“We’re used to it.” Leo stepped around Kate. “She’ll be okay in a few days.”
Kate didn’t call him out on the fib, though she must’ve known about Lila’s night wanderings. “What about you, honey? Do you want a hot drink before you go to bed?”
“No, thanks.” Leo looked around the landing for a place to sit and listen for Lila.
Like she’d read his mind, Kate touched his good arm, though her hand didn’t linger. “Our bedroom is right there. Reg will hear Lila if she wakes up.”
“Yeah, and then what will he do?”
“He’ll wake me,” Kate said. “Leo, I know you’re nervous, but you have nothing to fear from anyone here. We’re going to take care of you, for as long as you need us.”
“We don’t need you.”
Leo made his escape to the door at the end of the landing. For a moment, he thought Kate might follow, but she didn’t. Instead, he heard her pull Lila’s door ajar and go into the bathroom.
He stepped into his own room, shut the door, and sagged against it, more relieved than he cared to admit. He’d had enough playing nice, and it was only the first day.
Exhausted, he made his way to the bed he’d dumped his bag on earlier that day. His hands were shaking, like they had done since he’d spotted Reg’s car pulling onto the driveway of the old foster place.Damn it.He shoved them in his pockets. That home had been a crock of shit. Behaviour charts, cleaning rotas, and endless lists of rules . . .
Speaking of which. . .
Leo eyed the closed bedroom door and wondered how long it would be before Kate or Reg came in and turned the lights off. How long he’d last before he told them to stick it too. In his pockets, he clenched his fists so tight his nails bit into his palms. Three years left until he could take Lila and get a flat of their own. A safe place wherehemade the rules, and they could keep the lights on all night if they wanted to.
Yeah, ’cause it’s Lila who’s afraid of the dark.
The door opened. Leo steeled himself for Kate or Reg, but it was Charlie.
“All right?”
Leo nodded and went back to staring at the ceiling.
Charlie hovered in the doorway. “Do you need to put any of your stuff in my wardrobe?”
“What?”
“Your stuff,” Charlie repeated. “You don’t have much storage in here.”
Leo had forgotten that, even though Kate had blathered on about it most of the way home. And now he surveyed the tiny, sparse room, he decided that it suited him. He shook his head without glancing Charlie’s way. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
Charlie left—irritatingly leaving the door open—though it didn’t sound like he’d gone far. Leo listened to him move around for a while, before his gaze drifted from the ceiling to the window. The glass reflected across the hallway, picking up Charlie’s lean form as he moved around his own room, half-undressed in what, in soft focus, looked like pyjama bottoms.
Damn.Leo’s chest warmed as he took in Charlie’s sinewy, tanned back and lanky arms. His shower-damp hair and prominent hip bones.
Yep.
Definitely gorgeous.
He searched the room for something—anything—to distract him. The walls were mostly bare, except for a few strange cartoons that were randomly dotted on the ceiling, some cut from magazines and others hand drawn. His gaze fell on a drawing at the foot of the bed, a felt-tip pen sketch of a red-haired woman with huge eyes and a pointy chin. Despite her exaggerated features, Leo could tell the woman was supposed to be Kate. Before he knew what he was doing, He sat up and pried it gently from the wall, then took it to Charlie’s open door. “Is this the Japanese stuff that Fliss was talking about?”
“‘Stuff’?” Charlie glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t be polite on her behalf.”
Leo said nothing. He’d liked Fliss’s blunt way of speaking, even when she’d threatened to kick his head in. It was a threat he’d heard a thousand times over, but coming from Fliss with her pretty eyes and box of ponies, it’d been oddly reassuring. A flash of normality in a strange new world.
“It’s manga,” Charlie said when Leo let the silence fill the room like a dense black fog. “I draw them with my mate Jess. She writes the storyboards.”
“Then what do you do with them?”
