“We’re just one big, fucked up family,” I grinned, planting a kiss on Rowan’s forehead.
“Can I tell a story now?” Corbin asked, breaking the silence.
“Sure,” I sniffed.
“This is the story of the last time I came to London, to this very bridge, in fact. It’s the story of how I found Rowan. He was the last of the guys to come to Briarwood, and he was bloody difficult to find. It took me two years to track him down,” Corbin said. “I had to do a few slightly-not-legal things to get his file out of the care system, and then of course there wasn’t any record of him after he ran away. I went to his last foster family and they told me in less polite terms to get on my bike.”
“That sounds like them,” Rowan choked out.
Corbin continued. “Flynn was in Arizona watching Maeve, so I left Arthur to look after Briarwood and came up to London. I vowed that I wouldn’t leave until I found Rowan. I’d just started reading Hunter S. Thompson and I got this idea that the only way I was going to find him was to do a bit of gonzo journalism, so I took myself to the first squat I could find – which happened to be this insane mansion owned by a Saudi oil baron who’d never even set foot in the door – and unrolled my sleeping bag.” He laughed. “It turns out among squatters that’s a serious breach of etiquette. I got my nose broken and was shown the door.”
“How did you find him?”
“I knew Rowan must be an earth user, because of his parents. It’s a recessive trait and they were both earth users. So I asked around about someone living rough who had a way with plants. I got beat up even more, but finally, a skinhead told me about this guy living down by the canal who grew potatoes and carrots in a tiny garden on top of an abandoned office block, and he shared the bounty with anyone who asked.”
That’s Rowan. Even when he was at the absolute bottom with nothing, he cared for people, sharing the only thing he had to share.
“I came here and asked around about the vegetable kid, and someone pointed me to a body slumped on a filthy mattress up on the fourth floor, high out of his mind.” Corbin grinned. “I waited until he passed out completely, then I bundled him up and carried him out of there over my shoulder.”
“You didn’t!”
“He did,” Rowan murmured. “It was like a fairy tale. I fell asleep in the squat and woke up in a castle.”
“Fairy tale my arse. In fairy tales, the fair prince never wakes up and pukes on his knight-in-shining-armour’s shoes.” Corbin kissed Rowan’s forehead. “I had to take Rowan on the Tube. It was so crowded that I banged his head on the doors. He smelled like a slaughterhouse and people screamed at the guards to kick us both off, but I’d paid for our tickets so I told them all to bugger off. I hauled him back to Briarwood and tried to shower him, but I couldn’t hold him up, so I just left him in a bed to sleep off the drugs.”
Rowan reached out his fingers, tentatively raising them to Corbin. His eyes swam with tears. Corbin took his hand and squeezed it hard. I wrapped my arms around both their shoulders, feeling Rowan’s kindness and Corbin’s steadfastness coursing through me.
“And then what?” I whispered.
“What do you think? I searched ‘how to detox a person from heroin’ on the internet, followed the steps until he stopped throwing up, and then I took him to a drug centre. Six painful months of rehab later, he was the handsome creature you see before you now.”
“All thanks to you,” Rowan murmured.
“You didn’t make it easy, you bastard. He ran away twice to come back here. I dragged him back. He smashed a bunch of priceless furniture at Briarwood, even tried to jump out the tower window.” Corbin smiled again, but this time his smile was tinged with sadness. “It was almost like having Keegan back.”
“You saved me,” Rowan whispered.
“You saved yourself,” Corbin replied.
We clung together in silence, listening to the lapping of the water and the pounding of each others’ hearts, until Corbin said, his voice husky. “Are we going back to the flat?”
The weight of the night’s revelations hung in the air, sizzling between us. Rowan and Corbin exchanged a glance so rife with hunger I imagined them as two explorers lost in a desert who’d just found water.
Rowan tugged my hand. “Come on,” he said with a smile that lit the night brighter than fireworks, brighter than a comet screaming across the sky.
Holding his hands, Corbin and I let him drag us up to the street. I’d follow Rowan to the ends of the multiverse if it meant I could see that smile again.
In the next block, Rowan pulled us into a dingy hotel lobby, the air thick with stale cigarette smoke. He went over to the front desk and asked for a room for the night. His fingers shook as he pulled out a wad of crumpled notes and counted out the right amount.
The three of us held hands in the elevator. No one spoke. I didn’t know what would happen when we got to that hotel room. All I knew was my heart raced a hundred miles an hour.
Rowan’s hands shook so badly he couldn’t get the key into the lock. “Give me that.” Corbin took the key and opened the door. I followed the boys into a cramped room with a bed, a TV, and a stunning view out the window into a brick wall. On the street below, two people screamed abuse at each other.
Corbin took Rowan’s wrist in one hand and mine in the other. He yanked us both close to him. His eyes blazed with need. He pulled Rowan’s head to his and wrapped his mouth in a sizzling kiss.
“What do you say, Rowan?” Corbin pulled back and winked at both of us. “Want to make another of Maeve’s dreams come true?”
“You saw, didn’t you?” Rowan whispered, resting his forehead against Corbin’s.
