Chapter 23
23
JOE
Isaac doesn’t sleep. I know because I don’t sleep either. I can’t when this could be our last night together.
Because of my brother.
A case of mistaken identity is more likely; a coincidence involving a tall, dark, and unrelated stranger. But as this endless yet too-short night grinds towards dawn when Isaac finally drops off, I rewind every conversation I’ve had lately with Josh and replay each of his where are you phone calls.
I’m miles from Cornwall where seagulls spiral every clifftop. Me circling back to his recent nosing through my court calendar feels like balancing over a different kind of long drop—one I’m not sure we could climb again together.
The thin light of a city morning bleaches my bedroom ceiling as I replay a wasp buzzing in a Rectory bedroom, Josh confessing his motivator.
Wintergreen, innit?
That place shouldn’t be on his data-collecting radar.
So why was it?
I don’t hear a wasp buzzing right now. I don’t even hear passing sirens, although there must be plenty this close to a black hole that sucks in kids and spits out violence. I do hear waves crash, even though the last time I looked down on foaming water was when Lenny napped in a lay-by. It’s Isaac’s turn to sleep now. He’s out for the count, and so am I at the idea of what waits at the bottom of a cliff for us if Emma Webber wasn’t mistaken.
What I need right now is another option, so the sleeping beauty sharing my bed can meet the other half of me one day and not hate him. Because I’ve said it once already, Isaac is it for me. But Josh is me in ways that go beyond a single egg splitting in two.
That’s nature.
Nurture is on my mind this morning. Has been since finding out I was gonna be an uncle. Staying with those twin babies was another reminder that family matters, no matter how it’s made. So was every mention of additional support in that folder Meera gave me for a family new to a potential diagnosis. Mending Isaac’s van was another reason to look back. Dad raised us both to fix things, not to break them. This morning, the past won’t let up reminding me of long nights in a burns unit when Josh must have thought I was unconscious.
He guarded me then. Now I want to defend him. The jury is out on whether I can, and I wish to fuck Dad was here to show me how to prevent this car crash about to happen.
A wasp does buzz then—Josh finally returning my calls.
My phone vibrates, and I grab it before it can wake Isaac, who wrapped around me last night as if I’d stop him from drowning. Now the only thing keeping me afloat is the chance that Josh can clear his own name.
I whisper a quick instruction.
No.
I issue an abrupt Josh-like demand.
“Meet me outside court at eleven.” I don’t give him a chance to argue. I end the call, but I wasn’t quiet enough—Isaac watches with eyes I know are big-cat amber. Today, they’re hollow and look as sore as mine feel.
“How long have we got?”
I want forever to be an option. I have to settle for taking today minute by minute. “I’m meeting Kwasi before court opens.” I don’t add that I’ll meet Josh after I’m done reassuring my client. I can’t say his name and risk seeing more pain. “I’ll need to leave soon. You don’t have to. Stay here until your visit, yeah?”
I want to take care of him to the very last second. Want Isaac in my home for so much longer than we have left. Need to make his life easier, not harder, only he won’t let me.
“I’ll leave when you do.”
I should get busy then. Should make the most of this final countdown while I still can.
I can’t move.
Can’t get this day started.
My motor’s well and truly stalled, and right now, I’m not even sure my dad could fix it. Only a mother admitting she was mistaken will do that, and her son’s hollow eyes suggest he knows that won’t happen.
Isaac must notice that I’ve run out of options, and perhaps this is what twelve months of caretaking taught him—he gets busy doing it for me.
On any other day, I’d love him taking over by running the shower and not letting me under steamy water until he’s sure it won’t scald me. I can’t relax while there’s a wasp in the periphery of my vision. Not for real. Nothing buzzes in this bathroom we share for what might be a first and last time. I still feel a sting when Isaac soaps me.
