Page 1

1 POET

THEN

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the colour of the sunlight as I watch my brother marry the love of his life. Dappled gold. It spills through the trees, catching dust and smiles. Catching the love in the orchard on Moondust Farm like it’s a tangible, physical thing, searching for a new place to land.

It’s early evening in rural Norfolk.

Dry heat clings to my skin and people are clapping. I know because their hands all move in the same rhythm that reaches me too late to join in.

I mean, I could still clap. Could still shout joyous things to my big brother. No one’s going to notice I’m a beat out of sync. But I stay quiet. Stay in my seat until two of my brother’s friends step forward to marry each other straight after.

Then I’m gone.

I slip away and I don’t feel bad about it. Folk knows I’m happy for him. I told him last night. He doesn’t need anything else from me, and I don’t need anything from him.

What I need is a rare drink, and lucky for me, there’s booze everywhere, even though my brother doesn’t partake and almost everyone here is driving home tonight.

I find the gin stash and swig from a bottle of my dad’s elderflower special. It’s floral. Delicate. But it warms my chest like a hug and I feel better for it. Almost like I could go back to the orchard and enjoy the prospect of peopling for the rest of the night.

Eh.

Probably not, a reality that has me loitering a little longer before the second wedding of the day breaks up, and the small crowd filters out of the orchard and into the rest of the space behind the barn.

Men, mostly. Tall, brawny men with beards and ink, bodies built for work and trouble, and none of them are bad to look at. Shame they’re all attached, mainly to each other with the same settled love my parents have shared for thirty-nine years and counting.

Doesn’t stop me looking, though. And my sister catches me at it, the message in her glare clear as the summer night sky: mingle, you little shit.

I suppress a sigh and abandon the gin to join the throng, skirting around where my brother stands with his husband to sneak up on my new niece.

Ivy.

She’s a firecracker and I love her.

I spirit her to the trestle tables where my parents have laid out enough food for the whole village. Or, you know, a garden overflowing with testosterone. This kid likes to eat, and so do I.

“Which one first?” I point at the cakes. “We need to try all of them before Grandpa Iggy gets to them.”

Ivy laughs and grabs my chin, forcing us face-to-face, because she doesn’t realise I can see her just fine in my peripheral. “I want the lilac one.”

“With the berries?”

“Duh. Yeah.”

I snag the chosen cake and spend the next few minutes helping her demolish it without staining her clothes. It’s no mean feat, but I’m used to little kids. Truth be told, it feels weird when there’s none around—a different quiet to the one I have no say over.

Ivy tugs my jeans to get my attention.

I crouch to her level and watch her tiny mouth move as she speaks. “Can we take one for Aras?”

“Who’s Aras?”

“Over there.” Ivy points over my shoulder.

I turn and see the little boy with shaggy dark hair and suntanned skin. He’s cute as a button, but I find myself transfixed by the big boots he’s standing beside, and the long denim-clad legs they’re attached to.

They reel me in.

I let my gaze travel as I rise from the ground. Let it traverse muscular limbs and a broad torso to the handsome face of a man with warm brown eyes and glossy hair tied back like a messy afterthought.