I shook my head, praying the warmth in my blood didn’t show in my face. “I didn’t know where you went.”
“Work,” Fen said as if he hadn’t been passed out on top of me ten minutes ago. “There’s a lot to do now the road is moving, though I’m not sure it’s safe to head south just yet.” He fixed Paddy with a stare that almost scared me. “You’re not going that way, are you?”
“Nope. Safia wants to roast Uncle Rama before he gets to go home. I reckon she’ll be done in five to seven business days.”
Great. I refrained from rolling my eyes like a petulant child and gave Fen my full attention while Paddy got in the truck. “Looks like I’m not going too far just yet.”
Fen grunted, his slightly bloodshot eyes giving away that perhaps he was feeling as shambolic as I was. “Far enough.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. I don’t like the look of that road.”
“Paddy wouldn’t drive Charlie if he didn’t think it was safe.”
That earned me another grunt, and a pouty bottom lip that would’ve been adorable without the storm raging in Fen’s cobalt gaze.
I frowned and took a subtle sidestep to the back of the truck where Paddy couldn’t see me. “What’s wrong?”
“Hmm?”
I reached for Fen and discovered his hip, my fingers somehow finding their way beneath his winter clothes to find bare skin. It was another fortunate accident, and something else I didn’t regret despite the complication of craving so much more.Focus on Charlie. It’s why you’re here.
True, but even a soul as cynical as mine had to believe fate had dumped me in Fen’s snowy driveway for a reason.
I rubbed his skin again, ignoring the buzz of electricity that zapped my veins. “Talk to me. I’ll listen.”
Fen’s smile was faint and sad. “You don’t need to do that. Just…”
“What?”
“Don’t leave without saying goodbye, okay? I don’t want to do it that way again.”
I didn’t want to do it at all. I wanted to transplant our lives back to a place where we’d been two simple men working in the same building, flirting over stale biscuits and release plans for offenders who deserved another chance. But at the same time, this mountain was Fen’s home; his past, his present, and his future. He belonged here and the goodbye that sounded so fucking wrong was inevitable. “I won’t leave like that, I promise.”
“So I’ll see you again?”
“Yeah. Lucky you, eh?”
“I’d say so.” Fen’s smile finally deepened enough to seem real. He stared at my lips, then pulled back with an infinitesimal shake of his head. “Take care, Stone.”
“You too. And Fen?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for watching my favourite Christmas film with me.”
I gave him a saccharine smile and climbed into the truck, and I didn’t have to look back to see his answering grin.
It was imprinted on my heart already.
* * *
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I closed my eyes, resisting the temptation to press my thumbs into the sockets, remembering in one fell swoop why conversations with my forthright sister stressed me the fuck out. “It’s not stupid. It could work if we wanted it to.”
Safia banged a cast iron pot on her huge kitchen table. I was sitting on a chair made of wood from Fen’s forest.