Thick as Thieves (The Greystone Family: Stolen Hearts #3)

Chapter 8

8

Xander

Aged 14

Yorkshire, England

She’s wandering around the churchyard at the top of Windy Hill. She's been here a lot recently. The view is spectacular as it looks down on the village at the bottom of the hill. It’s a quiet place, but, as you can imagine, it’s windy and cold when other places are warm and sunny. Set further up the hill, out on its own, the vicarage is not a place you would casually pass, a place you would go to visit loved ones or use the church. Marcus said her mum has died and there’s a gravestone she puts flowers and sometimes stones on, small pebbles, anything to mark she’d been there.

My mother died just a month before hers, just before Christmas. I’m still trying to come to terms with it. Not because I loved her and miss her. I don’t. She hadn’t wanted me, made that very clear to me from a young age, but never to my dad. Always when he was there she was nice. It was cruelty in my book, showing what she could be and then not being it at all.

I actually don’t think she was capable of love, that’s why she could only manage it as a pretence for a day tops. I had grown hard to it, which is why I stayed with my friends all the time. She wasn’t bothered, she was happy I stayed with the Russells. She eventually got to where she never pretended she wanted me, and Rowena was happy if Marcus was happy, so I stayed with them.

I’d stopped trying to tell my dad. He just didn’t get it. He still wanted me every holiday with him, but I kept him to Christmas and birthdays and the rest I spent in Yorkshire.

From age nine I loved it—the hassle of fighting, scheming, winning and losing. I loved it all. And the Greystones and this girl were a part of that.

I can see she’s hurting, I recognise it. The pain, it calls to me. I want to take it away for her, but I know I can’t.

My mother dying hadn’t given me a chance to get back at her, not given me a chance to ask her why? I was fucking furious about it. I wanted to hit things, shout at the fucking world for taking that chance away from me. Would it make me feel better? Probably not. She may have told me to get lost and not answered my questions. But at least I would have asked them.

So instead I fought, I drank, I smoked weed. I had to calm it a bit, as they were threatening to call a therapist—or worse, my dad—and I would be hauled up to the Highlands, out of the way, to sort my head out. And I needed to be here with my friends and my frenemies, as I thought the Greystones were now.

Since Marcus had lost the plot after kissing Evie in the river, he was besotted with her. He wanted to be wherever she was. We had sort of called a truce, inviting them to come over and use the stuff they had been using anyway but fighting us over it. Now we were doing it together. They were a bit wild, but I loved that more and more. They were game for anything, especially Evie and Jonno. They would go anywhere, do anything, nothing had a limit on it and I couldn’t get enough of it.

She’s sat cross-legged at the side of the grave. “You can come out, I know you’re there, Xander,” she shouts out but doesn’t turn her head.

Her hair is down, it’s so long. I didn’t realise it was so long as she usually has it up in a ponytail. Blonde, but going a bit brown. Boring, she always said. But I never see it as that. I see all the colours threading through it. A skirt and black tights, a school uniform, shirt and a coat, no blazer, she’s sat on that.

I step out of the shadows, standing behind her. Looking at the grave that has her mum’s name and the dates, loving mother, beloved wife, and a Celtic trinity knot underneath. I sit down next to her, and she shuffles a bit so I can get on the blazer.

She looks at my zip-up hoodie, fleece lined, and grins. It’s new. She’s asked for one, but they’re school ones so not really any good for her. But she’s bugging us about them anyway.

“No,” I say, smiling. Which turns into a massive grin.

She starts to laugh. “Never said a word.” She's side-eyeing me and the fleece.

“You don’t have to, I can see it in your eyes.”

She laughs at that, and takes my hand, threading her fingers through mine. She’s never done that before. The softness of her skin, blanketing me into calm.

I’d seen Kellen grab her hands. He was constantly touching her hands. He was constantly touching her anywhere he could without getting punched, but she rarely moved to touch him.

“You make my heart hurt,” she murmurs quietly, turning her full grey eyes on me. Eyes that looked into my soul when I was nine and have done every minute since—prodding me, probing me, challenging me, soothing me, I had felt it all.

“Why?” I splutter out.

“Do you miss her? I didn’t think you loved her, she sounded horrid. I know people say you should not speak ill of the dead, but if they were horrible, why should we not?” She shrugs at me. “Don’t you have a grave you could go shout at?”

“No. She was cremated, no ashes, her wishes. No one would have wanted them.” I laugh out sarcastically. “And she knew it.” I grip her hand tighter.

“Good. I’m glad she knew you wouldn’t want her. But she’ll be here, you know, listening. Tell her, tell her what you want her to hear. My mum was a shit mother in a lot of ways, but she was a great listener, weren’t you, Mum.” She pats the headstone, with a soft loving smile.

I gape at her. “You can’t say that. It was your mum.”

“Pfft! If I can’t say it, no one can. There’s no point saying she was great, because she wasn’t. You can’t do a lot from bed, you know. Limits your options.”

