Chapter 14

14

RAE

That fucker Sol gets to the door before I can on Sunday. His greeting echoes through the studio space. So does his teasing. “Nice of you to bring Rae a present, but you know flowers or chocolates are more traditional, right?”

Hayden must be used to dealing with best-friend bullshit. He jabs straight back. “Man, that’s rough. Feel for you, Sol.”

“You feel for me?”

“Yeah, if no one ever showed you a good time in a wetsuit.”

In a wetsuit?

I turn to find out that’s exactly what Hayden has brought with him. It’s folded over one of those corded forearms I just lost an hour to drawing. He must have come straight from whichever farm he’s spent the weekend at working. He’s tired. I can see it, and I itch to find the same shadowed shade amongst the pencils littering my cave of a workspace. I’d smudge it under his eyes in the latest drawing in my sketchbook. I’d need to find a warmer shade to speckle his hair with fragments of whatever his work today has thrown at him like confetti.

He raises a hand to his chin, where stubble has already thickened, as if he’s checking it for more of the burrs that clung there when I first met him. That’s a clue I must be staring. Sol gives me another clue by covering his smile with a hand and rolling his eyes before leaving us to it with a final unasked-for comment.

“Have fun getting wet and slippery.”

And we do, even if none of this outing goes as I expected.

For a start, we don’t leave in Hayden’s Land Rover. One of his friends from that wedding-venue farm is waiting for us in the car park in his own vehicle.

Marc’s handshake is firm. Today’s bright light finds auburn embers in hair darker than his little brother’s bright red. “Good to see you again, Rae.” He drives us out to the moors, only instead of taking the turnoff leading to the encampment, he keeps going uphill, the whole while chatting shit with Hayden like Sol does with me.

“You sure you should swim so soon after eating, Hayd?” Marc meets my eyes in his rearview mirror as the vehicle climbs higher, and his gaze twinkles as he directs this at me. “Stefan’s mum brought lunch out to us in the fields. You should have seen the number of pasties and scones Hayden packed away. He’s gonna get cramp for sure. Hope you know how to save him from drowning.”

And like with Sol earlier, Hayden doesn’t take any of Marc’s shit either. “It’s sweet you’re so worried. There’s no need. I already tested Rae’s mouth-to-mouth skills.”

Once Marc stops laughing, he pulls up at the top of the hill in a pub car park, and we get changed behind his vehicle where I echo what Hayden told him. “I’ve got mouth-to-mouth skills?”

Hayden pulls off a dusty shirt and replaces it with a wetsuit that strains over his chest and shoulders. “You’ve got some. But you know what they say.” His kiss is quick. Rough. Salty with a day’s hard work. It’s also fucking delicious. He slips on wetsuit boots, and tells me, “Practice makes progress.”

I like this version of him.

Yes, he’s tired, I can see that. But he’s also excited, and that’s a good look on him.

No. Not a good look.

It’s a great one.

I can’t stop staring, and Marc notices. “Ha!” He pokes Hayden in the ribs. “That’s exactly how you look whenever you get a text from a certain someone lately. Sorry the honeymoon tent isn’t free again until November. How about I book you two in then?”

Hayden flushes. “How about you shut the fuck up?”

“Charming.” Marc laughs as he leaves, but I am charmed by the thought of repeating a star-filled night that I’ll never forget. That I’ll always remember, and have drawn several times already when I should have been sketching another subject. So charmed that it makes me slow to realise Marc has taken our clothes with him. My phone too.

“Wait. Where’s he going with our stuff?”

“Back to Glynn Harber. He’ll leave everything at the bridge there.”

That doesn’t really answer how we’ll get from wherever this pool is and then back to the school. I don’t waste time asking. I catch up with him at a gap in the car park wall, where the view stops me. Stuns me. Means that I can barely breathe around this much beauty.

The moors fall away, steep and sudden, then flare out like a shaken blanket. So many shades of green and gold spread out below us with a thick silver seam sewn through the moorland’s middle.

A river.

