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Ben did. He hauled Nikolas up to standing, and he reckoned if the dogs were still at the top, waiting patiently for them, they’d have been terrified and alarmed hearing the heart-rending cry of anguish which would have issued from the mine. He held Nikolas in a tight hug for a moment, kissed him deeply then instructed, “Brace against the wall.”
Nikolas didn’t waste time or energy talking. Perhaps he couldn’t speak. Ben didn’t want to ask. He just stowed the knives in his belt and climbed onto Nikolas’s back, paused, then stood on his shoulders. As quickly as he could, he brought out one blade and slammed it into the wall. Nikolas was breathing deeply with pain, not least from the discomfort of supporting a hundred and eighty army-booted pounds on his shoulders. Ben gripped the handle, and got his weight onto it. “Move!”
He heard Nikolas shifting away, and then he swung up and got the second knife embedded. As he’d thought, the walls further up were easier to dig into. He wondered if he could use the knives to carve small hand and foot holds. He got all his weight onto one handle, pulled out the other blade, was reaching to stab it in…when it all crumbled around him. With a huge slew of earth and water and stones, he crashed back to the bottom of the shaft.
At exactly the same time, they both shouted the other’s name, and Ben was incredibly relieved to hear Nikolas’s voice. Ben confirmed he was okay, although he was now soaking wet, filthy, and his arm, hurt earlier in their fight, had gone numb, his fingers stiff and unresponsive. He extricated himself from the wet heap of soil and crawled back to find Nikolas.
They were both shivering equally now, and the sleeping bag was not helping.
Nikolas was very quiet, and Ben could hear his agony in that silence.
He swallowed deeply and asked in a low voice, “Do you think the mine could cave in entirely?”
“Are you thinking of waiting for that to happen and scrambling up and out?”
Ben frowned, although he was aware Nikolas couldn’t see this puzzlement. “No. Not really. I was just asking.”
“It will be light in a few hours, Ben. That will make it easier for you. I’m sorry.”
Ben then realised that Nikolas had known all along how he’d been feeling. Of course he had. He sometimes thought there wasn’t a thing he’d done in the fourteen years he’d known this strange man that hadn’t been observed. Which led him nicely back to the thing Nikolas had said to him on the walk.
Of course he couldn’t tell Nikolas anything about Nate’s funeral, because he hadn’t gone to it. He hadn’t even considered going. He hadn’t given Nathan Stones one thought after seeing him carried dead out of the burning house. The young carpenter had ceased to exist as a person, and had become only something that fuelled his sense of entitlement and revenge. Something had been taken fromhim. He had not enquired about the family. He had not tried to make restitution. And he had not even sent flowers. Nothing.
“You went, didn’t you—to the funeral.”
There was a long hesitation before Nikolas answered this question which had not actually been a question, possibly because he was struggling to catch up with this apparently random choice of subject, but more likely because he had been expecting it but didn’t now want to talk about it. Sometimes, Nikolas lashed out as a defence mechanism but regretted the hurt he subsequently caused. Finally, he replied, “I did. I was avoiding you, so it seemed a safe place to be.”
Ben also took some time to think about his reply. “I was a cold bastard, wasn’t I? When you met me.”
Nikolas gave the faintest of nods. “But I don’t think you’re asking the right person to assess that. I gravitated towards that frozen core. It was safe and couldn’t threaten me. It even felt familiar. It was enough.”
“But that’s not us now, is it?”
Nikolas brushed his thumb over the back of Ben’s hand under the cover. “No. We were both just in cold-storage. I think in the last nine years we’ve warmed each other up quite nicely.”
Ben didn’t want to point out the obvious: Nikolas’s teeth were chattering so much he was hardly able to get that sentence out.
* * *
Chapter 63
Four Months Before April
“How long have we been down here, do you think? Are you awake?”
Aleksey didn’t want to admit that sleep was impossible for him, so grunted as if Ben had just woken him. “I think it’s lighter. I can see the walls, so it must be morning. Are you sure you don’t have any matches?”
“Maybe they’re where you left the food.”
Aleksey sighed. Non-smokers had no idea about true suffering. He made a promise to himself that if he got out of this latest fuck-up alive, he’d never give up again.
“I’ve been thinking while you were sleeping. About love.”
Aleksey suppressed a tiny groan. He would have said anything was better than thinking about pain, but he couldn’t honestly say that a conversation about love in their current situation was what he would have chosen.
“And?”
“I’m waiting until you’ve stopped thinking and are actually listening to me.”
