This is the day of your reckoning... All I know is, I'm going to Hell... I never meant to hurt you, I just didn't know how to stop... Stop... stop your snivelling... Now do it. Just do it... Whatever you've got to do to stop him, just do it, please...
There's a screeching on the tracks, and you know a train is coming, and the floorboards creak and you know he's coming, and it bears down on you and it blocks out the light and he's in the doorway and he blocks out the light and you know what happens next.
I've left a little present for your family. A last minute parting gift that is gonna tear their lives apart.
Your eyes open wide, and you're sweating and your heart is racing. You're awake now, and you reach and switch on the bedside lamp, and lie back on the pillow and try to let the nightmare go.
Steven is there beside you. You see him when you turn your head, and now although the nightmare has faded you wonder if you're still asleep, because he wouldn't be here, would he, after what you've done – after what you've done to him. And so you ask yourself, Am I dreaming? You're not, though: your body tells you that you're not dreaming, with each ache and pain that asserts itself as you become fully awake, reminding you of the fight to the death that you fought and won. That's not all your body tells you, though. When you rest your hand on your belly you feel cum crusting there where he came on you, and when your hand moves down it finds your pubes flattened with lube; and your cock feels used and used up, and bears traces of him. It was no dream, and you remember all of it, the sex you had tonight and the love you made.
You look at him. He's on his side, facing towards you, his arm outside the cover. You think he'll get cold but you don't want to risk waking him by moving it. His expression is utterly serene.
He's safe now, now that Walker has gone, but he never would have been in danger in the first place if it hadn't been for you, and he wouldn't have lost his kids if it hadn't been for you. Steven knows these things as surely as you do; and yet here he is.
The sound of your phone ringing comes faintly from another room. You don't know who the fuck would call you in the early hours of the morning, and you feel panic rise in you at the thought that it's an emergency – that Walker's words about the parting gift for your family have borne fruit, and he's made something happen to Cheryl or your children. You get out of bed carefully so Steven doesn't wake, pull your dressing gown on again and go out to the front room. The phone has stopped ringing by the time you get to it. You look at the screen. Missed call, it says: Anne.
You call her back.
"Sorry," she says when she answers, "I forgot about the time difference, it must be – "
"No worries. You okay, Anne?"
"Never mind me. What about you, Brendan?"
"What have you heard? Maxine been filling you in?"
"No, not Maxine. She didn't want to worry me, with the baby and everything. It was Nancy that rang me, she thought I ought to know."
"I'm fine."
You give Anne an edited version of Walker's campaign against you, from Kevin's first appearance through to the kidnap of Steven and Cheryl and the confrontation with you and your dad. You find out something, too: you find out that Anne knew before she left that Walker was back, and she left all the details with Maxine to give you because she couldn't find you herself. You ought to be raging when you hear this, but you feel weirdly detached, as if there was such an inevitability about the chain of events that things would have ended up the same anyway. You try to explain this to Anne, because she's distraught about Maxine not giving you her message, but you can barely even explain it to yourself. So you change the subject, ask her about life in California; and it sounds as if she's happy over there.
"You'll have to visit, Brendan. You and Ste, you'd love it." When she doesn't get an answer, she asks, "You are okay, aren't you? Ste's okay? Nancy said he got beaten up, when Walker – "
"It wasn't Walker that beat him up."
You wait while she works out what you're saying. You hear her swallow.
"What happened, Brendan?"
"I... I lost it. He said I was just like my dad, and I just... I got no excuse, I'm... I thought I'd lost him, Anne. I didn't think he'd want to know me any more, but he's..."
"He took you back?"
"Yeah."
"He loves you. But, Brendan, that's got to be the last time." She pauses. "I'm guessing you still haven't told him about your dad, or he never would've said that about you. You haven't, have you?"
"No. I tried to, but..."
"You've got to."
You know she's right. You feel fraudulent, letting Steven be with you when he doesn't know the half of what made you, and now that your dad has said sorry, you think maybe you can find the courage that you lacked before. You need to tell him so that he can decide for himself if you're worth throwing his life away on.
"I will."
"And then... once the police have got Walker again, you'll have a fresh start, nothing nasty left in the closet. So to speak."
"Walker's dealt with," you say. Anne deserves to know, because of Riley. "I dealt with him."
"God."
"You okay?"
"Yes." She draws a breath, and you hear the tremble in it, and when she speaks again her voice is a whisper. "Thank you, Brendan."
"I better go, Anne, it's – "
"Yes, course." She's switched Mitzeee on, bright and protected. "What's the time there?"
You glance at your phone.
"Four, almost."
"You get back to bed, and give your Ste a big sloppy kiss from me, okay?"
"He'll love that."
