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How would that happen? He is never in bed without you.

Because, I have found, unless Aras needs me, I am terminally unable to leave Poet while he is sleeping. Some days, he can’t leave me either. But he didn’t have much choice today. Like the sea, the farm waits for no one, not even him, and there is work to be done before we can celebrate Christmas again, for him and for me.

I roll out of bed, eat the breakfast stashed in the fridge, and drive my car into town.

It’s early, barely dawn. Sea mist hangs low in the air and the Sirona waits for me in the gloom.

Sol does too, because work doesn’t stop for us either, and…we have demons to banish if we are to truly forget what happened to us a year ago today.

We make a short run out to the lobster pots. Haul them and check them. Rebait the empties and reset the rest. Quick work, bracing in the winter chill. Cold hands. Wet ropes. But the sea is calm, waves so quiet I hardly know they are there, and I cannot keep the smile from my face.

Sol notices, of course. “Something you want to tell me?”

“Like what?”

“Like whatever’s got you grinning like a tipsy piskie. It’s Christmas, Os. Throw me a bone.”

“I am going to live on the farm. With Poet and Aras.”

Sol’s pouring coffee in the wheelhouse. He abandons it and steps outside to wrap me in an embrace fierce enough to knock me overboard had I not been hugged by Sol like this for so many years. “I knew it. I told Jack this morning there was something in the stars when we went to bed last night.”

“It happened before that.”

“No, it didn’t. It happened before you were born.”

I can’t argue with that. And so I tell Sol the name of the farm instead and it makes sense to him, perhaps more than it does to me.

“Moondust raised him. Sunstone is him. You know, if fate asked me to pick a fella for you, I’d pick him twice.”

“And I would choose Jack for you, my friend.”

“Lucky for us, they chose each other, eh?”

It really is. I see it when we make land a couple of hours later and Poet and Jack wait for us on the shore. They are friends. They give each other time in a way the rest of us will never quite understand and it is as beautiful as they are.

We moor the Sirona. I say goodbye to Sol and Jack and fold my arms around Poet. “I will drive?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, I caught myself a nap. Just relax.”

It’s not hard. Po can manoeuvre a tractor like a rally driver, but he is sensible on the roads. Sedate, almost. Even when Aras is with us, I often zone out when he drives.

Not today, though.

Today, I settle into the passenger seat and watch him instead. As though there is something different about him, when I already know it’s me who is different. That the part of me this man brought to life that summer on Moondust Farm is finally waking up for real.

Home.

The word circles in my brain, but truly, my mind is somewhere else. I watch Poet’s hands on the steering wheel. Strong hands. Deft and clever. Hands that nurture the land all the while learning every inch of me. Hands that know how to unravel me with very little effort.

We have sex a lot.

Most nights. The dynamic shifts in natural cycles. Poet has taught me so much about myself. But there’s more…I know there is, and as we travel east on Christmas Day, to be with his family and Aras, it feels closer to the surface than ever.

Steady fingers tap my temple.

I turn my head. Poet is watching the road, but I feel his attention all over me.

“What’s going on in there?”