Colin nodded. The heat had turned his shirt into a second skin, and the noise of the car park with its rumbling engines and blaring horns pressed against his temples from every direction.
Lakan glanced sideways at him. Whatever he saw made him close his mouth, and the rest of the walk to the car passed in silence. Lakan’s hand stayed warm and light on his shoulder, guiding him between parked vehicles.
The door to the car opened, and the cold hit Colin’s face. He climbed in and the leather seat was cool against his back through the soaked linen of his shirt. Lakan pressed a bottle of water into his hands before he’d finished pulling his seatbelt across.
“Drink,” Lakan said. “Take small sips.”
Colin cracked the cap and drank. The water was so cold it ached in his teeth.
Diwa slid in beside him a moment later, leaving a careful six inches of leather between them. He didn’t touch Colin, didn’t press close, but his hands went straight to the air conditioning vents in the ceiling and the ones set into the door panel, angling every single one of them until the cold air hit Colin from three directions at once.
“We’ll be at the house in about forty minutes,” Diwa said, his fingers still adjusting the nearest vent. “You can lie down, have a shower, whatever you need. There’s no rush.”
He reached across and pushed Colin’s hair back from his forehead, his palm sliding through the sweat at Colin’s temple, and left his hand there for a moment.
In the rear-view mirror, Lakan was watching them. Colin caught the alpha’s reflection as Diwa cracked the safety seal on a second water bottle and put it in the cup holder by Colin’s knee. Lakan watched his younger brother’s hands — busy, careful, tending to his omega — and his expression softened.
Colin leaned his head back against the seat, the air conditioning raising goosebumps on his wet arms, and let himself be driven somewhere he’d never been.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Colinlooked good in the light blue linen shirt.
Diwa had bought it from a place on Chiltern Street that didn’t put prices on anything. The colour caught the blue of his eyes and made his shoulders look broader, and the linen sat well against the weight he’d put on since Diwa had started him on his feeding programme.
Right now, though, the shirt was wasted. Colin’s face had gone the grey-green Diwa associated with turbulence at thirty-eight thousand feet, and his knuckles were white where his fingers had laced through Diwa’s on the leather seat between them.
Diwa leaned forward. “You haven’t drunk water from the tap, have you?”
Colin’s head turned to face him. “What?”
“At the house. The tap water. You didn’t drink any, did you? Because Manila tap water will go through you like lightning.”
“No, Diwa. I haven’t drunk the tap water.”
“Okay, good. Because Stephen specifically texted me about it, and if you get the runs before we sit down to dinner with my parents, that’s going to be a difficult situation for both of us.”
Colin didn’t laugh. His eyes had gone back to the window, where the traffic had thickened to a standstill around them. Jeepneys in chrome and elaborate paint jobs boxed the Mercedes in on both sides while motorcycles threaded the gaps at speeds that would have earned a prison sentence on the North Circular. A vendor knocked on the window with a string of sampaguita garlands, and Deng waved him off without slowing his argument with whoever was on the other end of his mobile.
Colin’s grip on Diwa’s hand hadn’t loosened since they’d left Greenhills twenty minutes ago.
The house had been the first shock. Diwa had watched Colin’s face as they’d pulled through the gate, jet-lagged and heat-wrecked, and seen the exact moment the scale of it registered. Colin had been expecting something like Ledbury Road. A beautiful house on a nice street. What he’d got was an open-air compound behind high walls with stone pathways through a garden dense with frangipani and bougainvillea, a lap pool glinting under floodlights, and a main house with so many windows that Colin had stood in the entrance hall and turned a slow three-sixty to take it all in.
Colin had set his bag down on the marble floor, looked up at the double-height ceiling with its wooden beams and slow-turning fans, and said, “So this is where you live.”
“Sometimes.” Diwa had put his arms around him from behind, his chin finding Colin’s shoulder. “Do you like it?”
Colin’s hand came up and covered Diwa’s where it rested against his chest. “It’s beautiful, Diwa.”
He’d been swaying on his feet by then, the jet lag and the heat catching up with him all at once, and Diwa had steeredhim through to the bedroom and got him horizontal before Colin could insist on finding the kettle first.
Now, in spite of all of that care from earlier on in the day, he looked like he was about to be sick.
“Diwa.” Colin’s hand tightened in his. His eyes stayed on the gridlocked traffic, on a jeepney whose side panel bore a painted Jesus surrounded by chrome detailing and a bumper sticker that readGod Bless Our Trip. “Your parents.”
“What about them?”
“I shouldn’t care.” Colin’s jaw worked around the words. “I try not to, and it’s worked out fine.” His thumb pressed hard against the ridge of Diwa’s knuckle. “But they’re your parents, Diwa. They’re everything to you. And if they don’t like me, that’s basically game over, isn’t it?”
