“Not for me. Just figured I might’ve scared you off by freaking out on you. Wasn’t exactly what you paid for.”
Liam studied the waves as they rolled inland and hit the rocks. The resulting mess of froth and foam felt much like the chaos in his brain, chaos that only seemed to fade when he had Zac in his arms. Who am I to judge him? “Worse things happen at sea, mate. I’m all right with it if you are.”
“When do you want to go?”
“When are you free?”
“Thursday?” Zac said. “I’ve got, er, some stuff to do before then.”
By stuff, Liam assumed Zac meant other clients—johns—and the thought of him with someone else still made Liam feel slightly sick. Sometimes, it was all too easy to convince himself he was the only one and try not to ponder why it even mattered. “Thursday is good for me. I need to leave early, though. Around half seven?”
Zac whistled. “Probably not worth going to bed, then.”
“If you say so. Where should I pick you up? The flat?”
“That works. I’ll wait for you outside.”
Liam searched for a way to end the conversation, but saying good-bye and hanging up suddenly seemed impossible. Shame he couldn’t think of an intelligent reason to keep Zac on the line.
Zac cleared his throat. “So I’ll see you on Thursday? Bright and early?”
“Er . . . I guess so.”
“Bye, then.”
“Bye.”
Zac hung up, leaving Liam still staring at the sea and wondering how these rare, stilted conversations had become the highlight of his day. But the waves held no answers and he had a million things to do between now and Thursday. With a heavy sigh, he tore himself away from the cliffs and climbed into the van. He turned the key, and she rumbled to life with a tired splutter.
Liam patted the dashboard. “Easy, girl. Gonna get you sorted out soon.”
Hettie made no reply, and Liam questioned his sanity, but he wasn’t in the mood to lose that game today. Zac’s call had distracted him from something he’d been putting off for weeks, and he needed Hettie’s asthmatic purr to keep him grounded, just as he’d need her on Thursday when he drove to King’s Lynn and introduced her to the beautiful young hooker who’d claimed every thought Liam couldn’t fill with work, hassle, and plain old grief.
Liam eased the van out of the cliffside lay-by he’d pulled into when Zac had called. The sign for Fakenham came into view not long after. Liam followed the road inland until the turn for the cemetery popped up on the left, half hidden by the giant oak tree he’d slept against one dark night after he’d buried Cory within the graveyard’s walls. He parked in the deserted car park and got out, drifting to the shiny headstone that stood out like a new penny. Cory. Liam knelt and touched the fresh flowers Rosa left every week. The grave was neat and tidy, unlike some of the older plots nearby—the one next to Cory hadn’t been touched in years.
“If anything ever happens to me, just chuck me on the compost heap . . .”
Liam allowed himself a watery smile. He’d been tempted to follow Cory’s wish to the letter, but the world didn’t work quite like that. A biodegradable coffin had been the best he could do.
And look at you now, eh? Fucking hookers for therapy. Liam closed his eyes against the mocking inner voice, but without the stark reality of Cory’s grave to ground him, Zac filled his mind, dancing through his consciousness from that first heady night in King’s Lynn to their last encounter in London—Zac with his long, slender body and sharp, green eyes, his smooth skin and slim hips. Everything about him so entrenched in Liam’s brain it was hard to believe they’d only met twice.
Liam opened his eyes and took a deep breath of the cool October air. He rarely came to the cemetery. Its calm tranquillity was so unlike Cory that there seemed to be no connection between the bleak grave and the riotous, colourful man Liam remembered, even with Rosa’s weekly flower drop. He brushed some dirt off the shiny stone and wondered what Cory would think if he could see him now—the business, the house, the dogs . . . Zac. Most folk would probably hazard a guess that Cory wouldn’t be too pleased to know Liam had been paying a hooker to keep him company, but they didn’t know—hadn’t known—Cory. If there was anyone who’d understand, it would’ve been him.
“Don’t ever be lonely, dude. There’s someone worth knowing in every smile you see.”
They’d used that catchphrase on the festival ad campaign the first year they’d put it on. Liam had laughed and humoured Cory, even as he’d painted it on yards and yards of up-cycled fencing, but the words haunted him now. Zac’s smiles were rare, and Liam was still so lonely that his soul ached for the man who’d taught him how to love, so what the fuck was the point?
There were no answers in the cemetery, so he left Cory behind and drove home to Holkham. On his desk, he found a stack of updated employment contracts for the designers Sea Rave had commissioned to take his place when he’d been forced to take over Cory’s CEO role, exactly where he’d tossed them the day before. Rosa’s husband, Mike, had drawn up the contracts, setting out the terms and conditions, and the expectations from both sides. Liam ran an absent eye over them, checking for discrepancies and anything Mike had missed. One section stood out:
Sea Rave will provide fringe benefits, including health insurance, paid holiday and parental leave, and discounted clothing, regardless of the employee’s role within the company.
This meant that everyone from business director Mike to the teenager who swept the factory floors on a Saturday was treated as equally as they could be without bankrupting the business. The policy, dreamed up by Cory at a surf festival in France years ago, buoyed by too much beer and a foggy cloud of local weed, and reinvented and tweaked by Mike since, meant that Sea Rave’s employee turnover was next to nil. People came to work for them and never left. Liam couldn’t count the number of times he’d been told Sea Rave had become someone’s family.
It was a legacy Cory would’ve died five times over for. Liam approved the enhancements Mike had drafted, but as he finished up, he thought again of Zac and his heart sank a little further into his stomach. Sea Rave took care of their employees because they gave a shit. Who cared about Zac? Who made sure he was treated fairly? Supported him when he was ill and couldn’t work?
Dave walked into his leg, reminding him in her clumsy way that he hadn’t taken her and Jazz to the beach yet. Liam looked down and made a feeble attempt to tame the mud-streaked wild wool framing her face. Whose idea had it been to get labradoodles again? Damn things were dirt magnets. It was your idea, dickhead. Of course it was. The stupid ideas had always been his.
Liam rounded up the dogs and gathered their leads. Dave didn’t really need one, but Jazz had a tendency to bound away, a habit that had worsened since Cory had gone. Liam wasn’t brave enough to wonder if he was searching for his master, so he clipped the leads on and headed out to the beach, loosing the dogs once they were off the beaten path. He was halfway to the sea when he saw a familiar figure by the water, limping along the wet sand.
