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“Want a photo,” Luke asked, “before you go back to your mum?”
“Yes, please,” the boy said. “Because otherwise, my dad will say it wasn’t really you, and I must have imagined it. He’s always saying that. I don’t know why, because I’m not good at imagining.”
This time, Luke did smile, and said, “Go get your mum’s phone, then, and we’ll do one. And then I need to get back to my scone. Otherwise, my mate here will scoff it all.”
When he’d dispatched the kid, whose name was Roger—a prop name if he’d ever heard one—Luke turned back to Hayden and said, “You never did tell me why you wouldn’t eat a bite of my scone.”
Hayden said, “Well, obviously, because I long to be a terrier sprinting around the paddock like a madman and barking orders at everyone, and Roger says they can’t have scones.” Making it light again, as if the vulnerable moment hadn’t happened.
“Think he’ll like me as much when he finds out I’m gay?” Luke asked. He tried to make it light, too, but it wasn’t easy.
“I don’t know,” Hayden said. “Why did you decide to do it? Why didn’t you wait, at least until you retired?”
Luke looked down at the remains of his coffee, swirled them in the porcelain cup. “Dunno, really. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. I couldn’t lie anymore. It was making me numb. Separating me from myself, I guess.” He tried to smile, and couldn’t. “Makes me sound like I’ve got some kind of mental illness. I’m pretty sure that’s what my dad will say.”
“Ah.” Hayden was the one eyeing him much too closely now. Luke much preferred that the vulnerability stay on the other side of the table. If he could have sex with Hayden, it would be easier. He’d be in control then. Gentle, because he tried hard to be gentle, but in control. As it was …
Hayden went on, “Day after tomorrow. On the other hand, it’s going to be a big wedding, and your brother will be there. Zora and Rhys, too. And Nyree, of course, though she’ll be a bit busy. How was Marko about it when he found out?”
Luke shrugged. “Hard to tell what Marko’s thinking. If he had a real problem, though, he’d say so. Not a very devious fella, Marko.”
“What’s he like to play against?” Hayden asked. Possibly steering the conversation away from the shoals. Hayden wasn’t devious, but he was … tactful, Luke guessed. Socially skilled. Something like that. Something he wasn’t.
“Like you’d imagine,” Luke said. “Battering ram. Heaps of mongrel in his game. Tackles like a bloody locomotive, and is none too gentle about it.”
“So he and Nyree are …”
“Well suited,” Luke said. Yes, definitely a better topic.
At that moment, Hayden’s phone rang. He was pulling it out of his pocket when Luke’s phone rang. Luke looked at it.
Marko. Speaking of the battering ram.
He couldn’t help it. He got a lurch of the stomach, like it was flipping over, and not in a good way. Marko didn’t want him there. Afraid it would spoil the day if his dad got wind of the gay thing. Which was fair. More than fair. It was Nyree’s day.
And if it was Marko who had the problem?
Luke would do what was best for Nyree, he guessed. He’d make an excuse. He’d go back to Paris. His life wasn’t here, and his family was … a bit fractured. That was all right. He was used to it, and everyone lived in the world alone, as far as he could see. They just pretended they didn’t.
Harden up. Be a man. Hayden was talking to somebody, being bright and cheerful and funny again, like he wasn’t concussed and hadn’t been bashed. Luke was willing to bet nobody but him would ever know.
More than one way to be strong, he guessed.
There was a Maori thing his stepmother Miriama had used to say. “He toa taumata rao.”
Courage has many resting places.
He answered the phone.
CHAPTER 13
Change of Plan
Marko said, “Change of wedding plans, mate,” and Luke thought, Here we go, and tried not to care.
It was his sister.
That’s why you have to take it.
