Chapter 16
Fuck knows what my face does.
I freeze like I’ve done in so many classrooms. Then I burn with the same old shame at being the slowest student. The bluntest knife amongst so many sharp ones. The dimmest bulb in existence.
Did every Ex but me know that him and Flynn were banging?
It shouldn’t matter who Harry dated years ago. Somehow it does, even if Charles isn’t certain what happened between them the summer Harry dropped off his happy-hookup radar. Harry and Flynn disappeared together only to return separately. Unfinished business, he called it.
I call it fucked up. I also ripple with all kinds of weird feelings about slogging my guts out for Flynn and then working even harder for someone who says, “Darling!” today, as if he’s a friend and not a foe who has kept a secret from me.
For the second time in as many minutes, wheezing is all I got. This time, that’s due to Harry hugging me so hard my ribs are at risk of breaking. So is my heart when he lets go to clasp my face with both hands. His own is creased with concern, and man, it looks as real as ever.
“I wish you’d told me,” he says, as if I’m the one of us who lied by omission.
I almost say so. Harry stops me dead by reminding me that I did keep a secret from him.
“If I’d known about your aphasia issues, I would never have asked you to read what’s engraved on my pen.
Or suggested that you use it to journal how you were feeling.
” His hands slip down to my shoulders, squeezing.
“I’m so sorry for putting you in that position.
I came back as soon as I could to tell you so. You really can’t—”
“Read or write?” I’m gruff. East End rough. Extra gritty. “Not even my own name. Wouldn’t know it if I saw it.”
Harry looks me dead in the eye, and here’s the problem with spending the last few weeks with someone who shows their emotions. It means I’ve learned to read them. All I see now is more of that concern. For me. And admiration. “You’re incredible, Vincent.”
He hugs me again, even tighter, and a real hard man shouldn’t let that happen. I should come out fighting. Harry drops to his knees before I can. He gathers up the mail I’ve stepped over twice, then says, “Flynn,” as if I did just punch his ex’s name from him.
Harry clutches a handful of letters. They crease and crumple. “Did he know about your aphasia?” He’s angry on my behalf. “Because if he did know, and he used it to manipulate—”
“He didn’t.” I have to admit this. “I don’t tell people. Didn’t, I mean.” Lately, it feels like all I do. “He didn’t know.”
“Like I didn’t know Flynn was back in London last October.” Harry sighs. “Wish I had known.” He smooths out a crumpled letter. “I would have made sure—”
“That your boyfriend didn’t financially fuck me over?”
Harry looks so conflicted. “Flynn isn’t mine. I haven’t seen him in forever.” His free hand runs through sun-bleached hair, tugging on it as if he’s tangled. It’s a familiar motion, a reminder of the morning after I sent an SOS and Harry came to save me.
I can’t forget that. I also can’t forget what he told me during one of his regular check-ins.
Let’s have this convo face-to-face. I’ve been wanting to.
“You were going to tell me about you and him being together?”
“Of course.” Harry smooths out another crumpled letter.
“Although together was always a stretch.” He gets up from his knees.
“I would have mentioned it right away, only you were in such a bad way, giving you some TLC seemed more important. Then my flight got moved up, and I ran out of time.” He gets up from his knees. “Believe me?”
Fuck my life, I want to.
He hands me the letters he gathered from my doormat and taps the one on the top of the stack. “That’s for you.”
I hand them all straight back. “No, it ain’t. None of them are. I don’t get any post here. Never changed my address on nothing official. You can bin ’em, for all I care.”
“I can’t do that.” Harry shoves them back into my hands. “The one on top really is addressed to you. I’ll... I’ll leave you to it.” He backs away. The trenches of his smile lines deepen with what looks like genuine worry. “Just know that if you ever send another SOS, I’ll always come to find you.”
You know where that gets me, yeah?
Right in the chest.
It gets to Charles too. His voice from my phone is a surprise. “Like when you found me, Vincent.”
I’d forgotten we’d been mid-call. Now his face on the screen of my phone gives me a Dair reminder—he’s glossy-eyed.
“You can’t read? Well, take it from this dyslexic, you’re a beautiful communicator.” He rubs his chest. “Don’t stop now. Keep going. Talk to Harry. He was the very first person I added to the group chat for a reason. Tell him what will make you feel better.”