His arm is heavy across my shoulder, and I snap my hanging mouth shut, hot and flustered for a moment at looking like a twat who’s never seen this much nature. I mean, I didn’t, not as a city kid with no transport, and for a fleeting moment, I wonder if the family of that Polish boy ever stood in this spot and had the same reaction.

I see woods in the distance, but I hear gunfire. See some kind of kestrel hover at eye level, then plunge, only I hear the crump of bombs dropping like I last saw crayoned by kids across the Channel.

I’m suddenly homesick, which is stupid when I don’t have one.

Or maybe it’s guilt.

I should be there with them. Make sure they all have life vests.

Hayden’s arm tightens around me. He doesn’t speak. He’s strong and silent while I have a moment, then he leads me through the gap in the wall, and we follow a path towards the sound of burbling.

“Wait,” I say for the second time in as many minutes, this time at the bank of a river. “He drew a picture of a pool, not this.”

“Trust me?” Hayden extends a hand.

I take it without hesitating.

I also go underwater when he jumps from the bank, still holding my hand. He comes up whooping. I do too, and fuck me, it’s cold. Then we’re off on a wild and wet helter-skelter ride down the hillside.

“It’s called wild swimming these days,” he gasps. “I grew up doing it. Nothing beats it.” His fingers thread so tightly with mine there’s no escaping, but that’s fine by me. It means I get to hear him over the rush. “I can take or leave surfing.” He tugs me out of the way of a rock. “It’s okay, but I leave the tourists to catch waves. This is more my speed.”

I wouldn’t have pegged him as an adrenaline junkie, but there’s his smile again, a brilliant spark showing someone in their element that I’ve caught glimpses of in his clearing with the kids. I wish I’d seen him in his soccer days. I bet he looked like this while playing—while leaping to make the kind of save he does next.

Hayden pulls me away from more rocks, and we have to stand to wade around them. He’s breathless, but so am I. I’m also over that homesick feeling—which was guilt, I accept now that this river has washed it away.

It has also cracked open something I didn’t realise had been closed off in Hayden. He’s so fucking chatty, I wonder what else he’s held back.

He shakes water from his hair, glistening droplets beading in that short beard, no sign left of the tiredness he arrived with. “Plus, I don’t need to spend any cash to do this. Decent surfboards are expensive.” He climbs onto another obstacle—this time a fallen tree that he balances on like it’s a longboard, his arms extended. One of his hands is still linked with mine, and when he tugs, I join him up there. I also wish I had my phone with me to capture his expression when I slip.

He grabs me and won’t let go, an image of determination. I settle for being in this moment with him, and for listening to him sound like a winner instead of defeated when he says, “Used to come up here with Dad before I got scouted.”

He jumps again, and so what if I risk bumps and bruises by jumping right beside him? They’ll be worth it to hear what spills out after he threads our fingers again. “He promised me a trip up here for every goal I saved in under-eleven matches.”

“So you saved plenty?”

“So fucking many.”

I love his laugh. It’s magic. And loud. Not even the rush of water can drown it out as we tumble and splash, as we wade and dive, and as he only lets go of my hand to climb boulders, and makes it look easy. I brace both arms against a huge one, winded and catching my breath.

If someone took a photo or drew me, I bet I’d look just like that kid drawn by my mentor.

Would I even be here if I hadn’t seen someone just like me on a journey in a story?

I hope to fuck he never felt guilty for taking the time to draw it.

I find more strength then—strength to soak up as much of this as I can in case what I draw later does the same for a kid who needs to see that water can be fun instead of frightening. That traffickers don’t get to steal that from them. I also find more breath. Enough to laugh when I clamber to the top of that boulder and get to push Hayden into the deep pool of water behind it. My cackle rings out until he grabs my ankle.

Then I’m falling.

For him.

He’s so physical. Hayden powers after me in a game of chase, a seal slicing through the water behind me. A shark snapping at my heels as I splash. A bearded merman with slicked-back hair who I end up kissing for so long that I risk drowning.