"Reckon I could turn him? He's quite cute in a certain light."
"Over my dead body."
"You're alright, he's not my type. You, on the other hand..."
You smile.
"Goodnight, Anne."
"Night night." Her voice is warm. "I love you, Brendan Brady – and I don't say that to just anyone, so think yourself lucky."
"Love you too."
You sit for a minute after you hang up, and then you go to the bathroom and wash yourself, and then you go quietly back to the bedroom.
Steven is awake. He's sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes wide and startled as if he too has just woken from a nightmare. In the shadows cast by the bedside lamp he looks bony and fragile, and his nakedness is shocking.
He looks up at you.
"I thought you wasn't coming back," he says.
"I only went to the toilet."
"No. I mean, before, when... when you... Walker..."
He starts to cry, and you go to him, sit down on the bed beside him, reach for the cover and pull it up around his shoulders; wrap your arms around him.
"Course I came back, I always do, don't I?" You tighten your hold on him as he sobs against your chest. "Hey, it's okay, shh. I'm here, baby. I'm here now."
It's a few minutes before you feel his body become calm. Still you hold him, and you breathe him in. He smells of sex, but underneath that there's the faint vanilla of the soap he's been using, and underneath that there's the scent that you knew was there when you first met him, even though it took a while before you could get him to stop spraying on the Lynx. It's the scent of him, and it's something masculine and pure, and its effect on you used to scare you half to death, because that was before he changed everything for you.
"Did you just sniff me?" He looks up at you, his face blotchy and red-eyed, and he wipes his nose with his wrist and does his best to smile.
"Don't be soft." You stand up and pick him up in your arms, and lie him in the middle of the bed, because that's where he likes to sleep given half the chance. You take off your dressing gown and get under the cover with him, and you lie face to face. "You okay now, yeah?"
He nods. You watch his face, and you can tell that he's turning something over in his mind.
"Are you going to tell the police about Walker?" he asks eventually.
"What?"
"If you tell them it was self defence they'll believe you, cos they know he was out to get you."
You're shocked at the suggestion. He's not thinking it through: Walker wasn't the only police officer who's looked for a reason to put you away over the years.
"I don't think I can, Steven."
"But they'll still be looking for him, won't they, so they'll – "
"They didn't look too hard last time," you snap at him, and then you say more gently, "Look, they're gonna find him anyways... His body, they'll find it."
He seems to accept that, and he's silent for a while before he speaks again.
"What do you think he was gonna do? If Doug and Nate hadn't of found us, do you think... d'you think he would've come back and – "
"No. I would've stopped him, Steven, okay? I would've found you." You heard what he and Cheryl told the police about being trapped in that place, and you remember what Walker told you about it. Cold. Dark. Running out of air. You'd have got them out of there, or died trying.
"That's what I said to Cheryl," he says. "I was scared though. I just kept thinking about my kids, and... and I kept thinking about you."
"And I kept thinking about you."
"Cheryl was dead brave. Braver than me – I passed out, didn't I."
"That's because there's nothing of you, you got no flesh to stop you from freezing to death. Not because you weren't brave."
"I weren't, though. I gave up."
Is that really what this boy thinks of himself? This boy who has offered his sweet heart, bruised and undefended, time after time to you, knowing you might make it bleed again but running the risk anyhow.
"Steven, you're the bravest man I know."
"It's all gonna be alright now, anyway," he says, "Now that Walker's gone. And everyone's gonna know Kevin lied to the police. And you're even, like, talking to your dad now, so – "
"Steven," you say, and you wish he was right, but that parting gift comes into your head again, and it's all tied up somehow with what Walker made you talk about with your dad, but you don't know how. All you know is, you've got to tell Steven about Seamus.
"I can't wait to see everyone's faces when they find out you're not guilty," he says.
"I'm guilty of a lot of things, Steven."
"Not that, though. And all them people that thought you sexually assaulted him, right, they're gonna be – "
"You did, though."
"What?"
"You thought I sexually assaulted him."
"No I never." He looks bewildered.
"Yeah you did, you said you thought I was guilty. Outside the pub, you said it to my face."
"About the other thing, yeah, beating him up. Not the sex thing, no way." He's angry, and he's telling the truth – it's blazing out of him. "D'you really think I thought you'd do that to someone? I know I... I should've believed you about all of it, right, but you can't hardly blame me for thinking you battered him."
He touches one of the wounds you inflicted on his face, and the shame you feel competes with the relief you feel that he never thought you were a sex attacker. Both have weighed heavily on you.
"I'm sorry, Steven. Hurting you, it's the worst thing I've ever done, worse than... worse than anything. I'm sorry."
