My Love, My Drug, My Release

Chapter 29: Satan's Mirror

Okay, so, I have only been to London once, and I have no clue about the geography, and I figured it was better to make up places and keep things as vague as possible rather than butcher existing locations. Sorry if you're a Londoner and my description of the city and surrounding area makes you cringe XD

Once we were out of sight of St. Peter's, I let Gallagher take my hand, lacing my fingers through his. His palms weren't as soft as Brandon's had been, but they weren't calloused like Keith's; they were mostly just dry like the pages of an old book.

"Where did you want to go?" I asked him.

"There's this spot right outside of town where I used to hang out at all the time. We could take the tube most of the way there and then walk the leftover mile or two."

"No, let's hail a cab." 

I walked away from him, holding out my hand to get the attention of a taxi. This was where my years in New York handy.

"Wait are you crazy?" he asked, catching up with me. "It'll cost a fortune to take a cab all the way there."

"Don't worry, I've got it covered." In addition to sending me those J.D. Salinger books, Dad had stuffed a few more fifty pounds into the cards, amounting to quite a fine sum. Whenever he did this in the past, I would put my face in my hands, avoid the eyes of whoever was at my party, but now, it was a Godsend. It had been over a year since I'd genuinely considered running away from home, but those thoughts were back. Brandon had planted a seed, and the vines of the plant grew throughout my brain until they couldn't be eliminated without destorying the host. And now that I suspected Dad knew where Jack was living currently, I desperately wanted to find him. Leave Paul and Linda and never return.

"Do you parents give you all this money to just keep on you?" Gallagher asked when he saw me shuffling through the pages of my novel to find where I'd put two of the bills for safekeeping (the rest I'd stashed in my bedside table; Linda didn't come in to clean anymore, so I wasn't worried about them being discovered). "Or do you get that kind of cash other ways?"

I shrugged, hoping I looked mysterious and not flippant. Truth is, I was exhausted. Between seeing Mr. Grant in my home, letting Keith leave after our first time having sex without so much as a goodbye, and, of course, finding my father's gifts for me, what I wanted was some cold medicine and a long, deep sleep. That rundown of the past twenty-four hours didn't even include me jacking Paul off into the sink. The bloody sink! But now wasn't the time for those kinds of thoughts, it was time to get to know Gallagher better.

"Why do you go by your last name?" I asked before he could follow up his inquiry into my abnormal funds. 

"Oh, I don't know, it sounds better," he said a bit too casually. "Besides, there were about ninety Adams in grammar school, so it mostly had to do with self-preservation."

"Is that all?"

His jaw visibly twitched, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. "I don't want to talk about it right now." I nodded, folding in on myself, my legs crossing deeper, hair coming down to form a curtain around my face, and he noticed. "Not yet, at least."

It was a sweet thing to say, even though it was just four words with no contract, no time limit, no assurance of future emotional intimacy. Honestly, the last thing I needed was more people to care about, but it still felt nice when took my hand and hoisted me out of the cab, the sun turning his hair into copper flames. We were out of the city for sure, surrounded by trees in bloom and crisp, spring air, a shimmering body of water in the distance.