Whisper (Skins Book 2)

by Garrett Leigh

  Joe touched my shoulder. I brushed him off and walked away from him, ignoring him when he called my name. If my car keys had been in my pocket, I’d have made my escape that way, but they were upstairs in my room, and before I knew it, so was I.

  I shut my bedroom door and leaned against it, my heart thumping in my chest. Fighting wasn’t my bag, but I was good at it—I’d had to be—and a sick part of me got off on it when I didn’t keep myself in check. When I let myself be like him.

  ’Cause let’s face it . . . it was in me, whether I liked it or not.

  I closed my eyes, parroting the bullshit I’d fed Emma to get her out of the house. “The only constant in life is change. And I’m ready for it.”

  But was I? Until now, the farm had seemed a sanctuary from the real world—the last place I’d pictured myself squaring up to someone—but it was clear now that I’d been naive. Joe’s family had drama just like everyone else. More than everyone else, if the scene in the yard was anything to go by.

  A shudder passed through me. Those men had stood no chance of getting anywhere near Sal, even before Joe had appeared, but they’d meant business when they’d first arrived. If I hadn’t been there, how far would they have gone? Would they still go? They’d threatened to burn the farm down if Joe didn’t get to them first. Did they mean it?

  Pondering that question reignited the anxiety dancing in my chest. I exhaled long and slow, trying not to fight the inevitable. A full-on meltdown was probably avoidable if I could get out for a run, but that would mean facing Joe and Sal, and I wasn’t ready for that.

  Not yet.

  I went to my desk and forced myself to work. The words didn’t flow, but I hammered them out anyway, until my cracked muse gave up on me. I was staring moodily at the nonsense I’d typed when a knock at the door made me jump. “Come in,” I called, expecting Sal.

  Joe slipped through the door and shut it behind him. He leaned on it in much the same way I had, but didn’t close his eyes. Instead, he stared at me, curious—expectant, even—like he was the one waiting for an explanation.

  “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?” he asked quietly.

  I turned back to my laptop. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  “Not if you were paying attention. Pretty sure Dicky McGee told you all you need to know about my family drama.”

  “So, what else is there to say?”

  Joe pushed off the door and came close enough that I could smell clean sweat and hay. “Whatever you want to tell me? I mean, I’m grateful that you twatted them, but I’m curious about the death moves. You wanted to kill him. Why?”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was disturbed that Joe had read me so easily, but I stood by my actions, however he’d interpreted them. I forced myself to look at him. “You wouldn’t kill someone who put their hands on your mum?”

  Joe’s eyes darkened. “She didn’t tell me that.”

  “Yeah, well. You know how it went down. He wanted money, she wouldn’t give him any, so he got tricky with her. I moved him on . . . that’s all. Guess he’s lucky it was me, not you, eh?”

  “Not necessarily. I had a row with him a few weeks ago. Got nicked for it. But he still came here and got in my ma’s face, so I can’t be that intimidating.”

  I begged to differ. The fact that a man as big as Dicky McGee had felt the need to come back with two equally large men said a lot, even if they had taken the pathetic route of harassing Sal. “Do you think they’ll come back?”

  Joe came closer still. He crouched beside me, his elbows on my desk, his forearms tanned and strong. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “I’m always worried, but having an idiot drunk for a father will do that.”

  “Is he violent?”

  “Christ, no. I wish he was. Perhaps I’d understand him better.”

  I laughed. Couldn’t help it. “You’d understand your father better if he hit you?”

  “You said violent. You didn’t specify that it had to be towards me. Am I missing something here?”

  He was missing the world—my world—but why would he want to share it with me? Why would anyone? I tapped a key on my laptop to bring it back to life. “Trust me, you’re not missing anything. Is Sal okay?”

  For a protracted moment, Joe stared at me, his eyes deep pools of something I couldn’t escape. Didn’t want to escape. But he sighed before I caught up with him, and the moment passed. “Ma’s fine. She’s used to dealing with my dad’s mess. If you’re okay too, I’m going to head out and try to get to the bottom of this bullshit.”