He looks at you seriously for a long while. There's a little horizontal crease that forms between his eyebrows when he frowns, and you'd love to smooth it away with your thumb.
"I know you're sorry, Brendan. I know you are." And he does, he believes that you are truly repentant. He believes it without reservation, it's written in his eyes: he knows pain when he sees it, this boy, and his response is not judgement but absolution. "Now can we not talk about it any more, please?"
For once he looks older than his age, as if everything that's happened over the last hours and days and weeks has caught up with him. You can't burden him with the truth about Seamus now, in case it's the thing that breaks him. After all this time, it can wait a few more hours.
You lie looking at each other. The minutes pass, and you don't dare fall asleep in case he's gone when you wake again and it turns out this was a dream after all.
His gaze slides up from your eyes.
"I like your hair when it's like this," he says, and touches it briefly with his finger tips.
"Like what?" you ask. His words and gesture have taken you by surprise: his voice is still thick and punctuated by sniffs in the aftermath of his tears, and yet he says a thing like that.
"When it's got all the whatsit washed out of it – "
"Gel."
"Product," he says.
"Product?"
"Yeah, so it's all sort of, like, soft. Like your moustache."
"You're daft."
"Shut up. And I like it cos it's only me that sees it like that."
His eyes are sleepy, their lashes dark and heavy with lingering tears. His hair is messy where you grabbed it while you fucked him, spiked from the sweat of your palms, a collage of blonds and browns in the lamplight.
"I like your hair when it's like that," you tell him, and you comb your fingers through it.
"Like what?"
"Shagged."
He smiles, and you can taste his smile when he kisses you, and you can taste where the tears and snot have dried above his lip, and you can feel his dishevelled hair between your fingers. His hand rests on your face, and stays there when you separate to look at each other again. Those extra years have fallen away from him, and he's just your boy.
You kiss again, and this time when you part he takes your hand and feeds your fingers into his mouth, and then moves his hand down and wraps it around your cock. You watch him sucking, and feel his tongue coating your fingers with spit, and your blood floods hotly towards your groin.
He rolls from his side onto his back.
Jesus.
You half lie on him, and you nudge his thighs apart with your knee. You kiss him when you slip your fingers out of his mouth, and you feel between his legs and under him and feel his ring, and push inside with two. Not much pushing required, as his muscles are weakened and barely resist, so you pull your two fingers out and then go straight back in with three. He makes an Ah of surprise into your mouth, and tenses, and you kiss him til he settles.
You can fuck him now. You want to, and he's ready, so you take your hand away and shift so that you're fully on top of him.
"Not yet," he says. "Do it more."
"Do what?"
"You know. What you was doing."
"Tell me." You sit back on your haunches between his legs and look down at him, and you almost laugh: there he lies, spread out in front of you, cock pointing at the ceiling, and yet he's blushing to say the words.
"With your hand. You know... Like, fingering."
"Like this?" You hook your fingers inside him again and turn your hand.
"Fuck... fuck..."
He strokes his foot up the outside of your thigh, and then moves it across and rests his heel at your crotch, and your cock strains against its pressure. You're still working with your hand, your thumb rubbing his balls, and his mouth is open and red and wet and you want to kiss him, but when you start to lean forward his foot comes up to the middle of your chest to stop you, and you see a flicker of a smile. He knows how to tease you as much as he knows how to please you.
You take hold of his foot with your free hand and kiss its sole. He's ticklish, and his toes convulse and so does his hole around your fingers. You watch his face, and he looks amazed that you would kiss his feet, but he shouldn't be: of course you would kiss them, and you would wash them and dry them too if he wanted. Your own personal Jesus.
You sling his foot aside and it drops heavily onto the mattress. You withdraw your fingers from him and you fall forward, your hands on the bed either side of his shoulders, and the tired muscles of your arms protest as they take your weight when you lower yourself to kiss him.
"I'm gonna fuck you now." You say it into his ear, and lick a line across his cheek to his mouth.
The way he looks at you makes every nerve in your skin bristle: his pupils are huge and black, and blacker in the shadows of his lashes, and shining darkly.
You glide your tip across his rim, feel it react to you. He bends his legs at the hips and folds them around your back.
You hesitate. Can you really do this, when in a few hours' time you're going to tell him something that's likely to repel him from you? Should you do this, when he's about to find out that your sexual power is a myth?
Your answer is that you can't not. Not when he's burning like the sun for you; you're not strong enough to resist, and you need him. So you line yourself up and watch his face as you try him, pause til he relaxes for you, and then begin to push inside him.
"Ow," he says, and his bottom lip juts out.
You hold back, and you ask, "You sore from before?"
"Yeah."
"Wanna stop?"
"No."
"You sure, Steven?"
