Chapter 23

ROWAN

A clock still ticks. Eventually, he tunes into it. "They'll miss you soon, Mr. Popular."

I'm warm already. More heat spreads at him using the same name as Luke. "You heard that?"

"I've got tinnitus, Row, not complete loss of hearing." His lips brush my chest. "So, how long until a horde of kids come looking for you?"

"A while." I don't know for sure. I just don't want to hurry, that's all. Not now we've traded places. We must have—my head is full of buzzing static. Not that I mind. I'd switch with him for longer if it kept him relaxed and easy. It's just weird because static isn't only in my head and isn't limited to my hearing. This whole-body feeling is wild, electricity still coursing. I'm buzzing like when we drove back from the moors. I'm also aching, but even that's good. So good that I trace the shell of his ear when really what I want to do is purr like a house cat. Or roll him over and do it all over again, I feel so fucking amazing. I settle for asking a question. "What can you hear right now?"

"Now?" He draws in a final deep breath and lifts his head, propping himself up on an elbow. My chest cools as his gaze shifts to the bedroom door. "A clock somewhere out there." He rests a palm on my chest. "Your heart." He rumbles like a much bigger cat than I just pictured, doing it again when I run a hand through his hair, and his eyelids lower. "Nothing else." He hums as I keep stroking. I'm in no hurry to stop, not while enjoying the contrast of longer strands compared to shorter prickles, but doesn't that define us?

We're contrasts as well, nothing like each other but here we are, tuned into the same wavelength. I can't keep in my own hum of satisfaction until he adds, "Apart from drumming." He opens his eyes and cocks his head. "Or is that just me?"

I cock an ear. "No, I can hear it." I sit up because now that I listen for it, I know what this banging signals. "Shit. I hoped Teo would go and eat with the other boarders. Spend some time being social." I look at the door, and maybe Liam really does share a wavelength with me.

"You want to go find him?"

Nope.I don't want Liam to move a muscle, but we both stop at the bathroom where I explain while washing.

"He's all on his own."

"And you know how that feels, right?"

"What?"

Liam watches me in a shared bathroom mirror, no avoiding the flash of steel as our eyes meet. I want to look away, which is stupid when he only repeats what I've already told him. "You didn't fit in at your school, did you? You didn't ever belong there. No wonder you wanted out. Pretty cruel ever making you stay there."

"My stepdad?—"

"Had to work. I get it. Plenty of forces families use boarding schools for the same reason. Can't have been easy after your mum…"

"No, but he?—"

"Didn't notice how shit it was for you?" His jaw tics, and he grabs a towel, only he doesn't dry himself. He drapes it across my shoulders as if I need warming, and here's why. "You get goose bumps, Row. Every single time it comes up. You know exactly how that kid feels. He's all on his own, you softhearted muppet." The mirror reflects someone equally softhearted, who maybe growls to counteract that. "Get dressed. Go do your Pied Piper act with your magic whistle. Lead him straight to the hot dogs, while I?—"

He stops then, and it's my turn to drape a towel and do some straight talking. "While you eat with us? Luke said everyone was welcome. The whole team will be there."

I leave that open-ended.

It's Liam's choice if he wants to join them, and it seems he does. All too soon, we're outside the stables, clean and almost presentable.

Here's another growl that doesn't scare me, not when he straightens my shirt first followed by my collar, but I'm focussed on another sound—drumming that doesn't convey anger. Not tonight. If anything, Teo's playing stops and starts and falters.

"He is lonely."

That's what we both see and hear at the practice room doorway a few minutes later. At least, I can see it after sharing this space so often with a musician who could pass for an adult but who can have fun like a kid when he lets his guard down. Teo isn't having much fun right now. His guard also shoots back up as soon as he sees us in the doorway.

No.

His expression only hardens when he sees I'm not alone, and I guess why as soon as I look over my shoulder.

Liam's wince is visible. It won't be in reaction to Teo's playing, but that's who clutches his sticks and gets defensive. "No one's forcing you to listen."

"Wish I had an option to switch it off." Liam taps his ear. "Tinnitus, I mean. Not to stop listening to your playing. You're good. I'm the one who's messed up."

That's what they discuss on the way to the playground where the padre mans a grill and the scent of grilled meat greets us along with the other students. They try to lure Teo away, which is good to see, but not before he wrenches off his other prized possession.

He shoves his headphones at Liam. "Try the noise cancelling settings on these."

