Aiden [Book Two]

13

The Lewis household was quiet for a few hours after everybody left, leaving the youngest resident home alone to recover from a difficult few days.

After finally revealing his injured fingers to Nathan, Aiden's parents insisted on taking their son to the hospital to have his hand examined. And exactly as he feared, the little digits were damaged internally from the force of the boot crunching down with force.

An x-ray showed two small fractures through the bones and raised questions about how the teenager became injured in such a way. The injuries seemed excessive for simply falling over, but Aiden stuck to the same story, reinforcing the idea when he showed the fading bruises on his chest.

The additional bruising perplexed his family, but eventually, they accepted the story when they saw no other marks that looked like things from the past. Nothing that looked like physical abuse; if only they knew what was happening.

So the family took the redhead's word for it and reassured him they weren't angry about him hiding his fingers, or taking Nathan's medicine, as long as he told the truth about anything in the future.

After that, Aiden was allowed to stay home for the rest of the week.

He needed some time to grapple his emotions back in order, and to do that, he needed to rest. And he probably would have been resting by now, if it wasn't for his phone and those stupid messages.

The orange-haired boy rarely touched his phone these days, but Nathan promised to text when he got to school so Aiden wouldn't worry all day. When his phone buzzed twenty minutes after the elder left the house, Aiden thought nothing of it and looked right away.

He wasn't expecting to see his boyfriend's image as he sat in the passenger seat of Jago's car and definitely wasn't expecting the slew of messages that set his heart racing again.

After throwing his phone across the room, Aiden paid no more attention to the piling messages and tried to focus on anything else. The persistent vibration was impossible to ignore, constantly interrupting every thought and activity and allowing no moment of peace.

What the boy didn't realise was that the endless calls and messages weren't from the thug who tortured him, but a friend concerned about his welfare.

Jago promised Nathan that he would check in on his boyfriend, who didn't like being home alone, but he refused to answer his phone no matter how often he called.

Aiden didn't like the quiet; but he also didn't like the repeated knocking at the front door.

Fear gripped the fragile boy as he stood at the top of the stairs, staring at the distorted shape through the frosted windowpane. Irrational as it was, his mind fixated on one thing.

The person who hurt him had found out where he lived.

Just as Aiden was about to sneak back into his bedroom to hide, he heard a familiar voice that broke through the terror.

"Aiden, come on, man. I know you're home; it's starting to rain!"

The younger boy slowly walked to the door, pulling at his left sleeve to mask the state of his hand before opening up.

As always, Jago carried an enthusiastic grin when their eyes met. His humourous smile came from the fact he blatantly lied about the rain to get attention, but it simmered into an empathetic smile as he studied the exhausted expression of the orange boy.

He'd been through so much in the last few weeks. That was clear in how he didn't bother to greet the older boy and just trudged back to his room.

When Jago made it through the threshold into Aiden's room, the dishevelled state surprised him. Despite two teenage boys living there, it was typically well-kept, and was the cleanest of all the group. But with the redhead feeling so unsettled, it wasn't in its usual condition.