“I didn’t go to school much. My dad died, and my mum kept me and my brother at home for company until she got bored and fucked off.”
“That’s...” Sid shook his head. “I don’t know what—is it heart warming? Or awful? Sorry if that sounds bastardy. I’m sure your mum’s lovely.”
“She isn’t.” Dante dunked his hand in the water again, this time without looking. “But I haven’t seen her for a long time, so it doesn’t matter anymore. And don’t worry, I won’t google your shit.”
Sid let his head thunk back against the tree trunk. “I’m sorry about your dad. How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“Was he ill?”
“No, he was a soldier,” Dante said distantly. “How long have you had MS?”
Deflection, much?But Sid could take it, even if heknewDante had absorbed the information the first time. “Two years…... nearly three, I suppose, though it’s probably longer, I just didn’t notice.”
“No one else did?”
“Not that they’ve ever told me, but I know I’m different now. My sister—we’re twins—she says my personality changed, like, my DNA altered or something, and she doesn’t like it.”
Dante opened his mouth, then shut it again, clearly changing his mind about whatever he’d planned to say.
Sid raised a brow. “Whatever it is, you won’t offend me.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
Dante pulled his hand from the lake and studied the dripping water again. “I like your personality. I can’t imagine you different or being better for it.”
“I was less of a moody twat before.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know what a smile means if you’ve never seen someone frown.”
“That’s pretty philosophical from someone who doesn’t think much of themselves.” Sid tried for a smile of his own.
Dante’s gaze blanked out as if the sun had gone in. “I’m a piece of shit, mate. You just don’t know it yet.”
“You can’t be that bad. Not a murderer, remember?”
Dante let his hand drop and turned to face Sid fully, his lean shoulders casting shadows over where Sid sat. “I fronted a drug gang out of a tower block on the estate where I was born. I made my baby brother be my second, and then I let it destroy him and everything else I’d ever cared about.”
Sid swallowed thickly. “Okay... but that was before prison, right? So it was years ago?”
“It doesn’t matter how long ago it was, some things never heal. Like the scar my brother has on his brain from getting beat to shit in prison because of somethingIdid. And you know what? Even after that, I didn’t stop hurting him. If that isn’t evil, I don’t know what is.”
Dante stood with leonine grace.
Sid’s heart jolted with the fear that he would walk away without looking back, but he didn’t. He stepped closer to Sid and held out his hands.
Sid took them and hauled himself to his feet.
Let go.
His fingers disobeyed him and wrapped tighter around Dante’s. “I don’t believe you’re evil.”
Dante’s answering smile was as empty as his eyes. “Then you don’t know me.”
This time he did walk away, leaving Sid with a pounding heart and tingling hands that had nothing to do with lesions on his brain and everything to do with the spell Dante Pope had cast on him.