I had. I knew after less than two months at Little Hollow, that I could easily fall in love with him. And now, over five months along, I’d fallen so far for him, there was no coming back.
We would sneak away to find time alone. Holding hands and kissing any chance we got, and every time we did, I felt like everything was simultaneously right in the world, and like I was teetering on the edge of a cliff.
Standing next to him, the bonfire lighting up his gorgeous face, I wanted nothing more than to drag him away from the rest of the family and kiss him until the sun came up… but I couldn’t, because I needed to break things off before they went any further.
It broke my heart to even think it, but falling for him had been a mistake, and was going to jeopardise the longevity of my and Jake’s stay there.
When I didn’t respond, he nudged my shoulder with his, and I turned to see him looking at me with a quizzical expression.
Shit, I never answered his question.
“I’m good, you okay?”
He smiled his stupidly beautiful smile. “Yeah, I love fireworks. They’re beautiful.”
Damn. Why did he have to be so adorable all the time? It was like he was doing it on purpose to drive me mad.
We stood side by side watching the fireworks, our hands occasionally brushing, but never entwining like I desperately wanted.
Once the fireworks were over, the family all made their way back to their respective houses on the property, all except Matty and me.
The family had all started walking through the fields, back up to the houses, but Matty wrapped his hand around my wrist and tugged me in the direction of the bunkhouse.
A few years earlier, Stanley and Arthur—my adoptive grandfathers—had turned an old building on the land, into a bunkhouse. It was basically a fully functioning guesthouse with a kitchen, bathroom, lounge, and several bedrooms, for when the older of their grandkids wanted to visit home, but didn’t want to stay under their parents’ roof.
Matty’s hand on my wrist slid down to my hand once we were alone in the privacy of the bunkhouse, he tangled his fingers with mine and gave them a small squeeze before pulling me into one of the bedrooms.
We lay down on the double bed together, wrapped in each other’s arms as tightly as we could get.
He rested his head on my chest, and I carded my fingers through his dark hair, pushing the strands away from his face and leaning down to place a soft kiss to his forehead.
“I love you, Caleb,” he whispered into my chest.
“I love you too.”
He angled his head up, his lips seeking mine.
Our lips met in a slow kiss, gliding lazily together.
I never got tired of kissing Matty, and that was the problem. I knew we would keep doing this until we eventually got caught. This wasn’t the first time we’d
sneaked away to just hold each other all night, but this needed to be the last.
If I didn’t leave Little Hollow, I would never be able to give Matty up.
And I knew if I didn’t go then, I never would.
I kissed him like my life depended it, and then Matty settled his head back on my chest, his eyes fluttering closed.
I held Matty a little tighter and listened to his breathing even out as he fell asleep.
I waited a while, to make sure he was truly asleep, and once I was sure he wasn’t going to wake again, I untangled my limbs from his and got off the bed. I placed a final kiss to his forehead before going in search of a pen and paper in the lounge.
I needed to leave him a note, to apologise and assure him that everything would be better this way.
I scribbled the note as fast as I could, afraid if I took too long, I’d back out of my own plan.
My beautiful Matty,
I am so sorry. Please know that I love you more than I ever thought was possible. You are the brightest part of my otherwise dark life, and I will spend the rest of my life being grateful I got to love you.
I know you’re going to be worried… and angry… when you read this—I can already see the frustrated crinkle between your brows—but I swear to you, I’m going to be fine.
Leaving is what’s best for Jake, and for you.
You both deserve this family, and I’m only going to mess it up for you.
I don’t ever want to be the reason you two don’t get to live the best lives possible.
Be happy. Strive for everything you want.
And please, for me, always look out for Jake.
I know he’s safe with you and your family, but he’s going to need you now more than ever. Protect him, love him, and cherish him for the gift that he is.
I love you so much, baby.
Caleb.
I placed the note on the bedside table, knowing it would be the first thing he saw when he woke up.
I stroked the soft skin of his cheek one final time, and then I left.
No clothes, no money, no direction.
Nothing.
Just me, and the knowledge that I was doing what was best for the two people I loved most in the world.
A single, hot tear fell down my ice-cold skin as I walked to the gate at the end of the long gravel drive. I pictured Matty sleeping alone in the bunkhouse, and Jake safe in his bed with a family who loved him. I took one last glance at the wooden sign on the gate, wiped the tear from my face, and pushed the gate open, leaving Little Hollow for the final time.
ONE
Matty
Present Day
I was sitting at the kitchen table in the main house at Little Hollow, trying to fish half a soggy digestive out of my tea—that pretty much summed up my morning—while I waited for Jake to come downstairs. I’d been kept up until the early hours, trying to resist the urge to cut off my own ears as I was forced to listen to my brother, Max, fuck some random hookup through the thin wall that separated our bedrooms, only to finally fall asleep and be woken up less than three hours later.
“Sweetie,” Auntie Ness said as she strolled into the kitchen in her white, fluffy dressing gown. Her wavy brown hair tied in a messy bun. “You’re here early.”
“Got a text from Jake saying he wanted me to come over.” I yawned, and took a sip of my tea. “He wouldn’t tell me why though.”
“Have you eaten?” She asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I ate before I left mine.”
I lived in a two-bedroom house in Wiltonham with my identical twin—only a few miles down the road—but we spent just as much time at Little Hollow as we did at our own house. Most members of the Logan family, even though we were mostly all adults now, weren’t usually far from this place.
