Give Yourself Away (23 page)

“Are you happy?”
Christ, what a stupid question.

“This minute? In general? This minute I’m happy. You make me happy. I took a risk and showed you my nightmare and you haven’t run away screaming. Am I happy with my life? How could I not be when I remember what came before? But I don’t want my future to be all about getting over my past. If we’re going to make something here, you have to let it go too.”

There was no
if
about it. “There’s still the issue of the roses. The stalker. I want you to feel safe. I want to make you happy all the time.”

Finally, he’d said the right thing. Caleb smiled and inspiration struck.

“You still have your ballet stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Put it on.”

March tugged on his clothes as Caleb hunted through his bag. When he turned, Caleb was in a black tank top and knee-length black leggings, shoes in his hand. It had to be March’s imagination, but Caleb seemed to hold himself differently, more upright and confident.

“You better put on your ordinary shoes and a coat. We’re going out.”

“Er…nowhere public. You can still see the top of my back in this, plus I don’t want to get beaten up.”

“No public. I want you to dance just for me. What sort of music do you like? Do you dance to anything in particular?”

“I haven’t danced in ages.”

“If you don’t have anything on your phone, find a few tunes while I’m driving. I’ll take my speaker-dock system.”

“Hey, I’m an artiste.” Caleb put his hands on his hips. “I can’t just prance around to any old tune.”

March paused on his way to the door. “You can’t?”

“Okay, I can. But it might not be beautiful.”

Christ, anything you do will be beautiful. You are beautiful to me. Every bit of you.

“I do happen to have some music I like.” Caleb grinned, excitement all over his face.

March drove to Langbourne College and parked in the head of the Arts Department’s reserved spot close to the entrance.

“Should you park here?” Caleb asked.

“No, but what are they going to do?”

“Suspend you?”

“I like to live dangerously.”

At this time of night, there was unlikely to be anyone around. But the security guard stepped out from behind his desk as March used his key to let them into the building.

March knew him. “Evening, Stan.”

“Evening, Dr. Durant. You’re here late.”

“Something important cropped up.”

March led Caleb up two flights of stairs to lecture hall B, the biggest, and flicked on the lights. He was relieved to see the retractable seats had been pulled back and left tiered at the sides.

“Will this do as a stage?” March asked.

Caleb looked at him and smiled. “Yeah, it’ll do. Maybe a bit less light.”

March switched off a couple at the front, over the open space. “Okay. Give me your phone and I’ll deal with the music while you warm up.”

Caleb handed it over. “Just three songs, okay. I’ll be exhausted. Start with the James Morrison one, ‘Undiscovered’, then ‘Everything’ by Michael Bublé, and the last one is ‘Take Me to Church’ by Hozier.”

“Haven’t you got that one from
Frozen
?” March asked.

Caleb laughed and put on his shoes.

March settled on a seat by the door and slotted the phone into the docking system. He watched as Caleb ran around the room, and then launched into a series of jumping jacks followed by calf raises and full-leg swings. He rotated his head, shoulders and ankles, did more stretches on the floor, and March began to realize not only how flexible he was, but how strong. Like a gymnast. His build was deceiving.

How was it that Caleb seemed so different? He still looked sexy as fuck in that top and leggings, and particularly because March knew what lay under that padding over his groin.

Finally Caleb stopped moving and stood motionless, his feet pointing in opposite directions, his heels touching and his hands on his stomach. His eyes were closed as he breathed in and out.

Shit, even that’s sexy.

“Okay,” Caleb called.

The moment the first song began, Caleb seemed to change again. Every movement of every part of the guy’s body sent shivers running through March’s veins and made the hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms stand on end. Caleb became the music, interpreting it with his body, absorbing it, making it his own. With his arms stretched out imploringly, his extended fingers lengthening the elegant lines of his body, he showed joy, pain, fear…love. He died and was reborn. He rejoiced and he mourned.

