Epilogue

Bridge Crossing Day

Late August in Cornwall

LIAM

I thought I was a restless sleeper, with tinnitus as my usual reason. For the past week, Rowan's been more restless than me and is the reason I wake early on the day the bridge officially opens.

He doesn't wake me because he's noisy—if I can deal with nonstop fucking whistles daily, I can easily cope with sharing the bed in the back of my van with a musician. Rowan's only restless right now because he's itching to get up and at 'em. Apparently, that means I need to be kissed into consciousness to join him, and that's no hardship. Not when the rest of the day will be busy.

For now, here where I'm not sure if a background roar comes from the ocean or from blast-damaged aural wiring, his mouth skimming my shoulders is a welcome distraction. He can do this any time, and I won't stop him, but I guess he's right in making the most of this early morning given today's crammed agenda.

I blink my eyes open to a glimpse of pink- and gold-streaked dawn sky and to my watch telling me that we haven't got long before this busy day needs to get started. I'm not complaining if he wants to get off and get gone in a hurry. "You aiming to set another speed record, Row?" This grumbling rasp is normal for me, but so is me getting to tease him every morning these days, instead of waking up alone and lonely.

"Hmm?" His lips brush lower, his voice equally rough as he kisses his way southward to land a kiss where a phoenix would rise if I had a tattoo to match his. His stubble is nothing compared to mine. It still tickles as he asks, "What did you say?"

"I said?—"

Fuck it. It doesn't matter.

This action replay ending with his mouth against my shoulder again does. Each kiss north sums up a physical connection that's only strengthened since the school year ended and he practically moved in with me.

Maybe today is the day we take this role reversal even further, a switch I'm on board with as long as he is. Not by moving the last of his stuff into my van—there isn't room.

Even now, his guitar takes up space I need for my sledgehammers. There definitely isn't room for even a single one of the drums his dad had shipped to Glynn Harber along with his collection of keyboards and fiddles. I barely have room for his flute and that old whistle, let alone the Pringles tubes he's saving to make shakers for next year's students.

For next year's students? School starts again in a week, after the fastest summer ever, which is the real reason for this early wake-up. I reach back and confirm that us switching it up in bed isn't likely this morning, and this rasp comes out even lower. "You're already dressed. Charles is waiting for you?"

"Yes. Do you think I'm doing the right thing?"

I roll over to see that pink and gold light streaking him, and fuck me, he's so pretty. He's also worried.

No shit, Sherlock. Today's the day he'll give an interview that will blow the lid off everything that happened.

Brave fucker.

Before I can reply, he answers his own question, and here's a moment I should photograph, only not in secret to cause him pain. Rowan models trusting himself so clearly. "I am doing the right thing."

"Yeah, you are. But you know it doesn't matter what I think, Row." I touch his chest and feel his heart pound. This beat isn't steady, but I know that kind of anticipatory tippy-tapping, don't I? Felt it before so many detonations. It's natural—his body telling him to take cover.

Him breathing through that impulse to run?

It's like watching my own slow healing progress, so it's as natural as breathing for me to ask this. "You feel it's the right thing to do here?" I rub the centre of his chest.

He nods slowly at first, then faster.

I lower my hand to his stomach. "And you feel it here?"

He nods again, and I'm never gonna get over my myopic hero throwing himself into a situation that others might run or hide from. And this is why my circling days are well and truly over.

Not because he needs my protection.

I'm staying put because Rowan also models how to listen to more than self-blame or static. He has done so all summer break with Reece, hurling himself headfirst into counselling sessions. Now he does that listening thing again, only to his gut, to his heart, and to that magical part of him that kids respond to.

"Yes." He nods more firmly. "Yes, I do feel it there." He also dips his head, his kiss a soft brush of lips I'd chase for more if he didn't need something else from me right now.

Clear objectives.

That's what the workbook suggests helps people who've been where Row has.

Straightforward now-and-next expectations.

Those straight lines keep him steady. Like staves, I guess, even if I'm no musician, but who better than a soldier to know that clear direction is what keeps armies advancing, so I go ahead and give him a beat to march to.

"Right now you're going with Charles while I'm on a site visit. You'll both get ready for the opening before the kids get there." He opens his mouth, closing it just as quickly when I say, "Yes. I'll be back in time for the opening ceremony." And man, I've seen some bright explosions, but this?

Rowan's brilliant smile?

Wow.

