“I deleted huge clips without looking at them, so I never really knew what I’d lost, but that’s who I was back then—impulsive, selfish, and naive. If you don’t know what you’ve lost, you can never learn.”
They weren’t talking about films and songs anymore. Shay white-knuckled his phone. “Where are you?”
It came out as a whisper. Perhaps Ollie wouldn’t hear him.
But he did. Of course he did. “I’m at my mum’s,” Ollie said. “After I left you, I came here for a few days. We had some stuff to work through.”
“And did you? Work through it, I mean?”
“Getting there. It was more complicated than I thought it would be, but at the same time, so fucking simple, I don’t know why it took me so long.”
“Did you show her?”
Ollie snorted softly. “It wasn’tthatsimple, mate. And no, I didn’t show her, but it was never about that. My mum doesn’t need to see shit to believe it. It’s not as important as I made it sound… I know that now.”
“Do you feel better?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Shay wanted to know more. Fuck, he wanted to know it all, but perhaps that was Ollie’s point. That the details didn’t matter when the present was so important.
“Shay?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for the letter. You know I love you too, right?”
“Um… I think so?” Then Shay recalled every touch they’d ever shared, every smile and laugh, and he stood abruptly enough to shove the bench backwards. “Nah, Iknow. You don’t have to say it, I know you love me, Ollie.”
“Good,” Ollie whispered. “Because I need you to know it, whatever happens. I do love you, and I don’t know where I’d be headed if we hadn’t met.”
Shay couldn’t imagine life without Ollie either. Barely a month had passed since they’d first laid eyes on each other, but the change in Shay was irrevocable. And he wouldn’t have it any other way. All he needed was Ollie by his side, but instinct told him that wouldn’t be happening any time soon. “You’re not coming to the gig, are you?”
“No. I want to, but… not yet. You deserve the best of me, Shay, whoever that man is, and it’s not the dude who freaks out every ten minutes about stupid things.”
“None of it’s stupid. Why are you so hard on yourself?”
“Because I have to be.” Ollie spoke gently, his voice carrying none of the self-loathing Shay had heard from him before. “But not in the way you think. Sorry, mate, I know I talk like it’s the end of the world all the time, but I don’t feel like that… anymore.”
Shay stretched his legs out in front of him. He still needed new boots. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too. More than you know.”
“Really?”
“Course I do. In between trying to put my brain back together, I’ve been setting up your final film. I can’t be with you in London, but I’ll be there in Leeds, I promise. There’s something I need to put an end to here, and you deserve your beginning. Nothing can move forwards without it.”
He was right. Shay knew it like he knew water was wet. And Leeds was so close he could taste it. He’d waited his whole life to meet Ollie. He could wait two days, right?
Shay picked up his flute. “Can I play you something before you go?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ollie heardShay’s flute in his sleep, but it didn’t haunt him. Instead it bewitched him in all the right ways, keeping him company all night long.
The next morning, he listened to the recorded live stream of the last London gig, sitting at his mother’s kitchen table with Shay’s face spread over every available surface. After days of therapist appointments and soul-searching, he was finally ready to get back to work.
As ever, Shay consumed him, and he didn’t hear Jannah come in until she was peering over his shoulder.
