Once they had deflated the couch and settled the piano in the living room, Pax tuned it. When the piano was good to go, he dropped the lid and leaned on it. Luca was back to messing around with a video game, and Pax was due for a shower. He glanced at the tightly shut curtains. Were the neighbors up? Was the Christmas tree still woefully unadorned? Or had they spent the evening, brother and sister, decorating it, the only missing piece the angel in Pax’s room?

“Luca?”

Luca leaned his head back on the beanbag and looked at him upside down, game coming to a crashing halt. “Pax Polo?”

“Do you celebrate Christmas?”

“It’s a big affair in my family. Everyone comes together and insults each other over a large table. Best fun of the year.”

“You can join me and the Three T’s for Christmas if you’ve nothing better to do. Mum’s heading to Australia with her sister and the other guys don’t care for their parents, so we’ll throw something together.”

“Those guys we met tonight? They’re your chosen family?”

Pax winced. “About earlier. They are mates, but they’re thoughtless sometimes.”

Luca pressed his lips together. Shrugged. “Okay.”

“Really. They’re cool.”

Luca turned off the screen. He pushed gracefully to his feet and rounded to the piano. He gripped Pax’s face, staring him in the eye. “Lie by the roadside and pretend to be drunk. Friends will help you home.”

Luca petted his hair and disappeared.

Pax blinked, and hoofed up to his room, snagging the jeans that he’d left pooled in the living room.

He tossed the pants into the hamper, nutted one out in the shower, and collapsed onto his waterbed. What a day. Neither his face nor his fist felt tender anymore, but the rest of him felt like he’d been taken for a few rounds in a washing machine.

He curled on his side, flyers crackling under him and water swaying, and consulted the bedside angel. “They’re mates, dammit.”

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t look at him funny. Didn’t glow much, either.

Pax repositioned her against the light so she would.

The warm glow stretched toward him like a placating hand. The same ghostlike feeling he’d had earlier with Cliff.

Cliff’s dimpled smile came unbidden to his mind.

He scowled. Now that he thought about it, the smile made his face lopsided. It wasn’t a natural, happy smile. It held a secret. Like Cliff was already one up on him.

Not for long. Count on it. “Tomorrow I’ll be laughing.”

Except, he wasn’t laughing when his alarm bleeped in his ear at 5:30. Not even close. It felt like he’d been ripped out of death itself. His heart hammered while his limbs ached from yesterday’s run. Stiff and heavy, he rubbed his sleep-crusted eyes, threw his legs out of the bed, and batted around for the lamp switch.

Normally soft orange light, this morning’s light burned his retinas. He shifted the angel in front of the glare. “It’s con time,” he murmured, and ripped out a yawn to wake the neighborhood.

He fished the flyers from his sheets and gave a sleepy, satisfied smile. Looked a few weeks old at least. Perfect.

With a groan, he jerked on shorts, an Oasis T-shirt, and socks. He fussed about in the bathroom, scrubbing teeth, splashing water on his face, and working his hair until it did its thing. Its hot-as-fuck thing.

Flyers in tow, he stalked to the living room.

Luca, fresh-faced and beaming—the brightest thing in the curtained room—took the flyers and handed Pax a steaming coffee.

“You look like you need it.”

“Fuck you very much.” Pax grinned.

He drained his coffee and set the empty mug atop the piano. “Let’s crack the sliding door open a few inches. Wouldn’t want Cliff to miss out on your most excellent performance.”

Luca opened the door through the swaths of crimson curtain. Pax linked his fingers and turned them outward as he stretched.

After a few scales to warm up, he glanced at Luca.

“Is he listening?” Pax mouthed.

Luca peeked out and whispered, “He’s standing at the open window.”

Pax ripped into Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. A fitting choice, since it was before six in the morning. The moon was still out, for fuck’s sake.

His fingers flew over the keyboard, remembering the million times they’d played this before. His mum had told him if he practiced hard enough, he could be a musician.

Of course, she’d meant he could be a classical musician.

But the heart wanted what the heart wanted.

And that was the electric guitar.

And playing alongside Lone Whistle and the Deserted.