That's all I've got until I can clear my throat and keep going. "Next, when it's time for the interview, I'll do whatever you need, Row. Stay or go, all you have to do is tell me. And at this evening's fundraising concert? You do whatever feels right to you in here. Sing on your own or play the drums for Ed and Pasha, it doesn't matter." I skim his belly and chest with one finger. If I allow myself any more contact, I'll roll him under me and pull the covers over both of our heads, but he nods again and that urge to shield him settles.

So does something in Row. I see it in honeyed eyes that meet mine, clear and steady. Feel it too in a final kiss and in fingertips I bet he isn't even aware tap out a rhythm on my shoulder as our tongues touch in a quick and slick promise for later when this long day is over.

Those tapping fingertips, though? He can't ever help playing.

But I can't ever help wanting to listen, so I guess we're even.

A lambnearly makes me late for the first part of Rowan's jam-packed agenda. Not because this woolly menace needs saving from another cliffside tumble. She's too busy grazing to repeat that near disaster. I still pause during my site visit to check that she's doing okay. I wouldn't have met Rowan without her, so I take a moment out of this busy morning to shield my eyes against late August sunshine.

"You sure that's the same lamb?" This one is nothing like the scrawny newborn he once clung to. "She's bloody massive."

Her owner leans on the gate next to me. "That's because she's about six months old now. But yeah, that's her."

"How can you tell?"

Noah grins. "Watch." His whistle is a shrill surprise. I cover an ear while a trio of sheepdogs come to sharp attention.

So does Rowan's runaway, not-so-little, bleater.

The farmer I came here to visit laughs. "Cute, right? She spends so much time in the yard with Noah, she thinks she's one of the dogs." He lands a huge hand on Noah's shoulder. "Show Liam what else she can do."

Noah whistles again, and there she goes, shooting off like a fluffy bullet to join the dogs. They circle this herd tightly in a reminder of how I used to circle the West Country. I can laugh too, now that I've stopped the same endless wheeling. "She's smart." She's also nosy, trotting over to the gate, and I go to snap a photo, only my phone screen shows a message.

Matt: Train's running late, Sexy. See you later.

I can live with that. Another message pings in from a second soldier, and my heart stops.

Neck Brace: Row's spinning out.

About today?

He's changed his mind about setting the whole world straight about what happened to him?

I straighten up, ready to get circling like that lamb, because if pulling out is his final decision, I'll defend Rowan's choice or die trying.

Only, he'd been so sure this morning.

Another message kicks my heart back into beating.

Neck Brace: He can't find his whistle.

Now this is something I can help with. "Sorry, Stef. I need to go." I gesture at an almost tumbledown building behind us. "I'll be in touch, but?—"

"You're needed." He backs away. "No worries. Come back anytime if you want to take a longer look at the site. Help yourself if we're not here."

"Thanks, I will." For now, I head back to the van, then to Glynn Harber and a bridge I once thought I'd have to rebuild single-handed. One of the men who helped me with it meets me in the car park.

"You found it?" Neck Brace must have got too close to Charles—he's speckled with glitter. He's also concerned, and I wish I could turn back time six months. I'd show a past version of Rowan how quickly my pack circled him with caring. I guess I could show past-me the same visual. I still don't have words for what staying in Cornwall has rebuilt for me, even if it did take more than one library demolition for me to feel truly forgiven.

Not by Blake for the loss of his brother.

I was the one who needed to forgive myself for Benji. And that's why this bridge took so long to finish. We all spent more time reminiscing than rebuilding.

Today, we're joined by another soldier. Ed's hair is still damp from the morning surf we usually share, but I skipped today to make my site visit. He's been good company in the water between my crew's visits, someone to catch waves with and to sit with in silence while the ocean washed away a few last, clinging, guilty cobwebs. "Crisis averted?"

"I've got it." I waggle the whistle I found under Rowan's pillow.

"Good. But maybe he won't even need it." Ed's eyes twinkle. "Not now that Blake's keeping the kids occupied with stories all about you."

I hurry again then, parting tree boughs to step into a brand-new clearing beside trickling water just as a second-born twin addresses the kids gathered on one side of the bridge. His speech might as well be aimed at my side of the water.

"Today, we're all here to celebrate, aren't we?" The kids cheer, waving homemade shakers. A sunbeam finds Blake and turns his red hair fiery. "I used to feel bad about celebrating because someone I missed a lot couldn't share that feeling with me. But if my brother Benji were here today, do you know what he'd tell me?"

Little Hadi is at the front of the crowd, shaking his head as Blake continues.

"He'd tell me to let myself be happy enough for two people. Or for three or four missing people. For however many people there are who can't be with us today." He steps aside, and there's Rowan, who almost staggers when Blake grips his shoulder and gives it a shake. I've been on the receiving end of plenty of this gentle giant's gestures, so I bet his teeth rattle.