  “You’re going after those blokes?” Tension rippled through me. The urge to kill had simmered down while I’d sat and brooded on where it had come from, but the thought of Joe fighting alone reignited the worst kind of fire.

  He touched my arm, lightly at first, but then his fingers closed around my wrist, his thumb pressing against my pulse point. Sometimes I wondered if people could hear my thundering heart, but I didn’t care if Joe heard it, if it outpaced his by a mile. How could I care about anything when the heat of his touch reached every part of me?

  “I’m not going after Dicky,” he said. “I want to, but I’ve fucked up too many times to believe it will change anything. Besides, I can’t get nicked again for at least a year.”

  “Got a record?”

  “Little bit.”

  “But Dicky McGee’s the one harassing you.”

  “Don’t mean nothing in this town. We’ve got too much gypsy blood in us for the police to ever take our side.”

  Gypsy blood explained Joe’s wild eyes and dark complexion, and as I glanced around my borrowed room, little clues that I’d missed made sudden sense. There was even a Romani trailer abandoned in one of the fields outside. How had I not made the connection before? “Your grandpa was a gypsy.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Joe nodded anyway. “Roma. Came over from Bulgaria in the thirties. He was travelling with a circus, but when it all kicked off in Europe again, they couldn’t go back. He trained horses in Norfolk for a while, then came here to work as a farrier.”

  “How did he end up with this place?”

  “He won it in a card game. We’ve bought more land legitimately over the years, but this house is someone else’s history.”

  “Sounds like you have plenty of history here.”

  Joe’s eyes darkened again. “Too much. Listen, Sal’s going to be downstairs for the rest of the day. Would you mind keeping an ear out while I go deal with my old man? I know it ain’t your problem, but—”

  “It’s fine.” Everything was fine while Joe’s hand was still millimetres away from holding mine. “Your mum is safe with me.”

  “I know.” And then he was gone, away and to the door before he looked back. “Hey, Harry?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come have a beer with me later, if you’re not too busy. Maybe we could both use the company.”

  I took my role watching over Sal and the farm seriously. It was the perfect excuse to abandon my work and sit by the window. I watched George arrive on his rickety old bike, bring the oldest mares in for an ear inspection, and then push chaff through a machine that was older than he was. Some days I helped him bundle the chaff into bags, but I wasn’t in the mood for even his quiet company today.

  A little while later, Emma appeared in the lane from the bungalow. I tracked her as she came to the yard, comparing her slender frame and pale complexion to Joe’s. They moved with the same grace; I couldn’t imagine Joe creeping across the yard with the trepidation I saw in Emma now.

  The decent fella in me thought about going downstairs to greet her. To smile at her and push a cup of tea into her hands like everything was okay. To help her forget the inexplicable terror that so often paralysed her. But I stayed upstairs and left her to Sal. Helping Emma with her anxiety was important enough to keep me up at night, but my brain was fixated on myself right now, and she deserved bette
r.

  In an effort to distract myself, I let my mind drift back to Joe, then immediately wished I hadn’t because that was a vortex I could drown in all day long. I pictured him as I’d found him that morning, asleep on the couch, his face boyish and smooth—innocent, almost—then compared it to the Joe who’d hurled Dicky’s accomplices to the ground, and then the Joe who sat up all night nursing a poorly donkey. It was hard to believe they were the same man.

  At least it would've been if I’d been a different man myself.

  Early evening, Sal knocked on my door and told me it was dinner time, but I didn’t go down. I returned to my laptop and opened a blank document. I thought of Emma, and Joe, and everything they’d been through to make them such different people. After all, Joe’s father was Emma’s too, but the anger, the resentment, the raw pain was absent from her eyes when she spoke of him.

  Why?

  Four-thousand words later, I still had no idea, but an essay on the effect of personal relationships on the spirit was halfway done. I shut my laptop. I’d veered way off course, but the words I’d vomited out had legs. They had to, or I was wasting my time.