Little Hollow was a large piece of farmland in the middle of nowhere that my Gramps and Grandad—Arthur and Stanley—bought not long after they met, over fifty years ago. They’d built several houses on the land over the years; the main houses, which were two houses joined by a terrace, one of which was occupied by my parents, Martin and Lorraine, and the other by my aunts, Vanessa and Stephanie—Jake’s mums. Then there was the bunkhouse, which was a big house not far from the lake, as well as the small cottage Gramps and Grandad lived in. And right on the edge of the property, by the forest, was Auntie Harri’s house. The seventy-plus acres of land meant that most of us hated having to walk between the houses, and we opted to use quad bikes just to make it to the letterbox by the gate at the top of the long, gravel drive.
Growing up, there had been sixteen of us living between the houses, but it never felt overcrowded, or like you couldn’t be alone. Several of us had moved now though. Max and I were living a few miles down the road, my cousin, and Jake’s oldest brother, Alec, was living in America with his boyfriend, and Auntie Harri’s kids, Zach and James were living in Portridge—a city about forty-five minutes away. My cousin, Grace, never stayed in one place for long, but when she was around, she usually stayed in the bunkhouse. The only couslings—the name we called all the siblings and cousins of the younger generation of Logans—still living at Little Hollow were my younger sister, Lola, my cousin, Jake, and his older brother Ethan. Jake had just started his second year of uni, but he still came home most weekends.
It was Saturday morning, and I wasn’t working that weekend—I was a small animal vet at the local veterinary practice in Wiltonham—so I wasn’t thrilled when I’d been woken by a bunch of rambling texts from Jake at the crack of dawn.
Jake: You working today?
Jake: If not, can you come to LH?
Jake: I need to talk to you.
Jake: It’s important.
Jake: Are you even awake?
Jake: Matty?
Jake: WAKE UP!
He’d succeeded in his mission to wake me, and I’d replied that I’d be over in twenty minutes. It had now been half an hour, and I was sitting in Auntie Ness and Steph’s large kitchen, drinking a cup of tea, with no sign of Jake.
“Is Jake even up?” I asked Ness as she was putting bread in the toaster.
“Yeah, he was in the shower when I came down,” she replied.
“Jake, hurry the fuck up,” I shouted.
“Coming,” came the muffled voice of my nineteen-year-old cousin from somewhere in the house.
“Morning, Matty, you’re here early,” my dad said as he walked into the kitchen.
Nobody knocked in this family, we all just came and went in each other’s house. That morning, I’d just wandered into Ness and Steph’s house and helped myself to a cup of tea. That was just how this family worked… there weren’t a lot of boundaries.
“I know,” I groaned, but there was no real feeling behind it. I didn’t actually mind Jake waking me up this early. Whatever was going on was clearly important.
“Ooh, toast,” Dad said as he took a slice of buttered toast off his sister’s plate, then took a big bite before putting it back on the plate.
“Oi, you shit,” Ness swatted him away. “This is mine, make your own.”
“Rainy sent me to pinch some coffee from you. We’ve run out apparently,” Dad said to Ness.
“Help yourself,” she said as she sauntered out of the kitchen with her toast.
Once she was gone, Dad grabbed the jar of coffee that Mum had sent him over to get, and walked to the front door. “Bye,” he shouted to no one in particular. Several voices, including mine, shouted the word back.
I heard rushed footsteps coming down the wooden stairs before Jake came bounding into the kitchen at the speed of light.
“Jacob Logan,” I greeted, looking at the non-existent watch on my wrist. “What time do you call this?”
“Matthew Logan,” he grinned. “I call this, I didn’t expect you to hightail it out of bed this quickly. I thought it was going to take you at least a couple hours to drag your arse over here.”
“Eww, don’t call me Matthew.” I shook my head.
&nb
sp; He shrugged. “You started it.”
I chuckled. “Yes, but you like your full name, Jacob.”
“True,” he smiled.
“So,” I said. “What’s so important?”
The light, carefree expression on his face deepened into one of nerves. He looked around, like he was making sure no one was around us.
“I…” he trailed off. “Can we go for a walk?” He whispered.
I didn’t think I’d ever seen him look so jittery before, but I couldn’t tell if it was nerves or excitement. Maybe a little of both? Whatever he wanted to talk to me about was clearly important, and private enough that he didn’t want the rest of the family finding out.
I understood why though, because private information didn’t stay private very long in this family.
“Okay,” I said, and walked to the front door with him, neither of us bothering to say goodbye to whoever was in the house as we left.
The cool spring air chilled my skin as I stepped outside. I rubbed my arms, trying to stay warm, and wishing I could go grab my jumper from my car. Hopefully, the weather would start to pick up soon, because I hated the cold.
One of Ness and Steph’s dogs, Gus, followed us outside, happily wagging his tail as he went.
Once we were far enough away from all the houses on the property, I turned to him, my stomach suddenly feeling a little unsettled with anticipation for whatever he was going to tell me.
Did something happen at uni?
Did someone say something, or do something, to him?
If they had, I would be in my car on my way to have a stern talking to with that person, before Jake had even finished talking.
I wasn’t going to pretend that I had the strength, or even the confidence, for a physical altercation with someone on his behalf, but I would do everything in my power to protect him.
