Chapter Ten

Leela's suggestion for her dad to leave it alone fell on deaf ears, and she left Ste's room so the two men could talk.

Danny took a seat and tried to catch his son's eye. "Okay. You talk, I'll listen."

"What's the point?" Ste replied. "I'm sure you overheard enough."

"Enough to know that things aren't quite as simple as I thought they were, maybe. But not enough to stop me worrying about you."

Ste shrugged off his concern. "I'm fine. Can we not do this now? I don't care if you know everything, or if you've changed your mind about Brendan; I haven't got the energy to go through it all again."

"I won't ask you to," Danny told him. "Listen, do you remember how low you were after Doug died - the night I told you I was your dad?"

Unsure where this sudden change of subject was going, Ste slowly nodded his head.

"You told me that Doug was one of two people who had ever believed in you. The other one was in prison, you said, but I never pushed it. It was Brendan you meant, wasn't it?"

He closed his eyes, reliving it. He was back in the deli again, Danny having just stopped him from downing pills with a bottle of vodka. He'd let slip about Brendan without ever meaning to.

"Yeah," he answered, knowing he would have to get this all out if he ever wanted Danny to understand. "Yeah it was. We only get one chance, don't we, there's that one person that's the love of your life? Well Brendan, right, he was it. I loved Doug, that wasn't a lie; but he wasn't the one. I always knew it."

For one fleeting moment, Ste wondered whether Sam was his father's one soulmate, but thought better of blurting this out.

Being bisexual, maybe Danny was greedy enough to think he could have two 'true loves' - one from each gender. Labelling yourself as bisexual was fine, he thought. Just not if it meant hurting your whole family because of your lifestyle.

When he'd finished distracting himself by analysing Danny's habits, Ste looked at him. Still no response, and his father's face was ashen.

Perhaps they had both been thinking the same thing.

Within seconds the older man had composed himself. "How did you know he was the one, Ste?"

He hadn't expected the question, but it felt better; safer than having to talk about murder and crime scenes and all the things he wished he could erase from his memory.

"I just...felt it. The first time he told me he loved me I felt it right in the pit of my stomach. He was the only person I could love and hate all at the same time. He understood me, sometimes more than I ever understood myself. He'd have done anything for me, and he proved it."

"What did he do?"

Danny looked as though he took the statement literally, and Ste had no intention of telling him that Brendan had gone as far as murder in order to protect him. Instead he opted to paint the Irishman in a good light.

"He stood in front of a gun for me once. Almost took a bullet for me."

Instantly his dad was bombarding him with questions, but Ste barely heard them. As he'd spoken the words, the enormity of how that day had played out; how it could have played out, suddenly weighed down heavily on him in a way it never had before.

Brendan hadn't hesitated in laying down his life for him. That would always count for something. And now he was starting to see that even by shutting him out of his life, Brendan had been protecting him. Ste had hated him for it; probably always would, but finally he felt like he could understand it.

He had thought he knew exactly what was going on that day in the hospital. Brendan had tried his hardest to be cold and unfeeling, telling him to get on with his life. Ste had never missed the point - it was all an act, necessary to force him into giving up on them.

The thing was, he'd still felt second best with it. Cheryl had been the one that Brendan had been thinking of when he'd decided to take the blame for Seamus' death. Ste had considered himself to be only an afterthought at best.

Danny had now become aware that his son was no longer paying him any attention, and while Ste's mind ran overtime he snapped at the man to leave him alone. His voice was louder and more brutal than he'd intended it to be, and as a result his dad wasted no time in leaving, closing the door behind him.

Returning to the place his head was at, he closed his eyes again and recalled every detail of those moments in which Brendan Brady had gone out of his way to guarantee his safety.

Maybe it had just been Cheryl's turn the last time. If he had killed someone, he knew with renewed certainty that the same sacrifice would have been made for him.

It didn't undo all the pain and hurt, but somehow it lessened the sting of what he'd been through. Suddenly he could find some sense in Cheryl's confession.

Bolting out of his room, Ste ignored the concerned shouts of his sister and father as he hammered his way down the stairs and out the front door.

He was shaking. All ideas of getting closure went out of the window as he sprinted to Nancy's flat. She opened the door, stared him down for all of two seconds, then stepped aside without a word and pointed him towards the kitchen.