Blake does exactly what his brother was always so good at, making sure no one's left out. "We can still celebrate even without your whistle, can't we?" He focuses again on the crowd of children. "How about we all sing?"

The kids like that idea, some of them waving the same streamers that also hang high up from tree branches. They weren't here at last night's rehearsal. The guy I guess is responsible for filling this space with fluttering colour stands back, watching. I know that outsider feeling, so I lift my chin, and he joins us.

"Did you hang those decorations, Hayden?" He nods, so I murmur. "Surprised Rowan didn't try to break his neck by doing it himself."

"Oh, he tried," Hayden murmurs back, and there's a smile hiding behind that thick beard, one I've glimpsed a few times since he moved into the stables and started taming these wild woodlands, but it's Rowan who recaptures my attention. He crouches next to Hadi, listening.

"You want to sing your song?"

I've met more than my share of brave people. This little boy is up there with some of the bravest. His daddies too, because they could step up to help him, but he wants to do this alone, or that's what I think until Hadi stops singing.

I'd guess this was stage fright, only he looks the opposite of scared while repeating a move I've seen Rowan make so often in his outdoor classroom. He points his shaker the same way Rowan usually points his whistle as if to say, "Your turn."

And Rowan?

He doesn't quite freeze.

He doesn't quite sing either, and he definitely doesn't need me to save him.

I know that. Fuck it, he's saved me right here in this spot. I still can't help stepping forward, and maybe that's because love is a to-and-fro between us, a shoulder offered instead of an order issued. But here's the thing about him—when Rowan commits, he goes all in, and fuck me, he tops my brave list. Has done ever since I saw him from my surfboard. Now he's as committed to finishing a song that sums him up to me. These lyrics that he opens his mouth to croak out in front of an audience for the first time could have been written for him.

Brave?

There's no doubt about that as his voice shakes.

A good friend?

A beam of sunlight spotlights my very best one, Rowan giving it everything he has.

Strong?

Rowan's already proven that to me. Later today, he'll prove it to the rest of the world if he wants to, and I'll be there for him like he's been here for me during this rebuild. He isn't alone, and I think he knows that when we're joined by arrivals delayed by a late train.

Matt comes first, holding aside a tree bough for more children. Little Irish cousins join us, shouting as soon as they see Rowan. His stepdad follows, carrying a jingling box of tricks bearing a familiar phoenix image, and Rowan's voice doesn't shake any longer.

It rises, soaring all the way to heaven.

ROWAN

After the bridge opening is over and we've shared a party lunch together, I show Dad and my cousins around my classrooms before driving them to the beach for the afternoon while I'm busy. When I get back to Glynn Harber, Charles meets me in the car park.

He doesn't make a wind down your window gesture like the first time we met here. Months of working together means he slides into the passenger seat without asking or waiting. He also launches into an eerily familiar pep talk.

"You aren't late. There's no need to hurry or worry."

"I'm not worried."

"Really? Not about the interview?" His brow furrows. "It's okay if you are."

"I know it is. And I know I'm not late." I take my phone from its dashboard holder. "Look." I show him the time. "I'm a whole six minutes early. Let's do this."

"Without Liam?"

"He's with Dad on the beach." There's no chance of any of my little cousins getting into trouble with my soldier watching. Plus, I can face what's coming all by myself now that I've had time to manifest a happy ending for both of us. All I have to do is get through this interview first.

"Wait." Charles covers my seat belt release before I can press the button. "I just want to make sure you know you still have options." He's so sweetly worried. And smudged, although not with chalk dust or sand. Today, tiredness is the cause for the shadows under his concerned eyes, which prompts my own question.

"Are you okay?"

"Me?" He blinks. He also gets brutally honest. "Twin foster babies. What on earth was I thinking? It's chaos. Round the clock double trouble." Like my new bearded housemate at the stables, Charles can't keep a smile hidden. "I absolutely love it." He pulls out his phone. "Look at them with Hugo and little Adam. Or should I say, with big Adam? Doesn't he look like a giant next to them?" He shares image after image of the cause of his tiredness, then follows me once we get out of the car and I set off at a brisk pace. "Can you hang on for a moment?"

I do, even though I'm locked and loaded, primed and ready, never surer that today's mission is worth hurrying towards instead of hiding away from.

Charles asks about a different mission. "Listen, are you absolutely certain you're okay with taking over as Nathan's full-time classroom assistant while I take some leave?" A cloud covers his usual perpetual sunshine. "I don't know how long I'll get to keep my new twin wrigglers." But here's the thing about Glynn Harber—any clouds or rain here only means I have more options.