I stare at her, this girl sat here on the cold ground, being more truthful than anyone ever has. Unafraid. Unapologetic. Telling me it’s okay to say what I feel, to her at least. Stating it like it is. The flood gates open, and I feel the release as I start to talk.

“I am sad, mad, pissed off and fucking fuming. She was a bitch. She never wanted me and told me that every fucking week until I stuck with Marcus and wouldn’t go home.” My face is getting hotter and hotter. I can feel myself boiling. “I fucking hated her for that. Why? What was wrong with me?”

I stop as an involuntary tear has rolled out of my eyes, and I refuse to give her anything. Evie hangs onto my hand, moving her fingers further through mine and maintaining contact at all times. She waits a minute for me to collect myself together. Then turns to face me.

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with you, Xander Barclay. You are fucking amazing.” Her eyes force her will into my brain. “It was her, all on her. She was vile, a bitch. She could have left you with your dad. But she chose to be cruel. She chose that, not you.”

She nods towards the grave. “Just like my mum was depressed. I didn’t do it. She just was. She ended up depressed, and never sorted it out. Your mother was just a fucking idiot.”

I look at her, this amazing girl, and start to laugh. She smiles at me and then starts to laugh with me. We are both holding onto each other. She brushes the hair gently out of my face.

“You have nothing to prove. Nothing. Not one thing. You don’t have to worry whether she loved you. Or if you need to be loved better or harder. Because you’ve got us. And certainly Marcus, he loves you, we sort of like you.” She grins slyly at me. I grin back in response. “But if you want to talk to someone else, come talk to my mum,” She points at the gravestone. “As I said, good at listening, anything else, forget it.”

Then her eyes light up further. “Come see Marshall. He’s alive and the best talker and live listener in the business. But just someone to listen, come here and chat, leave her a stone, and me, so I know you’ve been. It can be our code. Don’t tell the others, and I won’t.” She looks at me expectantly and then stands up, waiting for my decision.

Scrambling up beside her, I take in a deep breath. “I was pissed off, getting fed up with everything and everybody, but I feel better here with you,” I tell her, my heart rate picking up as her scent messes with my senses.

“Good. Don’t get fed up because of her. She’s not worth it, never was really, and you know it. If she didn’t love you, so what, we do. And moi,” she points to herself, “am so much better it is not even funny.” She grins at me, full of swagger, fucking Greystone bullshit.

I stretch out my hand towards her, hooking my little finger around hers, regaining contact. “Do you love me, Evie, like you love Kellen?” I ask the question I’ve been dying to know the answer to.

She says nothing for a while and then muses out, “No, not like I love Kellen.”

My head drops forward, eyes on the cold hard ground. The grass flattened from where we sat. Not the answer I was looking for. Yet, she doesn’t move, doesn’t let go of my finger.

I feel the infinitesimal pull and I automatically look up into her stunning, captivating eyes. They’re blazing with a white heat pouring out of them and her. I gasp as the full force of it hits me. Stepping forwards into it, embracing it. Loving it. I’ve never felt anything like it. I would throw myself fully in and burn alive in it if I could.

“I love you like you, Xander. Just you, no one else.” She steps into me, kissing me. Full-on, blow your hair back, kisses me. Grabs hold of my head and pulls me closer to her.

I put my arms inside her coat and pull her waist to me. A primal growl rips from my lips. Her body responds to it. What the hell is happening to me? We stand in that graveyard, kissing, touching and making out for a long time.

Moving her towards the church, I drag her into the entrance way, out of prying eyes. Pushing her against the wall, I kiss her again, caressing her, stroking her, unzipping my hoodie, pulling out my T-shirt from my jeans. I need her hands on me. I put her hands up inside my shirt, letting her fingers move over me. Wishing she’d move them elsewhere but knowing she won’t.

I have a massive hard-on, and push into her body so she can feel what she does to me. I pull her shirt out of her skirt, needing to touch her skin. I feel the smoothness of her stomach, her muscles. I move my hands up and skim the underside of her bra. God, my brain is all over the place. I dream of this body and mine, I dream of these tits in my hands.

She opens her neck up to me. “Xander,” she breathes out.

I don’t think I’m going to stop. I can’t stop.

She opens her eyes and looks at me as I kiss along her jawline.

“He loves you, Evie. He wants you. I love him. He’s the only person who really knows me and loves me. We can’t do this.” My voice is so fucking low, and I’m gasping out the words.

She nods. “I know, but I love you too, Xan. And not like him, like you, just Xander.” She drops out of my arms and touches my lips. “You’re so beautiful, Xan,” she whispers as she presses her lips to mine, and leaves.

I stand in that churchyard for ages after, wondering what the hell just happened to me. I’ve never had anyone make me feel like that. “What the hell did she do?” I sit for another hour and then leave, picking a stone up and placing it carefully on the grave of Lynette Parker.