Heat crawls up my neck. “I don’t know.”
“You want to find out?”
“I don’t know.” I repeat myself like a moron. “He doesn’t really do serious, and I’m…”
“A fucking catch,” Tam snaps. “Even if you’re just passing through each other’s lives, he’s lucky to know you.”
The expression on my brother’s face is so fierce a startled laugh breaks through the tension I’ve woven between us with my pig-headed stupidity. “Cheers, bro.”
“I’m not messing around.”
I know he’s not. But truth lingers in the vague explanation I’ve given him, one that has me worrying my bottom lip, and Tam poking me again.
“It doesn’t have to be a big thing to count. Even a fleeting spark means something.”
“You get that from your scrapbook of one-off shags?”
Tam spears me with a sharp glare. “Non. I’m saying those one-offs still have the power to wake something inside you. Toshapeyou, même si ça fait mal. I’ve had plenty, remember? And every single one of them led me to Bhodi, and to knowing how ready I was when I found him.” We’re by Tam’s van. He shuts the back door with more force than necessary, as if he’s biting back a ton of other shit he wants to say.
For my sake. For his.
For Esme.
Despite the sugar lacing her blood, she’s starting to fall asleep.
Tam holds out his arms. “Give her here. I’ll take her home with me.”
“Why?”
“So you can either stew in my priceless wisdom, or make a fucking phone call.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to. Gives me a reason to breathe while Bhodi’s at work.”
“You just want her to keep Rudy occupied.”
“That too.” Tam blows on his hands before reaching for Esme for real. “Humour me, yeah? And put your keys in my pocket. Take my van home, it’s fucking empty anyway.”
Because he sold out, and I know how much that means to him. That the hobby he took up to stave off some hardcore PTSD pays the bills.
I let him have Esme and drop my keys in his coat pocket. Tam knocks his head to my shoulder. Then he leaves, taking Esme to the van with the child seat strapped in the front. A few minutes later, I hear the engine start and him rumble away with my baby safe in his care.
It leaves me alone with the cold and the echo of his voice colliding with Galen’s. I get into Tam’s smaller van on autopilot and drive home. By the time I reach my house, my nerves are something else. I’m pacing the second I get inside, clutching my phone, every fibre of me screaming as my brother’s words grow louder and louder.
A fleeting spark means something.
Even if it doesn’t stay.
Fuck it.
I open the app.
Find his name.
Hesitate a bare heartbeat before I fire out a message to Galen.
Sab
