I need to call Safia.
I stepped back into Fen’s cosy kitchen, and because he was a fucking psychic, he handed me my charged phone.
“You left it on the counter last night. I figured you’d need it this morning.”
I grunted my thanks.
Fen laughed. As much as I sensed something different about him, he still did that a lot—laughed with this warm, infectious joy that needled its way into even the moodiest man’s personality. I’d seen it in action on the prison wings, the way his presence could make a dangerous landing a safer place just because he smiled like the sun.
I’d missed that. I didn’t know much right now, but that I couldn’t deny.
“Hey.” Fen broke the daze I’d drifted into with a soft elbow to my ribs. “You okay? You never did get around to telling me how you came to be halfway up Christmas Mountain with this little guy.”
Charlie was now on the floor, on the rug by the armchair I’d laid him on last night, playing with a felt set I vaguely recognised, which made no fucking sense at all. “Yes, I did.”
“Nope. You told me you were headed to Safia’s place. Not why you were doing it in the middle of the night with no overnight bag or supplies that weren’t for the bairn.”
“So, you’re a proponent for me doing it in the middle of the day?”
A very faint flush stained Fen’s cheeks, and I smirked. My style of flirting had always been dirtier than his, which was why he’d rarely seen it, as we’d spent the entirety of our friendship at work.
“It wasn’t exactly planned,” I admitted.
“Sounds like the kind of opening we’re gonna need a cuppa for.” Fen lit the flame beneath the kettle. “Go on.”
I sighed. “You really want to hear my family drama?”
“Course I do. I’m stuck with you for the next twenty-four hours, so you may as well entertain me.”
Twenty-four hours. “Dick.”
“Ouch. You’re a grumpy dude, eh? I always wondered.”
“What else did you wonder?”
Fen’s smile was…sweet. “Lots of things. Right now, I’m wondering if you slept okay, if you’re hungry, and if you want to use the landline to call your sister as the phone signal up here is pants.”
“Pants,” Charlie echoed.
“It is,” Fen agreed. He held my gaze for a moment, then turned to Charlie and wiped his sticky face with a damp cloth. “Do you still want to see the biggest Christmas tree in the world?”
Charlie’s eyes grew round. He clapped his hands.
Fen laughed and faced me again. “Is that okay? It’s not far from the house and I’ll keep him wrapped up in my coat like a newborn.”
Every instinct I had told me Charlie was safer with Fen than he was with anyone. More than that, Charlie was happy with Fen, after he’d spent the last year screaming every time a stranger had looked his way, a belated realisation that should’ve occurred to me the moment I’d come downstairs to find them together in the first place. But the fact that I’d spent his entire life trying to keep him safe from other people-induced disasters betrayed me.
I hesitated, and Fen saw it.
With Charlie on his hip, he rounded the counter and came to stand close to me. “Tell you what, why don’t you go take a shower and make whatever calls you need from my bedroom. Me and the bairn can watch cartoons until you get back.”
His nearness was distracting. I wanted to stroke my fingers through his beard, cup his strong jaw in my hand and—
“Rami.”
I blinked. “Hmm?”
Fen’s brow furrowed, a tiny frown creasing his forehead. “Is there something else going on?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, whatever keeps making you zone out like you’ve banged your head. You’re not in trouble, are you? For taking him away from his mum?”
A bitter laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “I didn’t take Charlie. She left him with me and didn’t come back, like she’s been threatening to since he was born.”
Fen winced. “Sounds complicated. Drink the tea.”
He reached across the counter with his free hand and slid a full mug to me. Somehow, I’d missed the kettle boiling and him brewing up.
“Thanks,” I said absently as Charlie put his warm hand to my cheek. It was usually sticky with whatever yuck he’d managed to pick up since the last time I’d mauled him with a baby wipe, but under Fen’s care he was clean and dry, and my silent refusal to let them out of the house together seemed even more ridiculous. “It’s not that complicated, to be honest. Just fucking shit.”
Fen smoothed Charlie’s hair. The gesture was affectionate and kind, and for some inexplicable reason made me want to cry when I hadn’t shed a fucking tear since I was sixteen years old and my dad died of MND.
I held out my arms. Fen eased Charlie into them and pointed at his living room. “Telly is in there. Don’t ask me how to work it, though. Addie has to show me every time he’s here.”
“Addie?”
“Your other nephew. The DVDs by the wood basket are his.”
There was nothing about those words that didn’t make my head spin. Fen belonged in the world I’d left behind in Manchester, not holed up in this cosy house with my sister’s kids who I barely knew. How was this my life right now?
I took Charlie into the living room and tucked him up on Fen’s battered leather chesterfield. There were blankets folded on just about every available surface. I snagged one and pretended to steal Charlie’s nose from his face.
He scowled. “No.”
“No what?”
“No my nose. Is mine.”
“It’s mine now. I ate it.”
“Rama, noooo!” Charlie’s wail was loud. If I hadn’t known him better I’d have thought him upset, but he wasn’t. His dark eyes shone with laughter and he beat his tiny fists on my chest. “Nose mine.”
I gave it back to him and ruffled his hair, destroying Fen’s efforts to tame it. “You want Octonauts?”
“Yeah!”
I found Fen’s remote and navigated his TV to the CBeebies channel. The theme song for the show that made me want to stick pins in my ears blasted out until I discovered the volume button.
By then, Fen was watching me from the doorway. “And I thought I was a relic when it came to technology.”
“Fuck off.”
He snorted. “You don’t watch your mouth in front of him?”
“Nope. I’m a terrible parent.”
“Sounds like he’s had worse.”
Sighing, I left Charlie on the couch and jerked my head at the kitchen. Fen preceded me back to the counter and opened the fridge, giving me space while I found the optimal position to watch Charlie and ogle Fen’s broad back at the same time. “Damon wasn’t a bad dad, just messed up. He was getting better in the months before he OD’d.”
“Is that why he OD’d? Because he hadn’t been using and his tolerance was lower?”
“Maybe. I try not to think about it anymore. Drove me half-crazy at first.”
“Man, I’m sorry.” Fen threw me a contrite glance. “Tell me to shut up if I dig too hard, okay? I’m too nosy for my own good.”