I swallow down everything I said already. If he listened to my messages, he knows what I couldn’t hold in—a love you I’d repeat if I thought hearing it would help. And he knows I’m as sure as I can be that my brother played no part in Isaac needing to make up stories and draw a map to lead a little kid to prison. I’m also pretty sure he knows that I can iron my own shirt, but that’s what he does for me while his hair drips and a towel around his hips clings damply.
I can’t keep my distance.
I wrap my arms around him from behind and hold him close as steam hisses. The air fills with the scent of our shared shampoo and heated cotton as I kiss his still wet shoulder. Soft lips meet mine when he cranes his neck, and if my shirt gets scorched by the iron Isaac abandons to turn to kiss me, it doesn’t matter. I’ve worked with worse marks on my shirtfront.
What I don’t have is more time, now that I need to go meet the kid who caused the last one. We still kiss, chest-to-chest for what feels like a last time, as sirens scream below my window.
More sirens pass when we leave my flat. They follow us to my Tube stop. All too soon, a different alarm sounds at the entrance to the Underground station where we’ll finally part ways. This one is internal.
Don’t let him go.
Isaac backs off, and I should do the same. I’m stopped by the sight of him with Wintergreen as a brutal backdrop. That concrete jungle only showcases gentleness more suited to Cornwall. Not that anyone would know at first glance when his chin lifts to tell the world nothing scares him. I see his real truth when I call out, “I’ll be there waiting.”
His eyes sheen until he blinks fast a few times.
I can’t put off mentioning this for any longer. “And I’ll bring Josh.”
If Isaac nods, I don’t see it while commuters divide us. They part again to show him about to fall on a sword to set me free from having to make a no-win decision. “Don’t, Joe. Don’t even ask if he was there when Mum was arrested. Walk away if that would only fuck you two up forever.”
He adds more distance between us, and the scared kid waiting for me outside a court building means I should add some distance of my own.
I can’t.
Neither can Isaac, who comes back so I get to hear him loud and clear.
“Love you so fucking much. Did before. Still do.” He steps closer. “And I love you for wanting to fix this. But you can stop.”
I couldn’t say which of us holds the other the tightest or cares that we’re in the path of commuters. I hold on because I know what someone throwing a fight sounds like. Did it myself plenty when I couldn’t bear to take a swing at my brother.
I won’t let Isaac do the same for me now.
I can’t.
That only leaves one option.
If it means I get to keep him, I won’t only ask Josh about his involvement, I’ll fight to get the whole truth from him.
I’d make a start on that right away if a teen about to throw hands didn’t demand my attention. I spot Kwasi’s balled fists, and it isn’t even nine yet, but he’s found the worst person in the world to spar with outside a courthouse.
Josh.
I dodge city traffic then to fling myself between them.
“Hey, hey. Hold it. What’s going on?”
My brother tries to shield me by shoving me behind him. I have to shove back to stay piggy in the middle. Josh can take that roughness from me. This kid can’t, so I’m gentler with him. “Easy, Kwasi. Easy.” I tilt my head to the end of the street where a couple of cops stand beside the same kind of high-speed pursuit car that Dad used to tune up for a living. “No need to attract their attention, yeah?”
“Too late.” Kwasi spits the same definition for my brother as Noah once did for me. “He’s a fed.”
Josh huffs from behind me. “I already told you?—”
My client rolls his shoulders. “You already told me shit.” His fists still clench. “I saw you get out of that.” He unclenches for just long enough to jab a shaking finger at the pursuit car. “And I heard you chatting work shit with the driver. You calling me a liar?”
I expect Josh to react. For once, he must read this high emotion. Or maybe he realises he’s a sole white sheep between two black ones, and I can’t remember the last time he backed off from a fight, but he lets me deal with this one.
All of Kwasi’s posturing is fear—him assuming his bad dreams have come to life like I bet Isaac did the moment he opened his eyes this morning. Kwasi’s finger still shakes when he jabs it at me. “Thought he was you, didn’t I? Went over to check they weren’t hassling you for some bullshit reason. Only he told me to mind my business and turned his back, so I thought—” He breaks off to look anywhere but at me, and I guess the reason.
