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Fine. I try again, with the truth this time: I love you.

I haven’t told Folk that in years, so I’ve forgotten how his eyes soften any time I do. How good it feels to make him happy instead of cautious and guilty.

He raises his hand and signs back: I love you too, little brother.

Then he climbs up to embrace me before he shoves my shoulder hard enough to rock me in my seat and everything is right with the world.

Folk leaves.

I watch him pull on his helmet, wheel the bike around, and peel away with a roar that reaches me as a low hiss. A few seconds later, he’s nothing but a shrinking shape on the sunny horizon, but it doesn’t feel like he’s gone, and it’s a sensation I carry with me on the tractor for the rest of the afternoon. And to the top field where Dav is inexplicably still working long after he should’ve gone home.

“You don’t need to stay this late.” I hop the fence and land on a patch of soft earth. Fresh earth. “Did you dig a hole here?”

Dav shrugs. “Getting roots up.”

“What roots?”

“Dead roots.” He shoots me a shady glance. “’Ere, I thought you said you weren’t one of them.”

I kick at the earth he’s disturbed for…what? Some dead bramble? It makes no sense, but his question claims my focus. “One of who?”

“The Kings.”

“I’m not a biker, Dav.”

“Seems like it with all the comings and goings. All the brother love with the one who came today.”

He’s lost me. Until he hasn’t, and I realise not only was he close enough this afternoon to identify my visitor as a Rebel King, he also understands enough sign language to know what Folk and I said to each other before he left.

Something cold settles in my blood and I regard Dav with none of the fairness and empathy I was raised with. For the first time since I hired him, I find myself looking closer at the disturbed earth, evasive answers, and the nervousness rising in him the longer I dead-eye him. “The one who came today is my real brother. But even if he wasn’t, who I associate with is none of your business.”

Dav glances at the lane. As if Folk might still be there. “That one’s your brother? Jesus wept.”

He scrapes a hand down his face. A shaky hand. Then he’s in motion, a flurry of abrupt activity as he flits around the field, gathering his things before he hops the far fence and books it before I can remind him it’s pay day.

Dav usually takes a nap after work, in the barn behind the parked tractors, cap pulled low over his eyes. But he’s fast on his feet tonight, and for the second time today, he’s gone in a flash, leaving me alone and bemused.

And hungry.

I trudge back to the house, the sun setting at my back as I find myself glancing towards the lane for any sign of the strapping Lithuanian fisherman who makes every fret and worry hitching a ride in my thoughts fade to black.

Looking out for Oscar feels suspiciously like a habit, and the realisation he’s not here feels like something else entirely, but I’m tired enough to ignore it all and take a lonely shower. To pretend I don’t regret all the missed moments I could’ve asked for Oscar’s phone number and made actual plans with him instead of playing chicken with my gatepost every night.

Why haven’t we done that?

Exchanged numbers?

As I stand alone under the spray, missing his muscled arm threading around my waist, his rumbling chuckle at my throat, I have no idea. But I find myself still thinking about it—about him—long after I’m dry and putting myself to work with the floorboards in the second bedroom.

From the window, I can see Aras’s bedroom in his mum’s house. Dinosaur curtains and a cabin bed like the ones my dad built for the first foster kids they took in when I was ten. Brothers and sisters just passing through until a set of twins stayed forever a few years ago.

They like dinosaurs too. And berries and trees. Swimming in the sea. I don’t know if Aras likes the ocean. I’ve never thought to ask him, and I realise I want to know almost as much as I want Oscar to materialise in my house like the best dream I could ever have. And more than I want a what are you up to text on my phone.

I finish the floorboards and consider sanding them. But it’s late and I have an envelope in my kitchen that doesn’t belong to me.

It’s Dav’s. He’s asked for cash in hand, but not his own. Which means a trip into town that doesn’t need to be right now, but that’s not how my brain works. The idea takes hold and I’m downstairs before I’ve given it much thought. Halfway down the road before I realise it’ll take me past Oscar’s house and I slow my rapid pace, contemplating the skip in my pulse. What even is that? Why do I feel like he’s already touching me when in all likelihood, he’s not home.

He might be at the Joker.