"Just fuck me."
So you take him. He groans and frowns, and then his body adjusts around you, and then he's panting, open-mouthed, and he's looking into your eyes, right into you, and in the moments before you lose yourself, you wonder if this is the last time he'll look at you as if you are the moon and the stars.
Everything stops mattering, except him. Your world consists of the texture of his skin, the sounds you make him make, the fierce, searching look in his eyes, daring you to look away. The pleasure that ripples through you is turned into an urge to make him feel it too. As much as you want him, you need him to want you more. And he reads you like he always does, rewards you with what you want, his pelvis rising off the bed to meet your thrusts, his limbs keeping you close, his hands grabbing at your flesh, greedy and possessive. One hand moves in between your bodies – he wants to touch himself, but you tell him No, and he complies, flings both his hands onto the pillow above his head as if they're lashed to the bed. The muscles inside him grip you like a fist and wring you out, and you come, violently, and your heart stops and you're blinded by the light.
His body is alive with tension and on the brink. You slide out of him, and you're breathing hard as you take him into your mouth. His cock is smooth on your tongue, its taste is clean. Almost as soon as you close your lips around him, he comes, and you suck him til his last shudder dies away. Then you're in each other's arms, his face buried in your chest, and his heart is beating so hard that you can feel it shaking his ribs.
You don't kiss him, because he doesn't always want to kiss you when your mouth tastes of his cum – but this time he does, softly, and you kiss until his head lolls back and he falls asleep.
:::::::
You've bathed and shaved, and you've put on a suit, and you're putting its hanger back on the rail.
"You going to work?"
You wanted to leave him sleeping, but he's awake and you turn and look at him, and you wonder if he watched you while you dressed.
"Yeah. Wanna have another look at the books, you know, get some orders in for if people start coming again, now that... now that the other thing's over, they might..."
"They will, Bren, we just got to give it time." He sits up. "You know what this village is like, word gets round, and it's gonna be Kevin that gets it in the neck now, innit."
"Yeah." You hope he's right, but you've got a feeling the mud will stick to you. "You taking the day off, yeah?"
"Probably, yeah."
"Good lad. Get your head down. Coffee's there, so." You'd made yourself a cup and put it down on the bedside cabinet while you dressed, but he can have it now that he's awake.
"Ta."
You step across to the bed and brush his hair off his forehead, then tilt his face up with your fingers under his chin. His bruises are fading – he heals quickly, this lad – but they still faintly discolour his cheekbone and his eye sockets, and there are scabs where you made him bleed.
He knows what you're thinking; you don't need to say anything. You bend and quickly kiss his forehead, and then you go.
:::::::
You're at the club, but you're not checking the books. It's a different book you need to look at.
Yesterday was your day of reckoning, according to Walker, but it's something else he said that is going around in your head, and you're trying to figure it out but it's another one of his puzzles and you can't find the answer. I've left a little present for your family. A last minute parting gift that is gonna tear their lives apart. That was what he said, and you couldn't ask him what he meant because that was the moment when you had to kill him.
You're looking in the Bible for answers, but all it's telling you is what it's always told you: that you are a sinner, and that there's no forgiveness without repentance.
There are things that you don't repent, but there are things that you do, and for those things – the things for which you are truly sorry – Steven has forgiven you. You wonder, as you turn the pages, what it is that's stopping you from forgiving your dad. Walker wanted you to, and you'll never know why that's what he wanted, but you do know that you couldn't do it even with a gun to your head. You wonder if maybe your failure to believe without reservation in Seamus's apology is a deficiency in you, not him; maybe his Sorry to you comes from as deep a place as yours to Steven, and the sin Seamus is sorry for gives him the same pain as yours gives you. Maybe he is trustworthy, and you're just not a good enough man to trust him.
You hear Steven's quiet footsteps coming up the stairs. You look up at him as he hovers over you. He looks tentative, concerned.
"Brought you some brunch," he says, and puts it down on the low table in front of the couch where you're sitting. It's a paper bag with a sandwich in it, you guess; and an apple, shiny like he's polished it.
"I don't deserve you."
He sits down on the couch opposite yours, and asks what you're reading. You show him, and he doesn't say anything. You know he doesn't share your beliefs, or your struggle to reconcile yourself with them. Did you think God was just gonna strike you down with lightning? he said to you once. What century do you live in?
When he speaks again, it's to tell you that Walker's finally gone, so it's over; but you have to tell him that it's not. The pin has been pulled from the grenade, and it's only a matter of time before... Before what? You don't know, but you do know that it's not over.
"What d'you mean?" he asks. "He's gone, right, and this can be our new start, now there's no one coming after us. Here, maybe you can talk to Eileen, Brendan, see if she'll let your kids come over in the holidays."