And, oh fuck, the jumps. March didn’t know the names of them, but it seemed as though Caleb could do everything—leaping with his legs outstretched at one hundred and eighty degrees, jumping with legs together behind him, kicking, twisting. He slid over the floor, pressed himself up on one hand, flipped, arched until March thought his spine would snap. He flew through the air at an impossible height and danced full out, full-on.

Electricity poured through him and from him, surging into March. Even when the music slowed, there was no let-up in the intensity of the interpretation, as much passion in calm as there was in speed. March felt every fucking moment. This was pure, raw talent.

But when Hozier’s song started, March’s jaw dropped and he almost expected to hear it clunk on the floor. Lightning zipped down his spine. He sat welded in place while Caleb flowed like water. Caleb was sexy, sad, full of desire and lust, and March struggled to breathe.

When the last note died away and Caleb lay curled on the floor, March rose to his feet. Caleb had sprung to his by the time he reached him, anxiety in Caleb’s eyes.

“How can you look worried I wasn’t impressed?” March gaped at him. “Why the fuck are you a carpenter?”

Caleb’s lips curved in a smile. “Was it okay? I landed a bit—mmph.”

March dragged him into his arms and kissed him, and kept kissing him in between telling him how great he was. “It was fantastic. Why don’t you join a dance company? What the hell are you doing hammering nails into bits of wood? Any dance company would be lucky to get you.”

Caleb pulled away. “Let me cool down or I’ll be stiff.”

March laughed. “Like that’s a problem.”

“Ha-ha.” He leaned to stretch his hamstrings.

“I thought… Fuck it, you’re stronger than me.”

Caleb shook his head. “No I’m not. I’m more flexible.”

“Can you pole dance too?”

“I’ve never tried.”

“I’m going to get a pole put right in the middle of the lounge.”

Caleb stretched his arm. “Wreck your view of the TV?”

“I’ve found something much better to watch than the TV.” March adjusted his cock, shifting it away from his zipper. “I can’t believe I’ve never been keen on ballet. You have to give up playing with wood.”

Caleb sniggered.

“I mean it. It’s not too late to dance. You’re not old.”

“Yeah it is and I
am
too old. Apart from the fact that a back tattooed like mine wouldn’t be acceptable, I’m self-taught and no one really believes you can teach yourself ballet.”

“You did.”

“Maybe I’m the exception. I spent hours just doing this.” Caleb moved his arms and let his hands fall into different positions. “Looks accidental and it’s not. Each finger has to be in the correct place, but it has to appear effortless as you do it. I think I have it right, but no one has ever seen me who knows what ballet is all about.

“Plus, a major part of a guy’s role is lifting the ballerina. I’ve never done any lifts. I’ve never danced with anyone outside a club. I’ve never danced like that in front of anyone before.” He gave a short laugh. “I made most of it up as I went along. Chances to dance in a room like this don’t come along very often. Thank you.”

He changed his shoes and pushed to his feet. “Damn, I’m all sweaty again.”

March put Caleb’s coat over his shoulders and fastened the buttons. He handed Caleb his phone, picked up his speaker and wrapped his other hand around Caleb’s fingers. He’d never wanted to mend anyone so much in his life. No matter what Caleb said, it was March’s fault that Liam had taken him and stolen those twelve years. He had to put things right. He owed it to both of them.

Caleb felt as if he were floating as March drove them back. He’d wanted to do the best dancing of his life and he had. He’d practiced on the beach at dawn, but barefoot, wearing earphones and not in his ballet gear, and continually worrying about being seen or breaking his ankle.

March was still going on about how fantastic he’d been as they drove back and Caleb flushed with pleasure. He wasn’t that good, but it was still nice to hear.

“Tomorrow I’m going to look into finding someone to check out your back,” March said.

A comment that immediately chilled Caleb.

“And if that person says they can’t do anything, we’ll go to someone else.” March glanced at him. “It doesn’t make me feel any differently about you.”

Caleb gave him a small smile.

“I’ll still think you have a cute arse.”

