Page 89 of Tell No One
Delaney just sat watching and listening.
“No one ever came to see me. No one wrote to me. No birthday cards. No Christmas cards. No one cared about me so I stopped caring about myself. I was made to learn how to pick pockets while I was inside. Then when I was stronger, I learnt how to fight. No one touched me. Nothing touched me. Until someone did and I ended up in hospital.
“It’s hard not to miss the life I should have had. No one was waiting when I got out. I hadn’t expected anyone to be there, but it hurt. Sometimes I wished I’d never been born. The press hated me. The British public hated me. The papers had headlines likeWill child killer live next to you? Where is he now?I changed the new name I’d been given as soon as I could afford to. They know where I am though. Not the press. It’s against the law to look for me, but the police know.” He looked around. “Well, they did know.”
Tag finally turned to look at him. “Then one day, I walked out of my self-pity party because I could see it was going to wreck the life I had left. I was still young. I could make something of myself. I changed that day, became a glass-half-full guy, made myself smile even when I didn’t want to, hoping that one day I’d smile without thinking about it. It worked. I look for the positive in everything. I want to live.
“So that’s my story. There’s a lot more crap in it and what happened is a stain on my heart that will never go away, so letting go of it is still a work in progress. But I’m trying to make a new life for myself. I just hope that Sallyanne killed Louise by accident and that she’s not an evil shit like my mother.” He let out a shaky breath. “It’s okay if you don’t believe me. I don’t expect you to.”
Tag’s left ventricle was playing up again. Then he saw something in Delaney’s expression that made him think… “Oh fuck. You already knew.” Of course he did. Tag hadn’t thought about that posh-sounding blond who worked at the same place as Delaney knowing the name Rufus Connelly, the one he’d been given when he went to the YOI.
Delaney nodded. “Yeah, I knew.”
“From before you even met me?” Tag choked out.
“No. Later. I believe you.”
Tag’s heart jumped.
Delaneydidbelieve him. He’d listened to a lot of lies in his time and Tag hadn’t been lying. For the first time in a long while, he felt rage on behalf of someone else, fury that no one had listened to a fourteen-year-old boy. Then he did something else uncharacteristic and pulled Tag into his arms, pressing his face against Tag’s head. A gesture of comfort, one that Tag should have had years ago. He felt Tag sink into him, grasping his T-shirt. For several minutes, they just sat holding onto each other.
“I don’t ever want to talk about it again,” Tag muttered.
“Not talking doesn’t make it go away.”
“You’re throwing that back at me? Wanker.”
Tag pulled away to glare at him and wiped his eyes with his fingers. Delaney pretended he couldn’t feel the dampness on his neck, or the rolling surge of heat in the pit of his stomach. Not the right time.
“You don’t tell me anything,” Tag protested.
“I’ve told you more than I’ve ever told anyone.”
“Really?”
It was weird the way a smile could light up Tag’s face, let alone the way that smile bathed a room in sunshine.
“I don’t talk a mile a minute like you.” Delaney pulled Tag close again, not really understanding why he felt the need to hold or touch him like this when they weren’t fucking. He let his fingers drift down Tag’s spine, slipped them under the bottom of his T-shirt and onto his skin to trace figures of eight on his back, ignoring the lurching feeling in his stomach.
“Compared to you, my life has been easy. When my father died, he’d left money in trust and asked a friend to look out for me. I went to university, then into the military and when I came out, I was approached by the man who’s now my boss.”
“Not MI5.”
“Not exactly. I can’t tell you more than that.”
“Not even if I take my clothes off?” Tag whispered.
Delaney chuckled. “No.”
Though part of him disagreed. In any case, Tag had already stood up and was stripping. Delaney grabbed a book from the coffee table and started to read it. Not read, just look at. Tag had an ulterior motive. After telling him about what happened, he wanted to use Delaney to wipe it away. That wasn’t going to work. Though Delaney found his gaze sliding to Tag and had to drag his eyes back to his book.
Tag lay on his stomach, knees bent with his legs in the air, his face against Delaney’s thigh.
“What are you reading?”
Delaney had to look at the cover. “Gettysburg.”
“You had to check?” Tag put his mouth on Delaney’s leg and breathed on him. The flush of warm air had the heat of steam.