Liam holds his hands out but not to take them. "No point," he says bluntly. "Already tried headphones. Have to wear defenders plenty when I'm working. Thanks, but all they do is lock me into my own personal washing machine revving up for a spin cycle. Don't mind the sound of it filling so much. That swooshing isn't awful." We join the line for hot dogs while they talk. "It's why I work best on my own." He says that as if men from Dom's team haven't waved hello, or as if he hasn't waved back while we wait for our food. "Too much of a risk that I'll miss something important. Makes me a liability."

That's what he's called me a few times while joking. Aimed at himself, it comes out flatly, like he believes it, and I can see how that might have been the case in his old life-or-death occupation.

With a renovation crew, though?

I don't ask him, not while he and Teo are mid-discussion in a conversation that Liam doesn't have any trouble keeping up with.

He doesn't with me either, not when we face each other.

"Tinnitus doesn't reduce hearing, not according to the medics. Just interferes with it," Liam tells him. "I hear extra sounds along with everything else, and it's…"

Teo's got him matched for gruffness. "A lot?"

"Yeah." That comes out tiredly, like he's resigned to what I might have struggled to see as a negative before I knew him. When it comes to sound, more has always been better. But I get to choose my music, don't I? Liam doesn't.

Over on the school field, several of the younger students play five-a-side. Their referee blows shrill blasts from a whistle, and Liam tenses. I see it right away, and also get to see it ease the moment I tell him, "That was real. Look?"

He does, gaze following the football, while I can't drag my eyes from his clenched jaw in profile, from a return of that bathroom tic, or from him telling Teo what he's mentioned to me already. "It's the unpredictability of tinnitus that's the real—" He doesn't need to say fucker for me to hear it, and Teo nods like he gets it. "That's why I park my van by the sea whenever I can. And why I surf each morning and evening. If I'm going to hear roaring nonstop, it might as well be the real deal, right?"

Teo nods again. He also frowns, but that's his thinking face, not anger. I've seen both, especially when he's messed up a loop for an audition file he still isn't pleased with. He's lashed out on the drums, but he's also thought of ways around his lack of skill and this school's lack of technical resources. He's thinking hard again as Liam keeps talking.

"Plus there's something about constant sounds like waves that are easier to live with. So much better than not knowing if it'll stop or start with no warning. Got my hopes up for a while about a white noise machine having the same effect. Thought it might help me sleep through all the other fu—" He stops himself again. "Nonsense. That's what I live with." He shrugs. "There are worse things."

"Did it work?"

"The white noise? Nope."

The line for hot dogs shuffles forward as they keep talking, and I hear familiar phrases like blast damage, pitch,and frequency while we get closer to our supper, but I'm also aware that I'm under scrutiny. Or rather, all three of us are.

My new headmaster stands with Dom. Luke meets my gaze before it flicks slightly sideways to Teo. Then he meets my eyes again, and it's a good thing I've learned to read small smiles—Luke's more pleased than he's showing, maybe not wanting to draw attention to someone who's joining in for once instead of avoiding contact.

And Teo really is. There's nothing grudging about his responses to Liam's questions. "Why am I interested? Need to be if I'm gonna be a producer or a sound engineer one day, innit."

As for Maisie's daddy? He watches Liam, who chooses that moment to capitulate, holding out both hands to take Teo up on his offer. He puts on the headphones, only to shake his head before Teo pulls out his phone, which must be Bluetooth connected.

And Liam?

He goes still.

"That's…" His expression does something complex before he pulls off the headphones. "What was it?"

"A mix of brown noise and sound cancelling. Not full-on sound cancelling." Teo takes his headphones back and cradles them. "Transparency mode, see? You should still be able to hear what's going on around you." He looks up from them, nothing defensive in this eye contact. If anything, he's hopeful. "Could you hear, or were you locked in?"

"No, I could hear." Liam's so, so gritty. "Why brown noise?"

"It's a different frequency than white. Lower, I think. I dunno." Teo shows him his phone. "Look? This playlist says it's softer. You got GarageBand on your phone? That's what I mix the levels with. Not as good as a pro console."

I can picture the studio monitors he means, the ones I had access to at a school with so many more resources that Glynn Harber. Now Teo sounds almost wary, and I should know. It's like looking in that bathroom mirror when Liam told me I had goose bumps. "It really sounded better?"

Liam takes the headphones once more. "The tinnitus is still there. Probably always will be, but yeah, it…" Liam's still gritty, and maybe when we first met, I would have thought him unaffected. Or about as soft as granite. Now I see he's doing his best to blink away sudden brightness, struggling to hold on to his composure like I once struggled to hold a lamb without him.

