“Really? Because you look a little rattled.”
“Probably just horny.”
A faintly hysterical laugh burst out of Dylan. “Me too, but I don’t think we’re gonna get around this by fucking.”
“Shame.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“So...” Dylan found Angelo’s hands and gripped them. “We have to figure out what we’re doing. You don’t have to tell me you don’t want to come back to London because I already know. And I get it, I really do, but I don’t know where that leaves me. I can’t—” Dylan stopped and glanced around the cosy kitchen that seemed to be home to everyone but him. “I can’t live here, Angelo. I’d lose my fucking mind.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not like you. Or like Harry. Or Joe. I don’t work with my hands—I don’t build things, fix things, teach broken people how to move again. I earn my living sat on my arse with a phone glued to my ear.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is, and I’m not even saying it’s a bad thing. Just that it’s not how things work down here. You guys all move in sync like this machine of equine-fuelled efficiency, and... it’s just not me. I don’t fit in—”
This time, Angelo cut Dylan off with a strong hand clamped over his mouth. “Don’t say that.”
It’s true.
Angelo’s eyes were fire.It’s not.
But he was wrong. Dylan loved Whisper Farm as much as Angelo, but that didn’t make it home. He squirmed out of Angelo’s grasp. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you—you know that. You have to, or we’re fucked anyway. But I can’t drop everything and move down here without something more than horse shit and sausage baps to wake up to. It will destroy us, I know it will.”
And there it was: the reality Dylan was so afraid of, laid out on the table like the pure damn selfishness it felt like as soon as the words left his mouth. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Don’t.” Angelo shook his head. “Don’t ever be sorry that my bullshit has screwed your life up too. It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not your fault either, and you haven’t screwed my life up. We’re at a crossroads, Angelo. None of this changes how much I love you.”
“No?”
“No!” Dylan pulled Angelo close and wrapped his arms around him, clutching him as tight as he dared. “I just miss you so much, it’s made me so fucking crazy I can’t think straight.”
“Then I need to come home—”
“That’s not the answer either. You’d be as unhappy there as I’d be down here without a fucking purpose, damn it. Why is this so hard?”
“Because you ain’t got a plan.”
The new voice in the room startled Dylan. He reared back from Angelo to find Jevon passing through on his way to the living room. “What?”
Jevon shrugged. “Sorry to barge into your drama. It’s just you seem to be having the same conversation me and Rhys angsted over for months until he decided to come and work on the camps. ’Cause it wasn’t about me in the end, or us, it was about him. He could’ve come over, kipped in my tent, and done a bit of volunteering to stay useful, but it wouldn’t have meant anything until he found his own path. The NGO he’s hooked up with have done that for him. Or at least, they will when he gets back on his feet.”
Angelo looked bemused, but Dylan was up to date enough with Rhys’s love life to put together what Jevon was trying to say: that his place was right here if he searched hard enough to find it. “I suppose I could look for work in Truro.”
Jevon shook his head. “Don’t live to work, man.”
He left the kitchen again, leaving Dylan with his words and the barest hint of an idea that made no more sense than anything else he and Angelo had been through to get to this point.
“I’m so confused,” Angelo said. “I can’t work out if you’re leaving me or not.”
There was humour lacing his weary tone, but Dylan hugged him again anyway. “I’m not leaving you. I’m trying to find a path that doesn’t kill one of us. You can’t live in London anymore—I know that, and I don’t want you to when being down here is so good for you. I’m just trying to figure out how I fit into that, you know? Jevon’s right... I can’t justbehere. I’d hate it, and you wouldn’t be able to live with it any more than I can live with dragging you back to London.”