Caleb laughed.

March sighed. “We’ll find someone who’ll remove them because I’d prefer not to change my name to Liam.”

Caleb wouldn’t let him do that.

“I quite like the ‘mine’, though once is enough and nothing else. But I don’t like that it was Liam who put that ink on you.” March squeezed Caleb’s knee. “I understand you don’t want anyone to see what he did, but let’s try and fix it, okay? I’ll come with you to the specialist, and then if anyone looks at you as if you’re an idiot, I’ll deal with them. Head-butt them or something.”

March was still in protection mode after all this time and Caleb loved that about him. But he needed to tell March everything.

“In a way, it was what Liam did to my back that saved me.”

March gave a startled gasp. “How?”

“Liam grew tired of me, bored. I was harder to control without being doped and I guess a grown man just lying there and accepting it didn’t turn him on the way a struggling kid had. I know he’d stopped wanting me. All those years I’d hoped it would happen and once it did, I was afraid not just that he’d kill me but that he’d snatch another child.”

March turned onto the road that led up to his house. “Sure he’s dead?”

“Yes.”
Oh God, I hope so.
Caleb let out a shuddering breath. “Liam didn’t only have me under constant video surveillance, he also took photos and filmed me and put them online. Me on my own, me and him. There’s one movie, a long one, where he shows how I changed as I grew older, how the look in my eyes changed too.

“Sometimes he brought another guy in to film. I begged the man to help me but he just laughed. The cameraman wore a mask, never spoke while Liam fucked me. Even though Liam kept bleaching my hair, I thought it was a good thing that he was filming me because maybe someone would recognize me or him, even though he wore wigs, and it was obvious, he made sure his face was never in full view. So although I hated that he sold images of me, it gave me hope.

“Which was stupid because the guys in that world are under the radar. None of them would have done a thing because they got turned on by watching. They weren’t going to give themselves away. But I was too innocent to realize that and sometimes I smiled at the camera because I was thinking ‘they’ll catch you’.

“Liam made me watch the recordings on his laptop and he’d point out what I should have done differently. Those videos will still be on the Web. I’ve never looked for them. The ones from when I was underage will be well hidden, maybe on the Deep Web, but those when I was an adult, no need to hide those.” Caleb’s hands twisted in his lap. “The thing is, I didn’t fight all the time. Sometimes I just accepted it. Sometimes I pretended to like it. But I didn’t.”

March pulled up outside his house and turned to him. “Nothing that happened to you was your fault. Nothing you did was wrong. You did what you had to in order to survive. To come back to me. Liam was a monster. He was what all parents fear, what we feared, and he caught us and kept you and I wish, wish, wish he hadn’t, but don’t ever apologize for anything that happened. If I hadn’t been greedy for fishing rods—”

“No,” Caleb snapped. “What you say applies to you too. We can’t spend the rest of our lives thinking ‘what if’. I’ve told no one since I got away from him. Yes, I have panic attacks, but what happened isn’t eating me up inside because I won’t let it. You have to let it go too. If you can’t, we’d be better apart because we’d tear ourselves to pieces.”

“No,” March said. “Please don’t tell me that. I can let it go.”

Caleb wasn’t so sure. He didn’t know if he could cope with being with someone who knew. To have no secrets sounded good, but if every time March looked at him he was remembering what Liam did, it would drag Caleb back into what he’d escaped.

“Give me a chance,” March said. “Live with me. There’s a spare key in the blue pot in the kitchen. Take it.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Please take the key.
March could feel panic surging inside him at the thought of losing Caleb all over again.

“You can’t mend me,” Caleb said quietly. “Don’t let that be the reason you want me.”

March understood what Caleb meant about mending him, and yet didn’t, so it was better to keep his stupid mouth shut. But why was it wrong to want to make Caleb happy, to help him have the life he deserved?

“I want you because you’re mine. The only one for me.” Even as the words came from his mouth, March wondered if he’d said them too soon, whether he sounded too much like Liam. Before Caleb could speak, March got out of the car.

