Then I ditch my phone and rub my eyes, letting Sab’s cosy home wrap around me again.
Sab.
Esme.
Even Tam as he slides me a cheeky apple brandy while Nurse Bhodi isn’t looking.
Sab’s brother hasn’t said much to me, but as he takes a seat beside me on the couch, his rabid hamster squirrelling at his feet, I get the sense that’s about to change.
“We share some mutual friends.”
I sip at the brandy, trying not to recall what a twat I was last time I drank it. “Thought we might. You know Locke Halliwell?”
Tam shakes his head. “Not really. I was done with the life before he came along. The O’Brians and Nash, though, they’re my friends. I have a lot of love for them.”
“Me too.”
“It’s mutual, in case you didn’t know. My phone was blowing up last night with Rebel Kings looking for you.”
“That’s what that was?” Sab says this from the floor, where he’s lying on his front with Esme on his back while she watchesone last run of cartoons before she goes to bed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tam shrugs. “I didn’t want you to freak out that his friends were as worried as you were.”
Sab growls something French and sexy.
At least, it’s sexy to me. Tam rolls his eyes and grumbles back, and as much as he rocks the biker vibe, it doesn’t have the same effect on me.
I step outside to call my old dear. She’s not one for deep conversations—funny that—so it doesn’t take long. A few soft words, some heckling from my siblings, and it’s done. I talk longer with my step-dad. Let him ground me in ways I’m sure my real dad never did.
But when I slip back inside, Sab’s nowhere in sight, and his absence does a number on me. I feel wobbly as feck, like the floor’s tilting beneath me, until I hear his voice, his laugh, upstairs, and I wonder if he has any idea how safe he makes me feel. How much I want him as a different ache blooms in my bruised and broken body—a different need.
Sab laughs again, and Christ, I want to follow the sound, climb the stairs, and kiss him until there’s no doubt left for either of us how we really feel.
I want it so badly I have to lean against the banister, and rub a hand over my face for the hundredth time today.
But it doesn’t soothe the ache.
If anything, it deepens to something I hardly recognise. A desire that’s been dormant in me a long time, and I’m all up in my feelings about it when he comes back downstairs.
When he fills the space behind me and circles an arm around my waist. “All right?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure? You know…uh…”
I turn to face him as he fumbles his words. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” Sab scrubs his free hand over his short hair. “I guess I’m trying to say you being here today doesn’t mean I expect anything from you.”
Ouch. Pretty sure it’s not a dig, but if it was, I deserve it.
Sab, though. He doesn’t deserve to feel anything but loved and wanted, and I open my mouth to tell him how much of both I have for him. But Tam calls his name, and the moment passes.
Later.
Whatever that means.You know what it means.And as the evening unfolds with more love and laughter, the more sure I become.
Tam and Bhodi eventually go home, leaving their vehicles behind and tramping through the snow.
