“Are we?”
“Yup. And I get the feeling Joe wasn’t the type to fall asleep in his mate’s lap until you lot came along.”
Angelo knew Joe well enough by now to believe that. The bloke was soft as shit beneath his fiery temper, but he’d been lonely before he’d met Harry—almost as lonely as Angelo’s life before Dylan.
Disquiet sparked in Angelo’s chest. A few hours of naked reconnection hadn’t fixed the issues that had drawn them apart in the first place, and despite Dylan’s reassurance that they’d find their way, Angelo was petrified. He’d move back to London in a heartbeat for Dylan—he’d doanythingfor him—but Dylan was right: one man falling on a sword would kill them both.
“Fuck’s sake, mate.” Joe groaned and covered his face with his arms. “I can hear you bellyaching in my sleep. You’re going to give yourself a stroke.”
Angelo scowled. “Nice.”
Joe sat up, looking far too rumpled and cute for a farmer pushing thirty. “Never said I was. Are you still freaking out about going back to London?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Joe slid off the couch and left the room. He came back a few moments later and dropped a dusty photo album into Jevon’s lap. “Rhys told me you pulled a Nellie. Have a look at those—you might see something you recognise.”
Jevon seemed as mystified as Angelo until he opened the album. Then his face lit up with the kind of smile that made it so fucking easy to see how Rhys had fallen in love with him. Rhys’s shadows were complex—Angelo had missed them for the first few months they’d known each other—but Jevon’s light was simple and free.
“Is this your grandfather?” Jevon turned a page. “Rhys told me he rode horses in Romani circuses.”
Nelly. Elephant. Circus. Joe’s nursery-rhyme slang clicked in Angelo’s laboured brain.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Joe said. “I’m probably related to a few of the others too, but I don’t know their names. My grandparents came here on their own.”
Jevon was clearly fascinated. He tapped a page with his finger, tracing the skyline. “I’ve been here, but not with the circus. This is Macedonia, close to the Greek border. It’s where I was before I went back to Lesbos.”
Joe peered at the page. “What’s it like now?”
“Hideous.” Jevon’s sunny expression faded. “But I’m trying to forget about work for a while.”
“Good luck with that.” Joe eyed the phone that seemed to ring for him every other night, dragging him out into the darkness to rescue more horses in need. “I’d drink a hell of a lot more if my old man wasn’t a raging pisshead.”
Jevon grinned. “Rum helps, eh?”
“It does.”
Angelo watched the exchange like a spectator, switching his gaze back and forth. Then a page in the photo album caught his attention, and he elbowed Joe in the ribs. “Budge up.”
“Piss off. Go round.”
Rolling his eyes, Angelo clambered over him to sit beside Jevon. “I love acrobats. We used to have this bloke from Memphis come and train us every couple of weeks when I was with the English National Ballet.”
“A Beale Street Flipper?”
“Yeah. He wasfit.”
Jevon chuckled. “Rhys likes acrobats. I’m thinking of doing backflips as foreplay.”
“Seems legit.” Angelo pictured Jevon and Rhys together, but intrigue outweighed the horniness of his imagination. “Thought you were a clown, though?”
“I’m a play specialist these days, but I started as an acrobat.”
“Can you still do it?”
“Some days. I’m not as slick as I used to be, but I practice when I can.”
“I’d like to see that. Harry had me doing cartwheels a while ago, but I don’t think I can flip anymore.”
