Joe

Harry drank whisky like he did everything else—artfully . . . thoughtfully, swirling it around in his glass before he tipped it down his elegant throat. Not that I was watching or anything.

“So,” he said when we were three shots deep. “Did you find your dad?”

“Aye.”

“And?”

“He’s a bigger idiot than he was the last time I saw him.”

“That’s all you’re going to give me?” Harry reached for the bottle. “I’ve been trying to figure out what he’s done to owe that bloke money, but I can’t think of anything sensible.”

“There isn’t anything sensible about Jonah, trust me.” I scooped up my refilled glass, ignoring the devil on my shoulder who told me I’d probably had enough. “And the truth isn’t particularly exciting. He bought a caravan on tick and then crashed it—and one of Dicky’s dodgy cars—into the central reservation on the A30.”

“Wow. What happened? Was he drunk?”

“’Course he was. My pa ain’t often sober. He left everything there and walked home, so Dicky’s boy got nicked for it too ’cause the car was in his name.”

“He couldn’t just say it was your dad driving?”

I shook my head. “That’s not how it works around here. It’s one thing to let me get done when the coppers turn up anyway, but we don’t grass in our world.”

“The gypsy world?”

“We aren’t real gypsies anymore—and my ma is Welsh—but it’s more than that. It’s a local thing. We don’t rat. We sort things out ourselves.”

“Right.” Harry necked his whisky. “By threatening your mothers and burning things down?”

“Something like that.”

Harry scowled, but I kind of liked the sneer on him. After weeks of shy smiles and friendly grins, it was refreshing to know he wasn’t perfect, even if his derision was probably justified.

I drank my whisky and eyed the bottle, contemplating a refill. My father’s demons were never far from my mind when I got drunk, but some days I was able to push it aside, kick back, and forget that the end of the world was in my blood.

Today turned out to be one of those days.

I topped up my glass, Harry’s too, reaching across him, my shoulder bumping his chest. His soft intake of breath made me shiver. I wanted to kiss him.

Whoa.

Where had that come from?

Fucking whisky. Even when it didn’t push me into a fog of despair, it still sent me round the bend.

I sat back in my seat, my head spinning, and not from the booze. I stretched my legs out in front of me, massaging my thighs. My shoulders ached too, stiff from a three-hour ordeal with Shadow, and I knew my body was going to give me hell tomorrow. Still, that was what you got for leaving a horse like Shadow unworked for so long. It was going to take months to get him back on track.

Harry nudged me, his elbow driving gently into my side with just enough force to rouse me out of my haze.

“Huh?” I blinked at him. “What?”

“I said, you look uncomfortable. Have you hurt yourself?”

“No.”

“Sure about that? Because I can see the tension in your neck from here.”

I scowled. Couldn’t help it. “Got X-ray eyes, have you?”

“I’m a physiotherapist, mate, not a freak of nature.”

He gestured for me to move closer and spin around. Against my better judgement, I obeyed. I braced myself for his touch but was sorely unprepared for the sensation of his hand sliding down my neck. He was tactile with Emma, with my mum . . . even George, but I didn’t touch people carelessly, and so the dizzying relief that came with our contact now—the energy—left me breathless.

A strangled noise escaped me. Harry chuckled. “Better?”

Better than what? Whatever he was doing was magic—spreading down my spine and across my back, easing the burning tension in my shoulders—but what replaced it was insane. My chest tightened and my skin tingled. My vision blurred.

I closed my eyes and dropped my head. Harry upped the ante and pressed his thumbs hard into the pressure points in my neck. It hurt, but somehow my body knew the pain was productive, and I didn’t flinch.

Another groan escaped me.

“Sorry.” Though Harry didn’t sound contrite enough to mean it. “Sleeping on this couch is probably messing with your entire body. Do you get a lot of neck pain?”

“Some. It’s not usually like this, though. Riding Shadow always fucks me up, especially when I haven’t done it in a while.”

“Would it be better with a saddle?”

He was watching me. I felt suddenly naked. I darted a gaze to my abandoned T-shirt, draped over an ironing board that no one ever used. To reach it, I’d have to stand up—to break the spell Harry had cast over my sore muscles.

I couldn’t do it. “Even if Shadow would let me, I don’t ride so well with all the gear. It doesn’t feel right—too detached, you know?”

“I don’t know anything about riding.”

“What do you know about?”

Harry snorted. “Not much.”

