Page 49

“Why’s that?”

“He is in love, my friend, and he gets to live that every day now.”

There’s a story there, I feel it in the wind the same way I did the other night when I realised Sol and Jack from the Joker were together. Their love didn’t feel new, though. It felt timeless and pure, and I wonder what stokes the wistful glow in Oscar’s cinnamon gaze. Why it matters so much to me.

Iggy taps my arm again. “Those leaves could do with being shifted tonight. You’ve only got a couple of days before the next lot need cutting.”

Right. Salad. Money. Oscar. I’m grateful reclaiming my focus means I still get to look at him. Honestly, he’s so attractive it’s ridiculous. You made him come.

Yup. Yes, I did. “It would really help me out to move some of this stuff. You sure Sol won’t mind?”

“You have met Sol, yes?” Oscar leans a little closer—close enough that his body heat seeps into my blood. “He would charm the moon from the sky. But truly, Poet, it is no trouble. Summertime in Porth Luck, you can sell anything.”

My dad says something that makes Oscar’s smile widen. I don’t mind missing it. It affects me more to lose Oscar’s hand from my arm as I get out of the truck to retrieve the plants.

Iggy gets out too. I’m about to tell him I don’t need help, but he goes to Aras instead and Oscar’s attention follows him.

Though I assume Oscar can hear me just fine, I brush my palm over the back of his carved bicep. “My parents fostered kids for twenty years before they adopted the twins. He can talk dinosaurs all day long.”

Oscar slips me a glance more parent than the man who left handprints on my skin. “I know your father is a good person. It is more that Aras can be shy sometimes—he is like my brother.”

“Does your brother look like you?”

“A little. He is…less, though—smaller—that is the word. Something about you makes me forget how to speak.” Satisfied his son is content with Iggy, Oscar turns to face me fully as I lower the truck bed. “Or maybe it is everything.”

I feel the sincerity in his words. And though I don’t spend much time wishing for things I’ve never had, I miss his voice. Enough that I don’t reach for the plant trays and instead lay my hand on my favourite place, on the swell of muscle over the steady thump of his heart.

Say my name.

He does and the deep timbre of his voice rumbles up my arm and soothes the parts of me I didn’t know were so raw until I met him. I smile, my only answer to his confession and he doesn’t seem to mind. He glances to where my dad is reading up a storm from a book with far fewer words in that whatever Whitlock yarn he’s spinning to Aras. Then Oscar kisses me. Just once, on the highest point of my cheekbone, and I can’t explain what it does to me. What he does to me, without even trying.

We load the plants into Oscar’s car. By then, my dad is done with his grand tale and we watch Oscar and Aras drive away together, in the grey car I’ll never be able to look at without feeling the weight of Oscar pinning me down. Without grassy stones digging into my back and the scrape of his beard against mine.

“He’s a looker, eh?” Iggy murmurs. “Nice too.”

“Don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything.” He holds his hands up, already surrendering. “Just don’t let your ma see you mooning at each other like that or she’ll have her fancy frock out again.”

I’m twenty-six years old. A farmer. A landowner. But there’s still enough brat left in me I roll my eyes and stomp back to the truck without dignifying any of that with an answer.

My dad’s chill. He lets it go. But I know I won’t be that lucky around the people I see most in my brand-new life and I don’t know how I feel about that. How I’m going to explain to Ivy why I’m wearing Oscar’s bracelet and he’s wearing mine, if I can explain it. And I don’t know how I feel about that either.

Rattled, I stop thinking about it and go back to work, grafting side by side with my dad for the rest of the afternoon as if I never left home. The only thing missing is Jekka’s cooking, but we make do with the bread that keeps mysteriously appearing in my kitchen every time Rubi swings by and the eggs and cheese my dad brought with him.

“Be time for some chooks soon,” Iggy observes as we amble to the top field to check on Dav under the pretence of bringing him lunch.

“I need to build a hen house first.”

“I can help you with⁠—”

“No.” I cut him off as we reach a fence that still needs work to hold. “I don’t want you to come down here and do everything for me. You’ve got your own farm.”

“Runs itself these days.” Iggy’s expression stays mild, unfazed by however my irritation hits my voice. “You saw to that before you left. Why’s it so bad for me to help you do the same here?”

It isn’t. And I know that on every level I’m not a stubborn idiot. But that idiot level is vast and I’m not ready to step off it just yet.

We come up on Dav. He’s sitting on a stack of tyres he must’ve cleared from the hedgerows, smoking a pipe under the shade of an oak tree. Around him are neat piles of scrub exactly where I told him to leave it. Deadwood and old roots. Cuttings and brambles too decayed to feed the birds.