40. Chapter 40
Chapter forty
Lennox
The tomatoes are winning.
I stand over them with my hands on my hips, appraising the situation the way I used to appraise a scene, except the only crime here is that I planted them too close together in April because I didn’t believe the seed packet when it told me how big they’d get.
They’ve got me on it now. Every stake I add just gives them somewhere new to go.
I should have listened to the seed packet and not been a stubborn bastard.
I think that most days, about most things, these days.
The sun’s properly out, the kind of heat that surprises you this far southwest, and I’m sweating through an old shirt I’ve had since long before I knew what any of this was going to become, kneeling in dirt that isn’t London dirt, that’s never known a crime scene in its life, and there’s something almost indecent about how much I like it.
My knees complain when I stand up, more than they used to, and I stand up anyway, like I do every day, because the alternative is staying inside, and staying inside means not being out here, and not being out here has started to feel like the worse option, which not all that long ago would have baffled the man I used to be.
I tie off the worst offending tomato stem and look up at the house.
The tall windows are reflecting the evening sun as well as the garden. My tomatoes look great in the mirror image. Maybe there is hope yet.
The back door goes, and I don’t need to turn around to know it’s him, barefoot on the warm grass, because the garden always announces him a half second before I actually see him, some shift in the quality of the afternoon that I’ve stopped trying to explain to myself.
“You’ve been out here for hours,” he says, coming to stand beside me, two glasses of something cold in his hands, and he passes me one without asking if I want it, because he already knows I do.
“They’re winning,” I say, nodding at the tomatoes.
“Only if you let them.” He takes a sip of his own drink, surveying the plants with the mock seriousness of a man who has never once grown anything in his life and has no intention of starting. “It’s very charming, though. Very rustic. Retired detective, defeated by nature.”
“I’ll have you know I saved a whole row of these from slug damage last week.”
“You’re a hero.” He says it warmly, and leans into my side for a moment, smelling of garlic and whatever he’s had simmering since I came out here, and we stand like that for a minute, not talking, looking at a garden that I never knew I wanted.
“Have you thought any more about us having a dog?” he says, apropos of nothing, watching a wood pigeon do something aimless over by the wall rather than looking at me.
“A little,” I say, which is not remotely the same thing as no, and we both know it.
He doesn’t push. He just grins into his glass, quick and satisfied, the grin of a man who’s already picked out three names and is simply waiting for me to catch up to a decision we both know I’ve already made.
“The plumber’s coming Thursday about the outbuilding,” he says instead, looking at the tomatoes rather than at me. “For the second sink.”
“You renovated that room three months ago.”
“And I’m already outgrowing it. That’s a good sign, actually.” He grins, entirely without shame about it. “Speaking of, a parcel came for you this morning. Don’t ask what it cost, I already regret telling you the last time.”
“What is it?”
“A very specific kind of hose attachment that you will use exactly twice and then forget about.” He shrugs, unbothered, the way he’s unbothered about most things that would have made either of us gawp when we were kids, the ease of just deciding to want something and having it arrive.
“I ordered myself something too, before you ask.”
“I wasn’t going to ask.”
“You were absolutely going to ask.” He bumps his shoulder against mine.
I was, but now I’m not. My guess is something for his next OnlyFans shoot. But if I think about that too hard, I’m going to end up scooping him into my arms and carrying him to bed, and dinner is going to be burned. Again.
So I’m going to think about other things, and I’m not going to ask to watch, because OnlyFans is his thing and the tomatoes are mine, and why mess up something that works perfectly.
I like knowing there’s a version of him that thousands of strangers adore, because I get the version underneath that, the one that burns garlic if he’s not watching it and hums off key and still can’t quite believe some mornings that he gets to stay.
“Dinner’s nearly ready,” he says eventually, against my shoulder. “Go wash up. You look like you’ve been wrestling something.”
“I have been wrestling something. They’re called tomato plants.”
“Go,” he says, laughing, and doesn’t move yet, tipping his head back to look up at the sky instead, that particular shade of late gold it goes out here that London never quite managed. “God, I love this time of day.”
“You say that every evening.”
