Why would anyone?
I found my boots at the back door and stamped into them, then stepped outside, bracing myself against the cold wind. The air was moist, as if rain was coming, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. I liked this limbo I’d found myself in with Rami. I wasn’t ready to give it up.
The thought of the snow thawing sunk a cloud over my mood. A deep, dark, melancholy that often sent me to the whisky bottle when I was on my own. I fought it, mind. I was good at that. Bad moods were annoying, and I didn’t want to be annoyed while I still had Rami in my house. This was my wildest dreams come true—the PG ones, at least. I wasn’t going to waste it sulking over the fact that, eventually, it would have to end.
I found the pie among the stack I’d bought to feed my crew when it was my turn to cook Sunday dinner up at the main house. My next go wasn’t for a while yet, but I liked to be prepared. It meant circumstances like these didn’t derail my sanity, and that I’d been forward-thinking enough to buy turkey and cranberry pies for my December slot. Go me.
The looming rain began to fall as I trudged back to the house, big fat drops that would dislodge some of the snow and leave treacherous ice behind. It wouldn’t do much to rescue Rami’s car, but Paddy McCann’s truck would be okay.He could be gone tomorrow.Like, literally gone. He’d already admitted he’d made a mistake bringing Charlie up here. What if he got in Paddy’s truck and went straight back home? To Manchester? The place where I’d left a piece of myself on the grimy floor of a D wing cell?
I was not in the mood to relive that mess. I ignored the tremor in my hands and shoved the back door open. Rami was nowhere in sight and my heart clenched, but the tiny slippers at the bottom of the stairs calmed my raging pulse more than I could say.You’re a strange man, Hawthorne.
Cooking dinner kept me occupied while Rami and Charlie were upstairs, and because I gave zero hoots about morphing into a carbon copy of my dad, I turned the radio on for company. It was late enough in the year that the playlists were rammed with cheesy Christmas songs and listeners calling in to rant about overcrowded shops. It was a world away from anything I cared about, but I listened anyway, grumbling under my breath when the first world problems hacked me off too much.
A low laugh from the doorway sounded a little while later, and I felt Rami’s presence like warm water being trickled over my skin. “Talking to that pie, are ya?”
“I’m talking to Agnes, actually. She doesn’t think anyone from further south than Blackburn should be up here.”
“And you disagree with her?”
“Course I do. Tourists pay the bills. If they didn’t fill the pub all summer long, there’d be nowhere to go for a pint in the winter.”
“I always forget there’s a community here.”
“Easy to do from the top of the mountain. Safia doesn’t come down much and at this time of year, only when the kids need stuff she doesn’t trust me to buy for her.”
“You do that?” Rami pushed off the doorframe he’d claimed as his leaning post while he was here. He ventured farther into the kitchen, then stopped as if he’d forgotten why. “Shop for my sister, I mean?”
“Sometimes. We’re neighbours.”
“You probably know her better than I do these days.”
“Doubt it. Cheese-swapping and letting her kids run riot round my farm doesn’t make me blood.”
“Dude, they call you Uncle Fen.”
I had nothing to counter with. I had no idea why the McCade kids had gifted me that privilege, and I hated the introspective frown it had put on Rami’s face, but I liked the affection they shared with me. Their innocence had kept me alive at a time in my life when I’d struggled to breathe, and I loved them for that.
Rami stayed quiet while I heated the pie and opened a can of beans. Charlie was already in bed, so we ate together at the table. He cleaned up, and I drifted to the couch with a beer.
He followed sometime later, his own beer in hand. “It’s nice to drink with someone,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t bother at home, cos I’m not sure I’d stop.”
“Been there.”
He cast me a curious glance. “When?”
The simple question caught me off guard. My hand rose to the scar on my neck, and Rami’s sharp gaze caught it before I did.
His eyes widened.
I lowered my hand and gripped my beer bottle, bracing myself for the question, but baulked at the last minute and stood. “I’m empty. Back in a sec.”
In the kitchen, I necked the beer I still had and opened the fridge despite knowing there were no more bottles in there and if I really wanted another I’d have to go to the garage. The bare shelf seemed to taunt me. Or maybe it was my subconscious telling me not to be such a tool. I was ninety percent sure Rami already knew I’d been shanked. Clamming up and running away every time it came up was ridiculous, and yet…I’d been doing it for more than a year and I didn’t know how to stop. The deafening thud in my chest could be quieted by whisky, but the coward in my head never took a day off.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. You nearly died. It’s okay to be messed-up. But the spiel I’d spent a decade serenading traumatised offenders with didn’t work on me.
Shame, because my inner monologue spoke nothing but truth.
A warm hand grazed my back, light fingertips that travelled from one side of my ribcage to the other. “Hey,” Rami whispered.