“You thought I was done advocating for you? That I wasn’t actually on your side and hadn’t been this whole time?”
His nod is tight. Fast. There and gone as quickly as it once took him to throw his drink at me. That high-stress meeting led to a trusting breakthrough for us. Now we’re almost back where we started, and a night without sleep means I don’t think on my feet as fast as usual.
Josh does it for me.
“Hey, listen. I’m sorry.” He muscles his way between us. “You surprised me, that’s all.” He surveys a kid no older than I was the last time I got locked up, and Josh is as blunt as usual. “Was expecting my twin to give me a bollocking this morning, not one of his clients.” He dices with danger by extending a fist, and Kwasi flicks a gaze my way to ask a simple, if silent, question.
Can I trust him?
I’ve never hesitated before.
I don’t exactly hesitate now, but Josh frowns at a split-second delay my client doesn’t notice—Kwasi bumps my brother’s fist, this drama over for him. It isn’t for Josh, who opens his mouth, no doubt to ask what the fuck . I stop him with a black-and-white statement.
“I said to meet me at eleven.”
He surprises me with his answer.
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have scared me shitless with that phone call, should you?” He hip-checks me out of the way to sling an arm across Kwasi’s shoulder. “Sounds like we both got a scare this morning, yeah? Guess that makes us even.”
He steers him up the steps to the court entrance, and I jog after them, on the back foot all over again when I hear what else Josh confesses.
“I was on edge because Joe telling me to come here was a reminder of all the times he got nicked for TWOCing. Dad would always get down the station in a hurry. Would drop everything and pull no end of strings to get Joe out of trouble. Did favour after favour to get him released with a telling-off instead of a criminal record, until he couldn’t. If Joe called, Dad ran.” His gaze lands on hands I’d usually shove in my pockets. “Can’t help doing the same.”
I’d say something about not needing his help if hearing what Dad used to do for me didn’t knock the breath from my body.
Josh isn’t done with landing punches. “My missus says Joe doesn’t need me to watch out for him these days, but I almost lost him once.” He shoots his own cuffs to show Kwasi how I looked before acid ended our identical days. “Not about to risk that happening ever again. So, if he calls?—”
“You come running?”
My brother nods. “Except he never does. Call, I mean. Mr. Self-Sufficient here never asks for a fucking thing, so for him to actually tell me to be here? You better believe I pulled in a favour of my own to get here in a hurry.” For once, he’s sheepish. “Might have overreacted by blue-lighting it across the river.” Josh checks his watch. “Bit early for court, isn’t it?”
Kwasi usually gets defensive when questioned. My brother’s won him over, and I wouldn’t have guessed Josh would end up tagging along on this very last chance to tour an empty courtroom. Some things haven’t changed. Josh is still assumptive. Still jumping to what sound like criminal conclusions. “What have you been charged with?”
“Nothing. It won’t be me on trial.” Kwasi’s chin lifting is a reminder of the one and only person I wish could see my brother being human by apologising, then by listening to Kwasi’s story. “Still feels like I’m being made to pay for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it’s messed up that none of my family were there but they’re the ones who keep getting threatened on the daily.” He ends with two familiar words that must feel like a life sentence. “Wintergreen, innit?”
That’s a link Josh latches onto, firing question after question once our tour is over, but all I register is how often he checks his watch.
As soon as a reassured Kwasi heads off, I ask, “You need to get back to work?”
“No.”
I guess again. “You need to head off to buy supplies for tomorrow?”
Josh blinks. “What’s happening tomorrow?”
“You and Dad painting the nursery.”
“No. He decided to get started today. It’ll all be done by the time I knock off work tonight. Anyway, that isn’t why I’m keeping an eye on the time. You told me when to be here.” He taps the face of his watch. “It’s almost time. What’s happening at eleven?”
