“Your pops was a clever man.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Or wait much longer to lay eyes on Rami. This morning seemed a long time ago.
Ignoring Safia’s amusement, I left her at the gate and traipsed across her property to the trail on the other side of the mountain. It was a path I rarely trod. The forest was thick and lush on the northern side, but wild and free. We didn’t fell there. Never had.
The path was rocky. I kept my head down as I walked, watching my step, but as the treehouse drew closer, my gaze seemed to drift up of its own accord, drawn to the tree that housed the wood and glass structure I remembered my dad building when I was a gangly teenager. Back then, I hadn’t appreciated the tenacity it took to build something so beautiful, but I was a better man now.
Mostly.
I reached the gnarly staircase and took a deep breath, bracing myself for what I wanted the most—Rami. Then I climbed the steps to the treehouse and slipped inside.
At first glance, my eyes told me Rami wasn’t there, but Ifelthim, even before I spotted him hunched over his phone on the old leather futon. “Hey.”
His dark gaze found mine. He smiled and the anxiety I couldn’t quite unpick by myself lost its sharp edges. “Hey,” he said. “Come to kick me out of your dad’s office?”
“No, I brought your car back. And it’s not my dad’s. I was just telling your sister it doesn’t technically belong to anyone, except maybe the queen.”
“How do you work that out?”
“This land is wild. It’s not mine, it’s not hers.”
“How come this is here then?”
“Best satellite signal. And my dad didn’t care about red tape. Besides, no one from the council has been up here since the fifties, so I think you’re safe for now.”
Rami gave a dry chuckle. “Define ‘safe’. Now I’m connected to the matrix again every man and his dog wants a piece of me.”
No one wants you as much as I do.“Work?”
“Yeah. Um…” Rami’s hot stare doubled down. “I spoke to my boss.”
“Your boss?” My voice was scratchy, as if I hadn’t spoke for a thousand years. “About what?”
“About working remotely until after Christmas. I mean, I still need to go home and fetch some things so I’m not wearing my sister’s clothes all the time, but other than that—”
“You’re staying?”
“For a few weeks,” he said evenly, what he wasn’t saying—not forever—laced in every syllable. “Until the day after Boxing Day when my current cases come to an end and I go back to the prison to pick up new ones.”
Not forever, not forever, not forever. But still my heart leapt. Christmas was a few weeks away yet, and I was busier than a worker bee selling trees and shipping firewood and timber. But I was home every night with time to spare before the moon took over, and I—
It’s not all about you. He has a family who want to spend time with him. A child who needs him. Think about Charlie.
“Fen.”
“Hmm?”
Rami was in front of me. He was wearing different clothes to the ones he’d left my house in that morning; a pink T-shirt—Safia’s—and his own jeans. The pink was good against his dark hair and warm skin,reallygood, and I couldn’t remember what I’d come up here to talk to him about. Just that I wanted to kiss him and keep him wrapped around me in my bed forever.
I’d never felt like that before. I mean, I’d only slept with people I was in some kind of relationship with, but I’d never felt so consumed by someone as I was by Rami and we hadn’t even got that far—in the sexual sense.And you won’t if he leaves.
Man, my head was a wild place to be right now. Common sense told me that Rami leaving didn’t mean he’d never come back, but the thought of weeks, months,yearspassing before I saw him again was…awful.
“Hey.” Rami grasped my hands and squeezed them. “Just because I’m sticking around longer than I said I would, doesn’t mean I’m expecting you to, like, totally bang me or anything.”
A grin split my face. “No?”
“Nah. I wouldn’t stop you, but…I heard you when you spoke, and I respect you. You know that, right?”