Page 109 of Too Close To Home

And the one man who’d caught Harrison’s attention after twenty years of belonging entirely to someone else.

But that wasn’t the most disconcerting part.

It was that he’d wanted to.

Chapter sixteen

Gutter Runoff

Monday morning arrived with Jake’s alarm buzzing at six.

The bedsit was cold enough that he could see his breath when he sat up, and he slapped the alarm off before it could wake the entirety of Hartswick, neck aching from sleeping badly. Not because of the mattress. That thing had been trying to kill him for years.

Because of Harrison.

Sunday had passed in a blur of routine and stubborn avoidance about it all. He’d picked Teddy up for rugby, spent half the morning freezing his arse off on the touchline, then gone back to his mum’s for Sunday tea where everyone had talked around Emily Fisher and Robyn without quite mentioning either of them. Afterwards, Teddy had dragged him upstairs for guitar practice, proudly butchering every chord Jake had shown him the week before.

That part, Jake secretly loved.

Watching Teddy learn and him getting excited when it all finally clicked. Seeing little flashes of Robyn in the way he grinned whenever he got something right.

The evening had been spent much the same as most evenings. Drums until the neighbour hammered on the wall. Guitar after that. He sometimes wrote songs. Not many people knew that. But he had half-finished lyrics and scribbled melodies filling a battered notebook beneath his mattress. Most of them never got any further than that.

Last night hadn’t got much further either.

Every time he picked up the guitar, his thoughts had drifted back to a woodland path, a pair of brown eyes, and a kiss he’d spent far too much time replaying.

Then Brodie had called.

Jake had ignored him.

A year ago, he’d’ve answered without thinking. These days the idea felt exhausting. Which was probably a problem. Because the alternative wasn’t much better. Not when the alternative had a London accent, a complicated past, and a habit of looking at Jake as if he could see straight through every bit of bullshit he tried to hide behind.

Jake groaned and dragged a hand down his face. “Fucking brilliant.”

Then he pulled on his work clothes, grabbed a coffee from the petrol station down the road, and headed for his first job of the day. Which was Ron and Eileen Briggs’ terraced house on Dew Lane overlooking the moors and sitting a stone’s throw from the steelworks.

Ron had called him a couple of days back, wanted the loft boarded out and insulated before winter properly set in. An old mate of his dad’s. So Jake knew this was gonna be a mates rates job. And he spent the first couple of hours up a ladder fitting timber battens along the joists, the smell of dust and fresh wood filling the cramped roof space. He shoved his earbuds in to blast music loud enough to drown it all out.

Halfway along the run, Jake paused. Something felt…off. A faint vibration travelled through the timber beneath his boots. Subtle. Most people wouldn’t notice, but he wasn’t most people. Old houses had a way of speaking. He stilled, slipping one earbud loose as he tipped his head towards the far side of the loft.

Nothing.

Only a tight, dusty space. Insulation. Timber. The low hum of his music still bleeding from the other ear. Old house. Terraces carried everything. Weight, movement, heat. Could’ve been next door. Someone walking about. Something dropped. He pushed the earbud back in and carried on.

By mid-morning he was short on materials.

So he climbed down, wiped his hands on his work trousers, and checked the list again. Board screws. Insulation rolls. Another length of joist timber. A couple of packs of chipboard panels. All the things he’d need from the builder’s merchant.

“Back in a jiffy, Ron!” he called out to the garden where Ron was bent over the patio, pulling weeds.

“Aye, Jake, lad!” Ron straightened with a grunt. “Long as you sort that noise for Eileen.”

Jake frowned. “What noise?”

Ron waved it off, dropping back to his knees. “Nowt. She keeps saying she can hear summat up there. Scratching. Knocking about. Probably nowt but the house.”

Jake glanced back up towards the loft hatch. “Aye. Old places make noises.”