Caleb exited on the other side. “Want to make some hot chocolate while I shower?”

March nodded.

While making the drinks, March thought about what Caleb had said. As confident as March had felt about a future for them, he sensed it drifting away. Caleb was right. March wanted to make up for what happened when they were kids. But that wasn’t all of it. March had wanted Caleb before he knew his true identity, but wanting Caleb wasn’t enough. Caleb had to want him too, enough to tell him everything.

Caleb came back barefoot, wearing just his jeans, the top button undone.

March’s hand slipped and he spilled the chocolate he was pouring. The yo-yo in his pants reacted instantly, pushing against the confines of his jeans.

They settled at either end of the couch, lounging face to face, their legs partly entwined.

“I don’t know whether to be happy or sad,” March confessed.

“Be happy. There’s no point in sadness.”

“You astonish me. I’m…I’m so proud of you.” March wasn’t sure of the right thing to say, but that looked as though it had pleased Caleb.

“I keep wanting to pinch myself,” Caleb said.

“Me too.”

“Sometimes I managed to dream myself to another reality, create a world outside that room where I could do anything I wanted, be anyone I wanted. And sometimes I cried when I woke because I’d been so sure I was somewhere else. I’m still having trouble believing I’m looking at you, touching you, wondering if my desperation has managed to create a reality so powerful, so fucking fantastic that it’s fooled my senses and I’m really sitting in a chair in a psychiatric ward.”

“I’m here. I’m real.”
Forever…if you want me.

“Yeah.” Caleb smiled.

“How did you get away? How did Liam die?”

Caleb sipped his drink and March saw his hand shake.

“I’ll get there. I just need you to understand how things were.”

March nodded.

“Liam told me all the time that he loved me. He wanted me to say it back.”

At those words, March sank his teeth into his cheek.

“And I said it because making him happy was better than making him angry. What I didn’t do was say it first. Not for a long while anyway. But in the end it made no difference because it was the boy he wanted and not the man I’d become, and I was afraid, after surviving so long, Liam not wanting me would be my undoing.

“So I played at being young, behaving like a child, because I didn’t want him to kill me. My biggest fear was that he’d not come back and I’d starve to death and no one would know.” Caleb released a shaky breath.

“I think even in those last few years, he still loved me in his warped way, but it was out of a need to control and possess. So never really love at all.”

March slid his hand to Caleb’s and squeezed hard. “Whatever you had to do, you had to do.”

“Like you jumping into the sea?”

March chuckled. “The best thing I ever did in my entire life.”

“I don’t like it when you’re reckless. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Oh God.
“I’ll look before I leap next time.”

“Promise?”

The weight in that one word hung heavy in the room. Easy to say, to promise, and then carry on in his own sweet way, but something in Caleb’s face made him want to mean it. “I promise.”

Caleb nodded. “One day, after so many years in the same room, I woke in a different one, in a stranger’s bed. I saw the sky through the window and thought I had to be dreaming. Either that or I was dead.”

March could barely stand to spend more than a few hours in the same place.
If I’d been trapped in one room, I’d have gone mad.

“Later, I discovered Liam had held an auction for me on the Dark Web. Jasim had seen me in videos, bid for me and won me for ten visits, three hours each time. He told me he was a Saudi prince. Maybe he was. He was in his late thirties, early forties, about the same height as me, but bigger, stronger. He always looked as though he was trying to grow a beard and failing. He was…rough. He wanted to fuck me hard.”

March told himself not to tense. Nothing Caleb was going to say would be good.

“Liam made sure I was heavily doped up when he took me to Jasim. Now, I think it was Rohypnol he gave me and the addition of alcohol enhanced its effects. I was never aware of Liam taking me from the room until I managed to trick him.

“I pretended to eat, pretended to drink the whisky, pretended to take the pill. But when he brought in a crate, I panicked and he realized I’d been faking. So he stuck a needle in my neck.