And maybe, one day, finding someone he could share his music with.

Jesus, fuck. That was a sappy thought. A sappy, unrealistic thought. Pax was too rapscallion for anyone to take him seriously.

“Your smile turned sad,” Luca said quietly, standing beside the piano.

Pax lost his concentration and fumbled a few keys. He recovered and finished the piece with a flourish.

He was good on his own. Besides, he had friends. The Three T’s and . . .

Maybe that guy with the banjo. He should try to find him.

Luca clapped. As they executed their lines, Pax asked what he’d practiced this morning. Luca answered perfectly and asked Pax what he was doing up so early.

Pax smirked toward the curtains, sure the shrew was listening.

“Oh, nothing much. Skinny dipping with the shrew.”

“Skinny dipping with the shrew?”

Pax smiled to himself. He stood outside Cliff’s gate, sans shades so there wouldn’t be a repeat of yesterday. The pickets he drummed his fingers against were wet with dew. Cliff jogged down the brick path, breath clouding in the fresh, still air.

“So you were listening,” Pax said. “Luca’s good, right?”

A hum.

Pax eyed him. Cliff looked different this morning. Had he skipped a shave? “Whoa. You going blind today?”

Probably should’ve noted the lack of thick-rimmed eyewear sooner.

Cliff opened the gate, skidding the damp pickets away from Pax’s reach. “Contacts.”

Pax smirked. “Tossed out those tortoise-print rims for my aesthetic benefit?”

“I misplaced them.”

“Have you tried looking in the last place you put them?”

Cliff started their jog with a light swat to the back of Pax’s head. This was becoming a thing.

Close to a lung-burning, limb-screaming hour later, they slowed to a walk a couple of streets from their houses. They passed a blue-and-cream church whose bells chimed the hour. “I’d have taken a dip in the creek if it was warmer. But I’m not stupid.”

Cliff stopped for a stretch, suctioning his hot hands onto Pax’s shoulders. “You know, there’s a perfectly good tree right beside us. How about you choke that, instead?”

Cliff smiled wryly. “That wouldn’t be half as fun.”

Pax shook his head, forcing his lips not to twitch.

“Come on,” Cliff said, finishing his stretch. He remained in front of Pax, eyeing him. “You need to stretch, too, or it’ll hurt.”

“Care about me, do you?”

“Just do it.”

Pax glanced around Cliff’s glistening body. Ahead, precisely where he’d instructed Luca to tack one, was a flyer advertising Luca’s tutoring services. He waved a hand vaguely in its direction.

“I’ll stretch over there.” Against the BMW parked next to the flyer-pinned lamppost.

“Not against the tree?”

Pax skirted around Cliff. “Too much bird crap. And I don’t dare to start choking you. I might not stop.”

Cliff’s laugh followed him—rather close. Close enough to lift the hairs on his arms and nape. Pax shrugged off Cliff’s aura trying to attach itself to him. It made him shiver.

He quickened his pace to the BMW, braced a hand against the roof, and lifted his foot behind him. As predicted, Cliff leaned against the lamppost, watching him.

Pax gripped his ankle behind him, balancing on the curb as he used his other arm to point next to Cliff’s head. “Huh. Told you Luca was into tutoring.”

Cliff pulled his gaze from Pax to the lamppost. His expression was unreadable as he scoured the information. Finally, he tugged the flyer, the staple snatching a souvenir before letting it go.

He lifted his eyes to Pax over the top of the flyer. “Had enough stretching your right quad?”

Pax waited an extra few beats before releasing his hold. His leg relished its freedom and swung into a kick against the shiny BMW. The car alarm serenaded the early morning. “It got in the way of my leg.” He paused, listening to the rhythm of the high-pitched wailing. “It’d sound halfway decent with a bit of guitar.”

A window from the corner house opened, and Cliff stepped between Pax and the neighbor, cutting off her view of him.

The alarms ceased, and a shrill voice yelled at them.

“Gary’s dog escaped his leash again, Mrs. Donaldson,” Cliff called back at the neighbor. “Bowled right into your passenger door. Don’t worry, no damage done.”

