Page 23 of Second Story

“For a one-off work reason. I got what I needed faster than I expected. The head teacher asked if I had time to sit in on an interview. To be an objective observer. I had to tell him why I couldn’t.”

“You told him how you know me?” It’s wild how I can tell when Isaac’s heart sinks. This action replay of him expecting the worst makes me cut to the chase.

“I told him that I knew you, but what he told me is probably more important. About you.”

Isaac freezes again, and I hate to see it.

“He wants you here, mate. Thinks you’ve got a real gift for storytelling. Wondered if you’d be a safe pair of hands with his kids. I told him you would be.”

He laughs.

I used to love that sound. Would work hard to get to hear more of it. Now I wince at this brittle version.“Okay, okay. I get it. I’m not entirely back on your list of good guys.” I meet his eyes and tell him the real truth. “Trust me, if I was a real bad guy, I would have stayed as Lenny’s welfare officer. Only I couldn’t, could I? What you asked me for the night before your Mum’s hearing meant I had to rule myself out.”

I don’t say it aloud. There’s no need when his gaze drops to my mouth as a sign he remembers.

A kiss for luck.

I had to walk away from that request and not look back, even though it killed me. Today, I take the risk I couldn’t when Lenny was on my caseload. I close in on Isaac to finally finish what he started.

And he doesn’t stop me.

6

JOE

For a third time, Isaac shoves a hand through his hair. And again, all I want to do is unsnarl him. Instead, I finish what started in a hallway outside his brother’s bedroom the last time I made a home visit.

“You made a move. On me, Isaac. I always understood why. You were stressed to the max about what might happen in court the next morning.” I swallow and make myself continue. “I don’t work in the same support role anymore, but back then, that’s what I was—Lenny’s support person. And your liaison with the services to help him. Anyone looking in from the outside at what almost happened?” I shake my head. “They would have seen me taking advantage. Not due to your age. There aren’t that many years between us. I mean it would look like me taking advantage of someone relying on me to stay professional.”

“Only if you’d said yes.”

Isaac looks away, colour rising, and he’s always been a looker but this much pink under gold is a lot. So is him giving me a short, sharp reminder that bravery runs bone-deep through him.He meets my eyes again, his chin lifting, and attraction lands a swift punch to my solar plexus.

He’s so fearless. Forget that solo panic party in a bathroom. Look at how fast he recovered.That resilience gets me right in the gut. I’m as winded now as the first time he looked at me like I was someone he’d willingly choose as a partner instead of as an ugly lifebelt to cling to. This gaze is as fierce as I remember him being about his brother, a growling panther trapped in that shadowed amber. “You didn’t say yes, did you, Joe? You told me no. I dealt with it.”

“You know why I turned you down, yeah? Because you can’t think that I wasn’t—” I stop myself from finishing that sentence with what would have been a career-endinginterestedortemptedback then. I abandon that to ask a different question. “You know what a power imbalance is?”

He nods, hand still in his hair. Resisting the urge to ease it free is tough, especially when his knuckles whiten, but I have to make sure that he hears me this time. It can’t have sunk in the first time I told him this.

“I had parents on my caseload who couldn’t ever put their kids first. Who wouldn’t. You did that and more to make Lenny’s life continue almost like normal when your own… It ended, Isaac. You’d made a life. Had a future out of Wintergreen. A job in a bookshop. Friends at uni. Did they stick around when you became a de facto dad with zero warning?”

He doesn’t answer and avoids my gaze. I wait until he resumes eye contact, then I shake my head with him watching.

“I knew you were on your own. Saw that almost daily in the run up to the hearing. She should have been bailed way ahead of that, not made to wait for months. That was a long time for stress to build up, and you definitely didn’t want a kiss for luck from me the evening before that long wait should have ended.” I lower my voice but go ahead and vocalise what he’d really puton offer. “Or for me to stay past Lenny’s bedtime to fuck you through your mattress.”

I’ve pictured how that scene could have played out, imagined Isaac sprawled across sheets with me balls deep in him and with my hand over his mouth so as not to wake his brother. My imagination has fucked him against every wall of that shitty emergency accommodation. I’ve done him fast, then slow and careful, in my imagination. Banged him on his knees behind the locked door of his bathroom, and just like each time my brain took me on that wishful-thinking journey all alone in my own bed with my cock hard and aching, this aches even harder.

“Mate, you didn’t want me.”

Isaac looks about to say something. I keep going before he can, because after today, I won’t get a chance to make sure he really hears this from me.

“Take a look at you.” He’s shaded by that willow. I’m lit by bright and brilliant Cornish sunshine, and if that didn’t already spotlight the nightmare a stack of bad decisions toppled over to leave me wearing, I push up my sleeves to add grim punctuation. “Then take a look at me. Believe me, this is barely the tip of an even uglier iceberg.” He has to know that after last night, and I die a little at what the full moon must have shown him. This is as rough as damp beach sand. As gritty. “You didn’t want this, or me.”

This is what he’d really needed.

“You wanted to stop thinking. I don’t blame you for that. I wouldn’t blameanyonein your situation for wanting to fuck reality away for a while. Want to know who I would blame?”

Isaac almost sighs, “I get it. I get it. You’ve said enough.”

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