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I remember Oscar as steadfast as an oak tree in the wind, like nothing could knock him off balance unless he caught sight of his own smile in the mirror.

This feels different.

I stop without thinking, watch without calling out, like I did last time, as his lips move with words I don’t know, and he reaches into the car.

Oscar tears open a bag of something and tips it into his mouth, and there’s an edge to it, a lack of patience I didn’t see in him the summer we met.

He pokes at his phone with a frown on his face—a deep frown—and doesn’t seem to like what he sees. His weight shifts and he lists forward a little, as though his body is a beat behind his brain. One hand presses to his stomach, the other grips the open car door. He takes a breath that goes nowhere useful, then he goes back to the start—insulin, food, phone—without clocking that I’m five feet away from him. That I’m watching his eyes grow heavy and his hands begin to shake, and that I know as well as he does that something is wrong.

5 POET

Something’s wrong.

It’s a quiet instinct, but one I can’t ignore.

I hop the fence I rebuilt just yesterday and jump down the embankment to the lay-by, coming up on Oscar as he sways enough for me to spring forward and catch him. “Oscar?”

His only answer is a rough exhale. Then he blinks hard at my hands gripping his forearms, drags his gaze up to meet mine, and for an awful moment nothing exists there but the effort of trying to place me.

Then it clears and recognition flares.

“Hey.” I hold his stare. “You with me?”

Oscar nods, but confusion reigns, and I don’t blame him. The last place he saw me was four hundred miles from here and we never talked about me moving, because I didn’t know I wanted to. Sometimes it feels like I didn’t know anything until he kissed me. Now, I feel as if I’ll die where I stand if he’s not okay.

Both mindsets are weird for me. I don’t think about people—about men—like that. But in this moment, none of that matters. Oscar’s still leaning hard and I realise I’m propping him up. That he probably needs off his feet to get in front of whatever’s happening to him.

“Sit down, eh?”

I mean in the driver’s seat, but Oscar lowers himself to the ground instead, and I go with him as he redistributes his weight to the side of the car, and crouch in front of him, trying not to let his tattooed neck and bearded jaw distract me.

Two years ago, I’d have failed the test. Here and now, with the scent of a different ocean salty in the air, the light from his phone screen catches his handsome face and I see the pallor there. The faint sheen of sweat. The slowness in the hand reaching for me as though he’s lost signal along the way.

I take his hand like I own it. “What’s wrong?”

“Low.”

“Blood sugar?”

“Taip—yes. Is not much, but I can’t fix it.”

“Keep trying.” I reach into my pocket with my free hand and find the packet of sweets leftover from the last time I saw Ivy. She gave me the green ones, but I don’t like them either.

I show them to Oscar. “You want these?”

He frowns and I realise he can’t see the packet in the dark. I bring them closer and he nods. “Six, I think.”

I count them into his palm. Watch as he eats them—his mouth, not the line of his throat, or the pull of corded muscle beneath the ink. Definitely not the way those cinnamon eyes gleam in the moonlight.

My god, he’s hot.

And more alert too, as the sugar does its work and Oscar comes back online. Piece by piece. Minute by minute.

I don’t let go of his hand.

He doesn’t let go of mine.

Eventually, once he seems to trust the numbers on his phone and he can hold his focus, he tilts his head at our twined fingers, bemusement teasing his clearer gaze. “I am wondering if I’m in more trouble than a little dip should bring me.”