"She won't."
"She might. The court case is all cancelled, and if she knows what you've been through – "
"They're better off without me. I'm... I don't even know how to be a dad, Steven. My boys deserve better."
"You do know. You are better. Maybe you didn't used to be, but look at what you're like with Leah and Lucas, right, they love you because you're a great dad. And you're not telling me you're just gonna give up your boys to Martin or whatever his name is – "
"Michael."
"Michael. Because I know you, and you're not going to let him win."
You smile at his fierceness.
"It's not just that though, Steven. I just... I think they're safer where they are, til I know what Walker..." You pause. "Something he said, just before he died. The words keep banging around inside my head and I can't get rid of them."
"He was lost. Probably just said anything that he knew would get under your skin."
"One last parting gift," you quote Walker to Steven,"That's gonna rip your little world apart."
Steven tells you that he still thinks you should tell the police, so that they'll know the man they're looking for is dead. But it's not the police you're worried about: that's not the grenade. The grenade is Walker's knowledge of what your father did to you, and you don't know where it's going to explode, so you've got to take it into your own hands.
"What are you worried about, then?"
"There's something I should've told you, Steven, something I should've told you a long time ago," you say, and you don't know what he's expecting but he makes some smart remark about skeletons and closets, but you're not losing your nerve, not this time. "What I told you about my dad... what he did to me. You got the watered down version."
"You said that he beat you up," he says, and he's dropped the cynical bite of his last response.
"Yeah, he did. And then he made it up to me... in his own special way."
"What does that mean? Brendan?"
You force yourself to glance at him, and when you do, he looks frightened.
"My dad... Seamus, he abused me."
He's working out what it is that you're telling him.
"No. No, not..."
"Yes. He sexually abused me."
You see Steven move, only it's more like you sense that he's going to move. But what you can't sense is whether his movement will be away from you or towards you, and you don't have the strength to cope with either possibility. So you shake your head, or he senses that you're going to shake your head, and he stays where he is.
"When?" he asks, and his voice is small.
"First time? I was... I was eight, Steven."
"Eight?"
"Yes."
"Did he... When you were eight, it wasn't... he didn't rape you?"
"What?" Rape is what men do to women, isn't it? You've never thought of it being the word for what happened to you, and for a moment you think you're going to be sick because now that Steven has said it, you know that it's the right word.
"Brendan?"
"I didn't even... The first few times, I didn't even know what he... what it was that he was hurting me with, not til... til this time I nearly got away and when he grabbed me back, I saw. Saw him, his... How stupid was I? Not knowing – "
"You weren't stupid. You were a little kid, how could you know? You're not meant to know, Brendan, not when you're a... just a little kid."
He's crying.
"You okay, Steven?"
"Am I okay? For fucksake, Bren." He wipes his sleeve across his face. "Didn't anyone realise what he was doing?"
"It was a secret. He said that. Kept saying it, kept saying it was our secret cos I was... special, only the rest of the time he was hating on me, shaming me, you know? If anyone found out, they'd think I was... he said they'd think I was a... And that's if they believed me anyway. I didn't want it, though, Steven, I – "
"Course you didn't want it!"
"I didn't."
"I know."
"I just wanted someone to ask, you know? Someone just to say, What's wrong, Brendan? Someone to see... There was this one time, I was still young, maybe still eight, nine, and I... We were staying at our nana's house in the holidays, and... The bed got messed, see, the sheets, my pyjamas. I dunno, blood and shit on them..." Are you testing Steven, by telling him this? You are – you think you are – and you look at him expecting to see disgust, but instead he looks stricken. "So I stripped them off, three in the morning or something, went downstairs and put them in the washing machine but I couldn't... I didn't know how to work it, I was pressing all the switches, turning the dial, just blindly, you know, cos I didn't put the light on in case I woke anyone up. Then the light goes on anyhow, and Nana's there, and I think, she's gonna ask me now, ain't she? She's gonna ask what I'm doing, trying to wash my bedsheets at three o'clock in the fucking morning, when I never even made my own fucking bed before. I'm thinking, she's gonna ask and then she'll see the mess on the sheets, and she's gonna make me tell her what's been going on, and then it's gonna stop. Whatever she thinks of me, it's gonna stop. But what she did was... all she did was, she said, it's this switch and it's this number and you press that button there."
"So nobody found out?"
"Nobody stopped him."
"How long did it go on for?"
"A few years."
"Years?" He closes his eyes and rubs them with the heels of his hands. "D'you remember, that time you said about when you went away with him for a weekend, camping, and you come back with a broken arm? And you told me he did it to you? Was he still... was he still abusing you then?"
