Chapter 25
25
JOE
I don’t remember falling asleep or know if I’m truly awake until movement registers.
Isaac lies on his side, facing away, outlined by a faint glow. He shifts minutely, swiping his phone screen, I guess, his hair a night-dark halo I can’t help touching.
Soft curls wrap my fingers. I tug on one lightly. “Problem?” If something is keeping him awake, I want to solve that issue for him. “Can I help?”
“No.” He rolls over to face me, his voice low and husky. “Sorry if I disturbed you.”
“By reading? You didn’t.” The text of his book is barely bright enough to read let alone to wake me. “Must be good.”
“Not compared to you.” His gaze is shadowed, soft like his hair, and everything I used to dream of when hookups used to leave long before the morning.
Tonight, that faint glow from Isaac’s phone shows me that dreams can come true. His chest is bare. So is his expression while he touches my face. Isaac traces my jawline, my lower lip, a smile of his own flickering when I kiss the tips of those exploring fingers. He ends by sliding a hand through my hair and cupping the nape of my neck to pull me closer, and I can’t keep in a rumble at that sliding sensation or at what he whispers to me.
“Can’t sleep, Joe. But I can’t concentrate on reading either.”
He lets go of me to page back, his phone screen filling with a whole library of titles. Books go on forever, he scrolls through so many of them. “My brain won’t stop. Nothing can hold my interest.”
I hope to fuck I do—that I get to hold his interest long term, whatever happens.
I want that so much I don’t try to hide worry that comes out sounding as husky as him. “We’re gonna be okay, yeah?”
Time stands still for a long moment until Isaac slides even closer. His hold on me is as firm as his answer. “Yes.” That hold tightens, the next tug on my hair way harder than mine was on that single curl of his.
I like it. Like too that he only releases me to keep exploring. His thumb brushes against stubble at the hinge of my jaw, and he leans in for a kiss but misses my mouth—on purpose, I think. His lips drag next to mine as if he likes the prickle.
Isaac wants more friction, and not only in his bedtime reading. I don’t have to guess that. He goes ahead and tells me.
“You know the problem with the book I’m reading?”
I shake my head, which brings my ear to his lips.
“You aren’t in it.”
I’d like to believe that rough whisper, only I’m not sure I’m the real hero of today’s story. I can’t be after listening to what my brother attempted for me, or after witnessing that dirt under Noah’s nails.
He dug deep for Lenny. For Isaac and me. Most of all, he faced fear for his own brother, and man, I got nothing but respect for that.
I guess that’s why I can’t care about Josh making the piss-poor teen decision that burned me. I’m a mistake-making expert, after all. Made plenty of my own. The real truth is that the wheels of justice might just turn again soon, all due to my twin and a kid smart enough to break a cycle of violence by asking for help.
Only Isaac’s breath coasting across my ear can distract me from what that might mean for us.
An actual happy ending.
His lips find a pulse at the base of my neck next, where he nips nerve endings alight. He’s fierce about making me feel good, and I’m just as fierce about what I need to make that happen.
“Really want to keep you. All of you.”
I picture Isaac and Lenny, a fractured family one step closer to reuniting. To healing.
He surprises me by mentioning my own.
“I’ll talk to Josh. Tell him why I lost it with him.”
Isaac didn’t lose it. He came out fighting for me, and I’m never gonna forget it. Never gonna forget him being as watchful as he is now while straddling my hips, either. He waits a beat as if checking he isn’t too heavy for unpredictable scar tissue while murmuring about other old wounds. “He wanted to protect you.” This sounds like a promise. “Same.”
Isaac tests how much of his weight I can take, searching for a sign he should stop. I’m not about to give him any—he’s exactly the right kind of heavy on my dick, which wakes up in a hurry. So does my heart, which alternates between speeding and clenching at the sight of him taking this much care.
I’m here for anything he’ll give me, for soft lips and the sharp edge of his incisors, for kisses like these that come with rough confessions. “I’d have wanted to get you out of that world too. Would have done anything I could to save you.” His mouth against my throat sends all kinds of signals. So does him rocking against where I’m hard for him, and maybe that does something for him too—he’s breathless when his mouth meets mine, wet and open.
He’s so good at this, I lose time to the sensation of him sucking on my tongue. He’s good too at finding where else sucking me feels even better.
Isaac shuffles back, straddling my knees now, his mouth on the head of my cock, and the light from his phone fades.
