“You know you have to tell them, don’t you?”
“Tell who what?”
Fliss rolled her eyes and leaned on the closed door. “Don’t give me that nonsense. I’ve kept quiet until now because it’s none of my business, but PTSD is serious, Charlie. Mum and Dad need to know everything if they’re going to help Leo—including about the little cuddle party you two have got going on. What if it goes tits up, Leo gets upset, and they don’t know why?”
“I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“Liar.”
“Idon’t,” Charlie insisted, opening his wardrobe to hide the flush burning his cheeks.
“Want me to spell it out?”
“Piss off.” Charlie grabbed a T-shirt and pulled the one he was wearing over his head, replacing it with the clean one. “Can’t you annoy Andy for a while instead of me? It must be his turn.”
“Andy isn’t wearing Leo’s clothes.”
Damn. Charlie looked down at the T-shirt he’d mindlessly slipped on. ItwasLeo’s. Of course it was. “What do you want from me? To pay you to shut the hell up? To keep your mouth shut?”
“What do you think this is? A bloody soap opera?” Fliss let out an exasperated sigh. “Charlie, I’m not trying to ruin your life. I’m just warning you that Mum and Dad need to know that you and Leo are, uh, seeing each other. They could get in a lot of trouble if social services found out first. And Leo needs us, remember? How would you feel if they took him away?”
Of all the things Charlie had spent the last few days worrying about, never once had he considered that. “They couldn’t do that, could they?”
“They could if they thought you and Leo were up to anything inappropriate while you were sneaking across the landing every night.”
The fading flush in Charlie cheeks returned full force, incinerating his skin from within. “We haven’t done anything.”
Fliss shrugged. “Doesn’t matter if you have. It’s the suspicion that will screw things up.”
“But—” Charlie’s brain worked overtime, trying to push aside the embarrassment burning a path through every vein. “If I tell Mum and Dad, they won’t let Leo come home.”
“Yes, they will.”
“No, they won’t. He’ll have nowhere to sleep if they won’t let him sleep so close to my room anymore.”
“He will if I move out. He can have my room.”
“But—”
“Stop sayingbut. You sound like a moron.”
“But—” Charlie searched for a coherent sentence to prove Fliss wrong “—where would you go?”
“Andy has a spare room.”
“You hate Andy’s house.”
“Only because it smells of stale garlic. He’s got a wicked stereo system, and he works early shifts six days a week. I’d never see him.”
But. . . Charlie stopped himself just in time and allowed Fliss’s bombshell to take root in his whirling mind. His head told him that Fliss leaving home would be the best thing in the world—Christ, how many times had he wished her away?—but his heart was heavy. For better or worse, Fliss was his sister, and life without her was unthinkable. “I don’t want you to move out.”
“Why not? It’s not like it wouldn’t have happened eventually anyway.”
“Mum won’t let you.”
“I’m twenty, Charlie. Not fifteen.”
Fliss had a point, and the more Charlie thought about it, the more her moving in with Andy made sense. He was always moaning that he didn’t like living alone—or leaving his delinquent cat to its own devices when he was out. If Kate and Reg could live with Charlie and Leo residing on separate floors of the house, Fliss’s solution was perfect.
