We talked a little more about everything and nothing. I learned that he spent most summers rescuing his young trees from hungry rabbits. He asked me what I liked doing when I wasn’t working or playing mums and dads.
It took me a while to remember. “Climbing, mainly. I used to train at the ju-jitsu gym, but I can’t be arsed with the injuries these days. It’s not a good look to rock up to an offender meeting with a shiner.”
“I knew you were a fighter.” Fen eyed me thoughtfully. “You had that don’t-fuck-with-me vibe when you walked onto the wings, and no one ever did.”
I enjoyed the way his deep voice wrapped around the wordfuckway too much. Snorting out a laugh, I shook my head. “No one fucked with me because I always had a six-foot-four prison officer at my side.”
“It wasn’t always me.”
“No, but was often enough that offenders knew we were friends.”
“I didn’t realise we were friends until I missed you so much.” The admission seemed to take Fen by surprise. He glanced down at his hands, then curved them around his beer glass. “I should’ve given you my number that day, not trusted the assumption I’d see you again.”
“You had no reason not to trust it. It wasn’t like either of us knew Damon was going to die—not literally, anyway.”
“Is that what happened?”
“It’s why I didn’t make it back to the prison when I said I would. I’m guessing you got hurt sometime after, because you were gone when I did come back and no one would talk about it.”
“They’re not allowed to,” Fen said quietly. “There’s still an investigation going on.”
“Because someone fucked up?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s nothing to do with me—I, uh, don’t remember most of it.”
I took a breath. And a chance. I curled my leg around his beneath the table. “You want to talk about it?”
For a split second, I thought he might, then he shook his head, his expression somehow clearing and shuttering at the same time. “Not now. Back then, if I’d had someone in my life that got me like you do, maybe…I don’t know.”
He took refuge in his beer and I let him. It was cute that he thought I understood him, but far from accurate. I knew Fen Hawthorne was sweet and kind. I knew he flirted with me because he meant it.
I knew I wanted so much more.
7
Fen
I’d always known that dating Rami Stone—if that was even what this was—would be dangerous. I’d planned on buying him a couple of drinks, maybe a steak dinner, then driving him all the way back to the top of Christmas Mountain like a perfect gent, and yet here I was, three pints deep, my car long ago abandoned in the pub car park. “Why won’t you let me buy you dinner?”
“Because you’ve cooked for me a thousand times—”
“Twice.”
“—whatever. It’s my turn to provide.” Rami’s smile was as sweet as he ever got, but it was genuine, and reminded me of the earnest probation officer I’d first met so long ago. The man who’d spend a whole day with an offender if they needed him to. Visit their grandmothers. Their aunties. Their long lost brothers and sisters who wanted nothing to do with them. It was why I’d wanted him for Dante Pope. Rami probably didn’t know it, but I’d fought for him to be assigned that case, and not just because I wanted to spend time with him.
“Hey.” Rami nudged me with his knee under the table. “If it’s that important for you to be chivalrous, you can buy me a bag of chips.”
“Hmm?”
He tilted his head. “You were miles away. Anywhere nice?”
Tempting as it was, I wasn’t about to admit I’d been thinking about him. AKA wasting our time together when he was right here, in front of me, playing out the daydreams I’d carried all this time. “Probably not. And I’m not buying you chips for dinner. It’s Christmas. You deserve better than that.”
“It’s not Christmas yet.”
“It is in my world. Starts the day after Halloween and keeps going until midnight on Christmas Eve.”
“You’re still selling trees then?”