I don’t need extra brightness to name what helicopter searchlights find through the gap in my curtains. Isaac looks up from following a map of his own along fat veins from my base of my dick to the head. His lips and my dick are both wet by the time he’s done, and all I see is what he told me outside a Tube station this morning.
He dips his head to swallow me down, our eye contact broken, and my eyes close at this heat, this slick slide and the tight clutch where his throat narrows. He pushes for more, and fuck it, I give him what he asks for.
Both of my hands find curls to hang onto, hips chasing more of that constriction, and he chokes. His eyes are wet. Wild. And I see more of what I already noticed and what willow leaves once fractured. A mirror in a school bathroom also reflected what Isaac now shows me, and I don’t know how I didn’t see love sooner. It’s so easy to name. He doesn’t have to verbalise it. It’s already as clear as if those circling helicopters swung their searchlights straight through the window.
Thank fuck they don’t—the pilots would only get an eyeful of Isaac shuffling higher up my torso. Not to sit where scars wrap me. Higher. He brings his dick level with my mouth where it lands a precome-damp kiss to my chin, to my cheek, and to the lips I open for him.
Salt floods my mouth, an explosion of sharpness, and I’m flooded with even more of that care he keeps giving.
Isaac leans over me to grasp the headboard instead of bracing his hands somewhere that might send phantom distress signals. He doesn’t need to be this careful, so I grasp his arse to pull him closer—deeper—and I go ahead and drown in scent and taste and sensation.
I only choke because reaching under the pillow for lube while sucking him off wrecks my coordination. I guess he realises—he pauses rocking, then breathes, “Yeah,” once I smear lube across his hole.
Isaac lurches forward, so deep I can’t breathe. That’s no problem. We’re old hands at inhaling and exhaling with each other. All I have to do is wait for him to rock back onto the finger I press inside him. Then I get to drag in a gasping breath before he rocks forward again.
I’ll never take this give and take for granted.
This trust.
I also don’t hurry to get a second finger inside him. I take my time to find what and where is good for him, and his next groans come with another flood of flavour.
He pulls away what feels like far too quickly, but the click of the cap on the lube distracts me from caretaking. He does that for me. “I’m it for you, yeah?” He slicks my bare dick, and it’s a stupid time for my eyes to sting, but I nod again at him adding, “Because you’re it for me whatever happens.”
He’s as bare as I am, as raw, and this slow descent almost kills me. So does his mouth on mine, where he catches a soul-deep groan of my own.
His shadowed smile when he pulls back lights up the whole room, my entire world. So does his determination. He takes me inch by inch and tells me all about it. “F-fuck.”
“Need to stop?”
His gaze slays me. “Just getting started.” Isaac takes what he needs, the whole time giving back the kind of pleasure that makes it hard to hold back. I’m gonna believe that we’ll get to do this again, no matter which way those wheels of justice turn in the morning.
I still give in to the same urge I once walked away from, needing to fuck him through my mattress, to pin him here and keep him like this could be our last time. Or I would if he didn’t catch hold of my face all over again once I’ve muscled him where I want him.
“Love you.”
He’s flat on his back, and I’m above him, our faces so close he has to see what his promise does for me.
I used to believe da Silvas didn’t do emotion. Were stoic and silent. That I’d never be as strong as either of them. Lately, I’m questioning everything I thought I knew about my family, but right now, with Isaac’s legs around me, he’s my whole world, my only focus, the one and only man I want to be enough for.
I do that for as long as I can, fucking him slow to stave off this from ever ending, grinding into him over and over. Sweat beads and the bedsheets bunch until he has to let them go to get a hand between us. I find my voice then in a hurry.
“Let me.”
I get him off with quick tight strokes and his come spatters, leaving a mess on his belly that I’d add to if I wasn’t buried deep inside him.
I do let go then. Stop holding back and let myself feel this tight clench that squeezes my heart and soul as well as my dick. I couldn’t hold back any longer even if I wanted. Isaac doesn’t want me to—he urges me on until I shoot, and my bodyweight smears that mess on his belly between us.
He does let me take care of that, and him, once I stop seeing stars, and man, I love every second of that fussing.
We finally catch our breath side by side, the dawn still distant, and his hand finds mine in the darkness.
Isaac laces us together for as long as it takes sleep to finally find him. At least, I think he’s asleep when I turn down the brightness on my phone one-handed to search for answers to questions that must also be on his mind.
His eyes open, and fuck me, he’s gorgeous inside and out. He must be to forgive this easily on the behalf of a missing parent. “I had a van. Could get Len away from trouble and to a safe place to hide him. What did your brother have?”