  Something drew me back to the window. The gang had left after dinner, and the house and yard were quiet, but there was an energy in the air I couldn’t decipher until I spotted movement in the top field. The sun was setting, casting a rosy glow across the horizon as Shadow cantered the perimeter of the field, his powerful legs and shoulders moving like liquid poetry. Joe was on his back, no saddle or helmet, his torso bare to the evening air. Even from this distance, I saw his strong shoulders and leanly muscled chest. He was glorious.

  I watched him for a long time, enchanted. At one point, he seemed to return my stare, his flinty gaze and steely set jaw turning my insides to mush, but then Shadow whirled around again, and the moment passed, though the tremor in my heart remained.

  Work drew me back to my desk eventually. Joe had been riding for hours and didn't look like he was going to stop anytime soon. I edited a few chapters from the book until I was sick of my own words, and then ventured downstairs. The kitchen was deserted, like it often was when the offer of free food was done for the day. The yard was quiet too, the horses in for the night, fed and watered. Only a goat that had randomly appeared a few days ago seemed to be awake, and it paid me no heed at all when I poked my head out of the front door.

  Hunger brought me to the fridge. I opened it and surveyed the shelf that was apparently mine. Sal had left a covered plate that I considered removing and scraping into the bin, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Perhaps I’d eat it later.

  Right.

  Another plate caught my eye. It had a Post-it stuck to the foil. Joe. I’d forgotten that he’d missed dinner too and, somehow, the reason why.

  I grabbed both plates and stuck them in the warming oven—the farm didn’t own a microwave—and then drifted back to the front door, scanning the fields for any sign of Joe.

  There was none, and darkness had begun to fall while I’d dithered at the fridge. Has he come in already? I hadn’t heard him, but I didn’t always. Joe had a way of slipping undetected into his living room lair, and I’d noticed that people rarely disturbed him in there, and even then, it was only Sal and Emma.

  Fuck it. I followed one of the cats into the hallway and took the open living room door as permission to peer inside.

  Joe was sitting on the couch, an open bottle of whisky on the table, his T-shirt still missing-in-action. Sweat glistened on his beautiful chest, and his eyes gleamed like a wolf in the murky light of dusk.

  He held up an empty glass and nodded to the space beside him. I hesitated for the briefest moment before I took the glass and sat down.

  Chapter Seven

  Joe

  Harry drank whisky like he did everything else—artfully . . . thoughtfully, swirling it around in his glass before he tipped it down his elegant throat. Not that I was watching or anything.

  “So,” he said when we were three shots deep. “Did you find your dad?”

  “Aye.”

  “And?”

  “He’s a bigger idiot than he was the last time I saw him.”

  “That’s all you’re going to give me?” Harry reached for the bottle. “I’ve been trying to figure out what he’s done to owe that bloke money, but I can’t think of anything sensible.”

  “There isn’t anything sensible about Jonah, trust me.” I scooped up my refilled glass, ignoring the devil on my shoulder who told me I’d probably had enough. “And the truth isn’t particularly exciting. He bought a caravan on tick and then crashed it—and one of Dicky’s dodgy cars—into the central reservation on the A30.”

  “Wow. What happened? Was he drunk?”

  “’Course he was. My pa ain’t often sober. He left everything there and walked home, so Dicky’s boy got nicked for it too ’cause the car was in his name.”

  “He couldn’t just say it was your dad driving?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not how it works around here. It’s one thing to let me get done when the coppers turn up anyway, but we don’t grass in our world.”

  “The gypsy world?”

  “We aren’t real gypsies anymore—and my ma is Welsh—but it’s more than that. It’s a local thing. We don’t rat. We sort things out ourselves.”

  “Right.” Harry necked his whisky. “By threatening your mothers and burning things down?”

  “Something like that.”

  Harry scowled, but I kind of liked the sneer on him. After weeks of shy smiles and friendly grins, it was refreshing to know he wasn’t perfect, even if his derision was probably justified.

