I shake my head.
Harry has no problem with it. He lists what was always in plain sight. “Stage the flat. Set up a photoshoot. Secure the funding for the wreck dive.”
Blake frowns. “Wreck dive? Isn’t that what you used to do before you started selling speedboats?”
“Yes.” Harry pauses for so long I think he’s done reading.
He isn’t.
He reads out the sole unchecked box, Flynn’s ultimate goal, much more quietly.
“Get back what I lost.”
That’swhat I think about for the rest of the day while lumping other people’s belongings up and down staircases with my cousin—getting back what I lost, and what I loved from the first moment I found it. It’s still on my mind when I get back to Flynn’s place and that pretty little mahogany desk is still gone.
I get another reminder of loving and losing later that evening outside a restaurant full of Heppel Exes. None of them would have let Flynn walk into their lives and then walk off with what they valued.
I can’t face them.
Harry must spy me thinking that through the restaurant window. He comes outside to join me. “Having second thoughts?”
If he was a couple inches taller, we’d be shoulder to shoulder. For once, I feel like the smaller of us. The window reflects my quick nod. “About coming inside? Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“Don’t. Because every single Ex here tonight has already asked how you’re doing. You haven’t answered any of their messages in the group chat. Did you read them?”
This time, the window reflects my headshake.
Harry pulls out his phone to do it for me, and with each nickname he voices, my gaze finds the man inside who wrote me a message.
“Small Print says, if Flynn broke a legal agreement, he’ll help you fight it.” He pauses. “So did Loves Puzzles. They usually face off against each other in contract negotiations. Both of them are ferocious. They’d set aside their rivalry to help you.” He finds a message from another Heppel Ex. “See Ritz Bed Wreckerover there? He says he’ll find a bed for you until you have someplace else to stay.” He points at yet another Ex. “And if you need help with the up-front costs of renting and furnishing somewhere, Cash Moneysays he’s got you. We all do, Vincent.” He snorts softly. “That’s pretty much what is engraved on my pen.” He slides his phone away and pulls out the fountain pen he usually tings against a wineglass at the start of every meet-up. The streetlights find the lapis of its casing inlaid with gold script. “You see what it says?”
I can’t read it, and Harry notices. “Sorry. I’m so used to seeing it, I forget it’s written in Latin. Right after my name, it says ‘family first and always.’ And that’s what every Ex here would be for you, if you let them.” He nods towards a crowded table. “A whole family of brothers for you.”
That gets me right in the chest.
It also gets me inside the restaurant, where those Exes do me a solid by carrying on like usual, flirting with each other and shit-talking over plates of pasta.
Instead of letting me sit on the outskirts, Harry pulls up a chair beside his at the head of the table. I’ll never be into bondage, but his arm around my shoulder keeps me closeenough to listen. “My flight times have moved up. I’ll need to leave soon for my next stop on the boat-show circuit, but could you do me a favour while I’m away?”
Right now, if he asked, I’m pretty sure I’d agree to have his babies.
Harry asks for something even harder to accomplish.
“Take my place here.” He pushes his pen towards me. “Start the next meeting for me. Run the group until I’m back and keep them together. Be the leader they need, because if you let their dicks make all the decisions, no one will get a happy ending.”
“You’re leaving me in charge?” I get another schooldays flashback of trying and failing with an audience watching. “Nah, mate.” I push the pen back his way. “Ask Blake. He’s used to taking a command role.”
“No.” Harry’s surprisingly firm. “I can’t ask him. Not when he’s having a tough enough time adjusting to his retirement.”
“He retired? But he’s only?—”
“In his early forties?” Harry taps the case of my phone. “You would have known about it if you took part in the chat. Just take my word for it when I say I can’t leave him to herd all these highly sexed cats. Especially when he just lost his one other support system.” He lowers his voice. “I think he and Adey split up.” He tilts his head towards someone Charles Heppel labelled asSo Many Mapsin his phone contacts.
I ask, “Him and Blake were banging?”
Harry shrugs. “Don’t know for certain. They were definitely spending every spare minute together. Now they can’t even look at each other. It’s another reason why I’m not a fan of Exes hooking up. When it goes wrong, we all end up losing friendships.”
I can’t help thinking of Flynn. Of that restoration course he found for me that I now can’t afford to pay for. It’s another loved-and-lost reminder. I’m so sick of those that when Harrynudges his pen my way one last time, I take it. Then I use it as soon as he leaves for his flight.
