Page 89 of Second Song

“On a cliff?”

Right now? I could jump off the highest one Cornwall has to offer and be pretty sure I’d only spiral like gulls do now, caught in thermal currents. I’m just as giddy at Liam saying, “No, with me.”

He passes a familiar lay-by, only he doesn’t park there or head for the edge where we met what now feels like forever ago. Instead, Liam steers us off the coast road and onto a narrow farm track. Grass grows down its middle and trees tap the roof of the van with twiggy fingers. This long lane is a Glynn Harber reminder, overgrown and isolated. So is the ramshackle farmhouse Liam pulls up in front of. “There’s nothing around for miles,” he tells me, which is just as well when he gives the front door a hard shove.

“Breaking and entering is your version of getting into danger?” It’s dark inside this abandoned building. Cobwebbed and a little scary. Or it would be if anyone else led me into shadows. With Liam? I don’t need to be able to see to pick up from where I left off this morning.

Our mouths meet the second the door creaks closed behind us, and who needs light? The electricity we generate each time we kiss could light all of Cornwall—should sizzle, crackling like every nerve between my brain and balls do whenever we connect this way. All I know is something inside me shifts when he hefts me up, or maybe that’s the wall he shoves me against shuddering.

I don’t care if the whole building falls down around us. I’ve got his tongue deep in my mouth just the way I like it and a pair of strong arms to shield me, ones I haven’t needed today. But here, and in the bedroom he leads me upstairs to show me? I’m the one who does all the holding the moment he turns away to open a window while asking a suddenly gruffer than usual question.

“See those lights in the distance?”

I slide my arms around him from behind and squint through the dusk. “I see them.”

“That’s where Noah lives. Stef Luxton’s family bought this land for extra grazing years ago. Didn’t need this farmhouse or have the cash to renovate it. Now look right. See those sheep?”

I do. They dot a field rising all the way to moorland.

“Keep watching.” He lets out a sharp whistle that has to do a number on his hearing, but a woolly head shoots up, and he says, “That’s your lamb.”

“No way.”

“Look to the left next.”

The sun is close to setting in that direction, the sea glinting. “I can hear the waves.” That muted roar is the sound he sleeps best to, so I love it. I love him too when he tenses before asking, “Now see that outbuilding across the yard?”

“Yes.”

“Think it would make a good studio or practice room if I took on this long-term project?”

My hold around him tightens. “Who for?”

A drumroll started this morning when I saw him under trees shot through with sunny lightning. It picked up speed in a practice room where I told my truth with him standing guard outside for me. Now that drumroll is almost too loud to hear over because the last time I heard this gruffness, he told me about someone he lost.

Now he mentions who he’s hellbent on keeping.

“For you.” He looks back over his shoulder. “For us.”

And here’s proof that I’m a stronger person lately. I can pull him round to face me. Can kiss him and not stop until he opens for me and loses all that tension.

He kisses me back in a building no one has lived in for decades. It’s dusty, derelict, completely empty, so there’s no one to see me get his clothes unfastened or how he scrambles through a pocket before asking me a hoarse-sounding, “Yeah, Row?”

“Yes.”

To everything on offer.

To sharing this rebuild with him.

To living where sheep bleat and the sea can send him to sleep right here in a currently empty room where he slicks a finger before hesitating. “Yes,” I tell him again, and something new sings inside me when he turns and reaches back to touch himself instead of me for a first time.

Maybe I should be the one doing this slow and careful opening. My hands shake so much as I unwrap a condom that it’s probably best he does it while I kiss him like I did this morning. I press my lips to each fall and rise of his spine, to each scar and freckle, until he’s ready for me to try something as new to us both as us building a life here will be.

Long term.

I’ve already seen how dusty renovations leave him, so I know how he’ll look when his hair starts to silver.

And I’m going to be right here to see that.

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