“No, the night before.”
I’ve lost track of my days. I can’t remember when we came back here. Whether it was morning or night. I can’t remember anything except Tam telling me he loves me in every way possible, and I’m okay with that. More than okay.
I’m not okay with the worry lining Sab’s face.
I step back, waving him inside. It takes him seconds to find Tam’s abandoned phone and figure out the power situation. A little longer to jog upstairs and return with a smirk on his face.
“You wore him out.”
“He tell you that?”
“Not with words. I can tell by looking at him that he’s wrecked.”
Guilt threatens the glow I woke up with.
Sab steps closer. “Don’t get in your feelings about it. This happens sometimes when that big grumpy heart gets the better of him. He’ll be fine when he’s slept it off.”
I reach for the teabags before I remember nothing works. “How do you know his heart got the better of him?”
“He called me when he didn’t know where you were.” Sab moves to the log burner and fiddles around with it. “And now you have teeth marks on your neck, so I’m guessing he found you.”
My hand flies to my neck and thedeephickey Tam left there. “Uh. Yeah. He found me.”
Sab snorts and goes back to lighting the fire. It’s kind of cosy. Then he rises and his gaze flickers to the stairs again, and I notice his clenched hands and tight shoulders.
“What’s the matter?”
“Hmm?”
I slide off the stool I’ve sunk onto and pad to where Sab hoversin the middle of Tam’s living space, his entire frame a knotted mess of tension. “What’s wrong?”
Conflict rages in eyes that are so much like his brother’s, but at the same time, a world away from Tam. “I need some money.”
“Okay.” I’m already searching for the bag I dumped somewhere before Tam steered me upstairs. “I have some cash.”
Sab stops me. “Bhodi, I don’t need a tenner. I need a lot of money and I need it today.”
“You were going to borrow it off Tam?”
“I don’t know if he’ll have it, but I was going to ask.”
“So ask him.”
“I can’t.” Sab scrubs a hand down his face. “I know Tam—how he gets when he’s this tired. He’s not with it enough to make that kind of decision, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.”
I absorb that, and guilt does a number on me again. But I’m familiar enough with the progression of acute fatigue to know it’s brought on by more than one sleepless night of stress and worry. That Tam’s been working every hour under the sun to finish his orders by Christmas.
And that I’m a hundred percent going to help his brother. “How much do you need?”
The power comes back on midafternoon. By then, I’m a few grand lighter and aware it’s the day before Christmas Eve.
“I don’t know when you’ll get it back.”
I push Sab out the door. “It doesn’t matter. Go get your daughter.”
The lights on Tam’s Christmas tree glow warm and white. They sway a little in the slight breeze from his ancient windows, casting jumpy little sparks on the walls, and I stare at them for ages. Hours, maybe, until movement upstairs nudges me out of my daze.
I hear footsteps and the whine of the ancient pipes funnelling water around Tam’s house.
