Chapter 20
20
JOE
I don’t hurt for days.
Even my damaged nerve endings must get the message. They don’t bother me if Isaac forgets to be careful. Honestly, I live for those hot and sweaty moments when it’s just him and me making up for lost time.
I can see a future through those jolts and tingles.
Yes, my courtroom clock will tick again tomorrow morning, but we’ve got a second chance here that I’ll treat the same way my father does a broken engine.
So what if Dad still does his best to avoid being in the same room as me. He showed me how to take care, and the longer I think about it, he did that with more than motors.
I’ll tune up what Isaac and I have started. Tinker with it and with my court workload until I can find a way for it to run smoothly instead of all that stop-start coughing like whenever Isaac starts his Transit. He’s my incentive to carve a space for myself here that I inject into helping Hugo divide and conquer his welfare workload. Doing the same with Charles and his three holy terrors is another pleasure I couldn’t have imagined back in knife crime central. The cherry on the top is sharing evenings that start with bedtime stories.
For three nights in a row, I get to listen to ones read by Lenny’s mum on speaker now that she has more regular phone access. She’s only allowed ten minutes at a time. I bet she counts every single second.
So do I each night with Isaac.
Thank fuck no one else stays in this old stable block. Otherwise, I’d need to cover his mouth while doing him like I used to dream of—against walls and doors and in a bathroom where the mirror over the sink reflects someone who once lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes like he didn’t trust me.
Isaac is the opposite of wary after waking on the last day of my stay. I’d extend my visit if I could. Postpone yet another attempt at a court visit. The memory of hot chocolate staining my shirt means the best I can do is push back leaving to the very last fast train scheduled for this evening.
For now, I make the most of the sunlight painting Isaac’s first smile of the day golden.
I’d keep it if I knew how. Trap him and me and all of Glynn Harber in an amber bubble, even if I’d need to pop it sooner than I want to. For now, I soak up the sight of his sleepy smile and the warmth of the hand that spreads like a starfish on my chest.
His hand slides lower, and I could get used to this kind of start to the morning, to his closed-mouthed kiss when I turn to him. He buries his face against my neck, breathing me in as my own breath catches at his fingers trailing south, and my dick heads north to meet them.
He gets me off, slow and sleepy, then faster and more awake when I begin to return the favour. His dick was made for my hand, his mouth for the side of my neck, where nerves fire for more welcome reasons. And so what if his teeth are sharp when he comes. Like I told him the first night I shared his bed, he couldn’t hurt me, even if my heart clenches at what I witness on my way out of the stables early enough that no students see me leaving.
I need to go pack a case I shouldn’t have left at the Rectory, I’ve spent so little time there. I turn first to see Isaac in the doorway of a home where I promised to shield both him and his little brother if his mother does plead guilty.
Right now, with the early morning sun kissing Isaac so gold that he glows, I have to face facts.
I’d want to do all that regardless.
I want to be here for every hard time as well as these recent good ones, and I don’t need a reason beyond this fact.
He’s it for me.
Has been for over a year.
Maybe I could be it for him too. The impulse Isaac acts on suggests so, and where we come from, him blowing a kiss like this would make him a target. I’m the sap who raises a hand to snatch it, so I guess we’re equal.
I shove that kiss into my pocket, holding it tight on my way through a courtyard where mist curls around the site of a time capsule full of children’s hopes and wishes. I’d bury that kiss here for a future black sheep to uncover if I wasn’t in a hurry. Instead, I only slow down when I reach the car park, and I come to a decision.
I’ll be there for his visit.Even if I can’t go with him, I’ll do the next best thing by waiting outside the prison gates. Just as long as he knows I’m there. That I haven’t walked away again, like I always regretted.
I’ll stand guard this time.
There’s a lump in my throat when I pull out my phone to text my brother with only a willow tree as witness.
Joe: Meera mentioned us maybe painting this weekend. Go ahead without me.
Joe: I’ll be busy.
Someone else is busy when I reach the Rectory—Charles has his arms full with a pair of rowdy early risers, both of them batting at his face with toast and sticky fingers.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” he yodels.
I kinda love his cut-glass welcomes despite the fact they always come with teasing, like now. He scrutinises me and jumps to an entirely accurate conclusion. “Well.” He purses prim lips. “Someone got a head start on sinning this morning.” He eyes the open collar of my shirt, where I guess Isaac’s mouth has left proof, but then ruins his piousness by grinning.