I stand in the shadow of a statue holding scales of justice, but I can’t find the right balance between asking Josh questions about Isaac’s mother and making accusations. I end up giving a desperate order.
“Come with me. Now. We need to hurry.”
I head for the Underground entrance, only Josh stops me. “Hey. I didn’t just call in a favour for me. Where are we headed?”
I’ve been in plenty of cop cars for criminal reasons. Today is the first time I voluntarily get in one and ask the driver to take me back to prison.
Josh is instantly on alert. If he wore boxing gloves, they’d be raised. “You are in trouble.”
“Nope.”
But that isn’t true, is it?
“Yes.”
I’ll be in the worst trouble of my life if I don’t get to keep Isaac. And Josh.
Fuck.
I’ve never wanted Dad to bail me out more. Better still, I’d want him in the driver’s seat of this vehicle that slices through the city like a hot knife through butter. I can’t help rubbing my chest like Noah whenever he remembers the blade that almost cost him his life. I’ve never understood his silence more than at this moment.
Speak and potentially lose your family.
Stay silent and keep bleeding.
I break a silence of my own once we get out of the car and stand opposite a prison exit. “I fell for someone over a year ago. Got a second chance with him in Cornwall. Want to build a life with him. Could make a family with Isaac for his little brother.”
“Yeah?” I don’t expect Josh to give me another glimpse of Mum. She’s right there in his surprised smile. “Meera said you’d struck lucky down there.” He’s gruff. “Wondered if you’d tell me.” If my heart wasn’t already close to breaking, this would do it. “I want to meet him.”
“You will soon.” I can’t seem to clear my throat enough to speak without my voice grating. “You’ll get to meet Isaac right here, because he’s visiting someone who I hope to fuck is wrong.”
“About what?”
“About who set the wheels of a Wintergreen drugs raid in motion. I really don’t want it to be the person his mother is certain she saw that day.”
“Your new bloke’s mother is banged up in there?” Josh squints across at the prison building. “Who did she see?”
“Me.”
His frown deepens. “You? When?”
“When she was arrested. Doesn’t make sense, right?” I slot pieces together like the puzzles Dad challenged us to solve together. “Because I’m the last person who’d watch another family get fractured. Only Isaac’s mum says her arrest was down to me. Said she heard that I provided the intel and then she recognised me from a photo, only I don’t have the police connections to make anything like that happen, so it couldn’t be me. That only leaves?—”
“Me.”
“I was gonna say it only leaves someone else who looks like both of us, because it couldn’t be you either, could it? You’re back office, not front line. Civilians don’t go out on raids.”
My twin crushes my last hope just as a door opens across the street from us.
“I did once. And if it was that raid, then yes, it was down to me, and I was pretty happy about it going ahead until it was over.”
Across the street, Isaac leaves the prison with someone wearing a suit—the school’s legal counsel, I guess. I can’t pay attention to that stranger when I see Isaac stop dead.
He must witness a confession that breaks my heart. Has to see my last hope for a case of mistaken identity shatter. And I’m as sure as my suddenly blurred vision allows that Isaac sees how badly Josh’s next promise stings me.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
I can barely take in what follows.
“I’d call in every favour to get to see the fucker who got you scarred arrested. Been gathering the data for years. Why do you think I changed career paths?”
Isaac stalks across the street our way without looking, and horns blast. He picks up speed, sprinting between cars, and I know violence about to happen when I see it.
For the second time today, I get between my brother and someone who trusts me.
I plant one hand on Isaac’s chest, the other on Josh’s, any hope of a life including both men hanging from a cliff edge.
Isaac tried to save me once on a beach. My brother has apparently tried to do the same by hunting down who hurt me. Right now, I need another hero to swoop in and save all three of us from falling.
I wouldn’t have guessed he’d be a red-haired kid from Cornwall.