"Covering for you suits me just fine. I'm not ready to finish my teaching degree." I can say that now and see it as winning, not losing yet another prize. An extra year of play is a gift, the right path forward for me, and the man who joins us helped me come to that decision. "Reece. What are you doing here?"

"Reminding you that you always have options."

Charles crows, "That's what I said." He also shows his family photos to this counsellor who I've walked and talked with all summer long. Now we're only a week away from a new school year that feels like a fresh page in my workbook, one I get to fill instead of other people doing that for me. I'm not saying I'm done with what I used to lock away or hide behind thick fog banks. I'm just saying that I can let myself feel now without becoming voiceless.

We get as far as the school entrance before someone else who helped me with that process joins us.

"Photos of the twins?" Luke takes the phone from Charles to share it with Austin, and there's nothing fierce at all about this bursar's cooing although there is a touch of insistence in his quiet question while we all take the stairs up to the next floor.

"You know we aren't relying on this money, don't you?"

"For today's interview and song? Or from the fundraiser concert later?" I pause outside a study door where students will knock and wait come September. Today I only stop there to make sure this protective squadron all hear me. "Listen, I'd do all of it for free as long as what happened to me is out in the open." Here's an emotion I don't need a deck of cards to name now that I've kicked fear in the nuts. "I'm still angry about what happened. That's why I'm going public."

Reece nods. Letting out this fury is healthy.

I nod back just as firmly. "There's no way they get to reboot that show without the whole world knowing what they made me think for so long. Let them exploit more kids? Make them think they'd been…" There's still one word I can't say, and that's okay too, Reece's next nod tells me. Those dicks don't get to choose the vocabulary that describes me. I'm the only one who gets to do that. For now, I settle for saying, "I can't stay silent."

I do need to add this, making sure to meet one worried gaze in particular. "Your lawyer friend won't let me say anything that could get me into trouble, Charles. We've rehearsed it backwards and forwards." I crane my neck towards the end of the hallway. "He's here?"

Charles slides his phone away. "Yes."

"And Ed and Pasha?"

Charles nods again.

I repeat what I said in the car. "Then let's do this."

And we do as soon as we reach the practice rooms where I first heard Teo play like his life depended on him never stopping.

Today, some other kid's life might depend on me spitting my own bullets, so Pasha waits behind a borrowed mic and Ed tunes a guitar while technicians adjust lighting. The seat behind the drum kit is empty, waiting for me, while Teo holds out a set of drumsticks he's come back a week early to share with me.

I can't take them from him. Not yet.

Not when I hear marching footsteps, and Liam arrives to stand sentry.

"What are you doing here?"

"Matt and the lads are watching your cousins." He steps aside, and there's Dad guarding the other side of the doorway. I thought Liam was the only man I knew who had a ghost smile. Now Dad's flickers, his accent a soft Irish promise. "You don't ever have to face this on your own, Row."

My eyes blur, and Liam takes my glasses, giving the lenses a good hard rub. Our hands brush when he gives them back, his forehead pressing mine for a too-quick second.

"Sing from the heart, Row."

And me?

I close a soundproof door behind me that could feel like a prison door slamming.

Choosing to do it myself feels like freedom.

You knowwhat else feels like freedom later that evening?

Performing live in a sculpture garden as the sun lowers to kiss the ocean, and you better believe that now I've found my voice, I use it. That terraced space acts like an amphitheatre. All three of our voices—Ed's, Pasha's, and mine—fill it to raise even more cash for the school, applause still echoing long after we're finished, and everyone leaves for home or hotels.

Liam drives me back along the coast road. Each twist comes with stunning views that are wasted when I can't stop looking at the man who clapped the loudest for me. Liam looks my way too. Only for a split second while driving, but that's long enough to see something other than a ghost smile flicker. He doesn't keep me hanging. "Feel like getting into danger?"

"On a cliff?"

Right now? I could jump off the highest one Cornwall has to offer and be pretty sure I'd only spiral like gulls do now, caught in thermal currents. I'm just as giddy at Liam saying, "No, with me."

He passes a familiar lay-by, only he doesn't park there or head for the edge where we met what now feels like forever ago. Instead, Liam steers us off the coast road and onto a narrow farm track. Grass grows down its middle and trees tap the roof of the van with twiggy fingers. This long lane is a Glynn Harber reminder, overgrown and isolated. So is the ramshackle farmhouse Liam pulls up in front of. "There's nothing around for miles," he tells me, which is just as well when he gives the front door a hard shove.