Charles is asking me to trust his judgement about the Ex who now faces me head-on, braced as if for impact.
I hold out the letter Harry said is addressed to me. “Help me read this?”
Harry comes back then, and yeah, I could ask my phone to read this letter out to me. It’s printed, not handwritten by a drunk spider. I watch him rip into an envelope, and again, I got no trouble reading Harry’s reactions.
He’s uncomfortable at first, and I get it—what he’s about to read could be private. Nobody’s business but mine. I’m making it his, and he braces himself again before reading.
Then he’s confused.
“It’s from an auction house about a sale relating to...” He reads out the address of this townhouse. “They need your bank details for...”
Harry next shows me what surprise looks like on him.
Hope follows, and Dair was the last person to show me that when he suggested I pay him a visit.
Harry tells me why he shares that expression.
“Flynn always meant to come through for you. He must have. This letter says he gave these instructions before he left Britain. The auction house muddled the date to clear the house. He’s been in touch with them about it.
They apologise for their mistake and ask for your bank details, like he instructed, for your cut of the auction proceeds. ”
Harry reads out a total that doesn’t just make a one-off Scottish visit possible. It could change my future.
Struggle bus?
I get off that fucker in a hurry and have no problem saying, “Now help me find the fastest way to the Isle of Harris.”
Charles is still on my phone screen, his chin in his hands while earwigging, as nosy as any of his Exes. “Isle of Harris? Beautiful place, but why on earth would you go all the way up there?”
Because there’s only one person I want to share what feels like the boss of all solutions with, and I need to do that sharing in person. “That’s where home is for Dair.”
“No, it isn’t.”
My phone screen blurs. Pixelates. Freezes before reanimating, and Charles shows me the view from an upstairs window.
“Dair’s home is across the road from the Rectory.”
The building he shows me looks substantial. Granite built. Strong and sturdy. A manor house that could belong in a portrait if not for the bright blue tarpaulin hiding half of its roof.
“It’s right here in Cornwall.”
I don’t need to stay on a train to the very end of the line to confirm that for myself. Or spend a whole day or more on travel. Turns out all I need to do is share the cab of a boat transporter with a man on a mission.
Harry gets me to an airport lickety-split and walks me into a terminal where I might get turned around without his guidance.
He steers me to a ticket desk where Cash’s air miles come in clutch, because yeah, more money than I ever had in one go will soon boost my bank balance. For now, I’m as broke as ever.
Harry can’t come all the way to Cornwall with me. He has a boat show to get back to. “Charles will meet you at the other end.”
I nod.
“Security is that way.”
I nod again. I also give him back his pen. I can’t read English, let alone Latin, but I can’t help thinking that the family first and always motto engraved in gold is true. It must be. Harry has found me some brothers to fly with.
“Ah, there they are.”
I head towards a pair of travel partners who dropped everything to make sure I didn’t end up in Timbuktu instead of Cornwall’s Newquay Airport.
That doesn’t stop me from turning around to see that Harry still watches.
I walk backwards and call out, “Thanks, mate,” because that’s what he is.
A real mate, who I hope gets his own happy ending.
As for the flight?
I spend all of an hour and twenty minutes hoping for a happy ending of my own.
That’s how long it takes to fly south. Eighty minutes.
No time at all. Just long enough to learn that Adey is a nervous flyer.
Nervous too about this last-minute decision to visit the Cornish school where he might give teaching a second chance.
At least he has a hand to hold tight during our bumpy takeoff.
Not mine.
Blake’s.
I’m not convinced this ex-soldier is only here to make sure I get to my destination—it isn’t my hand Blake forgets to let go of once we’re airborne.
We only part ways outside the Heppel-Eavis household, where I get out of an old Land Rover Defender driven by a very happy Charles. “I haven’t said a word, just in case you didn’t make the flight. Does he know you’re coming?”
I shake my head. “Got something important to ask him. Don’t want him to overthink his answer.
” If Dair has reservations about us exploring if we have a future, his face will show me like it’s shown me everything else.
He hasn’t hidden a single thing from the night I met him until now.
Not even that he owns this old house lock, stock, and barrel.
I’ve got a photo on my phone to prove it.