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I t took Ollie a few attempts to write the last letter.

Hurt, frustration, and repulsion all had to be worked out of his system first.

He scrunched up each attempt and threw them in the bin by the door.

After a calming breath, he felt ready. He put his pen to the paper and wrote his last words to Teddy.

He didn’t ask why he had never written back.

He didn’t tell Teddy he’d read about his crime and wanted to know whether it was all true.

He didn’t ask about Gary or Ryan or whether he’d been Teddy’s messed-up way of righting the horror of what he’d done to end up in Hollybrook.

Instead, Ollie thanked him.

He wrote to his Teddy, not the one from before who’d killed in cold blood, and not the one from after who’d ignored his efforts to keep in touch.

When Ollie closed his eyes, he still saw Teddy’s face light up like it did whenever Ollie had written out one of his memories, then he’d watch Ollie’s mouth, waiting to hear his words out loud. His eyes always watered with awe, or with relief, Ollie didn’t know for sure, but he did know it meant a lot to Teddy. Teddy always cradled Ollie’s face and kissed him tenderly afterwards like he was precious, a gift that had been sent to him.

He’d felt special.

He’d never felt special before that moment.

Maybe it had never been love for Teddy.

Maybe he’d just been lonely, and Ollie was the one to hear him.

He was the one who had responded to Teddy’s advances and helped him with his urges .

If that was all it had been, Ollie was okay with it, but he needed Teddy to know what he’d meant to Ollie.

He loved Teddy Saul, his Teddy locked up in Hollybrook Prison, and he always would. Time, past and future, wouldn’t take away the two years they spent together.

He didn’t want to say goodbye, but he needed to, and he did.

For the first time, he didn’t sign the letter ‘Your Butterfly’. He simply put Ollie, before shoving it in an envelope.

Posting the letter felt momentous, but not in a good way.

It felt like he was abandoning Teddy.

But Teddy had already abandoned him first.

You are strong enough to survive out there without me, not only survive but flourish.

It was time to flourish.

Ollie took his plastic bag of Teddy’s memories outside to the fire pit.

He dropped them one at a time into the flames.

The back door flung open.

Rory rushed out in his police uniform, mouth flapping, eyes bugging from his head.

“What are you doing?”

Sebastian appeared, catching Rory around the waist before he could stop Ollie from destroying the rest of the letters.

“Leave it,” Sebastian murmured by Rory’s ear. “It’s his decision.”

“But—”

“No buts.” Sebastian dragged a stunned Rory back into the house and closed the door.

Rory didn’t come back outside, but he did watch stone-faced from the kitchen window. Burning each memory wasn’t enough to delete it from Ollie’s head. They were still there, but rather than dilute his memory by reading them over and over, he let the originals exist in his mind, the memory of him and Teddy in their cell.

When he was finished, he neatly folded the plastic bag and pushed it into the recycling bin.

Rory stared at him. “I would’ve asked if you were sure.”

Ollie smiled. “It’s a little late, but my answer would’ve been yes. It still is yes.”

“Okay,” Rory said softly.

“No more curfew,” Ollie said. “No more community service. My seven months are up. It’s…over.”

“What are you going to do?”

Ollie exhaled. “I think I’m going to move in with my auntie and uncle, look for a job up there.”

He expected Rory to smile, to look relieved, but instead he slumped.

“If that’s what you want…”

“It’s not what I want, but I think it’s what I need.” Ollie avoided Rory’s gaze. “I need to get away for a while, but don’t worry, you won’t get rid of me that easily.”

Rory took Ollie’s hand and squeezed. “I never want to get rid of you, Ollie, never. We’re best friends, right?”

Ollie rolled his eyes. “That’s so fucking cheesy…but yeah, it’s true.”

“And I’m what?” Sebastian asked from behind them with his arms crossed. “Spare fucking wheel?”

“Yep,” Ollie replied. “ Spare penny farthing wheel…”

Rory laughed but slapped his hand to his mouth to muffle the sound.

Sebastian delivered his most chilling glare to Rory, who shuddered.

Ollie knew what that meant.

It meant an early night for Sebastian and Rory…

Rory and Sebastian were at work when the letter arrived. It dropped onto the doormat, and Ollie yawned into his hand as he crouched down to grab it. His own handwriting had him frowning, then he noticed the Hollybrook crest. Ollie’s fingers shook as he touched the tape around the address. It had been ripped from his own letter and stuck to the envelope.

He sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and opened the letter. Inside there was a visiting form filled out with his details. All he needed to do was call the number at the bottom and confirm the date. Teddy had finally responded. In four days, he wanted Ollie to visit.

There was a piece of paper inside, folded in half. Ollie eased out a slow breath before flattening the letter on his knees.

It only said one word.

Please.