I can’t answer, my throat is too thick.
“He’s like your Dad, yeah?”
I can nod at that. Josh is.
Isaac nods too. “They’re both good at doing. Not so much at speaking about all the stuff that sticks here.” He unlaces our linked hands to touch the patch of hair at the centre of his chest, rubbing the same way Noah does so often. “He must have been gutted at how it played out. He never said a word after you got burned?”
I shake my head, then nod, and I have to dash at my stupid eyes again now that each recent wasp-buzz moment hits so different.
“I think he wanted to, back then. I woke up a few times in the hospital to him saying sorry. Thought I dreamed it. Now I think he always wanted to talk but couldn’t until recently. He was building up to it. Kept looking for reasons for us to be together.”
In hindsight, each of those where are you demands Josh made have new meaning. A plea instead of a sting. And now that I’ve seen the end result of Noah literally moving heaven and earth to swoop to our rescue, then shut down the minute he admitted to being scared shitless for his brother, I can’t help drawing parallels. He got overwhelmed. It left him isolated.
Isaac putting that into words does something to me. “Josh didn’t ask anyone to throw that acid at you. It burned him every day since regardless. I want to hear his story. Bring him to Cornwall to tell it to me when Mum...”
When she finally gets some justice?
I know Isaac will return to Cornwall in the morning for Lenny. I still don’t like leaving this story unfinished. Too many loose threads still need tying. I try to say so but have to settle for kissing him again.
That’s okay.
Isaac doesn’t need me to keep talking. We’re on the same page about our future.
All we need is for those wheels to turn a little faster.
It takes a week for those stalled wheels to finally grind into motion, slowly at first, then faster as forensic results gather momentum. And like the fast train I catch to carry good news to Isaac, once justice builds up speed, nothing stops it.
Seven days after Noah followed a map designed to find a missing mother, he sits across a train table from both her and me in a quiet carriage. His face is as red as his hair after spilling the same kind of drink that once stained my shirtfront.
Marc gets up from his seat beside him, telling his little brother not to worry, then heads down the train in search of replacement hot chocolate all while Noah’s face flames. It doesn’t matter that it was only an accidental spill that Emma Webber easily mopped up with a napkin. He’s embarrassed, masking it by holding up a folder as if he’s engrossed in reading, but his white knuckles remind me of Kwasi so strongly that I fire off a quick email.
Kwasi is still on my mind when my phone rings a minute later.
Hugo Calling.
I can’t help grinning, but maybe that’s contagious—the next carriage along is crammed with happy people. Their party spirit spills into this one each time the dividing doors open, and I can’t help my own spirits from rising at Hugo getting back to me this promptly.
I keep my voice low, murmuring, “Thanks for getting back to me so fast. Can you hold for a moment, Hugo? I’m in a quiet carriage.” I check in with my seatmate. “I need to take this.” I stand up and point to the sliding doors. “I’ll only be on the other side of those, okay?”
A set of doe eyes lock with mine, and I recognise this brand of wide and wary, this bruised but silent panic that means I sit again in a hurry.
“Or I can stay right here, Emma, no problem.” I speak into my phone next. “Hugo, I wanted to talk to you about a client. One I’m worried is in more trouble than he’s admitted. I wondered if Glynn Harber might have room for him, but I’ll have to catch you later.”
His reply is loud enough that my seatmate has to hear it. “You won’t catch me, Joseph. I won’t be here. A parish emergency has come up, then I’m off to the island. I’m about to leave. Listen, do you have a moment for something important? No need to speak, just listen while I walk and talk.”
I flash another look sideways, which is a mistake—desperate has always been my kryptonite. But so is strength, which Isaac’s mum gathers from fuck knows where, even if her voice shakes.
“Someone needs your help? Go ahead. Take your call.” She also glances across the table, and freezes at who has taken the seat next to Noah in Marc’s absence.
Josh.
She doesn’t want me to leave her with him.
My brother notices and pushes himself out of his usual comfort zone, and a week of seeing him through a clearer lens means I witness what this costs him. He touches the edge of the folder Noah grasps so tightly—the twin of a folder his wife once practically skipped across a living room to give me. “You haven’t made it past the first page since we left London. We’re almost at Cornwall. Want me to show you the page my missus suggested would be most helpful? To me, I mean, when I was figuring myself out.”
I don’t want to miss this. Can’t. Not when Josh turns to a page full of intersecting circles. His gaze darts to the woman he watched get arrested before it lands on a circle the same sunshine yellow as a freshly painted nursery.
