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I get the feeling he’s not being literal. More that he wants to know why I came to his farm when he wasn’t there. And so I tell him. “I stopped by in the morning. Then again in the evening, after dark, and I was worried when I couldn’t find you.”

There’s barely a breath between us, my palm still cradling Poet’s jaw.

Somehow, he leans closer, his lips an inch from mine. “Why?”

Because he has become every thought beyond my son. Because sleeping beside him has shifted something in me that won’t ever shift back, and when I couldn’t find him before I went to sea, that something inside me physically hurt. “I missed you.”

It’s a fraction of what I need to say. But, for now, it’s enough. The tension in Poet eases and he nods again. “Let’s walk.”

Along the beach. To my house.

On the way, he tells me a story that doesn’t shock me at all. Gives me the chance to duck out before he gets to the punchline.

I don’t take it. Instead, I hold his hand as he walks and talks, and deal with the emotions spinning through me as the tale of earth and guns unfolds. Anger. Worry. Grief for the land, and for Poet who unknowingly built a life around tainted dirt.

But there is relief too. Gratitude. Sol does not have the stomach for what Poet did tonight, but he would’ve done it anyway, and I’m glad he didn’t have to. “I admire you,” I say when Poet is done.

Bemusement colours his gaze. “I⁠—”

“No.” I squeeze his fingers in mine as motorbikes growl in the distance. “You were angry and still found the humility to believe that man is more than his worst mistakes. I have not felt that way about Dav for a long time.”

“He hasn’t hurt me,” Poet counters.

“Until now.”

“Oscar, I’m not hurt.”

It is the second time his voice has wrapped around my name tonight and the effect is no less potent.

We have reached my house.

I stop walking and angle my body in front of him. I let go of his hand only to hold his face again and something passes between us that we cannot take back. Something that overrides every single thing I have to say about Dav Bosanko’s foolery and leaves me with nothing but a whispered plea. “Come inside?”

17 POET

I shouldn’t go inside.

I shouldn’t stay.

I’m so tired I feel almost feral with it.

But I let Oscar lead me inside his cool and peaceful house anyway. Because I’m weak for him and I like it too much to fight it.

“Eat if you are hungry.” He brushes my jaw with a featherlight kiss. “I need to shower.”

“Do you need to eat?”

“Negaliu. I am tired of eating today.”

Oscar leaves me with that and goes upstairs with a tread that feels light, even though I can’t hear it.

It leaves me alone in the low light of the lamps he flicked on as he went.

I’m not hungry.

In the living room, I drift to the instruments still blocking the TV and pluck a string on a guitar, straining my ears for the sound reverberating through my fingers. But it’s not there. It’s the strangest thing that some days I feel more deaf than others.

It’s not so strange that I sense Oscar behind me a little while later. Or that I close my eyes to feel him more.