“That’s one word for it. They’ve never mentioned you by name, but then, every conversation I’ve had with Safia in the last…shit, however long this clusterfuck has lasted—has been about Damon and Charlie. It’s consumed us.”
“I can imagine. I know she was worried about him for a long time. She was worried about you too, I—” Fen shook his head. “Sorry.”
“What? What is it?”
“I just wish I’d known it was you. Maybe I could’ve helped.”
“What would you have done? Told my sister I was the bloke you’d been chatting up at work for a year and half and offered to be my live-in manny so I could take Charlie from Leanne before she got a chance to dump him?” It came out in an unpunctuated rush, and louder than I meant it too. “Fuck,I’msorry. None of this is your problem.”
“Telling me about it doesn’t make it my problem.” Fen covered my hand with his and guided me back to the kitchen counter before he detached us. “Eat your breakfast.”
I obeyed while he watched me, but it didn’t feel as weird as it might’ve done if I’d had prior warning of thisTwilight Zonemorning. When I was done, he took my plate to the sink in a repeat of our dead-of-night snack. His back called to me again, though I couldn’t say why. I liked his face just as much and zeroed in on it the moment he turned around.
“What happens now?” he asked. “With Charlie, I mean. Is Safia going to keep him?”
“That was my plan when I hurled us up here last night, but perspective and a couple of sandwiches apparently do magical things for brain power.”
“How so?”
“I have parental responsibility for him—legally, as well as—” I brought my fist to my chest— “you know.”
“Safia could get that if it was what you both wanted. He’d have a grand life up here, and she’s the best mum.”
“I know that.”
“So…”
I tipped my cooled tea down my throat. “I don’t want to not be his parent, I just—” I closed my eyes, tracking Fen’s soft tread as he neared me again.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Whatever you feel isn’t wrong and none of this is fair to any of you.”
“Don’t be so reasonable.”
“Don’t be so guarded. It’s just you and me here. You can say what you need to say.”
I opened my eyes. Fen was right beside me, his gaze shimmering with the kind of empathy I’d never seen in anyone else, even the people who loved me most.He gets me. How I knew after such a short time in his company I had no idea, but it was true. I felt it. Believed it. “I don’t want to do it alone. It fucking scares me.”
“Then don’t do it alone. Stay up here with Safia and raise him on the mountain.”
A half-crazed laugh bubbled out of me. “Yeah, that’s not going to work for me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not a man-of-the-mountain kind of bloke.”
Fen rubbed my forearm, a fleeting gesture over and done so fast I barely had time to register the wave of warmth left in its wake. “I thought that too, once upon a time, then the world shifted and I found myself back here after fifteen years away. When it hit, it took me a while to reconcile how I felt, but I’m telling you, man, this place is healing. It’s magic, and there’s no better place to raise a child.”
My heart thudded as I sank into his earnest gaze. My lips tingled too, letting me know that if we’d found ourselves thrust together in another context, circumstance, shit, another lifetime, we’d have been kissing the hell out of each other by now. Maybe more.
But I didn’t kiss Fen.
And he didn’t kiss me. He bumped my shoulder with his big fist, then he left the house and he didn’t come back, and for reasons I had no clue how to understand, it felt like losing him all over again.
4
Fen
It took me another twelve hours to figure out that Rami Stone was more emotional than the man I’d had a mad crush on back in the day. By then, it was dark again and I was standing in my kitchen once more trying to figure out how to feed two extra mouths I hadn’t in a million years prepared for.