But it was written in big, wonky letters.

“Teddy,” he breathed.

Ollie checked the visiting form again. Someone else had written that out for him, at a guess Green or Jack, but the letter, the please , that had been from Teddy. Ollie traced his finger over each letter, trying to pick a tone from the paper, trying to get a read on the emotion behind the word.

“Now?” He shook his head. “Are you serious?”

He’d said goodbye.

He’d shut the door.

Ollie needed to so he could move on with a new life. It had to be a new life because he couldn’t take the old one with him.

But Teddy was trying to pull him back in.

He flicked his gaze back and forth from the visiting form to the please . The thought of scrunching up the form and burying it in the bottom of the bin came and went.

Please.

“Fuck,” he growled, getting to his feet.

Ollie hurried into the kitchen and snatched the phone off the side.

Ollie kept the visit secret. Guilt ate away at him for not telling Rory or Captain.

They both knew something was up; Ollie apparently showed his worry clear as day on his face, but he managed to deflect.

Ollie got a taxi to Hollybrook and looked both ways before crossing the road. Pichard had said it looked small from the outside, but walking towards the prison, Ollie shuddered at the shadow cast over him. It wasn’t seven floors high; it was three with a slate roof and blackened bricks. Bars were over every window drilled into the walls.

A blend of barbed and razor wire ran along the perimeter fence.

He joined the queue to the visitor entrance, breathing warmth into his hands as he waited. Everyone else wore a coat, but sweating, and jittery with nerves, Ollie hadn’t noticed what a bitterly cold day it was until he was standing outside Hollybrook with his nose Rudolph red and his toes frozen in his shoes. He wished he’d borrowed Rory’s checked jacket hanging on the bannister.

The queue shuffled forward in a penguin march until eventually Ollie stood inside the check-in area. He handed over his ID, and they checked his likeness, then asked who he was visiting that day.

“Teddy Saul.”

The woman at the desk nodded, then waved him along to sit in the waiting room. Every visitor had to be frisked, and a pang of shame hit Ollie that Leo and his auntie would’ve gone through it every time they visited.

Letting somebody touch you like that, no matter how briefly, left you feeling vulnerable.

There were lockers for coats and bags.

Ollie had neither.

They waited on padded wooden chairs arranged in rows and directed at the clock at the front of the room. An officer went round the room with a roll of clear labels and a pen. He watched with no emotion as Ollie did the same as everyone else, writing his name and slapping it to his chest. He couldn’t recall if Leo and Maggie had been wearing stickers when they visited. They certainly hadn’t been trembling like he was. One of the officers kept glancing at him with a frown. Ollie imagined he probably looked like a junkie desperate for his next fix.

He wasn’t escorted out of the room for being suspicious, though. They were asked to stand and form another queue, which they did before shuffling into the visiting room.

The walls were grey, the same colour as the chairs and tables. There was a label stuck to each table, and Ollie was hit by a memory of being at school and searching for his place in the examination room. His table was in the centre of the room. All visitors had to sit on the same side, and they were back to waiting, no longer staring at the clock but at a door at the end of the room.

Ollie wiped his sweating palms on his jeans. He kept his lips slightly parted so he could ease air in and out; it wasn’t a pant, but he wasn’t breathing normally either. His throat tightened, he struggled to swallow, and fuzz started to fill his head.

“Keep it together,” he hissed under his breath.

The unknown of what was about to happen made him nauseous. Teddy might not even show up, and somehow, that didn’t devastate him. It would’ve almost been a relief if he didn’t, and Ollie could walk out the way he’d come and hyperventilate himself back to normal in the car park.

The door opened. There was more haste to how the prisoners came in. Ollie got to see all their faces stretching into broad grins as they located their loved ones in the visiting room.

People were moving, standing up to hug and kiss, and the quiet was broken with murmurs, then conversation. Teddy came through the door last. His eyes found Ollie instantly, but he didn’t smile. He strode over, clutching a dictionary.

He stood beside the table, waiting.

There were still hugs going on around them, and Ollie wondered if that was what he was waiting for. Did he hope Ollie would spring to his feet and embrace him? Ollie curled his fingers into the bottom of his chair and made it clear to Teddy that he wasn’t getting up.

Teddy looked away, then pulled out his chair.

The dictionary hit the table with a thump.

Ollie’s brow twitched as he took in Teddy’s face. He appeared gaunter, his cheekbones sharper. The black beard he’d taken pride over each morning, brushing and trimming it to perfection, looked haggard, wild.

Ollie wondered if it always had, and he just hadn’t noticed.

Sunken grey pits were beneath Teddy’s eyes, and when he sat, he didn’t tuck his legs under the table like everyone else; he sat to the side, legs in the aisle like he couldn’t wait to leave. He didn’t look at Ollie. His eyes darted from the doors to the other prisoners, to the officers positioned around the room. He was on edge, his jaw shifting with tension.