Charles is always happy, but the same golden light streaming through the kitchen window highlights something far from usual. This smile is brittle instead of his usual sunny. He does his best to mask it. “I remember those kind of wake-ups extremely fondly. Happy to go to hell for having so many of them, just as long as all my exes are there with me. Such a fun bunch to spend more time with.”
“You wouldn’t miss Hugo?”
“I wouldn’t need to. He’d be right there saving all of our souls. I’m sure death won’t part us. Goodness, this is the opposite of jolly breakfast conversation. Are you all ready for your last day?”
He grins again, but I’m a master at plastering on a brave face. I can tell he’s nowhere close to happy.
“Is…” I take one twin from him. “Is something wrong?”
“Oh, no, no, no. Everything is perfectly fine.” His gaze lands on a pair of bags on the kitchen counter. On two sets of bottles. On identical stacks of neatly folded onesies. “Actually, no. I’m not fine at all.” The baby he holds continues to bat at his face. Charles catches hold of one little palm and lands a kiss that leaves crumbs in his beard instead of glitter. “Because I thought about what you told me. About how being apart from your brother felt? That’s why these little wrigglers have been spending a bit longer with Mum each day since.”
Ah.
“And it hasn’t been going well?”
Charles confesses the real reason for his smile wobbling. “The opposite. And their social worker confirmed it last night.” He swallows. “They’ve all been doing so well that we think it’s almost time to say goodbye.” He swallows even harder. “For good.”
I didn’t have consoling a vicar’s husband on my list of things to do before seven in the morning, but that’s how Hugo finds us.
“Oh, Charles.” He takes over from my hug, both arms around his husband and temporary daughters. “What did I tell you?”
His husband sniffs as I escape to the hallway. “That the road to hell is paved with all of my past three-ways?”
“No. And I’m as certain as I can be that your latest three-way is a sure path to heaven. The girls and Adam would agree. But what did I actually say?”
I’m probably not meant to overhear Hugo answer for his husband.
“I said that the twins won’t forget you. No, they can’t speak yet. Can’t say your name or thank you for helping them feel secure. They’ll remember you each time they believe they’re worth taking care of, long after you say goodbye to them.”
My phone ringing is a reprieve from overhearing more. I don’t get time to be surprised by my brother calling when I almost stumble over little Adam. He’s all huge eyes and worry, two soft, pink rabbits clutched to his chest. “Milly and Tilly’s bedtime buns.”
“Yeah, they are, mate.”
He holds them out. “For their house?”
I’m not sure today is the day the girls will leave for good. “Shall we pop those bunnies back in their cribs for now so they don’t get lost?” I scoop Adam up then and juggle him, soft toys, and my phone while taking the stairs. “Hold on a minute, Josh, will you?” I don’t wait to find out if he has the time to do that. I’ve got important work to do reassuring a worried preschooler who asks, “Daddy’s sad?”
“Yes.” Honesty is always the best policy when it comes to emotion. So is having time to process, so I stop in the nursery doorway. “Saying goodbye is always hard, but your Daddy will be okay, and so will the twins.” I help Adam drop a bunny into each crib, my phone wedged between my chin and shoulder.“Because here’s the thing about twins—they’ll always have each other. Always. And you know what else they’ll have when they go home to their mummy?”
Adam could be Lenny, he’s so wide-eyed and silent.
“They’ll remember that you taught them all about sharing. You, Adam. You did so good sharing your home with them.” I set him down beside a bookcase and tap the cover of a book I’ve seen Charles read to all three children. “I know a librarian. I bet he’d say that if you shared a book with the twins to take home, they’d find their way back here with it one day and return it.”
This book opens to an inscription like I once left for Lenny, only this one says, Fly high, Adam! Love always, Uncle Rex , so I think fast.
“Or maybe there’s something else you could lend to the girls? Something it takes two to play with, yeah, so they don’t forget how to share, like you’ve been teaching them by sharing both your daddies?”
I start looking, and my memory chooses right now to serve up a reminder of family holidays minus Mum. Of Dad slapping a brand-new jigsaw between me and Josh and promising ice cream just as long as we took turns to slot together pieces without fighting. “How about a puzzle?” I open a toy box. “One for babies, not for big boys, like you. Something easy so they can build their sharing muscles.”
A nursery bedroom is a weird place to once again remember Dad teaching us to knot each other’s school ties. Today, my collar is unbuttoned. I still tug at it, as if Josh has pulled my knot too tightly.
“See if you can find something they’ll need each other for, yeah?”