Ste found Cheryl standing idly at the counter, kettle in hand. He gasped out a long breath, his erratic state finally subsiding.

"Ste?" she said as she turned around. "What is it?"

"I need to get a visiting order," he blurted out, still breathless. "I need to see Brendan. I have to see him now."

There was no way of knowing yet what Brendan's next move would be. Sam had done her best to persuade him to be honest, to take his finger off the self-destruct button; but he hadn't responded after her little speech.

She had ordered that his psyche-assessment be brought forward, so by the end of the week she would know which decision he had made. In the meantime she'd just been informed that it was time to start speaking to anyone present at the scene on the night of Seamus Brady's death.

Of course, the main person in this category was Ste, but being a member of his family, Sam wasn't allowed to talk to him herself during the formal process.

She probably wasn't supposed to warn him it was coming, either, but she was still going to.

When she got home from the station she was met by a worried Leela. Danny was on the sofa, looking just as anxious.

"Mum, have you seen Ste?" her daughter asked immediately. "He ran out of here hours ago and we can't get hold of him. He was in a right state."

"No, I haven't seen or heard anything from him. What's happened?"

By the looks on their faces, Sam knew they must have made some sort of discovery. It didn't seem as though they were about to share it with her, though, so she assumed it was something she already knew.

"We were talking about Brendan," Danny explained. "Asking him about him...then something rattled him and he just disappeared."

"And you've tried Tony, and Sinead?" They nodded in answer. "Could he have gone to Amy's to see the kids? Maybe he just needed to get away."

"We thought about that, but Leah rang earlier to speak to him," Leela said, pacing now. "I had to make something up, pretended he was working late and that that's why he won't answer his mobile."

Sam thought for a second, then picked up her keys.

"Where are you going now?" her husband asked. Hours ago he had been so angry with her and now all of the fight had gone out of him. She could tell he was looking to her for reassurance.

"To make sure Ste's okay. I think I know where he might be."

Danny stood from his seat. "Then I'll come with you."

Her face softened. "I know he's your son, not mine," she told him gently. "But if he's where I think he is then I really need to go on my own. I won't be long, love."

Before anyone could stop her, Sam was out the door again.

Nancy, clearly not in the mood to deal with an emotional Ste, had escaped her own flat to stay at John-Paul's. Cheryl had sat Ste down and promised that she would help him get a visiting order - just not now, when it was far too late to do anything about anything.

She had yet to find out what had made him change his mind about Brendan - if indeed that was what this was all about - but she could only hope her brother would cave in and agree to see him.

Ste was asleep on the sofa when a gentle knock on the door came. Cheryl thought maybe Nancy had forgotten her key, but instead found DI Lacey waiting on the other side.

"Is he-" the woman cut herself off as she stepped inside, spotting her stepson fast asleep in the lounge. "Ah. How was he when he got here?"

"Frantic. He was desperate to see Brendan," Cheryl replied. Her voice was calm but weary. "How did ye know he'd be here?"

"I just had a feeling. He looks like he needs the rest, so I won't wake him."

"Ye must think a lot of him," Cheryl remarked in the silence. "Ste's one in a million but until he found all of ye, he'd never had a decent relative to tell him so."

Sam smiled. "I know. I think of him as one of my own, I just wish I could do more to help him."

"And what about Brendan?"

She raised an eyebrow, beginning to feel that it was a mistake to just turn up here, where a woman she had recently charged was staying.

"How d'you mean?"

Cheryl had the good grace to look sheepish, but pressed on anyway. "Would ye help him too, if ye could?"

It was tempting to explain that she was already doing all she could on that front, but Sam simply nodded and hoped it appeared as sincerely as she meant it.

"Brendan's not insane," the blonde added, so quietly it was almost said under her breath.

"Mrs Ten-Cheryl," Sam answered, reminding herself that she was off-duty. "I never said that."

"Ye still think it though, don't ye?"

"No," she said impulsively, before she could stop herself. She would regret this later; but the woman had looked so worried. "Not anymore, I don't."

An alert Ste's voice reached them then, jolting the two woman from their quiet conversation. "Since when?" he demanded.