12
Rami
In my dreams, we fell asleep on my half-made bed in my Manchester flat, and we woke in Fen’s house, cuddled up against the cold fell wind. It was dawn. Charlie was still sleeping, and we had some time to revisit the heady bubble of pleasure we’d found together before life called us home.
The reality was quite different. We came to naked and cold in my unheated flat and realised it was late enough that we had to rush back. Fen had to work, and I’d promised Charlie I’d be home by teatime.
After fudging our way through Safia’s shopping list, we zipped home. I dropped Fen at his gate and drove up the mountain under a promise that I wouldn’t kill myself on the road, and it was a while before I saw him again.
Two days, in fact. Twolongdays that were full of fun and joy, but somehow seemed empty without him.
I missed him. A fact that didn’t go unnoticed by my sister when Fen finally reappeared in my life and she caught me peeping at him from the kitchen doorway like a weirdo.
“He’d make an amazing stepdad,” she whispered in my ear.
I turned to glare at her, but she was already backing away, an impish grin on her pretty face.
“Just saying,” she mouthed.
“Fuck off,” I mouthed back. It was a wasted effort, though. She was already gone, and even if she’d been at my side, I’d have ignored her in favour of the scene I was creeping on in the kitchen.
Fen was at the table, drawing with all the kids, even baby Lalla who was sleeping peacefully in the crook of his elbow. Charlie was perched on his knee, stabbing a crayon in the vague direction of the actual paper.
Smiling, Fen drew a circle. Charlie scribbled at it with a brown crayon then laughed. “Rama!”
Fen chuckled too. “He’s prettier than that. Draw some big ears on him.”
From my position unseen in the doorway, I rolled my eyes, but my heart felt so full it made my chest ache, and I didn’t know how long I could look at this perfect scene without crying.
Not long, as it happened. Eyes burning, I backed up and fled the house, following the path back the way I’d come to the office in the sky I’d settled into over the last few days. Working from home in a giant treehouse had turned out to be the stuff that dreams were made of. Every morning, I got up with Charlie, made breakfast for him and the other kids, then I handed him to Safia and hiked to the magic tree on the other side of the mountain and spent the morning clearing my inbox and honouring the last few appointments of my current caseload.
Honestly, with the peace and quiet I needed to work, it wasn’t a lot, and it left me plenty of time to wonder what I’d made so much fuss about. And, to contemplate my future. As much as I’d protested the idea of giving up my life in Manchester and decamping to a remote mountain for the rest of my days, the arguments I’d relied on were starting to fall flat. Working remotely suited me—more than that, I enjoyed it, and there was nothing to say I couldn’t spend a few days a week at the local prison if I stayed in the probation service.
It was that simple. And then there was Charlie. I’d worried he wouldn’t settle in a place so far removed from all he’d ever known, but in the short time we’d been here, he’d put on weight, gained a glow to his chubby cheeks, and he no longer woke in the night screaming my name. With Mae for company, he slept like a log, and for three days straight I’d had to wake him up for breakfast. It was a strange existence, brand-new, and yet familiar, and I was growing to love it.
Which led me to my next dilemma: my goddamn heart. Because there was no doubt I’d already lost a large swathe of it to the sweet, hot lumberjack I couldn’t stop thinking about. When I wasn’t focused on Charlie, Fen owned every thought I couldn’t control, and with the scene in the kitchen playing on repeat, I’d now found a way to combine the two.
I was so fucked. I wasobsessed, and the heady few hours we’d spent in my shitty flat hadn’t helped. Work forgotten, I closed my eyes and relived every kiss and snatched breath that we’d shared. Every rush of mind-bending pleasure. I’d never been so hot for someone. I’d neverburnedfor someone the way I had that morning in my abandoned bed. Could I walk away from that? Could I give him up? With Charlie and my job off the table as reasons to leave, they were questions I couldn’t avoid, and perhaps the answers were what Fen had been afraid of all along.
And I had reason to fear too. Fen and I were great together, but it had only been a few weeks. What if it all went to shit? Life on the mountain was challenging enough without a broken heart.
He’d never break your heart.
But what about him? The heat of our snatched encounter faded away and I pictured the scar on his neck, remembering the deeper, unseen ones he’d talked about. Finally. At least, it felt that way to me. I think. The ache in my chest was hard to decipher. On the one hand, I was relieved that I now knew what had driven Fen from a job he’d loved so much. The puzzle made sense. But Ihatedwhat I saw. And I was horrified that I’d known so little about it all this time. I was a shit friend. A distracted lover. Fuck, whatever I was to him, he deserved better.
What happened to him wasn’t your fault.
No. But maybe I could’ve fought harder to find him.
Maybe I would’ve if my own life hadn’t grown so complicated.
“You know, if you think too hard your brain breaks.”
I opened my eyes. Fen was leaning in the doorway of the treehouse, his cheeks flushed from the cold, his gaze bright with mischief.
The warmth that bloomed in my gut was something else. My smile was as involuntary as the breath in my lungs. “What makes you so sure I was thinking and not taking a nap?”
“You don’t nap. You’re too diligent. And…” Fen advanced on me and smoothed the skin between my brows. “You were frowning like an angry bull.”