A million questions exploded in my brain, but Mia breezed into the kitchen before I could speak, and instinct warned me to keep quiet as she kissed her brother’s cheek and smirked at me over his shoulder, as though she remembered how hot I’d always been for her with long, wet hair.
“Sorry about that, frère. I didn’t think you were home.”
Gus scowled. “Liar.”
“Am not.”
He snorted and I took my cue to leave, shooting Mia a glance to let her know I was far from done with her before heading for the door.
I was halfway there when Gus called me back.
“Wait,” he said. “I need to talk to you about something else before you go.”
“Something else?” Mia said. “What else have you two been gossiping about?”
Gus ignored her and shifted uncomfortably. “It’s kinda personal, actually, and I wasn’t going to bring it up, but someone mentioned it in the pub last night, so I want you to hear it from me.”
I frowned. “Hear what?”
“Um...maybe you should sit down.”
“Gus.” My voice lowered an octave. “Don’t fuck me about.”
Mia seemed mystified. She shot her brother a searching gaze and took a seat at the table.
I didn’t follow her. I couldn’t imagine what Gus had to tell me that warranted his clear discomfort, but I was willing to bet it was something fucking awful. It had to be, because my life was just like that these days.
“It’s about Billy,” Gus said. “I—um—had kind of a thing with him a few years ago...before both of you came back.”
“A thing? What, like a fight?” Like I would get up in his face about that. Billy had fought pretty much every dude in Rushmere at some point. I’d grown out of defending him long before I’d joined the Navy.
“Not a fight. The opposite.”
I glanced at Mia for clarification, but she was suddenly fascinated by her nails. “The opposite. You mean—” The penny dropped. I stared at Gus, my head shaking slightly of its own accord. “I don’t understand. He’s not gay.”
Gus shrugged. “He doesn’t have to be. Bisexuals exist, remember? And everything in between. He doesn’t have to be anything at all. But that’s beside the point. I’m only telling you because I’m not the only bloke he’s ever been with, so someone else might tell you before he does.”
“Someone else?”
“Yeah.” Gus ran both hands through his hair, clearly exasperated by my apparent inability to grasp what he was saying. “Look, it’s not a big deal, okay? It was years ago, so don’t get into a Daley existential crisis about it. I just wanted you to hear it from me before some clown down the boozer told you.”
“How does anyone in the boozer know you hooked up with my brother?”
“I didn’t hook up with him. It was a drunken snog in an alleyway that half the world probably saw. I half wondered if you already knew. If he’d told you himself.”
Of course he hadn’t. And why the fuck would he? I’d given up my right to know what went down in Billy’s life when I’d walked out of it ten years ago.
“Luke?”
I focussed. Gus and Mia were both staring at me, though I couldn’t work out who’d said my name. “What?”
Gus frowned. “Are you okay?”
“He’s fine,” Mia said before I could speak. “You just blindsided him. Let him go.”
I shot her a grateful half-smile and backed my way to the door. I wanted to tell her—tell them both—that I loved them.
But I didn’t. I spun on my heel and left.
Chapter Twenty
Mia
Walking home through Sandgrove Park, with the evening sun dappling the ground through the trees, was about as nostalgic as we could get without putting our school uniforms on and stealing my mother’s cigarettes.
Gus slow-rode his mountain bike beside me, face pensive as he considered my inevitable questions about him and Billy.
“It was a few years ago,” he said. “And trust me, it wasn’t romantic, but I didn’t get any sense he was particularly worried about anyone finding out.”
I kicked a pinecone along the dirt track we were following through the heathland. “Perhaps he wasn’t. Luke was gone, and I can’t imagine Fran giving him any trouble over something like that.”
Gus shot me a sideways look. “You’ve never liked her.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but what was the point? Gus knew how I felt about most things, even if I didn’t tell him. “It’s not that I never liked her. I just didn’t think she was there for Luke and Billy enough.”
“Her husband was dying.”
“I know. I’m not saying I’m right, but I think about our mum, and how she worked herself into an early grave so we could have choices. Why didn’t Fran do that? There was nothing to stop her, I don’t know, getting a job after Stan died, but she didn’t, and Luke left, which meant those boys didn’t even have each other.”
My rant had started softly but had risen in pitch by the time I was finished, and my hands were gesticulating wildly enough to amuse Gus, despite the solemnity in his dark gaze.
“Are you done?” he said.
“Piss off.”
He chuckled but sobered quickly. “It’s okay to still be angry at him for leaving. To not care about the rest of it. He knows he hurt you.”
“Are you still angry with me?”
“For what? For leaving? For doing exactly the same to me as Luke did to Billy, except without the nobility of financial provision?”
“Yes. All of that. Don’t ever think I don’t know how selfish I was back then.”
Gus gifted me another soft smile. The kind that made it impossible to tell how he truly felt. “I was never angry with you. Confused, maybe. But I was young and dumb too. It makes sense to me now. You couldn’t stay here without the two people you loved most. I get it.”
“You don’t. I love you just as much as I ever did Mum and Luke.”
“Yeah, but you knew I’d be okay.”
“I didn’t. I made myself not consider that you might not be and left anyway, just like Luke.”
“Luke considers everyone. That’s always been his problem. And like I said, he knows he hurt you.”