“What did you mean to do then?”
“Can’t remember. Best hope he’s not telling Joe, though, or we’re all in trouble.”
Harry snorted. “As if. You think I’d invite Cole to live with us without telling him something like that? And actually, I didn’t need to, because I confessed all my dirty secrets years ago.”
This just got better and better. “You could’ve toldme,” I grumbled. “How come Joe knows mydirty secrets but I don’t know his?”
Harry shrugged. “He slept with the carpenter from Porthkennack if it helps.”
“And his girlfriend,” Rhys added. “All Judgy McJudgerson about sex clubs when he was having orgies all along.”
It was a conversation that could only play out at a festival. I shook my head some more and drained the plastic cup of cider at my feet. “You lot are a pain in the arse, you know that?”
Harry had the decency to look contrite. Rhys, not so much. And truthfully, I didn’t want him to be. He was just being himself—honest, raw. Perhaps if I’d told Toby that particularyears oldanecdote myself, I’d have had nothing to worry about.
As it was, my need to be as close to Toby as possible was at an all-time high. Shame he was nowhere to be seen.
So go find him.
I stood, leaving Rhys and Harry to bicker amongst themselves, and set off in the general direction Joe and Toby had headed. The crowds had thinned as the night had gone on, but those who’d stayed the course were harder to navigate. I picked my way through them, searching for the dark mop of hair I saw everywhere, even when Toby wasn’t around. For long minutes, he was nowhere to be found. Then I spotted him by the reiki circle, peeling a young woman off him with an exasperated expression that was sexy as hell.
Come on. Help him out.
But was I helping him by inserting myself between him and someone his own age who likely didn’t have a kid at home?
That’s his decision. Not yours.
The subconscious thought caught me off guard. I stopped moving and the dude behind me barrelled into me, sloshing beer down my back. But I barely felt it as the cloud hanging over my brain drifted away. Maybe it was the booze or the second-hand weed smoke, but it was a total out-of-body experience. I watched the disjointed haze float into the distance, and the urgency deep within me to be as close to Toby as possible increased tenfold.
With beer dripping down my back, I shoved my way past the last few bodies to get to Toby. The girl was still hovering nearby. I stepped in front of her and got up in Toby’s face. “Can we go home?”
He blinked, startled. “Home?”
“Yeah. Home. I want to be alone with you.”
Bemused, he nodded and let me take his hand.
I towed him out of the festival and onto a dark lane that led who-the-fuck-knew where. Toby said nothing as we walked until we got to a stile I didn’t recognise.
Then he laughed. “I don’t know where you think we’re going, but if you really want to go home, we should probably turn around.”
“Oh shit. We need to go back the way we came?”
“Unless you want to walk off a cliff.”
There’d been times in my life when I’d have welcomed that, but even without the precious summer I’d spent with Toby, those days were behind me.
I let Toby manhandle me back in the opposite direction. We had to walk past the festival again, but the stewards on the entrance didn’t seem to notice. Maybe we weren’t the only idiots meandering around Newquay. “How far is home? I’m guessing the bus we took earlier isn’t running anymore?”
“It’s a couple of miles to George’s place. Another after that if you want to go back to the farm.”
I swivelled to face Toby. We were back in darkness again, on a quiet path alongside the road that led out of town. His gaze was fixed ahead, teeth digging into his bottom lip. I wasn’t sure what he was nervous about, but I wanted that bottom lip for myself. “You live in the outbuilding at George’s, right? Not in his house?”
“Yeah. I’ve got my own, uh, shed.”
“You got a bed?”
Toby jerked his head to finally look my way. “I have a bed.”