“Normal?”
“Yeah. Life happens here. Nothing good, nothing bad. It’s boring.”
Charlie laughed. “What did you expect? Tsunamis and nuclear war?”
“Piss off. Nah, I reckon I just thought it would be . . . something, you know?”
Charlie didn’t know, but he said nothing, hoping that perhaps, for once, Leo would elaborate. And it seemed the rum had granted him his wish. Leo stretched his legs and let out the kind of whooshing sigh that told Charlie he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Swindon was shit, but I knew it like the back of my hand. This place is like another planet.”
“A boring planet?”
Leo snorted. “Yep. Everywhere’s boring, ’cept my head.”
The words were muttered, and slightly slurred, but Charlie heard them like Leo had yelled them in his ear. He slid closer, hoping Leo would look at him, so he’d know for sure that he had no hope of ever knowing what Leo was thinking.
But Leo didn’t look at him, so Charlie braved a tentative hand on his back. “There’s still time for you to like this town. You haven’t been here very long.”
“Doesn’t feel that way. Doesn’t feel like anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fucked if I know.” Leo sighed and leaned back on the bench, but he didn’t shrug away from Charlie’s hand. “I don’t know much anymore.”
An eerie silence crept over them, enveloping them. For a long moment, Charlie welcomed it, like it could seep into Leo and absorb the pain he was trying so hard to mask with apathy. But it didn’t work. Leo trembled, then exhaled with a stuttered gasp, and Charlie pulled Leo into his arms.
Leo fell sideways against him. Charlie wished Leo would cry, but Leo didn’t cry. He lay slack in Charlie’s loose embrace and stared up at the stars. “How did you know they really wanted you?”
“Hmm?” Charlie shifted. His chin touched Leo’s hair. It tickled, and smelled of Leo—of smoke and rum—and the soft drizzle that had begun to moisten the heavy air around them. “You mean Mum and—uh—Kate and Reg?”
“Yeah.”
“Because they didn’t have to want me. They could’ve left me for someone else, or given me back any time things got rough, like the first couple who tried to adopt me.”
Leo turned his head and fixed Charlie with a stare that suddenly didn’t feel empty. A loaded gaze that pierced Charlie’s soul and shook his bones. Warmth filled Charlie’s veins, and an invisible chord drew him closer. Leo moved too, and then their lips touched . . . brushed against each other, gently at first, but then harder, like it meant something Charlie didn’t quite understand, until, wide-eyed, Leo pulled away.
“What— What the fuck was that?”
“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.” Charlie wrenched himself free and stumbled off the bench. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Charlie—”
“No! Don’t say it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Charlie backed away, then turned and fled, running across the park, his stomach in his mouth, churning and roiling, as humiliation and shame smothered him until he couldn’t take another step.
Oh God.
What have I done?
Charlie sank to his knees on the wet grass. Silence once again enveloped him, but it was different this time. Without the sullen warmth of Leo beside him, it suffocated him like a fog of broken dreams.
He’d kissed Leo.
He’dkissedLeo, his vulnerable and messed-up foster brother who’d never given him any indication that he even liked boys that way, let alone likedCharliethat way.
The hate the year-eleven boys had thrown at him the day Leo had arrived echoed in his brain:“Backs to the wall. Faggy Charlie might jump ya.”
Had they seen it all along? That it had only been a matter of time before he threw himself at someone who didn’t want him?
Why, why, why?