I didn’t believe that, but I considered the things I’d seen Harry do and tried to compare them to riding a horse. “Would you rather run through the fields or on a treadmill in the gym?”

“The fields.” Harry didn’t hesitate. “I’d never run outside much until I came here. It’s changed my life, I swear.”

“Why—fuck, that feels good—I mean, how has it changed your life?”

Harry said nothing for a long moment, his thumbs still creating alchemy in my neck, then he exhaled a soft puff of air against my skin. “I guess it feels more natural to run outside, to feel the wind in my face, the sun, the rain. It’s freeing.”

“Uh-huh.” I waited for the penny to drop, but Harry was silent again. He swapped his thumbs for the heel of his hand, and then I lost the ability to speak coherently anyway. I couldn’t say how much time had passed when I finally got it back, but I did know that it was a split second after Harry removed his hands from my bare skin.

He leaned back on the couch. I did the same, angling myself to look at him, although I kind of wanted to scramble for my T-shirt. “So . . .”

“So?” Harry arched an eyebrow in a way I couldn’t imagine him doing if we were sober. “What are you staring at me like that for? Have you got some big burning question you want to ask me?”

“Not especially. I was going to ask you about where you come from . . . your family, your life in London.”

“Oh.”

“Sore subject?”

“No. I have a family—my mum and my brother. I grew up in Hackney, but we moved to Romford when I was fourteen. Rhys still lives there. My mum’s out in Spain.”

“Your dad?”

“Dead.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Harry’s eyes darkened. The shadow was fleeting but unmistakable. “I hated him.”

Why? But I didn’t ask. Didn’t need to. Because the fire in his haunted gaze when he’d protected my mum suddenly made sense. “When did he die?”

“Four years ago.”

“Was that freeing too?”

“A little.” It was Harry’s turn to reach for the whisky bottle. His hand shook as he poured double measures. “But I hadn’t seen him in years, so it was surreal, actually. I didn’t feel as much as I thought I would.”

“What about your mum?”

“What about her?”

“Are you close?”

“Not so much anymore. I love her to bits, but life pulled a weird one on us. I was her shadow for years, then I just . . . wasn’t.”

“What about your brother?”

Harry smiled, the warmth of it melting away some of the tension. “He’s my best friend . . . when I don’t want to chin him.”

I laughed. “With you there, mate, though I’ve made it this far without decking my sister.”

Harry knocked his glass to mine and his grin widened. “So we’re both pillars of restraint?”

I shrugged and tipped some whisky down, tracking it as it merged with the buzz already lacing my veins. “I try, though I reckon I dance too close to the edge some days.”

Harry shifted on the couch, his smile gone like it had never been there at all. It was clear he’d had enough of the subject, and though I was screaming inside to learn more about him, I understood.

I rubbed my face. The whisky was starting to make me feel ridiculous. Like I should give him a hug or something. I settled for nudging him. “Thanks for breakfast. And the lie in. I know it was you who left me to sleep. Emma loves waking me up.”

Harry shrugged. “I owed you a few meals, and I didn’t see the point in disturbing you when I was awake anyway. Besides, I like helping with the horses. They’re not as scary as they were—oh shit!” He scrambled off the couch. “I left the dinner in the oven.”

He darted from the room, leaving me bemused until he reappeared with two scalding hot plates, filled with the kind of food he usually seemed terrified of. Sober me couldn’t seem to hide my curiosity, but drunk me held my tongue. I claimed a plate and some cutlery and dug in while Harry did the same with a little more dignity.

“I haven’t had a roast in years,” he said after a while, his plate still half-full.

“Why not?”

He speared a roast potato and frowned at it in a way that I couldn’t decipher. “My mum wasn’t much of a cook when I was a kid, and then I kind of got out of the habit.”

“Habit of what? Eating?” I threw the words out carelessly because they didn’t mean anything to me, but as Harry’s gaze met mine, it was horribly clear that they meant everything to him.

My dinner turned to dust in my belly. I forced myself to keep eating. And to say something—anything—to give him a way out of a conversation he clearly didn’t want to have. “Mani likes you.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

“Mani. He likes you.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because he looks at you. He doesn’t bother with everyone.”

“Would it bother you if he didn’t like me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The same reason it bothers me that you have as many demons as the rest of us. “Because he’s always right.”

Harry nodded slowly. “That’s not what you wanted to say.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. You want to know why I’m such a freak about food.”

“You think I’d call you a freak?”

