Chapter 291

“Okay, I get the idea,” Darren said soothingly and rubbed a hand firmly up and down Jayden’s back in heavy swipes. “I get it. You snapped out of it and realised I haven’t now?”

“I think so,” Jayden mumbled, but squeezed tightly all the same. “I just…for a moment, when I woke up, I thought it was real. I was convinced it was real.”

Darren kissed the side of his head, and Jayden inhaled the smell of him, wrapping his still-edgy mind around it. He was okay. He was. He’d come back from work, and he smelled like a police van, and he wasn’t hurt or sick, and he’d been taking his pills all week, because Jayden had seen him do it every day but today.

But today?

“You’re okay,” Darren murmured, and Jayden took a deep breath against his shoulder.

“So’re you,” he mumbled.

“You’re getting stupidly stressed, you know. Maybe you need to take some time off and chill out a bit?” Darren suggested gently.

“I’ll…it’s just…you know, the crash and everything.”

“Mm, no,” Darren disagreed gently. “It’s been building for a while. I think the wedding will be good for you. Little holiday, like.”

Jayden squeezed tightly for a minute, then let go and stepped back fractionally, scrubbing at his eyes. Darren watched him patiently, a hand still on his waist, warm and secure. Safe. He was calm and okay and alive and…and fine. Just fine.

“You took your pill this morning, right?” Jayden said hoarsely. He’d gone to work before Darren was up, and had put it on the stand with a glass of juice for him.

“’Course I did,” Darren said, sliding a hand through Jayden’s hair and using it like a guidance system to pull him in and kiss his cheek, high on the cheekbone and just under the eye. “I’m fine. Calm down.”

Jayden took a shuddering breath and wrapped his arms around himself. “It was a bad nightmare,” he insisted.

“Yeah, but you’re rattled because you’re so stressed and worried and I get it, I really do, but there’s no need right now,” Darren said. “You can’t live constantly worrying about me and right now, Jayden, I promise, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”

“You’re not cured.”

“I think you have to accept I will never be completely cured,” Darren said flatly. “This is going to be a lifelong illness for me. But right now, I’m better. Right now, I have every intention of making my dinner, maybe flick the telly on for half an hour while I eat, and then having a shower and going to bed. And tomorrow I’ll go to London for this stag do, watch Ethan make a twat of himself, and have a laugh. I’m fine.”

Jayden nodded jerkily and sighed. “I’ll get there,” he said lowly, and Darren smiled sympathetically.

“You will,” he agreed. “And hey, Thursday and Friday you can lay off worrying at all for a bit. Paul will be on loony-duty.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m kidding,” Darren said and offered a brief kiss that tasted, around the corners of his mouth, of dust

“Um, what have you been doing?” Jayden asked when Darren returned to the oven and pouring the hot water from the kettle into a pan of dry pasta.

“Oh, it’ll be all over the papers in the morning,” Darren said cryptically. “The things people keep in their attics. Like bodies.”

Jayden laughed lowly, sidling up to slide an arm around Darren’s waist and rest his head on one broad shoulder. After a minute, an arm came around his hips and he sighed, the panic easing. “Can you come and watch telly in our room and eat there?” he bargained.

“And get pasta sauce on the sheets? You’d kill me.”

“I offer a pass to do it just once?”

Darren snorted and smiled. “Go to bed, Jayden, I’ll be up soon.”

“Won’t be able to go back to sleep without you,” Jayden admitted. He could feel the nightmare—a twisted amalgamation of everything bad that had ever happened to them, with Ella’s sneer and Jonathon’s kiss and the car crash and the bloody airbag and every scar he’d ever found on Darren’s body and the pills (all of them) and…

He tensed. Darren’s arm tightened around his waist. “S’pose I can,” he said, and Jayden relaxed again. “You’re going to hug me to death, aren’t you?”

“Probably.”

“Can I bring an oxygen tank?”

“No, it’ll take up room.”

“Jesus, I’m gonna die,” Darren grumbled, and Jayden huffed, butting his head against Darren’s shoulder. “Hey, I said I would do it.”

“You’re still going tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Jayden said lowly. The half eight train. He was going to go and see him off from the station before work, he decided. If he was ten minutes late, Stephanie wouldn’t mind. “Ethan’s going to hate your face.”

Darren’s black eye had sort of faded—it wasn’t swollen anymore, and the little scratches from his smashed glasses had healed—but the cut on his forehead was still pink and scabby and was definitely going to scar, and the skin around his eye was still a deep and startling berry-purple.

“Ethan always hates my face.”

“You’ll have to see Lillian about getting some make-up.”

“Not a chance.”

Jayden let the easy talk heal his nerves, and lingered to let Darren eat downstairs, sitting beside him and rubbing his bare toes over Darren’s calf and ankle while Darren inhaled an inhumanly large portion of food. “Busy?”

“Uh-huh.”

Jayden dropped a hand to stroke his fingertips around Darren’s wrist. He wanted to put his head on Darren’s shoulder, but the motion of chewing made Darren’s jaw bump Jayden’s forehead when he tried. “Let’s go on holiday this summer,” he murmured. “Just get away. Somewhere cheap, I know you’re having to sort out the car repairs and insurance and everything, but…let’s just get away.”

“Bed and breakfast in Cornwall?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Darren paused long enough to push his fingers between Jayden’s and shake their joined hands lightly. “We’re fine,” he said quietly, and Jayden smiled.