Nerves and guilt threatened the home Gus’s beef sandwich had made in my stomach. People thought I was bad at controlling my emotions, but it was the opposite. I was a dab hand at convincing myself I didn’t care, about myself or anyone else. But something had switched in me since my brother had been run down by a speeding car and left for dead. Whether I wanted to or not, I did care. A lot.
Just not enough to spend time with him.
I got up and took Gus’s place at the kettle. “I have a better solution. You can do Luke’s job, and I’ll do yours.”
“Huh?”
“You heard.” I opened a random cupboard and fortuitously discovered the coffee. “I haven’t worked on the roofs since I was a teenager, but I don’t remember it being that hard. Tell Luke to take his fucking holiday, yeah?”
Gus said nothing for so long I wondered if I’d made the proposition in my imagination. Then he sighed in a way that kept my gaze on the mugs of coffee I’d made while he’d stared down the side of my head. “You’re kind of missing the point, but I guess that’s better than nothing. If I can persuade him, can you start in the morning?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I leave at seven. That too early for you?”
“No.”
“Sure about that? You were out like a light when I left this morning.”
“How do you know that?”
Gus reached for one of the coffee mugs. “You left the door open, and I’m a creeper, remember?”
“Your words, not mine.”
“Uh-huh. See you in the morning.”
“You’re not coming home tonight?”
“Wasn’t planning on it unless you need me for something?”
I didn’t need him for anything, but somehow, the thought of him leaving and not coming back until morning made me feel sick. I shook my head and found my phone for something to do.
Gus left the room. A moment later, the front door opened and shut. Trepidation filled me, melding with the nausea in the pit of my stomach. I got up and treaded to the hallway. Gus had gone. His coffee cup rested on the windowsill, and the crumpled five pound note was still on the floor.
Gus
Luke: don’t let him steal anything
Gus: have a little faith
Luke didn’t reply. I was hoping because he’d gone back to bed, but if I knew him at all, I’d have bet my house that he was on his way to the gym, which left me sat in his van, waiting for his brother to emerge from said house.
I checked the time—06:59—and pondered breakfast. It had still been dark when I’d skulked out of a hotel room ten miles away, leaving a semi-regular fuck buddy in a blissed-out coma. Lucky him. I’d barely slept a wink, and now I was so wired only the thought of a double bacon roll was keeping me in my seat.
The passenger door opened. Billy slid in beside me, clad in his jeans, boots, and a hoodie. It wasn’t exactly company uniform, but it’d do.
It’d do even better if he looked at me.
“Morning,” I tried. “Sleep okay?”
Billy dumped his feet on the dashboard. “Nope. You?”
“Not really.”
“Bad date?”
He still wasn’t looking at me. I shifted in my seat, wishing I’d taken a longer shower. “Nah. Just restless. Hungry?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I am, so I’m going to swing by the bakery. Let me know if you change your mind.”
He didn’t. I bought him a sandwich anyway, but he left it on the seat between us, leaving me torn between eating it myself and studying his profile every moment we were caught in traffic. He hadn’t shaved, and his shaggy hair was perfectly mussed. Even the smudges beneath his eyes suited him.
My gaze drifted to his hands. His knuckles were battered and scarred, and I already knew his palms were as rough and calloused as mine. Work hardened, which boded well for the week we had ahead. Despite his bravado the day before, roofing was a tough gig.
We pulled up at the flat-roofed house we were resurfacing. I turned to Billy and nudged him until he glanced up from his phone. “When did you last climb a ladder?”
“In general? Or to fix a house instead of burgle it?”
“All of it.”
“I don’t rob houses anymore unless someone annoys me enough to deserve it, and I last worked for my uncle six years ago until he sacked me and gave you my job.”
“I didn’t take your job, man. You’d been AWOL for months.”
Billy grunted. “My point is, I’m not as useless as you think. And whatever Luke tells you, I’m capable of doing as I’m told.”
“He never said—okay, maybe he did. But I never said you were useless. Don’t make things up for us to argue about.”
“Who’s arguing?”
“Not me, mate.” I gave him a grin. Luke had once said that Mia would’ve been better off if she’d fallen for Billy all those years ago. That they had more in common. I’d argued against it, but he’d been right about their shared propensity for starting a fight over nothing. Luckily for me, I’d spent my whole life with Mia, which meant Billy’s animosity went over my head. He could bicker all day if he liked; he’d be doing it alone.
I got out of the van, half expecting him to stay where he was, but he followed and met me at the back door. “Did you finish stripping the old surface off yesterday?”
“Mostly.” I opened the van and started unloading tools. “There’s just some felt and timber fillets to come off. If you put the ladders up, I’ll help you take the tarps down.”
Another grunt. Billy slid the ladders from the top of the van and set them against the side of the house as if he did it every day. He danced up them and heaved himself onto the roof, and even after years of working with Luke, I’d never been so struck by how beautiful a man could be silhouetted by the early morning sun. Billy took my breath away, though without the proper gear on, he did look a little like he was casing the joint.