“Whatever he injected wore off enough for me to talk coherently to Jasim. I pleaded with him to help me, told him Liam had taken me when I was eleven and he was drugging me against my will. Then Liam knocked on the door because time was up.”

March took Caleb’s empty mug from his hand and put it on the floor with his own.

“I don’t know exactly what Jasim said to Liam. He offered to buy me, but Liam was never going to let me go. That was when Liam did this to my back. I don’t know where he got the tattoo equipment. He tied me down. I ended up covered in blood. When he’d finished, he didn’t let me see. He removed the mirror from the bathroom. He smirked when he left the room.

“On my next visit to Jasim… Oh God, Jasim was…furious.” Caleb paused. “He still fucked me, though.”

“Christ.”

“Jasim thought I’d agreed to be tattooed, even when I told him I hadn’t and I didn’t even know what Liam had tattooed on me. Liam had fed him a pack of lies and Jasim believed him not me, but when Jasim pushed me to a mirror, held me by the neck and shouted at me, I cried and threw up the little I had in my stomach.”

March breathed out deeply.

“I think that convinced him because he held me then, wrapped his arms around me and just held me. It was the first time he’d been kind. The first time in nearly twelve years I’d been shown real kindness.

“Jasim left me showering and when I came out of the bathroom, he gave me a pill and it brought me down. I was calmer, less manic. There was pizza to eat and he said that was the way he’d got the drug he’d just given me past Liam. I understood then that Liam waited somewhere nearby, that he knew who went into and out of the apartment.

“I explained how Liam had snatched you as well, that he’d locked me away and been abusing me since I was eleven. I told him Liam had done that to my back because I’d asked Jasim for help, and that Liam wanted Jasim to understand I belonged to him and only him.”

“Did he call the police?”

“No. He didn’t offer and I didn’t ask him to. I knew it would drag him into a shitstorm. I just wanted him to keep me and not let Liam take me back. But he wouldn’t, said he couldn’t. Not this time. I cried and begged.”

Caleb’s face had paled and March swallowed hard.

“Jasim told me to have patience, and he’d do what he could. I suspect Liam thought Jasim wouldn’t want to see me again after that day. Jasim said the next time he saw me would be the last and to trust him. Then he kissed me. He’d never kissed me like he did then. It was different, sweet, and it made me hope, made me think a small part of him might care.”

The ache in March’s heart grew more painful.

“Jasim said he’d named one of his polo ponies after me. Tye’s Dream.” Caleb let out a choked sob. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone about this, about what he did. I promised I never would, so you have to promise too.”

“I promise.”

“Don’t be so quick.”

“I’d never betray you. Ever.”

“It’s not me you’d betray, but Jasim.”

March didn’t like this guy, didn’t like that Caleb had been sold for rough sex. Why hadn’t Jasim helped Caleb the first time they met? Then that would never have happened to his back.

“Tell me,” March said, though he’d guessed.

“Jasim killed Liam for me.”

March exhaled. “I wish I could thank him.” It was the truth, though March also wanted to hit him.

Caleb’s mouth twitched. “Yeah well, remember, if by any fluke you ever meet him, you’re not supposed to know.”

“What happened?”

“I woke in my concrete room and knew before I even opened my eyes that something was different.
My
bed,
my
pillow, but there was movement in the air. A draught. The two doors were open and Liam wasn’t there. I didn’t move because I thought it was a trick. He’d done it before—let me think he was releasing me and when I’d run to the door he’d slam it in my face and snigger.”

“What a fucking bastard.”

“When I sat up, I saw a backpack on the floor. Inside it were bundles of cash, a bankcard and documents, including a birth certificate in the name of Caleb Jones. Next to it were a pile of clothes and a pair of sunglasses.”

“I thought you’d picked the name.”

