Promise Me This by Cathy Gohlke Read Free Book Online

worse all his life. But the spreading of this new path before him reminded him that in a very few hours Owen would be gone from England forever. Michael had never even told Owen his name—at least not his full and proper name. He’d lied outright about having a granddad, about his priest, about a dozen things. But what mattered, all that mattered, was that Owen had called him his friend. And he’d been a friend—the only friend Michael could remember having.
    Owen squeezed Michael’s shoulder, trying to shake him from his reverie. And Michael bolted.
    He couldn’t say good-bye to Owen, dared not try to thank him in a voice that would surely break. Michael could not sleep another night on the floor of his friend’s room, could not accept another morsel of food or drink, not a pitying or encouraging word from this man who’d given him in six days more kindness than Michael had known in the six years since his parents’ death.
    Without a word or a backward glance, Michael ran. Fiercely pounding the planks of the dock with his broken hobnails, he tore through the gates, then pounded the cobbles of the darkened street. He pushed back tears that threatened and oozed, unwanted, from the corners of his eyes. Those rebel, unfamiliar streams served only to anger him. Why was kindness so hard to bear, so foreign that it could not be endured?
    Michael couldn’t think it through, refused to think, but set his face to run until he was spent. Too late he saw the three men, twice his size and more, stumbling from the Grapes Pub swearing, singing, bent over in their raucous laughter. But when the collision came, knocking all four to their knees, Michael smelled the sour and familiar stench of ale-soaked breath and bodies.
    The beefy hand that grabbed Michael’s jacket collar, yanking him to the ground, was no stranger, either, and Michael’s heart heaved, broken, to the pit of his stomach. He dared not speak. But the word echoed and reechoed through his brain, Betrayed! Betrayed! Betrayed! It was a joke too cruel.
    “Fool!” Uncle Tom swung a fist toward Michael’s face, then another that found its mark. As the punches landed, Michael slammed shut the door in his mind, turning the key in the lock, retreating to the familiar dark and secret place inside himself, a place where he could not hear or see or feel or know—a place to wait until the beating stopped, however long that took. Another punch knocked the breath from Michael’s lungs.
    And then there was an unexpected tussle of arms and legs. One of the men stood, stumbled across Michael’s feet, and fell face forward into his uncle, knocking the three of them to the ground again. For a moment, a brief and precious moment, Tom Auld lost his grasp on Michael’s jacket. Already tasting the blood from his split lip, Michael jerked away, rolling into the lane.
    Before any of the men could rise, Michael scrabbled backward, found his feet, and sprang through the alley, through the next garden, and over a low gate. Two blocks away he could hear his uncle rage—the memory it conjured a garden claw torn down Michael’s spine. He waited until the cursing ran its long and heated course.
    Michael sat long minutes hugging the shadows, his back pressed against a cold iron gate, willing his breath to slow, his heartbeat to stop pulsing in his eyes.
    He couldn’t say what drew him back to the cobbles outside the Grapes half an hour later. He didn’t want to go, yet couldn’t keep himself away.
    The pub stood dark, locked against the night, and the lane, blessedly empty. Only the gaslight of the lamppost shone a pool in the street. Michael slumped against a garden wall and drew a sharp breath. Had his uncle recognized him, or was that a beating he awarded a stranger in his path? Either way, it had been a close shave.
    That was when Michael’s eyes narrowed to take in the dark lump in the gutter where they’d fought. It looked for all the world like the kit of a ship’s crew member.