Harry looked at me. The whisky we’d necked had reddened his eyes, but the warmth was still there, despite the strain. “Sorry. My words, not yours.”

“It’s a fucked up word. Do you think Emma’s a freak?”

“Do you?”

“Nah.”

“You’re good with her.”

“No, I’m not. I want to shake the shit out of her.” I put my plate on the cluttered coffee table. “I did once, when we were younger.”

“What happened?”

“She hit me with a ladle and stayed in the house anyway.”

A chuckle burst out of Harry. He slapped his hand over his mouth and shook his head. “Sorry. I’m just picturing it.”

“Stop apologising. It’s not you who fractured my cheekbone.”

Harry winced. “Ouch. That hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Yup. Nice shiner, though. I think she was secretly proud of it.”

“I doubt that.” Harry’s smile faded. “She seems to feel very guilty about her condition.”

My humour ran for the hills too. “I wish she wouldn’t. She does more for this place than anyone. Without her, we’d have no website or online donations. And the freelance marketing she does from home keeps us fed some months.”

“You all work hard, Joe.”

I sighed. “I know, it’s just never enough.”

“What is? How do you define when you’ve done enough? Because it seems to me that it wouldn’t matter how many horses you had here, there would still be more to keep you up at night.”

He was more right than he probably knew. The RSPCA were monitoring a field of ponies ten miles away. It was only a matter of time before they called on us to take them in, and the prospect of turning them away cut me to the bone. “So, what are you saying? That there’s no point in trying because we’re doomed to fail?”

“I’m saying that you’re too hard on yourself because you expect the impossible. Perhaps we all do.”

“Did you fight him?”

“Who?”

“Your dad.”

“Does it matter?”

Did it? I took Harry’s plate from him and put it with mine. The booze in my blood roared to life and my body moved of its own accord. I straddled Harry, pushing him back on the couch, and pressed my forehead against his. “I don’t know.”

Harry took a breath, one of those, soft-sharp gasps that I’d started hearing in my sleep. I braced myself for his answer, but then he kissed me, and my mind was devoid of all else but the sensation of his lips on mine.

My hands flew to his face and I kissed him back, rising up on my knees, pouring everything that I didn’t understand into everywhere we touched. Perhaps he hadn’t meant to kiss me. And maybe I hadn’t meant to return the favour, but right now, it was all we had.

Harry growled into my mouth and pulled me tight against him, his blunt fingernails scraping my bare back. I gasped and kissed him harder, my world narrowing to his chest and his heartbeat thundering a hairsbreadth away from the growing bulge in my jeans. Too much. Too fast. But I couldn’t pull back. My lips were fused to his, my skin addicted to his bruising touch, and it was only the need to breathe that eventually forced us apart.

By then, Harry’s T-shirt was somewhere behind me, his belt undone. I was shaking, and so was he. I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. So I kissed him again, losing myself in the rounded muscle of his beautiful torso—his smooth skin and ripped abs—and blocked out the fluttery sensation in my stomach. What the hell are we doing? But the bemusement in my conscience found no purchase either as I coaxed a low sound out of Harry with my tongue. Everything about him set me on fire, and what little control I possessed in spite of my father’s dud genes was long gone.

Harry’s belt buckle clanked against mine. I moved to rectify the fact that he was the only one with undone jeans, but he got there first. He ripped my belt away and unbuttoned my jeans. I braced myself for his electric touch on my dick, but it didn’t happen. Instead, he slid his hands over my heated skin, his fingers digging in, and rocked up against me, the layers of denim between us the sole thing keeping me from embarrassing myself.

My heartbeat spiked and madness crept up on me. I snaked a hand between us and found Harry’s cock. It was hard, and hot, and heavy, and the scrape of my palm along his length clawed a hoarse gasp from his throat.

“Joe.”

The way he said my name was everything, but as I gazed down at him, something changed. Perspective seemed to hit him first, and then come crashing into me, and the fierce compulsion to never let this end gave way to reality.

A shudder passed through me. I let my hand drop, and Harry brushed my hair out of my face like he could ease the sting of what I knew he was about to do. He stood with me still in his arms as though I weighed nothing, and deposited me gently on the sofa. He turned away. For a moment I feared that he’d leave without a word, but he stopped at the door, one foot in the hallway.

“I did fight my dad, but not until he’d hurt me enough that I’m still fighting him now. Don’t try and make sense of these things, Joe. Just be the best man you can.”

And then he was gone, and I was half naked on the couch with wet eyes and a raging boner.