A snort escaped me. I was too far away for Billy to hear me, but he glared down from the rooftop all the same. “Are you helping me, or what?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I joined him on the roof and we rolled back the protective covering Luke and I had left in place the previous night. The night before that, I’d worked alone knowing I’d be coming home to Billy. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Billy fetched a spade and set to work stripping the remnants of the old roof like a pro. I watched him as long as I could bear, then retreated to the van to find a tape measure to double-check the membrane specs.
The whole day played out on a cycle of rinse and repeat. Billy did everything I asked before I asked him to do it, while I hovered around him under the pretence of inspecting his expert work. Luke worked like a dog, but his obsession with perfection often held us up. Billy was less ridiculous. He worked fast and hard, and we were half a day ahead by the time we lost the light. The only thing dampening my mood was the fact that he hadn’t been interested in stopping for lunch.
With Luke, I’d have chipped off on my own, but I didn’t fancy leaving Billy to work alone, so I ate his breakfast sandwich in two bites and carried on until the sun dipped too low to see what we were doing.
The house we were working on was quiet by day, but as we packed up the van, folks began to come home. Billy was on top of the van when the occupants of the house opposite pulled onto their drive. Rushmere was a small town. I knew most names, and almost every face, which meant everyone knew mine.
And, despite his absence, Billy’s too.
“Jesus-fucking-Christ. When did that little shit get out of prison?”
I stuck my head around the van door. The father of the house—Barry Keane—was on the pavement, glaring up at Billy.
Billy scowled right back. “Day release, mate. I’ll be back in the nick in time for Corrie.”
; “You bloody toerag. I don’t want you anywhere near my house. I’m calling the police.”
Keane turned on his heel. I intercepted him at his front door. “What’s the actual problem here? We’re not even working on your house.”
“Don’t care. That scumbag is trouble. My missus will go mad if she sees him outside.”
“She won’t see him. We’re packing up, and he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
It took a while, but eventually I managed to convince Keane not to call the police. How we’d manage tomorrow when we returned to work on the same house, I had no idea, but I was a live-in-the-moment kind of guy.
Billy was waiting by the van, his face a study of bored nonchalance, though his hands were restless. Jittery. Despite his sardonic smirk, he was rattled. “Did he at least make you a brew while he spouted all the bullshit at you?”
“Nope. But he’s not calling the police, so there’s that.”
“Don’t care if he does.”
“I do. We have to come back here tomorrow.”
Billy snorted. “Like that’s happening. Luke will do his nut when he finds out about this, and that’ll be the end of our beautiful partnership.”
I opened the driver door and threw my gloves inside. “Why would Luke find out?”
“Uh, I don’t know. Maybe because you’ve got him on speed dial?”
“Says who?”
“Says anyone who knows him. How else would he cope letting me work for him?”
I sighed. “Him wanting to know how you’re getting on isn’t the same as him checking up on you. Why do you give him such a hard time? He didn’t have to give you a job.”
“Yeah.” Billy pulled a packet of cigarettes from somewhere and lit up, blowing smoke in my general direction in a clear attempt to irritate me.
I waved the smoke away and grinned. Try harder.
His glower returned. He jammed the cigarette in his mouth and turned away. “Whatever. I don’t want his fucking charity anyway.”
“Why not? The business belongs to your family. He’d probably give it to you if you asked. He doesn’t want it.”
Billy didn’t answer. He walked away and ducked down an alleyway, disappearing in the fading light. I thought about following him, but instinct warned me off. Billy wasn’t a bloke who could be chased down and forced to be reasonable. I’d just have to wait and see if he’d show up tomorrow.
I drove the van to the gym on the outskirts of town, half expecting to find Luke there. He wasn’t, so I worked out alone, ignoring the Grindr notifications as I got my heart rate up in a different way. I ran five miles, then hit the weights, lifting heavier and longer than I normally would in an attempt to keep busy.
It worked, for a while, but when I ran out of steam, bad habits called my name. Just go home. Even if he’s not there, at least you’ll have his cat for company.
There were other places I could’ve gone too. I had friends, and Mia was usually home by now. But for some reason my brain was giving me only two options: go home to Billy, or find a new bed to keep warm.
I went home. I parked the van on the driveway and let myself into the house. The lights were on downstairs, and Billy’s cat was sitting on another stack of clean clothes at the bottom of the stairs, loose silver fur piling up around it. I stepped towards it, hands outstretched, but changed my mind at the last moment, bottled it, and ducked into the kitchen.
It was exactly as I’d left it when I’d last been there yesterday lunchtime, but somehow everything seemed different. On autopilot, I opened the fridge. Blinked, shut it, and opened it again. Damn. My fridge contained more food than it had since the day I bought it. Billy had been shopping. Eggs, milk, cheese, butter. Ham, and a solitary carrot. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what he was going to do with one carrot, but the sight of it made my heart clench in ways I couldn’t describe.
On the middle shelf was a plate wrapped in foil. My name was scrawled on it in biro.
