“Oh.” Comprehension cleared Dante’s puzzled frown. He ventured forwards again, further this time, until he was as close as he’d been when he’d taken Sid’s arm in the yard. “Do I fascinate you? Make you feel like being around me is exciting even though I’ve done fuck all to make you think I’m remotely interesting?”
“What?”
“Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Whatever it is that’s twisting you up. Say it, then I can tell you why you’re wrong.”
Sid swallowed, unable to contemplate how a simple conversation had become so intense so fast. “But what if I’m not wrong? What if you do fascinate me and that’s okay?”
Dante’s frown returned, deeper. Darker. “It’s not okay.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a good person who deserves better than to waste your, uh, fascinations on me.” Dante tapped Sid’s temple like Sid had earlier, but his touch was gentle, not sharp and punishing, a feather-light touch that left Sid dizzy. “Save what’s in there for someone who matters.”
He backed up before Sid could take a breath. Sid gripped the counter behind him, a crackle of misplaced pressure hugging his chest. “You matter,” he said slowly. “Someone wanted you to have this job.”
Dante smirked, and it changed his whole face, sharpening his features into blade-like edges. “Maybe I manipulated that person into thinking I was worth it. I do that, you know. Manipulate people into liking me so they do what I want.”
“Yeah? What do you want from me then? Cos all I’ve got is a bag of weed and a pot of rice, and you already turned me down for both of those things.”
A silence stretched out between them, weighted and painful. Or maybe Sid had reached the part of his day where everything hurt, even his eyeballs, as he lost himself in Dante’s honeycomb glare.
Then, as if a higher power had clicked their fingers, Dante’s expression softened. He closed his eyes and sucked in a shaky breath before he met Sid’s gaze again. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m still learning humility.”
“When did you lose it?”
“I never had it.”
Sid braved releasing his death grip on the counter. “I don’t believe that. Something happened to take it from you. That’s why you can get it back.”
“That’s your theory, huh?”
“It’s yours, actually. Your ability to pretend you’re an evil person has evolved enough to abandon you.”
Dante’s lips twitched. “That’s not what I said.”
“Yeah, well.” Sid reached for his vegetables and a knife from the block. “It’s what I heard, and it’s what I’ll believe until you show me otherwise.”
“Fair enough.” Dante threw Sid a dry grin and left.
5
The earth in the manor grounds was different to the sand-heavy soil Dante had battled in the prison gardens. Years of diligent care had left it rich and nutrient-dense. It held water better, and the fertilisers Sid and Dante mixed in stayed put.
Dante was enchanted. He trailed his fingers through the damp clumps. “I used to watch the rain from my cell window knowing it was washing all the fertilisers away, and every time it did, I’d lose more time.”
He spoke to himself as much as Sid, who he’d found in the last few weeks zoned out as often as Dante stayed silent. But Sid heard him this time and came to squat at his side. “Was that your job in the prison? To work in the gardens?”
“Towards the end. I worked in the library before that. Then a course came up that I thought might help me grow my own weed when I got out, and here I am.”
Sid snorted. “Worked out okay, didn’t it?”
“I guess.”
“Don’t guess. Know. You’ve got the bug, I can tell, and I already told you I can help you with the weed thing.” Sid rose and wandered off again.
Dante watched him go, as drawn to him as he was to the earth scenting his fingers with wood and sand. Seven days had passed since he’d been released, and he still couldn’t decide how he felt about it. At night, wide awake and smothered by deafening silence, he missed prison and hated himself for it. But the days . . . fuck. With his hands in the earth and Sid close by, somehow this strange new life seemed almost normal.
He tried not to dwell on how he felt every time Sid ambled away from him.
How he missed him.
You don’t have the right to miss anyone. But Dante’s subconscious wasn’t listening, and he shivered as Sid meandered back to the rose bushes he’d been muttering to all day, and not from cold. No, this tension was something else. A prickling sensation that let him know someone was coming up behind him. Someone that wasn’t Sid.
Don’t turn round. You’re safe. No one here wants to kill you.
The problem with the most logical logic, though, was that it was often the hardest to accept.
Dante spun around, fists clenched.
Benjamin was two feet away. “Your probation officer is at the front gate. Someone is bringing him across. Take him for a coffee, if Sid can spare you, so you can talk in private.”
Worried someone might see him? “Okay. Thanks.”
Benjamin nodded and continued on his way. A few moments later, he came up on Sid who was wiping rose leaves down, one by one, with a soft damp cloth. Dante sat back on his heels, observing their exchange while every sensible instinct told him to look away, but he’d learned over the past few days that averting his gaze from Sid was a newfound and constant struggle. The man was addictive, even when he was sharing friendly banter with a dude Dante had decided could sit on a spiked dildo.
Rude.
Yeah, well. New start or not, Dante had never claimed to be polite.
Sid said something that made Benjamin laugh. Benjamin clapped Sid’s shoulder. Sid’s broad grin was like the sun, but Dante didn’t miss the way Benjamin’s clumsy touch made him rub the back of his neck. The way his cornflower blue eyes flickered with the kind of pain he didn’t want anyone to see. The pain Benjamin didn’t see. But Dante did, and the urge to put himself between them was so strong he finally found the will to look away.
He went back to turning over the fertilised soil in the bed where Sid was going to plant out his new dahlias. Growing ornamental flowers was a new experience for Dante, but Sid’s excitement about them had him interested enough to lose himself in the task until he sensed a new presence behind him.
Rami Stone was Dante’s probation officer. With his twinkly brown eyes and compact build, he was the kind of attractive that usually got Dante excited, but with his attention still fixed on Sid in his peripheral vision, Dante felt nothing as Rami took his turn to kneel beside him and dissect how he was spending his time.
“I don’t know anything about gardening,” Rami confessed.
“Neither did I two years ago.” Dante dusted his hands as clean as he was going to get them without soap and water. “I read a lot of books and outdated copies of Gardeners World.”
“That’s as good a way to learn as any. How are you getting on with it here? It’s quite different to what you’re used to, even before prison.”