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“And your brother?”
Jesse winced. “Not so close with him.”
“Sorry. That must be hard.”
“Meh, not really,” Jesse said, lifting his eyes to the slate-colored clouds. “It’s always been that way. What about your folks? Sisters?” Jesse said, shoving the last of his pie into his mouth. “Do you see much of them?”
“Not for a few years now.”
“No?”
“No,” Tom said, setting down his coffee. “There was a bit of a falling out.”
Jesse cursed himself. “Sorry, man. My big mouth.”
“No, it’s fine,” Tom said. “I haven’t talked about it to anyone except my shrink. I’m glad you asked.”
Jesse held his troubled gaze and asked quietly, “What happened?”
Tom tore more bread apart but didn’t eat. “Your family ever get funny with you? You know, for being like we are?”
Jesse raised his eyebrows. “For being gay? No. That was the one thing they got right. Did yours?”
“Not for being gay,” Tom said, laying the bread down. “But for my choice of partners? Yeah…that happened.” He brushed crumbs off his gloves. “You ever get that?”
Jesse forced himself not to stare at Tom’s scar. “Only when I was sleeping with dickheads. Though, to be fair, I did that a lot.”
“Past tense.” Tom’s smile warmed. “Broke that habit, then?”
“Sort of,” Jesse said, nibbling bread. “Glen, my last ex, he was…nice. My family couldn’t get enough of him.”
“But you could?”
Jesse dunked the crust of bread into his soup. “I thought this was going to be a conversation for another date?”
“Sorry,” Tom said, draining his coffee and screwing the cap back on the flask. “I’m an idiot, getting all heavy on you in the first bloody hour.”
“Hey,” Jesse said, putting his hand on Tom’s, “I asked, didn’t I?”
“You did.” Tom’s lips twitched then he looked away. “I was with some…unusual partners. They didn’t like it, which I get, now. But they didn’t exactly handle it well. Neither did I.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah, it was,” he said. “But it’s better now. Or…I’mbetter. Even if things are still hard with my family, at least I know I’ve got my shit together now, you know?”
“I don’t know, actually,” Jesse said with a nervous laugh. “But I get the idea. That’s good, mate. Really good.” Tom smiled. Jesse drank the last of his soup and looked up again at the ruins. “So how old is this place, do you reckon?”
“It was first built in 1132,” Tom said, following Jesse’s gaze to the soaring tower. “So almost a thousand years, if you can imagine that.”
Jesse shook his head. “I can’t. Time like that? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It can’t, really,” Tom replied, pouring more coffee. “We’re not meant to know time that way.”
“But haemophiles do,” Jesse mused. “Do you thinkhesaw this place when it was still running?”
Tom chuckled softly. “It was dissolved in 1539, well before the baron’s time.”
“Do you know how old he actually is?”
