Dante didn’t blink. “I am who I am. What difference does it make to you?”
“It makes every fucking difference because you’re all I have. You’re my only fucking option, else I’d put you in the ground for throwing hands at me.”
Dante believed him. Asa was twice his size andfearedon the streets they’d come from for good reason. But... something simmered beyond the aggression, a desperation Dante had never seen in him before. “Tell me the truth. What’s really driving this? You’ve never wanted to go straight before. Why now?”
For a long moment, Asa said nothing, and Dante feared that was it. That they were going to fight over something he didn’t understand.
Then Asa sighed, and the emotion he’d let creep into his eyes moments before returned full force. “Because I’ve got someone else to worry about now. Someone who’ll follow me into the fire if I don’t put it out.”
“A girl?”
“No.”
“Boy, then. And he loves you?”
Asa grimaced. “Telling you that feels like feeding babies to a wolf pack.”
“You think I’ll use it against you?”
“I know you will. But I need this, and I don’t care what I have to do to get it.”
Dante stepped away from Asa, giving them both space. He leaned on the tree Sid liked to sit against when they came to this place, as if the solid trunk tapped him into the bubble he’d created around their quiet days together. “Is it someone I know?”
Asa shook his head. “He came up after you’d gone.”
“And you want to save his soul?” Dante turned his gaze to the sky. “You’ve changed, Asa. I know you cared about Luis enough to pressure Martell to let him go, but this is some next-level shit.”
“Pope, please,” Asa blurted. “I need to take care of him. If I don’t get him out now, he’ll end up like us, and Ilove him too much to let that happen.”
Dante stared, as caught up in his own feelings as he was in Asa’s. He reached for the tools he’d been given in therapy. The prompts he needed to be a better man. He put himself in Asa’s shoes and imagined Sid joining him on the road, running coke up and down the M1 and fucking up anyone who got in their way, but the picture wouldn’t come. Sid was sunshine, not acid rain.
Asa shifted, swaying the tree Dante had shoved him against. Shadows danced on the ground and seemed to grow bigger the longer Dante stared at them.Help him. He deserves a second chance as much as anyone else.But the selfish motherfucker Dante had always been was already shaking his head. “Sorry, mate. Your shit stopped being my problem when you let that crew put a bullet in me.”
* * *
Sid watched the big man walk away. He was tall—taller than Sid and Dante—withhugeshoulders and a colourful sleeve tattoo that didn’t match the darkness creasing his face. In another lifetime, Sid might’ve found him attractive, but every single thing about him, from his fisted hands to his pitch-dark eyes, put him on edge.He’s trouble. Sid couldn’t say for sure how he knew it, but he knew like he knew his tomato plants needed more sun.
The man disappeared behind the gift shop. Sid swung his gaze back to where he’d come from to find Dante was watching him go too. Like the sinister giant, shadows fractured his features, but it was more than darkness. As Dante scrubbed a shaky hand over his face, he looked distraught.
Heart in his throat, Sid started forward, but the split second it had taken him to go to Dante was too long. Dante was already gone, vanished into the vast grounds of the estate like he’d waved a magic wand.
The fuck?
Sid spun around, searched the foreground and the horizon for any sign of Dante, but found nothing. It was as if he’d never been there at all. Perhaps he hadn’t. Some of Sid’s worst days had left him so confused he’d seen things that weren’t there. But today wasn’t his worst day. Despite the fatigue in his limbs from moving a shedload of sandstone, he felt good, damn it. Too good to be hallucinating Dante’s weird moods.
Bemused, he returned to the pumpkin field and the unfinished display. He’d only left it to chase after Dante and warn him he hadn’t done a proper grocery shop in weeks, so if he needed anything to cook his magic meal, he’d have to improvise or wait for Sid to run him into the village. That, and to pull him behind a tree and kiss him, because, well, Dante. Sid couldn’t get enough of him, a fact that was as exhilarating as it was terrifying.
And, unexpected. He’d wanted Dante from the moment he’d seen his picture, but the chemistry between them blew his mind—literally, some days. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Facts. Sid had resigned himself to bachelorhood and chancing a wank when his body played ball, not sliding into a friends-with-benefits arrangement so intense it never seemed to matter if only half of Sid showed up to the party.
Dante? Healwaysshowed up—and it had nothing to do with sex. As Sid crouched in front of the complex rockery he’d built with his bare hands, it occurred to him that no one in his adult life, not even Anna, had ever been as constant as Dante had become. They worked together, ate together, and even slept together on the nights Sid coaxed Dante into staying the night. Well, Sid slept. He wasn’t altogether sure what Dante did all night. Just that he was up and about long before Sid’s body and brain connected, and that he appeared in the doorway the moment Sid opened his eyes, smiling with a soft light that was the green and gold of the forest in the autumn.He’s there for me. Whenever I fall, he’s right fucking there.
So be there for him. Fuck this display. Find him. Make sure he’s okay.
But something Sid couldn’t decipher kept him on his knees, working the earth, while his heart ached to track Dante down, wrap his arms around him, and soothe whatever fuckery had etched that pain into his face. And he stayed there for the rest of the day until it was time to pack up and limp home.
He half expected to find the bungalow silent and empty, as if Dante’s request to cook him dinner hadn’t happened, but when he opened the front door, Dante’s boots were the first thing he saw.
Sid left his own on his feet, let the door bang shut behind him, and strode through the living space to the kitchen. Dante was at the counter facing the garden, his back to Sid as he sliced courgettes on the wooden chopping board Sid had fashioned from a discarded scaffold plank.