She muttered something about “that damned dog” and slammed her window.

Cliff waited a beat before stepping away and gesturing for them to move.

Pax’s gut gave a weird lurch. He stared past Cliff at the morning sun glowing on the rooftops. Their footsteps slapped, but each step felt surprisingly light.

“Did you just . . . save me?”

Cliff took a moment, and then scoffed. “Save you? Why would I do that?”

Cliff’s expression was blank as he focused on the view of Dunedin harbor sparkling in the distance.

“You stepped in front of me so she wouldn’t see me. You took the brunt of her wrath.”

Cliff said nothing.

“You did. You saved—”

“It was an opportunity. Gary’s dog breaks free too often and has tormented the kids in this neighborhood too long without consequence. Mrs. Donaldson will make a right fuss, and Gary will get better control over his dog.”

Oh. Of course. Thank God. The shrew saving him would have been far harder to digest. “You thought of that in the split second she opened her window? You’re more cunning than I thought.”

“Don’t you forget it.”

“So. Luca. Tutoring. What do you think?”

Cliff eyed the flyer crumpled in his hand. “Smells fishy.”

Like coffee, actually. “Do you always think the worst of the world?”

Cliff responded without the bat of an eyelid. “That’s my thing, Apollo.”

“Come on,” Pax said. “You heard the man play. He was good. You can’t renege on our deal.”

Cliff eyed Pax out the corner of his eye. “I’m not convinced he’s good enough.”

Good enough! The balls of this man. “He’s bloody brilliant.”

“Hmmm.”

“Could be a classical pianist!”

“I want to listen some more before I make up my mind.”

Another six o’clock start? Pax would cut off his balls first. At least—at the very, very least—he needed one day to sleep in before he did that to himself again.

Cliff continued, “He practices at 5:30 every day, I assume?”

Pax nodded. “Every day except Tuesdays.”

“Why not Tuesdays?”

Because the man is not insane. Pax shrugged. “It’s a cultural thing.”

“Italians don’t play instruments on Tuesdays?” Cliff clearly didn’t believe the line.

“Not an Italian thing. More a rural, small village thing. Very particular to Luca’s hometown.”

“Fascinating. Where’s he from, I’ll look it up.”

Fuck the internet and rapidly developing technology. How would anyone get away with crimes in the future? Rogues like him were in for a hard time. “You know, now that I think about it, Luca might have mentioned it being a family thing. Toneless Tuesday. None of the kids can play music or listen to it. They have to whisper at the dinner table.”

“Toneless Tuesday. That sounds like a thing.” Cliff’s flat tone lifted. “Never mind. Wednesday, then.” He let himself though his gate. “Tell him to play some Chopin.”

“Sure. Luca plays Chopin all the time. Doesn’t need notes or anything.”

“I look forward to it.”

Cliff turned up his path, and Pax strode home cursing to himself.

It’d been a while since he’d had a crack at Chopin.

He needed notes, and a dickish amount of practice.

“Luca, if the shrew asks, Toneless Tuesday is a long-standing tradition in your family.”

Luca tore his eyes from his bedroom computer to look at Pax picking his way inside. “I should not be surprised by anything you utter, sì?”

Pax winked. “Sì. Now that’s sorted, I need a shower, then I’m going to give my mum a heart attack by popping in and using the piano to practice the classics.”

Luca raised his brows.

“Don’t worry. I will make up for it by bashing out my own tunes on the guitar all evening.”

“Is there anything you can’t play?”

“The flute.” Pax paused. “Well. Not the instrument.”

Luca blinked. “Why do you live with me if your mum lives in the city?”

“Because I’m a self-sufficient, independent guy, who—is scared of his mum.”

Luca gestured to Pax’s face. “Will she freak out at your face?”

Pax glanced at himself in Luca’s mirror. His eye was a nasty black with yellow edging. “Oh yeah. I’ll need makeup.”

“Where are you getting makeup?”

Pax’s Nokia was already warming in his hand. He scrolled to a most important number. Blessedly, she picked up.

Pax grinned. “Say, Bianca, do you have some foundation you could throw to Luca out your living room window?”