Hayden’s breath is hot and panting, his nose freezing, his smile amazing when we break off. The water carries me away, plunging me downhill, while an eddy traps him.

I spin, fighting that tumbling water, and fuck me, it’s an effort, but I wade uphill against this torrent and pull him out of the whirlpool that trapped him.

I slip next, and he grabs me.

“Got you.”

He does. He’s got me in a way that goes beyond us linking hands to take this wild and wet ride together. He’s well and truly got me, even when the incline lessens and we float while he continues his story.

“The river runs past where I used to live.” He eyes me for a long and quiet moment before reaching out to push us away from more rocks, and we turn in a lazy circle. The water is calmer here, which means I get to hear him ask this. “Want to see where I grew up?”

I do.

I want to see anything he’ll show me.

Everything.

I’m meant to be filling a book with sketches of one kid. He’s who I itch to put on each page, and as we float under a canopy of trees, a way to do both comes to me.

I see it as if I’ve already drawn it, and calm descends in an instant.

Peace reigns and it’s fucking glorious.

The clamour in my head is silenced, that fast beat perpetually skittering behind my ribcage finally slowing.

Hayden is the story.

He’s the only one of us who knows what’s ahead on this downhill journey. But I know a way ahead too now. It is as clear as this water to me, and a new journey flickers to life behind my eyelids the same way as light flickers between the leaves above us.

I can’t fucking wait to add him to each page, not only to the first one.

“Nearly there,” he promises. He pulls me closer, not letting the current carry me even an inch away from him. I get a face full of water in the process but it’s worth it to be close enough to hear this. “I said that Dad was a moorland warden, yeah?”

I nod.

“He worked for the duke who owns everything between here and Porthperrin. The cottage was tied to his job.”

“He didn’t own it?”

Hayden shakes his head. “Didn’t need to. It was a lifetime deal. And he loved his work even if it never paid much. He got to be in nature, you know?”

Of course Hayden got his love for wildness from someone special to him.

“He got to do that and coach footy in his time off. I’m glad he got that. I only wish…”

He rolls away.

The water is shallow, and when he kneels up, silt stirs. The water turns cloudy. Murky. That’s the only way to describe what crosses his face until he covers it with both hands. Only for a few seconds. He’s back to usual as soon as he drops them.

Too late, mate.

Way too late.

I’m seeing through all his cracks now, and there are plenty, like him insisting he’s a short-term guy like me. Everything he’s shown me suggests otherwise, and I see more after he extends a hand to haul me out of the water, and then pulls me up a bank to peer through a gap in a hedge with him. His sudden exhale is a signal. I can’t ignore that he goes preternaturally still, his next breath held, until I prompt him.

“What is it?”

“The goal posts. They’re still there.” He swallows. I hear it over the rush of water behind us. “We needed permission from the duke to put them up. Proper regulation-size posts, not the flimsy kids posts I outgrew. I remember him and Kirsty talking about it.”

“Kirsty?”

“My stepmum. Dad always says she’s the brains of their operation. Said, ” he tags on before clearing his throat. “She wrote the email asking the duke for permission. She explained my…” He swallows again. “She explained my potential. A week later, a truck turns up with a delivery. From the duke.” He tilts his head at those posts. “A pro setup—posts and a net, a dozen balls. And a cheque. Said he’d had a growing boy of his own once. Footy wasn’t his son’s sport, rowing was. But he remembered what it cost to keep him kitted out for that. Said to keep in touch about my progress.”

“Did you?”

“Dad might have until… I didn’t. Good thing too. He might have felt like he had to come and watch me fuck up my?—”

He doesn’t have to say my big chance for me to hear it, or this.

“Fucking glad Dad didn’t see it either.”

“He’d already…”

“Gone? Yeah. He got to see me start at the academy, and then…” He shakes his head, maybe trying to shake off the past, and here’s another crack to peer through—he only ever looks this bruised when he mentions soccer. That doesn’t stop him from being open about failure, which is a reminder of when he stood outside a chapel and told a bride and groom they’d survive what felt like a disaster. That they could change plans and look back one day without flinching.