Hugo must guess that I’m distracted from his phone call. Before ringing off, he repeats what I must have missed the first time around. “I said that Luke and I want to talk you through a proposal soon. To join our team. Think about it, Joseph.” He wouldn’t have needed to repeat himself if I wasn’t so invested in hearing a different story.
Josh talks to Noah but he keeps looking at Emma. “You see, this circle describes my wife. And everything written inside it is how come Meera knows her stuff. How she knew more about me than I did.” He flicks a look my way. “Neurodiversity is her thing. That’s why she puts these packs together for families. This is her.” He touches a label that Noah reads out.
“Dyspraxic.”
“Yup. That’s one label. She didn’t find out until she was your age. Explained little things like why her handwriting looks like drunk spiders having a rave. And why she’s always covered in bruises. Her family are sporty, and for a long time, she felt bad about being clumsy. That’s the label she gave herself. She tried to fit in, but that would be like painting a room grey just because everyone else does. Look around the next time you go shopping. Grey is everywhere.”
He taps that sunny yellow circle. “She says being dyspraxic helps her to relate to struggling people.” He runs his own finger under a much better definition for Meera. “It built her empathy.”
I see him chance another look across the table in Emma’s direction.
“Empathy doesn’t apply to everyone like her, but she’ll chat shit with anybody. Never stops yapping and asking questions. You’d like her. Everyone does. Can’t believe she chose someone who isn’t the best at communicating, like me. But when Meera said I could choose my own description, like she had, you bet I listened.”
He meets my eyes for a fleeting moment, and I see our father.
“Call myself caring instead of closed off because I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Joe as well as our mother? I’ll take that. Or describe myself as determined instead of obsessive because I couldn’t rest until he got justice?”
I guess it’s true that every scar does tell a story when Josh describes his own so clearly.
“I’m not saying that I would have ended up in a different line of work if I’d gone down the ASD diagnostic route any earlier. But I might have found tools to help me talk to Joe about what happened to him because of me.”
Emma eyes my hands, my wrists, the scars I wear on my outside, and my heart aches as Josh describes the hidden ones he’s lived with.
“I couldn’t deal with not knowing what would happen now and next for me and Joe, if I told him the truth. But I also couldn’t risk...”
He doesn’t need to finish that sentence. I do it for him. “I never wanted to lose you either.”
He nods, then draws in the same kind of deep breath Isaac has made so familiar. Josh looks as determined to finish what he’s started.
“All I’m saying is that overwhelm cost me a lot. Yeah, me and Joe have got the same hardware but we’re running different software. I wasn’t wired to deal with it, and Meera didn’t only notice, she helped me understand why.”
His next glance across the table is fleeting again like this eye contact is hard, but under the table, his feet find mine, slotting us together like puzzle pieces.
“It doesn’t have to be the same for you, Noah, whatever happens in your trial. This circle is mine. It might not be yours, but it kinda explains why I was locked in on one thing and one thing only—believing it was me who should be in prison.”
If I ever wanted proof beyond my own eyes that Emma Webber gave birth to Isaac and his brother, it’s this small sound of consolation. I hear it again when the train pulls into the station and a carriage full of passengers giddy with party spirit hurries out ahead of us to fill the platform.
“A reunion,” she sighs from the train doorway as a small boy runs into a man’s arms. His shout echoes.
“Daddy, Daddy!”
Hadi.
I see Ruth and her son get swept up into a hug next by a returning husband and father, I guess. She’s gone just as quickly. Steam from a tourist locomotive billows a white cloud between us. It parts a moment later to offer a glimpse of Luke, and I’d take a moment to appreciate how happiness suits him so much better than sternness if it wasn’t for who else I spot through steamy tendrils.
Isaac.
The platform might as well be empty instead of full of reuniting families. All I see is both he and Lenny searching, scanning, seeking out someone that another gust of steam hides from them.
I hurry then, and it doesn’t matter that Emma Webber is a shrimp who could easily get swamped on this crowded platform. She takes my arm, hand curling my elbow, then takes the arm Josh offers, and nothing stops us from bringing her home to the only little boy here who arrived without a parent.
“Mum! That’s my mum!”
Today, Lenny will get to leave with her at long last, and I’ll never forget what steam clears just in time to show me.
Isaac meets my eyes over his mother’s shoulder, his own glossy for the best of reasons, and I couldn’t wish for a happier ending with my brother right beside me.