"Yeah. I didn't want to go, see. Just him and me, I knew why he wanted to go: just the two of us in this old tent. So, you know what I did? When he told me to get the tent out of the car, I... It was one of those old heavy canvas ones, you know, with the poles to hold it up, so I thought – bright idea – I'll hide the tent poles so we can't put it up, and we'll have to turn around and come straight home again. Only we didn't come straight home." You remember your dad's rage when he found out what you'd done; you remember what he did when you ran and he caught you. "Angriest I ever seen him," you say. "Then in the car, he's driving me to the hospital and he's saying, I told you not to climb that tree, and I ask him, what tree, Dad? What tree? And he says, the one you fell out of and broke your arm. And it's... it was like, by the time the doctor asked me what happened, it was like I believed it myself. It was like, Seamus said it, and it was so."
"So he got away with it."
"I don't know, Steven. He don't think so, he thinks he's going to Hell. But he's confessed now, to me: admitted to me that it all happened, first time ever, over the road there when Walker had us tied up. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. So maybe that's it, maybe now he's confessed it, he gets his absolution."
"Do you believe that?"
"Don't know. Didn't work for me, so." You tell him how you once stole some money from your mother's purse, blew it all on cola bottles, but then you got it into your head that what you were going through – what your dad was putting you through – was the punishment you'd earned for it. Thou shalt not steal. So you said sorry to God, every night, and you'd pray for him to keep your dad away. "But then I'd hear his feet on the landing, then I realised that either God wasn't listening, or he just plain didn't like me."
Steven is quiet. What you've told him must be hard to process, finding out that you're not the man he thought you were, not the man he wanted.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, and there's something in his voice but you can't pin it down: you never could tell the difference between pity and compassion, and you're not even sure if there is one.
"Cos I didn't want you to look at me the way you're looking at me now... Damaged goods."
"I don't think that."
He's protesting, but he's working it out, isn't he? What your dad made you: ugly, inside and out. He says he isn't thinking it, but he must be. He must be. And you're sounding pathetic even to yourself, giving yourself excuses as if everything you've done is down to your dad – all of the things you've done, and the things you keep doing to Steven.
He tells you that you're not going to do that to him again, because you're better than your dad. He's fierce as he says it, like he would defend you to the ends of the earth, but he's not seeing you as you really are. He seems to think you deserve his understanding, but how can that be true?
"Thousands of kids go through what I went through," you say. "None of them turn out like this... like me. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. I learnt that." You learnt the rest of it, too: The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. Your dad is accountable before God for his own wickedness, but not for yours.
"He can't just get away with it," Steven says.
You tell him that you thought – you think – that you'd got somewhere, you and your dad. Progress, after all these years, and you're trying to convince Steven that it's true, because you want it to be true, and if you can convince Steven then maybe you can convince yourself. Sorry, your dad said to you. Sorry.
He doesn't respond to that. Maybe it's all too fresh for him to imagine that progress is possible; or maybe his instincts are right, and there are some things that can't be forgiven, even with a heart as big as his.
He asks about Cheryl, and you tell him she will never know. Your own childhood was spent trying to protect hers, and you can't have hers destroyed now, you tell Steven, "That's if she would even believe me."
"Course she'll believe you." He almost smiles, as if the idea of your sister doubting you is ridiculous to him.
"My whole life has been mapped out by the fear of asking one question: why would anybody believe me? Why?"
"I do, I believe you." And he does. He really does, and you try to focus on the light he's brought into your dark as he tells you that your dad can't hurt you any more.
Still, if this is closure, it doesn't feel how you thought it would, and Steven thinks it's because there's something you've got to do.
"What's that?"
"Tell Cheryl. And not for me, not for her. You gotta do this for you, Brendan."
When did this boy get so wise? Maybe he always has been, but you had to learn to listen.
"I know you're right, Steven, but it's... she's my baby sister, she's her daddy's little girl, ain't she. It's going to break her heart."
"But you'll do it. I mean, what if her and Nate have kids, what if – ?"
"I warned Nate. Didn't tell him why, just told him to keep their sons away from him."
"Oh god," he says, "When you wouldn't let Cheryl have Leah and Lucas at her place to babysit, you were protecting them, weren't you? In case he was there?"
"Yes."
"What about your own kids?"
"Eileen knows what my dad's like. Always knew, from when we were kids. Not the... other stuff but the violence. People were scared of him, you know, he had a reputation, and she knew I was always coming to school with a black eye or whatever."
"She knew it was him that did that?"
"I told her, when she was pregnant, first time. We went round together to tell my dad and Chez's ma about the baby, and I thought... I thought maybe he'd be pleased. Jesus, I must've been stupid to even – "
"You're not stupid, Brendan."
