“Hang on.”
That’s for Sab. The toe of my boot is for Rudy as I gently nudge him into the house, shutting him in.
He’s unimpressed—Rudy, I don’t know about Sab. But they both have to wait as I meet the driver halfway, reaching for the boards before I remember that I can’t fucking hold them.
The driver sees my predicament and helps me out, carrying them to my front door for me to retrieve one by one when Rudy isn’t doing his nut. But every silver lining has a cloud and I don’t have to look at my phone to know my nosy brother has heard every word I’ve exchanged with the friendly Evri man.
I cage a sigh as the driver returns to his van and retreat to the garden again, hoping I can distract Sab with the broken fence, but he’s not having it.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Am I?”
“Oui-oui.” Sab has the same dark brows as me. They pull together as he launches into a tirade of irritated French, calling me out for being exactly who I am.
When he’s done, I throw him a bone to shut him up. “I knocked it a bit in the garage.”
“How? When?”
I don’t feel like explaining the daft chain of events that ledto theprobable fractureI’m walking around with—Bhodi’s words, not mine. Or dealing with the frustration Sab’s going to inflict on me when he figures out I haven’t had it treated yet. The humiliating empathy when he figures outwhy.
You’re ridiculous.
I am, and I know it, as much as IknowI’m running out of rope to put it right. But this shit—unpicking the mess in my head—it takes time, and doing it alone is hard. If Sab was here…
He can’t be. He’s got an actual child to take care of, remember?
“Look, don’t worry about it, okay? It’s fine.”
“He’s lying.”
I spin around. Bhodi’s behind me, on the steps of the annex, dressed for work six hours before I’m expecting him to leave for the night. Because after three days of watching him sleep off his night shifts, I’ve somehow convinced myself I know his routine. “I’m not lying.”
Bhodi grunts and moves past me, heading for the side gate I never use, and I have no working free hand to stop him. Noreasonto stop him beyond the fact that he’s just dropped me in it with Sab. But the back of his head taunts me, as if I have any right to feel something as he walks away from me, and I bank Sab’s outrage for later.
I hang up on my brother. A risky move if I don’t want him on my doorstep by dinnertime, but the mood I’m in, I can’t be sure I don’t want that. That I don’t need it if I’m not going to let Bhodi’s ominous warning come true.
Bhodi.
I shove my phone into my pocket and track his steps down the path to the gate. It gets to me more than it should that he might be gone already, but he’s by his car, scraping ice fromthe windows, not a scrap of apology in the tough gaze he sends me.
“Brother?”
“That obvious?”
“You look alike and I wish my brother talked to me like that.”
“In angry French?”
“Sadly, no.” Bhodi flicks scraped ice to the ground. “Raging cockney doesn’t have the same magic.”
“You’re from London?”
“Carmarthen, actually. My brother’s ten years older than me.”
