But Sid kept that to himself and took the hint. He left Dante to his pots and returned to his own work.
At five o’clock, he trudged home and took a shower. It was injection day, but being around Dante made his heart beat too hard as it was, so he made the executive decision to leave it till bedtime. And, because he knew himself too damn well, scrawled a reminder on the back of his hand.
Then it was time to collect Dante. Predictably, Sid’s blood temperature rose with every step he took towards Dante’s bungalow, and his pulse quickened, thudding in his ears like a sultry bassline.
He knocked on the door.
Dante opened it, wearing clean jeans and a Diesel T-shirt Sid hadn’t seen before. “My PO told me to save some clothes for doing normal shit. This is normal, right?”
Sid grinned, ignoring the echo of his own thoughts earlier that day. “Nothing about my sister is normal, but yeah, it’s pretty fucking normal for me to take a mate to her house with me.”
“Who else do you take?”
“Benjamin. Rhonda. Mitch from security, but I don’t do that anymore because I’m pretty sure he broke the bro code and started banging her—what?”
Dante shook his head. “Nothing.”
Sid frowned. “Why is your face so complicated?”
“Born this way. Sorry, mate.”
Rolling his eyes, Sid beckoned Dante out of his bungalow and led the way to the forest paths. “My car is down the hill,” he explained at Dante’s confusion. “I keep hoping someone will nick it, but every time I drag my arse off this estate, it’s still there.”
“You don’t like your car?”
“It’s more I don’t like dealing with the outside world, and not having a car would give me the perfect excuse not to bother.”
“You’re institutionalised?”
“Maybe. What about you? Are you excited to go somewhere new? Or is it freaking you out?”
Dante shrugged, turning his gaze up as they entered the forest, his hazel eyes gleaming gold in the dappled evening sun. “I’m okay.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not freaking out. You can be okay and agitated at the same time.”
“That right?”
“I think so.”
Dante drifted left and stooped in front of some wild foxgloves. He snapped a picture on his phone, a habit he’d had since he’d arrived that seemed to coincide with outside interference with the new life he’d built with Sid.
We built it together.The thought gifted Sid another ridiculous rush of warmth. He joined Dante on the ground and pointed at the tube-shaped pink flowers. “Do you know why it’s called foxglove?”
“I didn’t know itwascalled foxglove,” Dante said dryly. “You gonna enlighten me?”
“I’m going to repeat folklore. It’s up to you if you feel enlightened by it.”
Dante waited, eyes endearingly wide and curious.
Sid steadied himself on Dante’s solid shoulder. “The flowers were said to look like gloves, and they grow near to where foxes make their earths and raise their young, but this is my favourite part: the tale is that foxes wore the flowers as slippers to keep their paws silent when they hunted for food. I have a cartoon about it somewhere—I think Anna has it, actually.”
Dante nodded slowly, taking it all in, as always. “Did you draw it?”
“Draw what?”
“The cartoon.”
“How the fuck do you know that?”