  I drank my whisky and eyed the bottle, contemplating a refill. My father’s demons were never far from my mind when I got drunk, but some days I was able to push it aside, kick back, and forget that the end of the world was in my blood.

  Today turned out to be one of those days.

  I topped up my glass, Harry’s too, reaching across him, my shoulder bumping his chest. His soft intake of breath made me shiver. I wanted to kiss him.

  Whoa.

  Where had that come from?

  Fucking whisky. Even when it didn’t push me into a fog of despair, it still sent me round the bend.

  I sat back in my seat, my head spinning, and not from the booze. I stretched my legs out in front of me, massaging my thighs. My shoulders ached too, stiff from a three-hour ordeal with Shadow, and I knew my body was going to give me hell tomorrow. Still, that was what you got for leaving a horse like Shadow unworked for so long. It was going to take months to get him back on track.

  Harry nudged me, his elbow driving gently into my side with just enough force to rouse me out of my haze.

  “Huh?” I blinked at him. “What?”

  “I said, you look uncomfortable. Have you hurt yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Sure about that? Because I can see the tension in your neck from here.”

  I scowled. Couldn’t help it. “Got X-ray eyes, have you?”

  “I’m a physiotherapist, mate, not a freak of nature.”

  He gestured for me to move closer and spin around. Against my better judgement, I obeyed. I braced myself for his touch but was sorely unprepared for the sensation of his hand sliding down my neck. He was tactile with Emma, with my mum . . . even George, but I didn’t touch people carelessly, and so the dizzying relief that came with our contact now—the energy—left me breathless.

  A strangled noise escaped me. Harry chuckled. “Better?”

  Better than what? Whatever he was doing was magic—spreading down my spine and across my back, easing the burning tension in my shoulders—but what replaced it was insane. My chest tightened and my skin tingled. My vision blurred.

  I closed my eyes and dropped my head. Harry upped the ante and pressed his thumbs hard into the pressure points in my neck. It hurt, but somehow my body knew the pain was productive, and I didn’t flinch.

  Another groan escaped
me.

  “Sorry.” Though Harry didn’t sound contrite enough to mean it. “Sleeping on this couch is probably messing with your entire body. Do you get a lot of neck pain?”

  “Some. It’s not usually like this, though. Riding Shadow always fucks me up, especially when I haven’t done it in a while.”

  “Would it be better with a saddle?”

  He was watching me. I felt suddenly naked. I darted a gaze to my abandoned T-shirt, draped over an ironing board that no one ever used. To reach it, I’d have to stand up—to break the spell Harry had cast over my sore muscles.

  I couldn’t do it. “Even if Shadow would let me, I don’t ride so well with all the gear. It doesn’t feel right—too detached, you know?”

  “I don’t know anything about riding.”

  “What do you know about?”

  Harry snorted. “Not much.”

  I didn’t believe that, but I considered the things I’d seen Harry do and tried to compare them to riding a horse. “Would you rather run through the fields or on a treadmill in the gym?”

  “The fields.” Harry didn’t hesitate. “I’d never run outside much until I came here. It’s changed my life, I swear.”

  “Why—fuck, that feels good—I mean, how has it changed your life?”

  Harry said nothing for a long moment, his thumbs still creating alchemy in my neck, then he exhaled a soft puff of air against my skin. “I guess it feels more natural to run outside, to feel the wind in my face, the sun, the rain. It’s freeing.”

  “Uh-huh.” I waited for the penny to drop, but Harry was silent again. He swapped his thumbs for the heel of his hand, and then I lost the ability to speak coherently anyway. I couldn’t say how much time had passed when I finally got it back, but I did know that it was a split second after Harry removed his hands from my bare skin.

  He leaned back on the couch. I did the same, angling myself to look at him, although I kind of wanted to scramble for my T-shirt. “So . . .”

  “So?” Harry arched an eyebrow in a way I couldn’t imagine him doing if we were sober. “What are you staring at me like that for? Have you got some big burning question you want to ask me?”