Page 57
Lots of people are protective of me and it usually pisses me off. But Oscar isn’t smothering me with his concern, or telling me what to do. He’s explaining what, on some level, I already know.
We both eat like working men. Quickly, until every scrap of food is gone. I wipe my hands and rinse the pot in the old Belfast sink plumbed into the side of the house.
Oscar comes with me, checking his watch periodically. “Who is Dav to you?”
No one. He’s a pair of hands I’m paying fifteen quid an hour to collect scrap wood when any number of the Rebel Kings prospects would’ve done it for nothing. Free labour I refused.
I get the feeling Oscar already knows this. He studies me anyway, patience warring with scepticism that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the old codger I know not to let in my house. And yet…
The evening breeze sways the hanging baskets loaded with the trailing tomato plants I grow for fun more than produce. Because Jekka likes the companion flowers I shoved in there with them and however much I need some space from my family to make this work, I love my mother something fierce.
Somewhere beyond the orchard, birds dive and wheel through the last of the sunlight. “My parents fostered kids.”
Oscar fiddles with the bracelets on my arm, listening with a slow nod.
“Some of them only stayed a few days, some stayed for months. But the goal was always the same.”
“To give them a home?”
“Yeah, and give wherever they’d come from a chance to heal. There were exceptions, obviously. A lot of them. But it took so much to make my parents believe someone wasn’t worth saving.”
“Were they ever wrong?”
More than once and I remember the heartbreak when it happened. But still. “Rarely, and they never regretted trying, and they were right often enough that it stuck.”
Oscar’s fingers stray from my bracelets to my dirt-streaked skin. “Are you trying to save Dav?”
“No. I don’t care that much. But I had work that needed doing and he asked for it. Where I come from, that’s enough until someone shows you otherwise.”
“You think he can change?”
“I think…that I don’t know.
“That is an extremely Whitlock answer.”
“It’s annoying you know that.”
“I do not want to annoy you.”
I lean closer to Oscar and tell myself it’s an autonomous choice, not an unseen force drawing me in. “What do you want to do with me?”
Oscar’s cinnamon gaze glows hot. But he’s not done with Dav. “Sol will always tell you to give him another chance. I am not always sure you should listen to him.”
I’m so hooked on Oscar’s eyes. On his face. On the bone-deep vibration of his voice. But I need to see the land again. The fields. The orchard. The produce growing in the tunnels. Everything alive has a million and one chances to survive, some tangible, some so hidden we never know about them. Even trees break and mend themselves.
This farm was dead when I first came here long before I bought it. Now it’s feeding people berries and leaves, and whether it makes me stubborn or soft, that means something to me. “I didn’t listen to Sol, but I heard him anyway.”
A beat passes. Then Oscar nods. “And I hear you.”
And this time, as his eyes grow molten again, he kisses me as the last golden light fades from the day. He steals my breath and my balance until I realise I’m giving it so freely I haven’t noticed him lifting me off my feet.
Why does that feel so good?
Why is it too much and not enough at the same time?
I need more.
The kiss peaks and fades.