It took a few minutes for Ollie to find his voice, and when he did, it was so small it surprised him that Teddy heard.

“Do you hate me that much?”

Teddy stiffened. He shook his head.

“Then why won’t you even look at me?”

Teddy’s nostrils flared as he finally moved his legs underneath the table. He checked the officer behind him, then looked at Ollie before averting his gaze.

Ollie shook his head in disbelief. “I read about you,” he whispered.

Teddy bowed over as if winded.

“I read about why you’re in here. I didn’t. For a long time, I didn’t. I had this idea of how things had gone down that day. It was horrible, of course it was. You killed four people, but you tried to stop it, you tried to save them but couldn’t, and you cried, and you sobbed and you begged God to forgive you.”

Teddy opened the dictionary, but Ollie pressed his hand down on top.

“That’s not what I read, though. I read about a man, a jealous coward of a man, who killed his friend, or was it his boyfriend ?”

Teddy’s eyes widened.

“You threw gasoline over his caravan in the middle of the night, knowing there were others inside. You set it alight, then you ran away and hid.”

Teddy closed his eyes. He began rocking back and forth in his chair.

Ollie kept his hand over the dictionary and leaned closer so no one could overhear.

“And I don’t believe it.”

Teddy froze. He slowly opened his eyes.

“I don’t believe it,” Ollie doubled down. “It doesn’t matter how many different reports I read; I won’t believe it. My Teddy didn’t do that. And the Teddy you told me about before you were mine, the one who loved his sister so much he painted the caravan purple for her, who carried his father home in a wheelbarrow after he’d passed out drunk in a pub, who helped his mother cook dinner every night even if she did accidentally set fire to his hair, which he blamed his premature baldness on… He is not that monster either.”

Ollie exhaled a slow breath and sat back in his chair. “Maybe you kept the darkness from me. Maybe you never told me stories where you were jealous or manipulative or spilling over with hatred, but I never saw it. Not even a flicker of it when you reminisced. I know hatred. I know evil thoughts. They consume everything. They taint every memory. And I’m supposed to believe that, out of nowhere, you lost yourself to them?”

Teddy’s eyes were wide. He didn’t look away from Ollie.

“Gasoline? Really? You wouldn’t do that.” Ollie shook his head. “The middle of the night when you knew Gary wasn’t the only one sleeping inside that caravan. No fucking way. You can’t speak, but your eyes have always said so much. I knew there was something hidden in them. I don’t know what , but it’s there even now. I don’t know why you said you did it; I don’t know why you pleaded guilty, but I’ll never believe it.”

Teddy kept staring. It hurt that Ollie couldn’t read his expression.

“But none of that matters. You want to cut me out, then fine, but why bring me here now when I’m finally strong enough to let go?”

Ollie glanced at the dictionary. Teddy picked it up and began flicking through it.

“And don’t lie. You don’t need to. I’ve already said goodbye.”

Teddy paused. He pressed the dictionary down on the table so they could both see.

I…

Ollie glared as Teddy flicked through the pages.

Love—

“No.” Ollie slapped his hand over Teddy’s. “Don’t you dare.”

Teddy’s bottom lip trembled. There were tears in his eyes. Ollie’s burned just looking at him. “I’ve sent you letter after letter. You knew how I felt about you. You said it was born out of circumstance, but what love isn’t? You waited… You made sure it wasn’t just sex. You made me feel it. Why would you do that if you always planned to abandon me?”

Teddy shook his head.

“I didn’t stop loving you when I left Hollybrook. I’m not going to stop, but I need to say goodbye because you won’t let me have you. You won’t let this be more than me sending letters and you ignoring them. I can’t live like that, Teddy. It’s not fair. Do…do you even read them?”

Teddy nodded. He moved the dictionary out from beneath Ollie’s hand.

Ollie hesitated, then sank back into his chair to let Teddy have his words.

All the time.

“Why didn’t you ever write back?”

I wanted to.

“But you didn’t.”

Could not.

Ollie let out a tired sigh. “Captain, Green, Jack… They all would’ve helped you.” His eyes started stinging again. “Even one wonky word on a piece of paper would’ve meant the world to me…or…or you could’ve just told me to stop.”

Teddy picked his words. I never want you to stop.

Ollie slumped back in his chair. “Who the hell are you, Teddy? I don’t get you. I thought I did, but I don’t.”

Teddy eyes, gleaming and searching, said Ollie did .

He got Teddy better than anyone.

“You pushed me away again, when you knew I wanted the opposite.”

I know.

“You didn’t start that fire, did you?”

Teddy inhaled and exhaled from his nose.