Liam lowered a rope for me that time. Tonight, I get to save him.

"Hey, Teo?" I think fast. "How's your friend getting on in France?"

Teo launches into a description of a trip that I only half-listen to. It's hard to focus when Liam's white-knuckled hold on the headphones loosens. One of his hands brushes against mine, my little finger hooked by his. This squeeze spells a quick thank you, and his next question is less gravelly. It's also brutally honest. "This can't fix me, but show me what you did on that app, will you?"

Teo does just that while we're surrounded by the kind of school-based social I used to slam a practice-room door closed on. Now I kick a stray football back onto the school field, and older students call out, "Thanks, Mr. Byrn," while younger ones show off their hot dogs to me as the sun dips lower and I tell my goose bumps to fuck off.

It's a nice evening.

Golden.

So is Charles. The last of the sunlight catches his hair as he waves from a picnic table, a toddler just as fair as him on his lap, and I…

I fit here.

Maybe that's down to the padre serving me three hot dogs and murmuring a quiet, "Bless you for not giving up on him," as if I've done something special by bringing Teo along with us. Or maybe he means Liam when the only effort I've made with him this evening has been horizontal. And amazing. I'm still tingling with what we did, but I also get a blast of warmth from Charles calling me over.

He pats the bench, eyeing my tray. "Someone's hungry. Been busy building an appetite, have we?"

He's joking. I can see it even as the evening sun leaves him and his little boy haloed. He isn't wrong though. I'm starving even as I tell him, "They're not all for me." I turn to wave the others over, only Teo's busy adjusting the headphones Liam has put back on, taking the same kind of care with their fit as Liam did with my hard hat. I don't want to interrupt that, so I set down the tray and then take a huge first bite while still standing. The sound of appreciation I let out is a reminder of other notes I hit back in the stables.

Charles laughs. "There really is nothing like a juicy after-school sausage, is there? Speaking of"—he points his hot dog in Liam's direction—"is your boyfriend joining us?"

Boyfriend can't be the right word for someone who'll leave soon.

Can it?

Charles also tickles his toddler's tummy, who laughs like a drain. Those gurgles are infectious, and I can't keep in my own laugh. Of course it comes out as wildly as usual lately, surprising a table full of students on one side of us and workmen on the other, but Liam?

He swings around, searching like he could pick me out with zero trouble, even while wearing headphones.

He doesn't smile when he spots me. He doesn't need to. I can read him just fine regardless. I sit down in a hurry then, immediately regretting dropping so hard onto the bench after what we just did together, hoping Charles didn't notice.

Liam still looks my way. Still doesn't quite smile. Still watches as if I'm the one who's haloed. He shifts, responding to something Teo asks, but just as quickly shifts back, and the sun finds him. He's outlined with gold, shimmering with every soft shade in our classroom chalk box, nothing hard or sharp about him, and I can't swallow my mouthful.

I have no idea if Liam heard that boyfriend description. Not from this distance. Something crosses his face that feels a whole lot like an answer.

"Ah," Charles says softly. He rephrases. "Is your boyfriend staying?" He could be asking if Liam will stick around for long enough to share this food with us. He might be wondering if he's staying for even longer after his demolition is done.

I don't know. I don't even know if I'll be here.

Maybe that's why I let myself into our classroom later, once the car park is empty and Liam isn't with me. I shouldn't be rummaging through a supply cupboard at close to midnight, but here I am, digging through stationery instead of hunting down percussion instruments.

The scroll of paper I take back to the stables isn't yellowed like the ones in that time capsule. It's bigger, longer—a roll of the wallpaper that Charles uses for art projects. Now it unfurls across the living room floor where I kneel and try much harder to do what a Polish student did here in the last century.

The clock ticks on the wall behind me, and I pick up a marker pen to get started. Orange to start, detailing happy days filled with music and with magic. I use a blue pen to draw a stave and dot notes along a line that travels from festival to festival, from school to school alongside a steady pink thread, a constant representing Mum that I hate having to cut off halfway along my roll of paper.

I draw wedding rings there, a drum kit, a spotlight, and can't continue—can't complete what I have to if I want to be here the next time Liam's work brings him back to Cornwall.

Be someone he can circle back to when his world is noisy?

Be a constant in his life path from this point onward?

I want that so much.

The clock on the wall chimes twelve times as I clutch a final pen while staring at a gap, a crater, a fog bank, at exactly the same point I gave up trying last time.

I set my pen to paper, but all it leaves is a smudge of stormy purple.

I need to fill this gap.

I have to.

So why the fuck can't I do it?