Page 39 of Never Tell Secrets

“It’s alright, Alfie.” I kept my voice calm as if I was trying to soothe a wild animal. He slumped against the door, his breathing laboured.

“I see their faces. How can it be alright when I see their faces every night?” he whispered, sounding every bit the haunted man.

“I’m here. It’s alright, Alfie.”

“Don’t…” He tried to pull away, but this time I didn’t let him go. “Don’t forgive me.” His head fell into his hands as he struggled with himself, unable to look at me. He warred with himself on all sides, the side that was a young boy desperate to be loved, the side that hated himself for what he had done, the side that needed me. The side that hated me for what I was forcing him to face, the side that wanted to run, the side that was borne of anger and violence that wanted to rage and fight. The side that wanted to control me, to bend me and fuck me to make me stop, to rob me of my power over him, to keep himself safe.

He wanted me to go. He needed me to stay.

I reached up and cupped his face as tenderly as I could and he whimpered. “You can’t forgive me, you can’t. Please. Please don’t.” His tears spilled over my hands and my heart broke too. “I can’t be forgiven.”

In the face of all of his pain, I did the only thing I could think of. I pushed up on tiptoe, pressing my forehead to his. “Go to the Evergarden.”

Almost instantly, he seemed to calm. Like a soothing wave washed over his body, his warring stopped and all that remained was an exhausted man. He slid down the wall, his head in his hands, tears falling on his shirt.

Without thinking, without stopping to question myself, I crawled into his lap. He clung to me like a life raft and I held him, his cheek pressed to my chest, his tears falling in shuddering silence accompanied by darkness and the crackling fire as he cried out over a decade of guilt and a lifetime of pain and neglect.

The sun rose, shining a light on his sins. I saw them all. Finally, after all of this time, I saw Alfie Tell and here, crying in my arms, he was the strongest person I had ever known.

His tears stopped long before the fire went out. From our slumped spot by the door, we watched the flames die down together, like two lost souls watching an hourglass run out. When that last grain of sand fell through, when that last flame flickered out, we would have to come back to the world.

We watched as it crackled, sputtered, and died. Just like that, this temporary tenderness between us snapped. Slowly, with regret, I crawled out of his lap and stood. I hugged my arms around my torso, watching as he rose too. He shrugged out of hisjacket and folded it over the back of the chair by the fire. He ran his hands through his hair and turned to me. No one looking at him now would have ever known what a broken man he’d been a few hours ago.

“Alfie, you need help. I mean, real help. Not just crying on the floor with your ex at 6am. I know you don’t want to but?—”

“I have a therapist,” he cut me off and I stopped short, stunned.

“Seriously? Since when?”

“Since a while ago,” he answered, his gaze wary, waiting for me to judge him. I didn’t know what to think.

“Is that why you’ve been so different?”

“Partly, yes. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again if I ever got another chance with you. She’s helped me a great deal but she can’t help me with this. I talk to her about the club, I give her a watered down version of my family, and I talk to her about you. I tell her everything about you. But I can’t tell her about what I did to my father and Charles. She would be obligated to report it. This is something I need to deal with alone.”

“Yeah,” I huffed out a laugh, “because you’ve been doingsogreat with that.”

He held my gaze for a moment, unflinching and steady. “I agree, the last twelve years I’ve done a shitty job of dealing with everything. But, something has changed tonight, Lola. I feel different.” His brow furrowed and I wondered what was happening in that beautiful mind of his. “I need to sit with it for a while. Then we’ll talk.”Talk?No, no, no. I couldn’t get dragged into this again.

“Alfie, you and I, we aren’t getting back to?—”

“We’ll talk.” His tone left no room for argument. He fixed me with those steel grey eyes, and my insides turned to liquid. There was the Alfie I’d known. I could have argued with him, sure, butI decided to let it go, for now anyway. Exhaustion hit me in a wave. My feet hurt from still wearing Keira’s high heels and I smelled like a bar. I wanted my bed with a deep ache I felt in my bones.

“Alright.” I nodded, letting him have this one. Another conversation wasn’t going to kill me. I picked up my bag where I’d left it on the coffee table. “Can Elliot drive me home now, please? I’m really tired.”

“Of course. Or you can stay here.” I narrowed my eyes. Did he really think I was going to fall for that? “I meant you could stay in your own room.”

His words made me pause. “You expect me to believe that you’ll let me sleep in the guest room and that you won’t bother me?”

“It’s not a guest room. It’s yours.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. He looked tired yet strangely nervous. I felt like he was giving me that red dress all over again. “And no, I won’t bother you.”

“What do you mean it’s mine?”

“Let me show you. If you like it, you stay. If you don’t, Elliot will drive you home. Will you let me show you?”

“Alright,” I said, uncertainty ringing in my voice. Looking relieved, he extended a hand to me and I stared at his offering. I couldn’t take it. A moment ago I’d held him in my arms because he’d needed me, but touching him now said a whole different thing that I didn’t want to say. Sadness crossed his features as he withdrew his hand.

“Follow me.”