Sid kept his hands still and inclined his head to the soil-encrusted blade. “I didn’t know you were in here. I’m sorry.”
The repeat of the apology shifted something in Dante’s brain. Perspective returned to him, though he couldn’t pinpoint when he’d lost it or when a cold sweat had spread over his skin.
He swallowed and lowered the tool, dropping it back in the box. The obnoxious clatter felt like a car crash to his hyper-vigilant senses and made him think of Luis, and how he’d jumped at every tiny sound when he’d first got out. Dante had seen it when he’d watched him from afar, stalking his baby brother as he’d navigated a new life that terrified him. And he’d revelled in Luis’s unhappiness, counting the days until he came back to Dante and asked to stand by his side again.
The day had never come, though, and waiting for it had created a monster only prison could kill.
“Hey.” Sid came closer, one foot dragging behind him. “Are you okay? When you didn’t come to breakfast, I thought you might’ve gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Home?”
“Home? Where the fuck is that?”
“I know, I know.” Sid raised his hands again. “My brain is shit, okay? I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t invite you over so I could corner you and then be a dick about it afterwards.”
Dante frowned. “That’s not what happened.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
It was Sid’s turn to draw his brows together as if such a thing had ever helped a man unpick his thoughts. “It’s what I remember. And you don’t have to be nice about it. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to work somewhere else where your supervisor doesn’t jump on you.”
There was compost on Dante’s palms from the zombie tool. He dusted it off, his arms moving in slow motion, or at least it felt that way. Of all the things he’d expected Sid to say when they’d finally come face to face, this wasn’t it. “You didn’t jump on me,” he said. “As far as I remember, it was the other way round, and I’m the one who should be fucking sorry.”
Sid’s frown deepened. He brought a hand to his face and rubbed one eye, hard. “That’s not—is it? I mean, I don’t. It didn’t feel that way to me. I thought it was—fuck. Whatever, man. Just let me be sorry, okay? I can’t do stuff like that with blokes, and whoever moved first, Iknewthat, and I let it happen anyway.”
Dante waited in case there was more, but Sid went back to rubbing his eyeball out of the back of his head, and it tookeverythingDante had not to grip his wrist and stop him.
He settled for trying to dissect every word Sid had said. To find the holes in his explanation that would gift Dante the evidence that it washisfault, not Sid’s, but his brain latched onto one phrase and wouldn’t let go.“I can’t do stuff like that with blokes.”
Damn. It was the one nightmare scenario that hadn’t occurred to Dante—that Sid wasn’t intoanyman, not just Dante, and as he digested it now, it didn’t sit right. Dante’s queer experiences were limited to detached blowjobs and one hate-fuck he’d spent a decade trying to forget, but he’d never read the room wrong, and his fuckingsoultold him Sid was gay. Not even bi, like Dante, butgay.
Sid said something about lavender.
Dante blinked. “What?”
“The lavender borders,” Sid repeated, careful and slow, as if he couldn’t tell which one of them had failed to understand whatever he’d said the first time. “They need cutting back so we can hang the flowers to dry for the art centre.”
“All of it?”
“Just the early stuff. The rest of it will keep flowering into the autumn, so I like to leave it alone. It’s not my thing to rip colour out of the earth.”
Dante had known that the moment he’d set eyes on Sid, but he kept that thought to himself and folded his arms, keeping his hands contained in case his body rebelled against the embargo on touching Sid. “That’s what you want me to do today? Cut the lavender?”
“Yeah. I mean, it probably won’t takeyouthat long, but it needs doing.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Honestly?”
Dante shrugged. “Why not?”
Sid’s harried expression softened a touch. “Because I’m a stubborn twat and the idiot in me would still rather let you think I’m a weirdo than tell you the truth.”
“I don’t think you’re a weirdo whatever you say. I’ve met stranger men than you.”