“What’s going on over there?” a thin voice called over the fence.
“Shut up, Cyril,” my father bellowed. “Go back to your TV.”
“I’m calling the police.” Cyril’s door banged shut and my father growled deep in his chest. He scanned the surrounding houses and hissed under his breath, “Chloe, you better get inside right now, or you’ll wish you had. I won’t let him go, you know that.”
With her attention still fixed on me, my mother shook her head. “No. Not this time, Travis.”
Horror washed through me.What did she mean?She wouldn’t . . . she couldn’t . . . she wouldn’t . . . leave me . . . would she?
“Mum?” I begged in a broken whisper. “Please. Stay. Don’t leave me.”
“She’s not going anywhere.” My father wrapped a meaty hand around my mother’s neck and started dragging her toward the house. The roar of an engine stopped him in his tracks, and when he turned to squint at the approaching vehicle, my mother wrenched herself free.
She grabbed a bag and raced for the blue Nissan pulling up in front of our driveway. The driver pushed the passenger door open, and my mother threw her bag inside, then turned to me. She gave a soft cry. “Nick, I have to go. I’m so sorry. I’ll find a way, okay? I’ll find a way.”
“If you show your face here again, you’re dead,” my father growled.
My mother ignored him, her gaze lingering on mine before she said, “I love you, Nick. I’ll always love you.” She jumped into the passenger seat with me still screaming her name.
“Mum! Please,” I begged, sobbing. “Please don’t leave me!” I started running for the car, but my father’s hand clamped around my bicep.
“Let her go.” He spat the words. “We don’t need her.”
And the last I saw of my mother was a frantic, tear-stained face against the window as the blue Nissan drove away.
I thought I heard her crying my name, but as the years passed and she didn’t come back, I told myself I’d been mistaken.
CHAPTER ONE
JUNE—FORTY-SEVEN YEARS LATER.
MADIGAN
The Toyota headeddown the driveway, flanked by the wintering magnolias. In another two months, the trees would be a mass of crimson and white flowers, lightening my heart during a generally wet and grey August.
Lee was ferrying his brother to Aaron’s nine-thirty appointment with his therapist. Aaron was doing a lot better, but he wasn’t comfortable driving Lee’s second-hand car in the chaos of peak Auckland traffic. He continued to suffer the odd nightmare, a hangover from his experience in Kettleworth. He remained tight-lipped about what had actually happened that fateful night, but his eyes had finally lost that cowed, haunted look they’d held for far too long. He’d recently moved out of the spare bedroom he’d been sharing with Lee and into a quickly converted storage room at the end of our hall. It barely fitted a single bed and a chest of drawers, but the small window looked out on miles of pasture and Aaron seemed more than happy with the space.
The Toyota turned left onto the road at the bottom of the driveway, and I returned to my bowl of muesli. With Lee and Aaron gone for a few hours and Gazza taking an admin day to do God knew what, Nick and I had the house to ourselves... for once. Hard to believe that just six months earlier I’d been living in this place alone, convinced that the dream of sharing my carefully curated, quiet, peaceful life with somebody else simply wasn’t on the cards for me.
I was happy enough, or so I’d told myself, but it had been a lie. Because here I was, not just living with a man I loved more than I’d ever thought possible, but another two men shared our house, our space, our table, our kitchen, our... everything. And I’d never been more deliriously content. Go figure.
Not that the chaos of four grown men living under the same roof didn’t drive me to distraction at times. Did nobody know how to clean a damn bathroom anymore, let alone fold laundry? And don’t get me started on replacing the milk in the fridge or putting coffee pods on the list when they used the last one of a certain flavour—goddammit. It was like herding cats some days, and Nick was as bad as the others.
When I’d called afamilymeeting to address my growing list of issues, Nick’s eyes had rolled dramatically skyward. It might’ve had more impact if he wasn’t the biggest coffee-pod culprit of them all so I ignored the man, which I’d discovered was generally the best strategy for dealing with a lot of Nick’s frustrating ways. After that, the meeting had gone surprisingly well, albeit with far more hilarity than I felt the topics warranted.
Everyone had given me shit, naturally, but their compliance after the fact was telling and I appreciated it more than I could say. I also hadn’t missed the shine in Aaron’s eyes when he saw the wordfamilytacked in front of the word meeting on my fridge note. With everything else that had happened to our two flatmates, I sometimes forgot they’d also lost their blood familyafter coming out. For Aaron, that was as recent as the previous year. It was a particular and painful type of loneliness that I’d never had to deal with and I didn’t envy them one bit. Nick, on the other hand, knew exactly what it felt like.
It helped that Aaron and Gazza had struck up an odd friendship born of many hours spent gaming together. I’d caught Lee observing them from a distance at times, an odd, troubled look on his face that I wasn’t silly enough to push him about. Regardless, or maybe because of everything Lee had been through, he was a hard man to read and even harder to talk with about anything of significance in his life.
Nick had been a little more successful with Lee, their troubled childhoods providing some common ground. But even then, Lee kept thick walls around his tender spots and ignored all suggestions about considering some therapy himself. The young man was as stubborn as they came. Not too dissimilar from someone else I knew.
Speaking of, I looked up from my muesli to find Nick scowling at his toast and marmalade like it personally offended him. His hair was growing out from the brutal buzz cut he’d sported during our trip to Australia, and I couldn’t decide whether I was happy about the reversal or not. I kind of liked the extra edge it had added to his sexy bad boy image and fuck-the-world attitude, but I also liked this softer side.
Nick took another bite of toast, moved the lump around his mouth, then reluctantly swallowed. All done while studiously avoiding my gaze. What could I say? The man was a multitasker.
I sighed and studied my complicated boyfriend... lover... partner—take your pick. I wasn’t up with the current buzz label for whatever Nick and I were actually doing together, and I didn’t really give a shit. As long as the frustrating man continued to live in my house and sleep in my bed like he’d been doing full-time for almost two months, I’d call him anything he wanted.Which would’ve been just dandy if Nick had provided any hint about howheactually saw us—a conundrum not helped by him introducing me to his and Davis’s friends and colleagues simply as Madigan, no label provided, and with a decidedly ruddy tinge to his cheeks like the introduction required an apology of some sort attached to it.
Assume what you will.
