He spoke in English, and finally, she cast him a glance. “Why?”
“Because I think we need a roof on this place.”
“Why?”
“To keep us dry? It rains a lot here, doesn’t it?”
The girl shrugged, and for a long, painful moment, Jevon feared she would go back to staring, unseeing, at the blank walls, but then something seemed to give. She got up and fished the cloth from the backpack. The flowered fabric wound around her wrist and her lips twitched in what—in another life—might’ve been a smile.
She brought the cloth to Jevon. “Here you go.”
“Thank you.” He began to drape it over the building blocks. The girl helped, correcting the hash Jevon deliberately made of it, and, little by little, revealed the scraps of information he needed to send her on her way.
With the shelter and the form complete, he scooped her from the ground and carried her to the doorway.
She came willingly enough. Jevon passed her to a social worker, but the girl kicked out and wriggled out of the waiting woman’s grip. Her tiny feet hit the floor and she ran with an imaginary wind behind her, reaching the end of the corridor before Jevon could react, throwing herself at a tall, dark-haired man dressed in bright orange. She climbed up him and onto his back, winding her arms around his neck.
The man seemed as surprised as everyone else, and it took Jevon far too long to realise that it was the bloke who’d been haunting his dreams.
It was Rhys.
* * *
“Jesus Christ.” Rhys leaned on the damp brick wall and closed his eyes.What the fuck is this day?He’d have struggled to invent a more bizarre chain of events, and as it was, he was struggling anyway. Jevon’s sudden reappearance in circus form had nothing on the trauma of giving that little girl—Haya—up to social services, and Rhys was about done for the rest of the year. He wanted to go home, drown his sorrows, or find a club to get his dick wet—to screw away the carnage in his mind—but all he had was a scummy hotel room, the clothes he stood in, and a fuckton of unanswered questions about Jevon, the child whisperer.
A hysterical bark of laughter escaped Rhys.I’m fucking tripping, I swear.
“Rhys?”
Yup, definitely tripping. Because the voice calling Rhys’s name was the one he’d heard in his sleep every night for the last three months—a voice that didn’t belong in the drizzly evening outside a Bedford hospital.
“Rhys.”
Rhys opened his eyes and Jevon was standing in front of him, his bow tie undone, a unicycle at his feet, and a sack of blocks slung over his shoulder. “You’re not real,” Rhys whispered.
“Aren’t I?” Jevon stepped closer. “What makes you think that?”
“What thefuckare you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same thing.”
Silence. A thousand replies danced chaotically through Rhys’s mind, but nothing coherent formed on his tongue. How could it, when out of everything he’d seen today, Jevon’s smiling face had kicked him hardest in the gut? “I don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Why it hurts so much to see you here.”
It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but it came from his heart.
Understanding flickered in Jevon’s warm eyes. “I wanted to cry when I saw you holding Haya. All this time, I’d pictured you so happy and free; it fucked me up to know that you’d seen the same horrible side of the world that I have.”
Something clicked and Rhys saw logic in the far-fetched explanation. Handing Haya over had cut him to the bone, but harder still had been to watch Jevon disappear with her, his kindness in every whispered word Rhys couldn’t decipher.He’s seen what I’ve seen.
Whatever that meant.
Right now, it meant everything.
“So you’re a paramedic?” Jevon ventured when Rhys didn’t respond. “It kind of fits now.”