Curious, I lifted the foil and found an omelette topped with another note.
this and supanoodles. it’s all i’ve got, so i guess we’re even
Chapter Five
Billy
I wanted to leave. I wanted to pack up Grey, get on my rusty stolen bike, and pedal us anywhere that wasn’t this suffocating piece of shit town. But I stayed. I braved the Tesco Extra, filled Gus’s fridge with random food, and cooked the only thing I could make that was real food. Yeah, cos he wasn’t the only one with a repertoire of average omelettes.
After, I flopped on the couch with the assumption that it was a waste of time because he wasn’t coming home. I fell asleep, and woke up in the middle of the night to find the duvet from my bed draped over me. Unnerved, I shot upright abruptly enough to irritate my angry shoulder, but stopped short at the large bundle of limbs crammed into the armchair on the other side of the room. Gus. The empty omelette plate was beside him, and he was...fast asleep.
Somehow the sight of him soothed me. My racing heart slowed, and I blew out a steady breath, catching Grey’s eye from his position stretched out beneath the radiator. His sage expression calmed me even more, and for a long moment, everything was as it should’ve been.
But Gus was a big guy, man. There was no way he was comfortable in that chair.
Still, the thought of waking him was impossible, so I settled in for a healthy staring session, taking in every part of him from his thick thighs, strong forearms and broad shoulders, to his smooth olive skin, floppy dark hair, and the kindest face I’d ever known.
Not that I knew him. Even when this town had been my home, Gus Amour had been a mystery. His amiable smile was skin-deep, and I wanted to know what lurked beneath. He’d nursed his dying mother like we had my dad. Endured his sister flaking out and running away, just as Luke had. How was he not a fucking mess like me?
Because he’s not a selfish little shit.
The insult my conscience threw out took me back to the douchebag encounter after work. To be honest, I’d expected it. Being parked outside the house of a more junior douchebag I’d come to blows with over a weed deal gone south had been a bad idea from the start. Time healed some wounds, but others festered. Rage became a dormant preoccupation until something triggered it back to life. Barry Keane had always wanted to lamp me one for decking his son. Shame—for him, at least—he was all mouth.
His words still haunted me, though. Scumbag. He was the second person to call me that in as many days, and it was starting to get under my skin, needle pricks at first, but then ants that crawled all over me.
I stood, letting the duvet fall away. It looked wrong crumpled on the floor. I picked it up, folded it, and put it on the couch, but it didn’t take enough cerebral effort to distract me from the anxiety dancing in my nerves. Pacing was my usual go-to when I felt like this, but Gus was asleep.
A smoke would help.
I crept out of the living room and into the kitchen. Gus’s work hoodie was in a pile by the washing machine. I bundled it up with the sweatshirt and tee I’d been wearing all day and put a load on, hoping he wouldn’t mind that I’d washed his clothes with my scuzzy threads. Cigarettes were still calling my name, so I let myself out of the back door and stood in the cold, shirtless and shivering.
Goose bumps prickled my skin, and my hair blew in my face. I turned away from the wind to light up and found Grey at the window, watching, as ever, with his owlish stare. Did he want to come out? Would he run if he did? I didn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out. As soon as I had enough cash for a train ticket somewhere new, I was gone, and I was taking him with me.
If he wanted to come. Maybe he’d like Gus better. Most people did.
“You must be freezing.”
I jumped and spun around, nearly braining myself on a hanging basket. Gus was at the back door, sleepy, dishevelled, and more gorgeous than he’d been
ten minutes ago. “I’m all right.”
“You’re bloody mad. Come inside.”
I waved my half-smoked fag. “Can’t. I’m protecting your lungs.”
“Protect your own. Come inside.”
The command lacing his tone caught me off guard. I waited for my hackles to rise, but nothing happened. He went back inside, and I stubbed my smoke out and followed him as if we were tied together by invisible string.
I washed my hands. He passed me a towel and gestured to a plastic tray on the countertop. “From my mum’s old cats. You can use them for yours if you want. We’ll pick up some proper litter in the morning, and some blue bowls if you’re a gender traditionalist.”
I peered at the tray. A set of pink plastic bowls were stacked inside, along with a sparkly fuchsia collar he’d have to pay me not to fasten around Grey’s elegant neck. “I don’t conform to much. And thanks. I think he’ll like them.”
“What’s his name?”
“Grey.”
“You put a lot of thought into that, huh?”
“Yup.”
Gus chuckled and opened the fridge. He slid a beer across the counter to me and opened one for himself. “Should probably put the kettle on, but this feels like the end of a rager.”
He wasn’t wrong. With my scratchy eyes and dry throat, aching muscles and churning stomach, I felt like I’d been on the piss all night, not snoozing on Gus’s couch. I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d been up to, though. How long he’d been home, and what had kept him out. His phone had buzzed and beeped all day. Every so often I’d spotted him tapping at his screen with a lazy grin, tongue caught between his teeth, and figured he was having a gay old time on Grindr, so it had been no surprise when he hadn’t come home.
And none of my business, but now he was right in front of me, questions burned a path to my tongue.
I swallowed them down and opened my beer. Cool, hoppy fizz hit my tongue, and I realised it was the first booze I’d drunk since we’d played out this exact scene yesterday. Huh. Maybe I was ill.
Unforgotten (Forgiven) Page 4