I get back to my call, aware that my tone shifts from gentle to something so much tougher. “Yes?” Christ, I sound like Dad. “What do you want, Josh?” I match the energy I expect to hear next, which comes out sounding way too hard-edged in this bedroom full of soft toys, grating instead of the tender I’ve been with Adam. I leave him distracted with a stack of puzzles and head for the hallway. “Josh?”
When he doesn’t answer, I assume he’s rung off to get back to his computer coding until he stutters, “W-who were you talking to about twins?”
“No one that you need to hack the police database to trace, thanks.” Adam has found a wooden farmyard, busy sorting black sheep as I speak to my family’s one and only white one. “Why did you call?”
“To find out why you’re cancelling this weekend. But first, who was it you were talking to?”
“None of your business. And quit being so suspicious. I was hardly teaching him how to hot-wire engines. I was?—”
“Teaching him how to be a good big brother.” This comes out in a rush. “You’re gonna kill it as an uncle.” Josh isn’t his usual certain. “How... How do you already know how to be a good one? How, Joe, when I don’t even know how to be a dad yet?”
I have to close my eyes and need to take a long and slow breath before I can force this out.
“Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?”
Josh’s laugh is as strangled. “Fuck off.” For once, it sounds as if he doesn’t mean it, and I’d risk believing if he didn’t immediately tag on a brisker order. “You’re coming home.”
“Not this weekend. Sorry.” I can’t. Not even for Meera, who I don’t think will hold it against me.
She couldn’t. Not if she met Isaac.
I open my mouth without thinking. “Unless I can bring someone with me.” I instantly backtrack. “Forget it.” I’m in no rush for Isaac to meet the two men who’ll always see me as a loser. Dad can’t even look at me without wincing, and Josh is… Josh. Besides, Isaac’s prison visit sounds intense enough already. “Gotta go. Someone has to teach kids how to make drug deliveries. Looks like I’m the resident expert.” And if I’m stopped in my tracks by my brother actually laughing again instead of listing sentencing guidelines, that’s nothing to what stops my heart next.
“Dad brought over three paint rollers in case you were coming. I don’t care who you bring with you. Just come over, yeah?”
What I actually do is deliver a little boy to his red-eyed daddy along with a simple puzzle for twins to solve together. Then I go spend a morning helping Hugo.
Before I know it, it’s afternoon and time for the introductory talk Luke suggested ahead of agreeing to more workshops. A trial of my own, I guess.
These sixth-form students are all London transplants, boys and girls who could give me a run for my past-crimes money. Noah sits in the back row of the classroom. He’s warmed up around me lately, but here, flanked by kids I know share our accent, he’s silent. So are they. Even my usual dad jokes get me nowhere. Girls sigh, so unimpressed, and boys yawn. It doesn’t help that the windows in this classroom give me a primo view of Isaac.
He isn’t in his library. He’s in that outdoor classroom, and if he reads a story, he does it empty-handed, leading little ones on a journey of discovery. Of dance, while Rowan plays a penny whistle. Of imagination, that involves the kids building something out of cardboard boxes.
“A car.”
“You what, sir?”
I’m dragged back to the reality of this classroom and a sea of the same expressions I used to mirror, back when being seen as a hard man was all that mattered. These kids are just as flinty, just as icy, until Luke pops in to see how we’re doing.
Most of them melt in a hurry for him.
That’s what I need them to do with me, and soon, if Luke is gonna agree to more than one talk from me. And after the last few weeks, I want that so much. Fuck it, I’ve wanted to be closer to Isaac for a whole lot longer if I count the first time I saw him rise to a caring challenge.
He’s my inspiration, my reason for getting brutally honest in a hurry, all while his new boss sits in to listen.
“I said a car because that’s what got me on the road to earning these.” I slip out of my jacket and roll up my shirt sleeves, aware of sharp inhalations. For once, I want to hear them. Need to, if I’m going to leave a lasting impression on kids who could so easily follow in my wannabe top-boy footsteps or fall victim to the same exploitation as Emma Webber. “The first time I got arrested was for TWOCing. Taking a car without consent.”
I didn’t need to translate that shorthand. They all speak my language. A few of them lean forward, so I keep going.
“I stole it as a way to prove myself to a gang that used to hang out at a boxing club. I was never much of a fighter, but I wanted to be noticed, so I served them up a shiny Range Rover without thinking ahead.”
A hard-faced girl squints at the ruin of my scar tissue. “You crash it?”