“Just tell me that much, please .”

Time stretched from seconds to minutes, then Teddy slowly shook his head.

“Then why?” Ollie whispered. “Why say you did?”

My fault.

“It was your fault, but you didn’t start it? What does that mean?” Ollie glanced around the room. “Is this some self-inflicted punishment?”

Teddy stared at him, making it clear he wasn’t going to answer.

“Who was Gary to you?”

A friend.

“Boyfriend?”

Teddy shook his head.

“You didn’t kill him? You didn’t kill them?”

Teddy looked him dead in the eye. No .

“Tell someone,” Ollie blurted. “Wait—I can tell someone. I’ll tell Rory, I’ll ask him what—”

Teddy clutched both Ollie’s hands across the table, shaking his head so violently he blurred.

“Why not?”

Ollie pulled his hands away.

Please.

Please.

Please.

“Fine,” Ollie snapped. “But he’d want to help.”

Teddy’s expression said, I know. Trust me .

Ollie gritted his teeth. “Teddy…”

Please trust me.

“How can I?”

Please.

“Okay,” Ollie said softly. “I don’t even know what I’m agreeing to trust you about, but fine. I trust you with whatever it is.”

Teddy collapsed back in his chair with his eyes shut, letting all the air out of his lungs like the weight of the world had just been lifted from him.

“But I don’t trust you with my heart, not anymore.”

Teddy cried silently at that, and Ollie couldn’t look at him.

They didn’t talk for the rest of the session. Ollie spent it glaring at Teddy, then looking away confused, only to glare again. It hurt to love and hate someone at the same time.

A bell chimed behind Ollie.

People started saying their goodbyes, and an officer unlocked the gate for the prisoners to go through.

Teddy got to his feet. He hovered in the same way he had when he’d first come in, but this time, Ollie took a deep breath and got to his feet too. He fixed his gaze on Teddy’s broad chest before Teddy cupped his face and tilted his chin up until they were eye to eye.

“Fuck,” Ollie mumbled, barely moving his lips.

It wasn’t fair.

The way Teddy was looking at him wasn’t fair.

It was all those nonsense words he heard in his head.

The butterflies Ollie thought had died started fluttering around his chest, and his heart ached. It ached so much he wanted to reach inside and squeeze it until it stopped.

“But you pushed me away again.”

Teddy stroked his thumb over Ollie’s lips before leaning down to kiss him. It only took two soft, chaste pecks for Ollie to part his lips and let Teddy kiss him deeper. Teddy vibrated with a pleased rumble, slipping his arm around Ollie’s back as he dragged him impossibly closer. He crushed Ollie to his chest and swept his tongue inside Ollie’s mouth, letting out content sighs from his nose.

Ollie’s eyes slid shut, and he brushed his tongue back, breath catching in his throat. He melted into the kiss, sighing at the taste of Teddy, and the warmth of his mouth.

An officer said Teddy’s name, and Teddy shifted his mouth to let out another rumble from his throat. This one wasn’t in pleasure; it was a warning, a deep growling sound from his chest.

Ollie remembered what that meant.

His stomach flipped.

It meant back the fuck away.

They weren’t forced apart. Teddy kissed him again and slipped his hand beneath Ollie’s shirt to touch his back. It was Ollie’s turn to let out a soft sound of enjoyment. Teddy’s palm stroked up and down his back as they continued to kiss. Teddy didn’t rush it. He took his time, nipping Ollie’s lips, licking over his mouth, sucking the skin of Ollie’s neck until he groaned and clung on to Teddy.

“That really is enough now,” a voice said. “I’ve let you have longer to say goodbye than anyone else.”

Ollie opened his eyes. His hand had found its way to the back of Teddy’s head. Teddy was at his throat, sucking marks into his skin, undeterred by the officer waiting a metre away from them. The officer wasn’t the only one waiting on them. Three others had positioned themselves around Teddy and Ollie, all edgy, all darting looks at each other.

Everyone else had gone.

“Teddy,” Ollie said softly. “We’ve got to go.”

Teddy’s body jolted with an unhappy grunt. He straightened, stroking his thumb over the mark he’d left on Ollie’s neck.

The closest officer cleared his throat. “It’s time to say your goodbyes.”

Teddy glared at him.

Ollie snorted softly. “He didn’t mean it like that .” He pressed a quick kiss to Teddy’s cheek as he untangled himself from his arms. “Send me another visiting form.”

Teddy didn’t shake his head, but he didn’t nod either.

“Goddamn it, Teddy, you’d better,” Ollie said, moving away. “Do the opposite, remember? Hold on to me, and don’t let me go.”

Teddy nodded, but it was small, tentative.

Ollie knew Teddy wouldn’t leave until he did, so he turned his back and walked out the door.