"See, I thought it'd stop him with all the... the Brenda stuff, the calling me a queer, and... But it didn't. He was okay when we told them, but soon as he got me on my own he gave me the worst hiding I ever had, and that's when I told Eileen that he's been thumping me all my life. Made her promise there and then that she'd never let him near our kid, whatever he said, whatever he did to try and get round her. She was only a wee girl, sixteen, and having to patch me up like that, the... the shock of it for her, I knew that she would keep her word."
"All that..." He searches for the phrase. "All that burden you been carrying, Bren. I could've helped you if you'd told me."
"I wanted to. I tried. I just never was brave enough."
"Until today."
"Until today." You stand up. "Want a drink?"
"I'll get it," he says, and you sit down again, and he goes and gets a bottle of Jameson's from behind the bar, and two glasses. "There's no ice in the buckets, shall I go and get some or..?"
"Can't get the staff," you say. "I'm okay if you are."
He comes and sits next to you on the couch, and you slop the neat whiskey into the glasses.
You both drink, and he coughs. It makes you smile, and he catches you.
"I know," he says, "It's gonna put hairs on my chest."
"It works for me, so."
You both drink in silence. You're glad to have him sat beside you now, but you're surprised that he wants to be, because things surely can't be the same between you now he's seen you for what you are.
He's obviously thinking things over, trying to fit the past into the new shape you've given it. When you sneak a look at him, he's chewing his lip like when he's helping Leah with her homework.
He takes a gulp of his drink.
"I told you to man up," he says, so softly that you only just catch what he says.
His eyes are full, and a single tear brims over and trickles down his cheek. Maybe it's the burn of the alcohol.
"I couldn't help it, Steven, there was nothing I could do, I was a kid and he was... he was in his prime, you know? In his twenties when it started, and he was strong, I couldn't – "
"I'm not... Brendan, I'm not telling you to man up. I wouldn't – I would never, not now. I'm saying, I said it to you before, didn't I?" he explains, and your hammering heart starts to settle down. "That day he came here and he tried to give you some of his winnings, and he said he would buy you dinner, and you went all weird on me, and when he went we had that row, do you remember? And I told you to man up, and I... I'm so sorry. How could I be so – ?"
"It's okay. You didn't know, Steven, and that's my fault, okay?"
His crying isn't from the whiskey, it's for you. You touch his face, and wipe away his tears with a sweep of your thumb. You half expect him to shrink from your touch, but he doesn't. Even so, you take your hand away.
"You're twice the man he'll ever be," he says. "You know that, Brendan, right? You're the bravest man I know."
"It's not a brave man that does that to you," you tell him, and you look at his battered face.
He shakes his head.
"I know why you went mad, with what Kevin said you did to him. It's like the worst thing anyone could ever say about you, after what your dad did to you. No wonder it was killing you."
"Still no excuse."
"No. It's not an excuse, but it's a reason. But that's the last time. It's got to be the last time, Brendan, it's the only chance we've got of having a future. It's got to never happen again."
A future.
"It won't. It won't happen again, ever, I promise."
"You need to get help though. Proper help I mean, anger management, like I had. I'll come with you for support, right, but you've got to do it. Will you do that? For us, Brendan, for you and me."
Anything. You will do anything. Nothing can be as hard as telling him what you've told him today, and if he still wants to be with you, if he wants a future with you, you will do whatever it takes.
"Yes." You've never been more serious.
"Yes?"
"Yes."
He smiles, and he's beautiful, and he leans and kisses you. You're taken by surprise: his kiss feels the same as ever, it's not non-committal, it's not careful, it's not treating you like someone different than you were when you last kissed a few hours ago.
It's you that's not ready. You feel exhausted. You pour another drink, and you're shaking, and the neck of the bottle clinks an erratic rhythm against the rim of each glass. When you sit back again, Steven leans into your side, and you put your arm around his shoulders, and his warmth spreads to you as he cuddles up.
He's getting used to the whiskey.
"Here," he says, "We should eat this, we've not had anything." He reaches for the paper bag on the table, and rips it open.
"What's in it?" You're surprised to find that you've got an appetite; maybe it's the Jameson's that's done it.
"Prosciutto e Fontina," he says, and then he grins. "That's what Doug would call it, and he would've made it with one of them posh breads he goes on about. Ham and cheese, on sliced white. There you go."
He takes half the sandwich, and you pick up the other half.
"I'll have to thank him," you say.
"Why? Doug didn't make it, I did."
"No, I mean for finding you and Chez when you were trapped."
"Oh, right."
"It's good," you say as you swallow a mouthful of sandwich. "Steven, how did him and Nate know where to look for you?"