“It’s true every evening.” He looks over at me, easy and unguarded in a way I still notice, still catalogue, even now. “Do you ever miss it? London, I mean. Not the job. Just the city.”
I think about it properly before I answer, because he’s asked before and deserves a real answer rather than the quick one. “Sometimes. Not enough to want to go back.”
“Good answer.” He knocks his glass gently against mine, no ceremony to it, just a small private toast of his own before the real one. “Because I’m never living somewhere with that much traffic again.”
“You lived in a loft with a view of half the city.”
“Exactly. I’ve done my time.” He grins, unrepentant, and finally pushes off my shoulder properly, heading back toward the house. “Come on. Before this burns and I have to hear about it for a week.”
I stand there a moment longer, glass in hand, watching him go, the light catching the back of him as he crosses the grass, and then I follow him in.
I wash the soil off my hands and arms, and by the time I come through to the kitchen the smell hits me before I’m properly in the room, garlic and butter and something with wine in it, and Micah’s back at the stove, sleeves pushed up, moving around the pan with the easy, unhurried competence he brings to everything he cares about.
He’s got music on low, something I don’t recognize and he’d tease me for not recognizing, swaying very slightly to it without seeming to notice he’s doing it, humming under his breath in a key that isn’t quite the song’s.
There’s a row of tomatoes ripening along the windowsill above the sink, my doing, brought in before the birds could get to them, sitting next to a chipped mug he keeps meaning to throw out and won’t.
I don’t say anything for a moment. I just watch him.
There’s a domesticity to the whole scene that still catches me sideways sometimes, the fact of it, the ordinary miracle of this incredible man standing in our kitchen making dinner like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
It is the most natural thing in the world.
It’s taken me a while to actually believe.
“You’re staring,” he says, without turning around.
“I’m appreciating.”
“Mm.” He glances back at me over his shoulder, and whatever he sees in my face makes him grin, quick and a little smug. “Sit down, this is nearly done.”
I sit. He plates up a few minutes later, two plates, something that smells considerably better than anything I ever managed to make myself in the small kitchen of my old flat, and sets one down in front of me with a small flourish that’s half performance, half genuine pride.
“Coq au vin,” he says.
“This looks amazing.”
“Good. Eat.” He drops into the chair across from me, already reaching for his own fork, and for a while we don’t talk much at all, just the sound of cutlery and the music still low from the other room and the particular quiet of two people who’ve stopped needing to fill every silence with something.
It’s a good quiet. The kind that used to make me restless, back when silence in a room meant something was being withheld, and now just means we’re both exactly where we want to be.
Micah tops up my water without either of us asking.
I pass him the bread without him reaching for it.
Outside the window, a blackbird is making a considerable amount of noise about something, and neither of us bothers finding out what.
I get the wine.
It’s nothing special, a bottle from the shop in the village that we’ve started buying without ever quite discussing it, the way couples end up with a bottle that’s just theirs without either of them deciding it should be, and I pour two glasses and bring them over and sit down across from him in the last of the evening light coming through the window, the same window Micah picked this house for, the light doing something soft and gold to the whole kitchen, and for a second I just look at him, properly look at him, the way I used to look at scenes, except there’s nothing here I need to read, nothing hidden, nothing I have to work to understand. Just him. Just this.
I lift my glass.
He picks his up too, easy, unthinking, already smiling before he’s even asked the question, and then something shifts behind his eyes, quick and small, a flicker of recognition arriving a half second before the words do, like he already knows exactly what I’m about to say and can’t quite believe I’m about to say it here, tonight, in this kitchen, less than a year after a small warm restaurant in Richmond with a candle between us.
“What are we toasting?” he asks anyway, because some things you ask even when you already know the answer. Maybe especially those things.
“This,” I say.
He looks at me for a moment, the smile settling into something quieter, something that reaches all the way to his eyes the way it didn’t used to, not at the start, not before either of us learned how to let it, and I watch him hold the whole memory of that first proper date in his face at once, the wine, the candle, the sound our glasses made, the version of the both of us that had no idea yet how far this was going to go.
“This,” he agrees, and clinks his glass against mine, the sound of it small and clear and exactly the same as it was the first time, and for a moment neither of us says anything else, because there’s nothing left that needs adding to it.
There is just this.