Innocence (30 page)

Unsurprisingly, I suppose, I find Jay in our cabin. He’s sitting on his bed. When he looks up and smiles, I get the strangest feeling he has been waiting for me.

“They warned Dad that coming back here might trigger some memories for me. They said it might be traumatic.” He looks down at his hands. “They said sometimes it can happen really fast.”

I stare at him, looking for any sign that he’s not okay. This is the most he’s said to me. He’s talking to me as if he knows me. I can’t take a deep breath.

Kai’s lilting accent out on the towpath finds me through the open porthole, and I concentrate on it, needing something to hold on to.

Suddenly Jay sobs. “I’m so sorry, Christopher.”

I drop to my knees in front of him, pulling him off the bunk and into my arms, holding him tight. There’s barely anything of him, he’s so thin.

“What do you remember? Everything?” My desperate voice is muffled by his hair.

“Just bits. Mostly about you.”

“Oh God, I’ve missed you, Jay. So much.”

Great heaving sobs rack my chest, and I know I’m crushing him, but I don’t want to let go, not yet.

Eventually he needs to breathe in more than a shallow gasp, and I sit back on my heels, touching his hair, his face, his hands.

“Cass told me about you and Malachi,” he says.

Cass can’t keep his bloody mouth shut
, I think, but I’m not even the smallest bit annoyed. Cass’s naive honesty is one of the things that drew me to him in the first place.

“His name is Kai. I’m going to stay with him for a while, see how it goes,” I say cautiously.

I’m telling him I’m leaving him here. It breaks my heart, but he’ll always be my brother, and I will always be there for him, even if we don’t live in the same small space. I know he’s not on his own. He’ll never be on his own now. So many people care about him.

“I am always going to be there for you, Jay. Always. I promise.”

Jay nods, his gaze in his lap, studying the way our fingers lock together.

“Cass likes you, you know,” I say gently.

“I know. He told me.” Jay blushes.

“Do you like him?”

Jay’s eyes meet mine. Smiling, he looks away first.

“I want to kiss him,” he whispers. “Do you think he’ll mind?”

“I don’t think he’d mind at all,” I say, bringing our heads together.

We should probably go back up.

“Come back outside with me? Tell Dad you remember something. He’ll be over the moon.”

A few months later….

I
T
’
S
O
CTOBER
,
the days misty and cold, and yet, when the skies clear like they have today, the colors of everything burn so bright.

We have a bet, Kai and I, about a song that I’m not going to sing in front of the crowd of people gathering round us.

The problem is the bet was more like a dare, his part of which he has just fulfilled by singing the song he wrote to this small London crowd gathered on the corner of this street. And he was amazing. He is why there is a crowd around us, waiting for more—girls and boys looking on at him with slightly adoring expressions on their faces.

Slinging my guitar round my back, I stride across to where he is standing and hug him fiercely, near knocking him over, and not just to show them he is most definitely taken.

“Your turn, sunshine,” he whispers, kissing my ear and smiling.

“I think they’d rather have an encore.”

He laughs, softly, sweetly, and cups my jaw.

“Oh, I’m just the warm-up act.”

I wish he’d forget about it. I’ve never sung solo. But there is a small part of me that wants to meet this challenge head-on. Singing sets me free in a way nothing else ever has, and I doubt I’ll ever be one hundred percent ready for the first time I sing in front of a crowd of strangers.

We’ve been busking for about a month now, just round Arlow, the police moving us on whenever they see us. We seem to have acquired a bit of a reputation, whether for the police or our music, I don’t quite know.

Today is our first day in London. London is the bet. Singing a song we each wrote, solo, is the bet.

My chest hurts, I think my heart is going to give up under so much pressure.

Kai strums the first few bars of the tune, gently waiting. We have no microphones, no fancy kit, just our guitars and our voices.

Closing my eyes, I turn round.

When I open my mouth, I forget the crowd. Instead I let it become the first time I sang in front of Kai, remembering how good it felt, not just the sex we had afterwards—or the sex we are going to have after this. I can’t keep the smile out of my voice, but I know it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the conviction, the feeling, the fact I’m doing this because I love it and at the same time I’m doing it for him. That’s all that matters, all that will ever matter.

I open my eyes.

The sound of people clapping rings in my ears.

I could get addicted to that sound….

One day on a stage in front of thousands… maybe I will.

S
UKI
F
LEET
grew up on a boat and as a small child spent a lot of time travelling at sea with her family. She has always wanted to be a writer. As a kid she told ghost stories to scare people, but stories about romance were the ones that inspired her to sit down and write. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop writing them.

Her novel
This is Not a Love Story
won Best Gay Debut in the 2014 Rainbow Awards.

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Website: http://sukifleet.wordpress.com/

Skeleton

By Suki Fleet

Jan has given up on love, at least the romantic kind. He loves his five-year-old son Henry more than anything.

But when Henry starts school, Jan is introduced to Matthew, a very sweet but shy young man who helps out in Henry’s class. Although he tries desperately to ignore his attraction, Jan finds himself falling for Matthew—he’s everything Jan needs.

But amid creepy silent phone calls and possible break-ins, things start to fall slowly apart for Jan. Matthew wants to trust Jan, but the skeleton Jan has been trying to keep buried in his closet and the guilt he feels threatens to destroy everything good in his life.

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This is Not a Love Story

A Harmony Ink Press Title

Love Story Universe

By Suki Fleet

Winner: Best Gay Debut,2014 Rainbow Awards

Second Place: Best Gay & Lesbian YA, 2014 Rainbow Awards

When fifteen-year-old Romeo’s mother leaves one day and doesn’t return, he finds himself homeless and trying to survive on the streets. Mute and terrified, his silence makes him vulnerable, and one night he is beaten by a gang of other kids, only to be rescued by a boy who pledges to take care of him.

Julian is barely two years older than Romeo. A runaway from an abusive home, he has had to make some difficult choices and sells himself on the street to survive. Taking care of Romeo changes him, gives him a purpose in life, gives him hope, and he tries to be strong and keep his troubles with drugs behind him. But living as they do is slowly destroying him, and he begins to doubt he can be strong enough.

This is the story of their struggle to find a way off the streets and stay together at all costs. But when events threaten to tear them apart, it is Romeo who must find the strength within himself to help Julian (and not let their love story turn into a Shakespearean tragedy).

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http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com