Caleb shook his head. “I liked it, though. A lot later I went to the library and looked up what it meant. Dog. I didn’t like it as much then.” He laughed. “Another book said Caleb meant wholehearted, loyal, faithful and true. Which dogs are, I suppose. On the other side of the clothes was a piece of paper and, beyond that, a phone. On the paper it said ‘Choose’.

“I’d already made up my mind about what I’d do if I ever got out. I left the phone where it was and dressed. Apart from the ballet belt, it was the first time I’d put clothes on in twelve years.

“Liam had delivered me to Jasim’s place in a crate—bound, gagged and naked. But Jasim never saw me until I was out of the container. Liam removed me the same way. I don’t cope well in confined spaces. Not sure I ever will.

“I hated the jeans and shirt and jacket, but loved them at the same time. They itched, hurt, felt uncomfortable. The shoes were the worst. They fit, but my feet weren’t used to being constrained by something stiff. I could barely walk.

“I packed what I wanted to take—the little birds I’d made were the most precious things—and headed out of my prison, still not believing, still thinking it was one of Liam’s tricks. I found stairs and climbed them—couldn’t believe how hard it was to do that—and I saw Jasim standing in front of a door. My heart leapt into my throat. He was wearing a hooded white coverall and gloves and I wondered—‘Am I going to die?’ He pushed open a door on his right.

“It was an ordinary room with a couch and a coffee table and a big TV. Liam was hanging from a light fitting, a chair tipped over at his feet. His tongue protruded and he wasn’t moving. I looked at him from the doorway and felt nothing. He wasn’t worth wasting any emotion over, not even relief.

“Jasim told me I had to leave. He said no one would ever know I’d been there. There would be no DNA evidence to link me to the place or the man. I could begin again. Liam had made a lot of money from what he did to me and Jasim had put it into a savings account. I started to tell him I didn’t want it and he stopped me, said I could decide what to do with it but not to rush.

“He reached out as though he was going to touch me, but didn’t. He said, ‘I’m sad to lose you, my broken bird. But you deserve better than this. What he did to your back was my fault. I wanted you too much.’ And the terrible thing was that I wanted him to want me, even though I knew he wasn’t good for me, but because I was scared to be on my own. He asked me what I was going to do and I told him I was going to look for you, in case you were still alive. That was when he told me I couldn’t, and there was no point anyway.”

“Why?”

“He said my priority had to be getting myself better, mentally and physically, and then building a new life for myself. That if I searched for anything in my past I could get myself and him in trouble. He told me about the Internet, that I’d soon find out its wonders, but there were dangers in it too. Put certain search terms in and I could bring him down and ruin any chance I had of an ordinary life. Jasim said he couldn’t afford anything being traced to him. That it could get him killed. And if news got back to him that I’d done what he told me not to, I’d be in trouble. That he
would
find out.”

“He threatened you?”

“He reminded me of what he’d done. He killed Liam. Freed me. To not search was the price of my freedom.”

March was horrified and trying not to show it. “But you looked for me?”

“I told you I went to your house. Came up blank. The Internet was too tempting to ignore, but what Jasim said repeated in my head every time I thought about typing in your name, my name, details of that day. I decided that I’d Google once. Just your name, but I found nothing. It would have been easier if you’d had a slightly more common name. Course John Smith would have been hopeless, but there is only one Baxter Carne.

“Yet you weren’t on the Internet. If I’d keep digging, I probably would’ve found old articles about when you escaped. If not on the Internet then on microfiche or in old papers, but Jasim knew I’d looked online. I have no idea how. Nor do I know how he discovered my phone number, but he sent me a text message and made it clear what would happen if I looked online again.” He gulped. “I’d used up my one pass. So I let the past die.”

“Fuck.”

“It was Jasim who told me my father had died in a car crash, my mother had killed herself and that you were dead. He told me you’d slit your wrists.”

March let out a gasp of astonishment. “What the fuck?”

Caleb reached for March’s wrist and ran his thumb over the scar. “Doesn’t mean he knew you’d tried.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t. This guy sounds as if he could have found me without too much trouble.”