He does the same now, even if he doesn’t know it.

He meets my eyes, his gaze much steadier than the hand he slicks back his hair with. “I’ve only got one regret.”

“Yeah?”

He shrugs. “Well, maybe I’ve got two. Here’s the first.” He meets my gaze, water droplets clinging not only to his new beard but also to his eyelashes, like tears for a past he can’t rewrite. “I wish to fuck I’d let Dad get a few more balls past me in that garden. If I got a do-over, I’d let him put every single shot in the back of the net.”

See how he doesn’t ask for a second chance at fame or sporting glory?

“I wish I could go back. I can’t. But I can remember.”

This is what I’m talking about—what I’ll burn the candle at both ends to capture later. I don’t care how long it takes me.

I’ll draw this memory for him. This resilience.

He makes some more memories for me by leading me back into the water, and it’s wild how it feels so much warmer after being out of it for a few minutes. I’m warmer still when the river dumps us into another pool, where I see what he must have noticed in Olek’s drawing to identify that this was the exact spot where he learned to swim. I point over the edge of this pool. “Those are…”

“Glynn Harber’s chimneys? Yeah. The school is just a little further downhill. Back in the day, they must have brought the kids up here for swimming lessons. This pool is perfect for it.” He’s right. The water is calm here. Almost still. The river rushing past is behind a natural wall of boulders.

I look back at him to find him watching.

Me.

His question is low and careful. “This what you needed to see, Rae?”

No.

He is.

I nod rather than say that he’s my muse now—my reason to itch for pencil and paper or for my phone and stylus. He’s the hero whose journey I’ll hold a mirror up to, and ask the world, what’s the fucking difference? English or Polish. Native or new arrival. In the past or the present.

That’s what floats along with us as the last of the sun fades and Hayden tells me more about growing up here. About his dad’s twin passions, and how Hayden learned about both without even knowing, and how he had all of his dad’s old contacts. “So when I got...”

“Dropped?” That’s what he said the very first day I met him, confessing to crashing and burning like Icarus in sunlight. “You already had another skill to fall back on and people who could help you?”

“I had Aleksander,” he confirms. His spots something behind me. “Turn around very slowly.”

I do, and I’ve never seen an owl from close up. This one watches us, wise and solemn. An otter also joins us, and I’ve never seen one of those in the flesh—or in the fur, either. This one joins our swim, curious and playful, before slipping away into increasing darkness.

Hayden looks up next. “Bats.”

They flit over the water, snatching insects, their flight another form of natural magic, another first that I add to a bank of images I know will spill out later with Hayden at the centre of my page.

But first, we climb that rock wall and tumble downhill one last time to end up where the river splits in two directions. It gushes to the left. The flow is more tranquil to the right, and that’s where Hayden tows me through familiar woodland that I get to see from a brand-new angle.

We float under a bridge decorated as if welcoming us home to Glynn Harber. Streamers flutter and fairy lights twist around handrails to light it against the twilight. That light is magical as well. So is the way it finds cracks between the planks of the bridge as we pass underneath it, and another crack splits wide open. This one is inside my chest, because Hayden’s suddenly gruff in another reminder of the first time I met him, back when he wasn’t sure if he had a place here. Now he’s uncertain all over again.

“Rowan stays with his boyfriend at the weekends. He won’t be at the stables if you wanna?—”

He’s led me all the way here. Shared more than secret pools and old goal posts with me. Now it’s my turn to be as open with him.

“Do I want to spend every fucking minute I can with you?”

He nods, a smile starting. He also hesitates like he can’t let himself have fun without double-checking. “Unless you need to get started?—”

“Drawing everything you showed me today?”

He nods.

“Fuck, no.” I grab his hand. “There’s tons of time for that.” I stand up so fast that water swirls around us. “I’ve got days and days left. Weeks. Maybe even longer, depending on what the publishers make of the first images I send my agent.”

That deadline might as well be forever away as I pull Hayden out of the water.

He emerges, wet and laughing, and…

I want even longer.