I guess the reason for that question. “No. These burns aren’t from a car fire. And all I learned that first time was to avoid stealing motors with built-in trackers.” I snort softly at past-me who had wanted to belong so badly. “Might as well have driven it straight to the feds instead of to their chop shop. It took me a few more years and a string of arrests to earn these.” I touch the spatter of marks on the back of my hand, but it’s little Adam I picture, with his pile of puzzle boxes. “Each arrest stacked up. Got me closer to the top of a hierarchy I thought meant I was finally accepted. You know what all that trying to be a big man really was?”
I look at that sea of faces. They’re still noncommittal. Still sitting behind desks with their arms crossed. A tough crowd to warm up, unlike Isaac’s kids outside in early summer sunshine.
That gets me moving.
“I’d tell you, but showing you is probably better. If we can take this conversation outside?”
Because that’s what this needs to be—a two-way discussion, not a lecture.
Luke nods, and we end up at the front door of the school, the playground to one side, the car park to the other, and I head for a van parked in the shade of a tall willow. I get them to wait there while hurrying to the outdoor classroom. “Can I borrow your van for a demonstration?”
Isaac blinks but doesn’t need convincing, and I tuck that trust away along with this morning’s saved kiss before stopping him from digging in his own pocket. “I don’t need the keys.” I do need tools, which Glynn Harber’s resident giant lends to me.
“Thanks, Hayden.” I jog back to the van with a borrowed toolbox and a question for this group of unimpressed teens.
“One of you try the door. Is it locked or unlocked?”
Noah finds out for me. “Locked.”
“And the other side?” Another student finds out the same, and I’m sure Luke must wonder what the fuck I’m doing by demonstrating how to pop locks, but they stop hanging back the moment I open the driver side door and make that look easy. “Every sentence I served as a youth offender only taught me new skills like this.”
I don’t need a key to start the engine. I work my car-thief magic until it coughs and hiccups, which lets me show these kids what it took more than acid to burn into me.
“You know what would have been more useful than serving time each time I was arrested?” I kill an engine that already sounds at death’s door and go sit in the opening of the side door. That’s where I grab a couple of books from a collection that Isaac curated for kids sentenced to missing a parent. “It would have been better for me to learn how to deal with losing my Mum at thirteen.” I add more books to my stack. “Or how to grieve in a family of men who don’t do emotion.”
Adding another book to my stack comes with Luke nodding from behind these kids who have stopped hanging back. They edge closer to hear me spit facts. “If I’d known how to deal with that, it might have been easier to deal with the reality of being gay in a world where being a hard man mattered.” I shake my head. “So there I was, with two strikes against me. Some of you have more than that already. Believe me, finding sketchy ways to fit in didn’t work out for me. Neither did overcompensating.”
I top my stack with a fourth book and with a final confession.
“Everything I did was to stop hurting. I didn’t know enough to ask myself if the people I was desperate to fit in with would help me climb life’s ladders or if they wanted to knock me down a few rungs to prove they were more powerful.” Hindsight has me shaking my head. “The thing is, once you’re in too deep, digging yourself out isn’t easy. Sound familiar?”
A few heads nod.
I nod back. “If you’ve ever felt cornered, I could talk you through some strategies another time if you wanted. Work with you to come up with some of your own so you get to moonwalk away from trouble without losing face or having issues escalate to this.”
I touch a scarred wrist, and Luke nods even harder, so I do more than roll up my sleeves. I stand to tug my shirt free and reveal enough of the shitshow splashing my torso and back to provoke indrawn breaths just as the school bell rings for break time, and I tuck my shirt back in so not to scare any younger students.
“I’ll wear my mistakes forever. Thought they meant I’d lost everything. My friends, who pretended they didn’t know me.My family, because they were ashamed.” It still hurts to admit this. “Of me.”
You’re gonna kill it as an uncle.
I have to sit again then—need a moment to replay what sounded far from the shame I’ve had running as my background program for so long.
Digging inside that borrowed toolbox buys me some time, but I’m suddenly clumsy and the stack of books beside me falls onto car park gravel.
Isaac must have finished his storytelling session.
He scoops up those missing-parent titles, and I just talked about men who don’t do emotion, but one glance from him shows me plenty. I hear it too in his murmur. “Ashamed? They can’t know you.”
I’d kiss him if knife-sharp eyes didn’t watch us.And I’d ask Isaac to come with me, as Josh suggested, which almost feels like a bridge between where we’ve been and where we are now. I would, if the headmaster of this school didn’t cross his arms like I still have work to do to secure a longer run of workshops.
That’s all I need to see to go all out, only not to impress Luke Lawson.
The way Isaac looks at me?
I can’t stop. Not until I’m sure I’ll get to keep him.