Page 108 of Hold On

“You know I’m not.” Dominic pulled himself out of the bath, snagged a towel for himself and threw one to Ren.

“You think you’re broken but you’re not.” Ren climbed out and rubbed his towel over Dominic’s hair, wiping drips of water from his face. “I don’t even know how you managed to survive.”

“What other option was there? Apart from one?” His face shuttered.

“You were never tempted?”

“I considered it, but no, not really ever seriously tempted. Those moments were only fleeting thoughts.”

They dried each other, then Ren took Dominic’s hand and pulled him back to their room and down onto the bed.

“When did you get time to make the bed?” Ren asked as he slid under the smooth sheet.

“While the bacon was cooking. I also cleaned the windows, did the hoovering, dusted and finished a fiendish Sudoku.”

“You probably did.” Ren snuggled in close to him, resting his head on Dominic’s shoulder. “Howdidyou survive?”

“I stopped thinking about how long I’d been in there, how long I’d continue to be in there.” Dominic dragged his fingers in patterns over Ren’s back. “I read something Seneca wrote and thought how even after a couple of thousand years, some things hadn’t changed. He said,as long as you live, keep learning how to live.He was right. I had to learn how to live in a different way.

“Education saved me. Books saved me. Sleeping did too. In my dreams no prison could hold me. I travelled all over the world visiting places I’d read about and some that I invented. I made friends with strangers. Sat and drank coffee with them, fell in love with them, though I’d mostly forgotten them when I woke up.”

“Did you think like that right from the start?”

“No. At first, I was preoccupied with what I’d done. Not just to my parents but to Col. No dreams then, only nightmares. I didn’t talk for a while. I closed down. Sometimes deliberately. Sometimes not. When I chose to speak, I was careful. Everyone was cautious around me. Even guys who felt they had to prove how hard they were when anyone new came into the unit…they were wary of me. I had no friends, no one to trust. I learned the hard way that it was better to live like that for the whole of the time I was locked up.”

Dominic ran his hand down the side of Ren’s body. “You had to learn how to survive too. Working undercover must be like walking a tightrope every minute of the day and night.”

“It was a good thing Levan couldn’t hear how fast my heart raced whenever he came into the room. He was a moody bastard. If things went well, he could be kind, almost normal. He’d take me to dinner, buy me something. When things went wrong, often because I’d made sure they would, no one wanted to be around him, but I had no choice. Pretending I liked him became harder and harder, though I often wondered whether he cared. I was his and I had to be what he wanted me to be. There was no walking away, and the position I found myself in was entirely my fault. I deserved what I got.”

“You didn’t deserve to be raped, stabbed and thrown over a cliff.”

“Did you deserve to be in Marsden?”

“The first time I was sent there, yes, I did. To stay there as long as I did, no, I shouldn’t have been kept there so long but I played the game and life was easier for a while. The second time I was sent there, I didn’t deserve it.”

“You fooled the psychologists?”

“Yes, though not all of them, but decisions went my way. It’s easy to feel that people are out to get you. Nearly everyone in there has some sort of paranoia. But my head was mostly my safe space. Even without access to my books I could lose myself remembering what I’d learned. I trained myself to remember.”

“Did Col visit you?”

“Yes, and it broke my heart when he came and it broke when he didn’t. I kept telling myself I’d done it for him. The psychologists wanted me to admit I’d done it for me. I suppose the truth is that it was a bit of both. But it was triggered that day by fear for Col.” He sat up. “You want to look through that box with me?”

“Inspired by looking at mine?”

“Maybe it’s something I need to do. I don’t want to keep worrying about opening wounds. I’ve told you everything. Col won’t have kept anything that would hurt me.”

Ren pushed himself to a sitting position. “Okay. Let’s look.”

Dominic brought the box over from the wardrobe and put it on the bed. The first thing Ren saw when the box was opened was a homemade birthday card.

“I made that for Col’s tenth birthday,” Dominic said. “Col was Billy then. He chose a different name to move forward with.”

“Did you consider doing that?”

“No. I didn’t want to give up my name. I gave up everything else. Maybe I should have thought harder about that. It could have made things easier now. But I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”

“This is cute.”

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