Page 2 of Hold On

White water was all he’d seen around him. The Hiod River. Ren had rafted down it with Levan, on Class IV rapids when they’d worn helmets and life jackets. It had been a wild ride.

But not as wild as this.

Chapter One

Nothing will be the same again.

Today my life will change.

Though not yet.

Dominic opened his eyes, looked around his cell and took a deep breath. If anything went wrong today, he’d really lose his mind. There’d be no pretending to be insane. His heart thumped faster.

Freedom was so close. But…

A groan escaped. He didn’t want to deal with any buts. But… letting himself get too excited would be a mistake.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years of his life and it all came down to today.

The passage of time presented a conceptual difficulty Dominic had never managed to come to terms with. He might have been moved from one prison to another over the last—almost sixteen years—but to all intents and purposes, he woke in the same room, put on the same clothes, ate the same food, walked the same corridors, avoided the same people.

Days inside were measured by meals, activities, recreation, the locking of doors… He both wanted and didn’t want to keep track of how long he’d been incarcerated.Didn’t wantwon. What was the point in counting down to a date that didn’t exist? Marking days off on a calendar would only have reminded him that when every day was the same, time passed very slowly.

Live the life you have and don’t lose hope.

He’d killed his parents to give his brother a future and he had no regrets about that. But then Adem Kilic had died in Dominic’s cell and even though his death had been an accident, the authorities had decided otherwise and years had been added to his sentence. He hadn’t been surprised the parole board kept turning him down, but he did wonder if he’d ever be freed. But finally, those few people with power over him had said yes. Today was the day he got back his life.

Hanging onto who he was had been harder than Dominic had ever imagined. He’d often felt lost, not just when he’d been under psychiatric care—whether self-inflicted or not—and pumped full of medication. His disassociation from reality—whether drug induced or not—could last minutes or hours. Occasionally he’d been gone for days and a couple of times for weeks. In some ways, those longer periods of not being him had been the easiest, his body functioning while his mind drifted. Though that bliss of not knowing was always followed by a painful return to a reality that never got easier.

It was horrifying to think he’d spent more than half his life behind bars. If he’d known the price, would he still have done what he’d done? Hindsight was dangerous, a path to bitterness and anxiety he saw no point in taking—though he still did on occasion. He hadn’t set out to kill his parents thinking he’d only serve around six of the twelve years he’d likely be sentenced to, and that possibly all of those six years would have been spent in a Young Offender Institute. Though he might have considered that a fair trade-off for ridding the world of two evil fuckers had he not come up against Adem.

Adem was the reason Dominic had ended up inside for so long.That,hewasbitter about. Trusting no one hadn’t kept him safe. Nothing could. It was a hard lesson to learn that he’d always have to be on his guard.

Talking of guards, when would they come for him?Not that they were called guards, not in a high-security psychiatric hospital. Excitement surged and faded. Sturdy, his Offender Supervisor, one of the least pleasant officers Dominic had encountered, would make him wait. He took a deep breath. He’d waited so long, what was another few hours? His future was in reach.

Life before his brother Billy’s tenth birthday had been…unbearable in ways Dominic couldn’t stand to think about, but had been made to in order to reach this point.

Confront your past. Come to terms with what you’ve done. It’s the only way you can move forwards.

Dominic had studied psychology and understood there was a game to be played, so he’d played it. Fooling doctors had been difficult. If he was being honest, he hadn’t always had to pretend to struggle mentally. But that was done with.Today, I’ll be free.

But what if it doesn’t happen?

He took a deep breath. Ithadto happen.

He’d had two previous chances with the parole board, each punctuated by acute disappointment when they’d turned him down. He wasn’t a danger to society but he’d failed to make them see that. The scars left by their decisions might be invisible, but they still hurt and probably always would. Dominic had not shown how he felt, even though his rage and disappointment had been hard to contain.

Don’t think of that. Think of being free. Calm down. Take a breath. Billy will be waiting outside. Probably with Theo.

Dominic managed a smile. The happiness he felt at knowing Billy and Theo were together, that his younger brother was happy, had sustained him these last few months, had fed the hope inside him. No matter how deep his despair, no matter how lost he’d been in the murky marsh of depression, he couldn’t allow that flame of hope to die, or he would die. A few times, he’d thought of giving up and letting thenothingtake him. But knowing how that would hurt Billy stopped him taking that step.

I am stronger than I think.

This was the start of his life. The day of his rebirth. His second chance. His only chance. There could be no fucking up. Even after he’d been given a release date, actually seen the signed document, touched it, held it, he’d still hidden his joy. It was risky to let hope grow too large, to allow it to take up a disproportionate space in his head, because if something went wrong this time, that flickering flame might go out forever.

But he’d ticked off each day in his head, something he’d never done before. Time was suddenly the most important thing in his life, though he was still beset by anxiety. Too manywhat ifs. The more anxious he’d become, the more unwilling he was to leave his room.

He might get attacked.