"They got into the hospital ward and they made Kevin tell them." He picks out of his sandwich one of the pickles that you like and he doesn't, and feeds it to you. "Doug said his face was well mashed."
"Ain't that a shame."
"I'd bloody... If I ever see him again..."
You've never seen hate in Steven before. When he hated you, it was nothing like this.
"He ain't worth getting sent down for," you tell him.
"What he did to us, though. Accusing you of that."
"I know."
You both finish eating in silence. Steven is the one to break it, and his vitriol has gone as quickly as it came.
"You know when we first got together? Well, when Amy found out that we were... that you, you know... that you hit me..." He glances at you apologetically. "Anyway, she asked me about... She asked me if you ever, like, forced me or – "
"Jesus, Steven."
"No, she was just... She didn't know you, did she, and I said to her, like, no way. I told her you was amazing in bed, and I told her you was... You know, the first time we... I told her you was dead gentle."
Jesus.
"She believe you?"
"Yeah, she did. She said that when I come home after that first night – you remember, when I stayed over at yours?"
"Yes, Steven. I remember." You will remember it until you're in your grave.
"She said that when I come home, I was, like, glowing."
He's blushing.
"Amazing in bed," you say, and he grows pinker. "I thought Amy Barnes looked at me funny. Apart from how she always looked at me funny."
You both become quiet again. He's tucked against your side still, your arm around him, and he's picking at a tiny nick in the knee of your trousers where they must have caught on something. You rest your hand on his, and stroke the back of it absently with your thumb.
He's pensive when he speaks again.
"You was talking about your dad, weren't you, when you was outside the deli and I was hiding in there? When you said... you said he took everything away from you, and you forgot how to be normal."
"Yes."
"And I made you think that the world can be..."
"That the world could be good again."
"And it can be, Brendan, right. I mean, if you think about it, it's... after everything you went through, it's amazing that you... that you love so much."
"That's what Anne said about you." You swallow, and there's a lump in your throat. "It's... it's down to you, Steven. It's down to you not giving up on me, I guess, making me think that maybe there was a... another way for me to be. And if I'm an okay dad to Leah and Lucas, that's because for the first time in my life I got to see what a good dad is, and that's you."
You become aware of him staring at you.
"You look knackered," he says.
"Oh, cheers for that," you say, but you know he's right.
"Why don't you have a kip for a bit, yeah? It's not like you've got any customers. I'll get off, and I'll see you later."
You both stand up, and he wraps his arms around your waist. Pain shoots through your body from the bruises from your fight with Walker, but you wouldn't have Steven loosen his hold on you, not for anything, so you embrace him and pull him tighter against you.
"You're a good lad. You know that, don't you?"
"I love you too," he says. "Now, eat your apple, it's good for you."
You walk him to the fire escape door and open it onto the balcony, and you both stand in the doorway. After being cocooned inside, the daylight makes you feel exposed.
Anne was right about Steven, turns out. Let him know you, she said, that day you told her what your dad was. He deserves to know the truth. After everything that you two have been through, you think you can scare him away?
He's not scared. It's you that's the scared one.
"Told you what I think you should do," he says, and he's talking about telling Cheryl the truth about her dad.
You've spent the past quarter century protecting her from Seamus, and protecting her from knowing about him, and you don't know what will happen to her and to you if you explode that grenade. You're her brother, and you're meant to stand in between her and the monsters.
You tell Steven it's a bad idea, but in his head it's obviously clear that it's the right thing to do, and he tells you that you've got nothing to be ashamed of.
"I been ashamed my whole life."
What he does then is, he comes closer, and he takes your face in his hands, and he kisses you. He kisses you twice, and it feels as if he's trying to kiss you into believing that everything will be alright in the end.
You kiss him back, but your arms stay folded in front of you.
He leans his forehead against yours, and he's still holding your face when he says, "I love you, and you love me. That's all that matters."
You do love him, more than ever, more than you thought it was possible for one person to love another, and you hate that you've brought so much danger into his life, so much pain, so much that he would never have had to deal with if it wasn't for you.
"Maybe in the next life you'll get a better me. One you'll deserve, yeah?"
"No," he says, and he lets go of you and steps back a little, and he's smiling. "Because after today, we get our happy ever after."
He can see your doubts but still he smiles, and he nods his head as he goes out of the door, as if he's saying, I'm right – and you think, maybe he is. Maybe if you take the step he wants you to take, then somehow your happy ever after will begin and the world will be beautiful again.
The Spring is starting to appear at last, but the sunlight still has the paleness of Winter, and as Steven crosses the street he casts no shadow. You watch him until he disappears from sight, and you try and hold in your mind that image of him in the light, as you close the door and go back into the dark of the club.