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Chapter 53
Four Months Before April
Aleksey had not missed the irony of Ben once more following him when he was not wanted. It seemed like another lifetime when Ben had mocked his attempts to find out about the holiday, gleefully teasing him with the dogs as he'd tried to sneak out to visit the cottage and interrogate their friends. Ithadbeen another lifetime, because he'd been another man then. Still Nikolas. Or worse, Ben'sNik, that awful diminutive that only Ben used, conjuring up a diminished man he could never be; occasionally Aleksey Primakov when it suited him; well, suited them both when the lights were out and Aleksey’s needs and desires had broken free and roared untamed into the glass-ceiling room they shared. Ben was strong enough to ride the winds of Aleksey’s deviant fury and emerge unscathed. Or only a little battered, anyway.
"Last time I wore this kit you ripped it off and fucked me with gun oil."
Aleksey glanced across at this odd non sequitur to his own confusing thoughts. It was partially why he wanted Ben to go away. It was hard enough unravelling alone—keeping walking, remembering to breathe, forcing your heart to beat—without Ben’s undeniably derailing presence. Benjamin Rider had derailed Aleksey Primakov on a beach in Devon. This new man had no defences against him at all.
He pondered this comment for a while. Ben never lied to him, but very occasionally what he said wasn't what he was actually thinking, an unconscious deceit that Aleksey had always found particularly endearing, indicating as it did, of course, that Aleksey knew Ben better than Ben did himself, and always would. Aleksey reckoned that this was one of those times. Ben was genuinely angry. He had a right to be. Justifiable anger or not, Aleksey now had no intention of explaining his actions nine years ago. Instead, he asked, "What did you do to Philipa?" He was the master of unrelated comments apropos of nothing.
Ben shrugged and didn't reply. Although Ben had learnt this tactic from him, it was annoying, nevertheless. He sensed they were at an impasse and returned to his own thoughts.
After a while, distance accompanied by silence, he stopped again. They were somewhere in the very heart of the moors now, he assumed. He wasn't sure exactly where, as he hadn't been taking much notice, nor did he have a destination in mind. There was a high tor a few hundred meters away and he headed for it so he could gauge his route, see if anything struck him as being better than where he currently was. He wasn’t hopeful.
To his surprise, when he reached the top, he discovered a car park on the other side with a vehicle parked in it. The tor fell away to a smooth level area, which on that side was an easy climb for tourists or children. Like life, he concluded, ease of navigating it depended entirely on which direction you approached it from.
His profound sense of dislocation from who he was had been enhanced by the bleak, stark isolation of the moors, and this banality now marred the illusion.
Real life, apparently, was much as it always was and never far away.
An elderly couple were sitting in a tiny Ford Fusion, admiring the view. Naturally, they both fixed their attention on the four of them as they appeared over the rocks.
For the first time since he'd started on his walk, Aleksey felt a tiny spark, just the merest flicker, of his old self returning. Despite how much of a conflagration Aleksey Primakov could normally cause, this might be enough.
There was an opportunity here which he could exploit.
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Chapter 54
Four Months Before April
Ben was biding his time.
The obvious solution to this latest Nikolas fuck up had occurred to him. He'd done it once before when Nikolas had tried to leave once before. But he didn't have handcuffs this time, and although he had no doubt he could win any fight with Nikolas, restraining him after the beat down would be far more difficult. Nikolas, he sensed, was quite serious about this plan.
So Ben hadn't beaten him up yet. But the day was still young, and he was beginning to actually want it, which was uncharacteristic. Sure he always wanted to get physical with Nikolas, and often this physicality was pretty brutal for two men in love, but this was different. It scared him in a way just how much he wanted to make Nikolas suffer for this...selfishness. Because that's what it was. Utter selfishness. To atone for somethinghe’ddone in the past, he was apparently intending to makeeveryone elsesuffer. Everyonelovedhim. Everything revolved around him. He created the gravity that kept them all in his orbit.
Climbing the steep rocks, following Nikolas’s rising form above him, Ben was having trouble thinking at all, let alone clearly.
He was confused, angry and, he suspected, going mad. Or at least, that’s how he rationalised the nagging voice in his head. Sane people didn’t hear internal chatter.
But this voice sounded exceptionally rational, given the circumstances. It was telling him he was missing something critical about this escape attempt.
Rational, but entirely fucking useless, because hegotthat he was missing something—it would be nice to be told what that something actually was.
He really didn’t want to be climbing rocks, following Nikolas’s backside. He wanted to stop, sit on the rocks for a while, and puzzle it all out.
But there wasn’t time.
Biding his time, sure, but now he’d seen the car just as well as Nikolas obviously had, and he knew, he just knew, that the infuriating one was now planning something.
The car was a total embuggerance.
Nikolas was going to exploit this opportunity to get away from him. He had climbed down far too casually to the level grass. If Ben had any sense of humour left, he would have said this nonchalance was almost funny.