"Breaking and entering is your version of getting into danger?" It's dark inside this abandoned building. Cobwebbed and a little scary. Or it would be if anyone else led me into shadows. With Liam? I don't need to be able to see to pick up from where I left off this morning.

Our mouths meet the second the door creaks closed behind us, and who needs light? The electricity we generate each time we kiss could light all of Cornwall—should sizzle, crackling like every nerve between my brain and balls do whenever we connect this way. All I know is something inside me shifts when he hefts me up, or maybe that's the wall he shoves me against shuddering.

I don't care if the whole building falls down around us. I've got his tongue deep in my mouth just the way I like it and a pair of strong arms to shield me, ones I haven't needed today. But here, and in the bedroom he leads me upstairs to show me? I'm the one who does all the holding the moment he turns away to open a window while asking a suddenly gruffer than usual question.

"See those lights in the distance?"

I slide my arms around him from behind and squint through the dusk. "I see them."

"That's where Noah lives. Stef Luxton's family bought this land for extra grazing years ago. Didn't need this farmhouse or have the cash to renovate it. Now look right. See those sheep?"

I do. They dot a field rising all the way to moorland.

"Keep watching." He lets out a sharp whistle that has to do a number on his hearing, but a woolly head shoots up, and he says, "That's your lamb."

"No way."

"Look to the left next."

The sun is close to setting in that direction, the sea glinting. "I can hear the waves." That muted roar is the sound he sleeps best to, so I love it. I love him too when he tenses before asking, "Now see that outbuilding across the yard?"

"Yes."

"Think it would make a good studio or practice room if I took on this long-term project?"

My hold around him tightens. "Who for?"

A drumroll started this morning when I saw him under trees shot through with sunny lightning. It picked up speed in a practice room where I told my truth with him standing guard outside for me. Now that drumroll is almost too loud to hear over because the last time I heard this gruffness, he told me about someone he lost.

Now he mentions who he's hellbent on keeping.

"For you." He looks back over his shoulder. "For us."

And here's proof that I'm a stronger person lately. I can pull him round to face me. Can kiss him and not stop until he opens for me and loses all that tension.

He kisses me back in a building no one has lived in for decades. It's dusty, derelict, completely empty, so there's no one to see me get his clothes unfastened or how he scrambles through a pocket before asking me a hoarse-sounding, "Yeah, Row?"

"Yes."

To everything on offer.

To sharing this rebuild with him.

To living where sheep bleat and the sea can send him to sleep right here in a currently empty room where he slicks a finger before hesitating. "Yes," I tell him again, and something new sings inside me when he turns and reaches back to touch himself instead of me for a first time.

Maybe I should be the one doing this slow and careful opening. My hands shake so much as I unwrap a condom that it's probably best he does it while I kiss him like I did this morning. I press my lips to each fall and rise of his spine, to each scar and freckle, until he's ready for me to try something as new to us both as us building a life here will be.

Long term.

I've already seen how dusty renovations leave him, so I know how he'll look when his hair starts to silver.

And I'm going to be right here to see that.

Those are my new lyrics, ones I repeat over and over while pushing the head of my cock against where he's slippery, and he hisses. Maybe that's down to a sting I remember from our first time, a burn that I hope heats him the same way he always warms me, stoking embers that every phoenix needs to rise from dusty ashes.

He's a lot. Tight and hot. Strong and shaking. The hand he reaches back to my hip shakes too, then grips hard, pulling, telling me to move, and who knew this intense, incredibly tight perfection would feel like improvising—like playing notes with no idea where this song is heading.

I play some right ones, and he groans. Play some wrong ones, and he hisses again, but he's hard when I reach around him, and he shudders, his face against his forearm on a weathered windowsill I hope doesn't give him splinters. And here's more proof that I'm strong enough to take as much care of my soldier as he's done for me from the first day I met him—I pull him back, and up, to kiss while fucking.

Our mouths meet and slip, crash and only hold for seconds, slide like a tide when I shift, and he says, "Yeah. Just like that."

I tinker then like I might on a keyboard or strum on a guitar until a tune is second nature, recreating the deep grind and slow screw that must do it for him. He tells me so.

"That. Don't fucking stop that."

I don't.

His head bows, his back an expanse of gleaming muscle, and I could do this forever right up until I can't.

These next slaps of skin against skin stagger like my breathing. I can only gasp out, "Love you," then almost tip over when he clenches around me.

And if I climax barely a second later?

We're already pretty perfect, but we'll have all the time in the world here to practise.

And me?

I can't wait to get started.

The End.