“He didn’t call the police? Or tell your mum?” I shake my head in disbelief.
“No. He used the excuse of cleaning up my burns to—” Bailey rubs his face, looking exhausted.
“To what?”
“He’d touch,” Bailey says so quietly I almost miss it. The reality of everything sinks in. How helpless he was. How no one showed up for him. The people he should have been able to trust took advantage of him or abandoned him. It’s all fucked.
I feel sick. I want to grab hold of him and never let him go again, but I don’t have the right to. “Jesus, Bay.”
BAILEY
Everything Teddy’ssaying makes sense, and I think I hate him for it. He’s shattering my perception of reality with every word. Telling me all the guilt I’ve harboured since I was a child was never mine to carry. And it hurts. It hurts so fucking bad, because until that night I told Shane no, I thought he’d been trying to help me. That he really was the only one I could trust with it all, because he was my brother, and he said he’d keep me safe.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting on the floor. Teddy’s leaning against the wall next to me, and all I want is for him to touch me. I want him to tell me it’s okay. That I’m not too broken to be held. I’m too scared to look at him, let alone ask for anything like that. We’ve both calmed down at least. The tears have dried, and the silence is comfortable, like we’re both processing everything that’s happened in the past forty-eight hours. So even if he isn’t holding me, at least he’s still here.
I push to my feet, and my whole body feels like I’ve gone too hard at the gym. Every muscle is fatigued, and my eyesight feels blurry. I start walking to the stairs when I hear movement behind me.
“Where are you going?”
I look over my shoulder, finding Teddy’s face pinched with concern. “I need to go in to work. That was the whole point of me coming here.”
He grabs my hand before I can start walking again, pulling me to a stop. “No you’re not. Not after all that.”
“I need to do something, Teddy. I’m not going to sit on the floor and marinate in it all. I can’t.”
“Go tomorrow.” His eyes are pleading. I know I can’t say no to him.
“We’ve already wasted one day, the wedding?—”
“Fuck the wedding,” he growls.
I frown at him and shake my hand free. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do. The wedding isn’t as important as this. We’re both exhausted, and I’m not driving when I feel this way. I just want?—”
“Want what?” I ask, nervous all of a sudden.
“I want us to be okay.”
I suck in a breath. If I thought Teddy being angry at me was confusing, it has nothing on this. He can’t just turn all that off and start being nice again. I can’t trust it’s real. Even if it was Shane who hurt him, I started it. If I’d ignored Shane and told Teddy I wanted to leave to go to Scotland, instead of dumping him, it never would have happened. I run up the stairs and into the bathroom, locking the door.
Teddy follows, knocking on the door. “Bay, come on.”
I switch the water on and strip out of my clothes. “I-I’m showering, go away.” He doesn’t answer me, so I assume he’sdone as I’ve asked. I climb into the bathtub and lean back, letting the hot water hit my face until there’s not a thought left in my head.
The day passes slowly;Teddy forces me to eat toast and drink coffee. We sit on the sofa together, and he puts some cartoons on. In a silent agreement, we don’t talk about the past. We don’t talk at all, really. I’m pressed against the armrest, trying not to draw attention to myself, scared that he’ll bring it all up again.
After a while, Teddy grabs my arm, pulling me until I’m laying against his chest. It’s warm and solid, his heartbeat so familiar. He wraps his arms around me, and I cry quietly while he holds me.
“I’m sorry, Bay,” he whispers for what seems like the hundredth time. Old thoughts of blaming him for abandoning me resurface for an ugly moment. I used to hate him for leaving me behind, but now I start to think about how he mistook me for Shane. He couldn’t tell us apart when it mattered, even though we’d lived together for a year. He was so willing to believe I’d hurt him that he ran away and never looked back. Never once questioned it all.
I hold the burst of anger inside, focusing on the now. Teddy ishere—in my house. He’s holding me, just like I wanted. It wasn’t his fault.
“How did you end up in Cumbria?” Teddy asks, pushing my hair back from my face.
“Jake,” I smile at the memory. He walked into my life, grabbed hold of me, and unlike everyone else in my life, never letgo. “I made it to London but didn’t know where to go. I wanted to go to Scotland to try and find you.” I sniffle, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. “I didn’t have enough money for the ticket, so I stupidly tried to jump the barrier. A guard stopped me before I could, and he was telling me to leave the station when Jake turned up. He said I was his nephew and then offered to buy me a ticket to Carlisle so that I could travel up North with him.”
Teddy shifts under me. “And youlethim?”
