One
Dylan paced the draughty seating area of Truro train station, clutching a paper cup of cinnamon-spiced coffee from the dodgy Costa stand. It tasted like soap, but he hardly noticed. Back home, coffee was his drug of choice—lifeblood when the chaos of reality frayed his nerves—but he wasn’t in Romford now. He’d left the city behind, and within the hour, he’d get his reward...ifanyone ever showed up to give him a lift.
He circled around the glass entrance doors again, scanning the traffic outside for a familiar vehicle. When he found none, he pulled his phone from his pocket and scanned his message threads, wondering if he’d missed something—instructions to make his own way to Newquay or any clue who was picking him up. Over the past few months, he’d seen them all—Harry, Joe, Emma, even old George in the stinky horsebox. But the WhatsApp chats revealed nothing. Just a vague notion that someone he recognised would be there to meet his afternoon train. Someone who was either late as fuck or had clean forgotten.
Fuck it.Dylan eyed the taxi rank. He could’ve done without spending twenty quid, but—
“Hey.”
Relief punched Dylan in the gut. He whirled around. Blinked. And threw himself into the embrace he’d been dreaming of all the way from London. Clutched the lithe, sinewy body against him, and buried his face in silky hair that smelt ofrealcoffee and grass.
I’ve missed you.
I love you.
I know.
For a long moment, they simply held each other, until Dylan pulled back to check his Angelo-starved imagination wasn’t playing tricks on him. “God, it’s really you.”
Angelo laughed. “Who else would it be?”
“Everyone. You’ve never come to the station before.”
Smoky brown eyes clouded with guilt. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Shit. That’s not what I meant—I just wasn’t expecting to see you for a little while longer.”
“Oh.” Mollified, Angelo grabbed Dylan’s hand to tow him out of the station. “Come on then. Let’s get out of here.”
“Wait! I need my stuff.” Dylan doubled back and grabbed the hold-all and messenger bag he’d hulked on the train. He shifted the larger bag out of Angelo’s reach but gave up the one carrying his laptop.
Harry’s car was outside, but there was no sign of the man himself. Dylan cocked an eyebrow. “You drove?”
“Uh-huh. I do have a licence, you know.”
“I know that, you just haven’t driven for, like, a year.”
Angelo rolled his eyes. “I don’t need to back home when everything’s on our doorstep. Down here I have to ask for a lift anytime I run out of lube, so Harry lent me his car for a while.”
A while. Dylan’s stomach clenched as he stowed his bag in the boot of the borrowed Ford Focus. It had already been a couple of months since Angelo had come to Harry’s rehabilitation retreat to recover from a severe ME relapse. Dylan wasn’t sure he could handle the prospect of a lonely train home in two weeks’ time.
He slid into the passenger seat and shamelessly ogled Angelo as he slipped behind the wheel. It had been thirteen days since they’d last seen each other in the flesh, but the difference in Angelo—as Dylan was becoming accustomed to every time he made the six-hundred-mile round trip to visit—was maddeningly clear. “You look so well.”
Angelo fixed him with a disbelieving frown. “Really? I had trouble getting up this morning.”
Another kick to the gut. Guilt replaced frustration, and Dylan covered Angelo’s hand with his own. “Fuck. I’m sorry. Do you feel better now? I hate it when you’re in pain.”
“I’m not in pain, babe. I promise. Harry had me doing yoga with the donkeys before I could think about it too much. It hurt then, but I feel good now.”
And there it was—the elephant in the room, and the reason they’d wound up at the end of the world in the first place. Harry was Angelo’s long-time physiotherapist, and the only one who could help Angelo when his ME made life so hard. The only one who could set him back on his fatigue-ravaged feet when all Dylan could do was angst himself into a migraine and make the fucking tea.
He left his hand where it was as Angelo started the car and backed out of the parking space. Truro disappeared and rugged Cornish countryside took its place. Dylan gazed out of the window, absorbing the familiar heat in his veins from Angelo’s touch, and pondered what lay ahead. Spending Christmas on Joe and Harry’s farm had seemed a no-brainer a few weeks ago. With Angelo on the mend, he’d looked forward to long, lazy days of eating, fucking, and just being together, but he felt antsy now, like he’d stepped into a puddle of quicksand. He’d avoided asking himself why while he’d been snowed under at the office, but with the end of his working year behind him, reality was hitting home. Angelo looked well because hewaswell. Because farm life suited him—healed him—and sooner or later, one of them would have to voice the idea that something in their current way of living had to change.
* * *
Angelo took Dylan’s bags to the chalet he called home right now, and relief washed over him as he dumped them on the bed.I miss him so much.
“All right, mate?”
