Page 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

LOVERS, LETTERS, SOUPE à L'OIGNON

T rue to his word, Percy could, and did, also make breakfast. Joe awoke in their four-poster bed to eggs and bacon and tea and toast and Percy. Half-naked Percy, crawling back into the sheets with a kiss, his skin cool from the morning air, flush against Joe’s cozy body. Kisses fresh and beautiful, and the delightful energy of the man, rested and ready for an adventure, and so happy. Joe didn’t think he’d ever seen Percy that happy, despite the screams of the cursed skull that had kept them both awake half the night.

He knew Percy must have, somewhere in the back of his mind, the horror of the day ahead, but he didn’t say a word about it. It was, after all, par for the course. Pleasure where he could take it, appalling hideousness and death, then pleasure again and twice as frenzied. Back and forth, back and forth, like a pendulum.

It was strange for Joe to observe, but it was an honour to be the person—the only person—who got to be there for both extremes. And maybe, it occurred to Joe, maybe that was why Joe was the one. Percy’s one and only true love. He was the one person who could face the darkness, then revel in the light with him.

They ate, they laughed, they talked about anything but the awful day that awaited them, then Percy finally climbed out of bed to address the pile of mail Leo had forwarded from his Paris office, which had sat waiting on a side table for a good twenty-four hours before Percy had bothered to look at it.

With the teacup and saucer balanced gracefully in one hand, Percy began sorting through the tower of letters. He made a quick assessment of business and personal, throwing the former to the side in a messy heap, then, one by one, he commenced scanning hand-written return addresses in the ‘personal’ pile. “From Aubrey,” he began.

Joe smiled. Aubrey was a lovely woman, and one of Percy’s most recent, though closest, friends. A woman firmly attached to, and in a relationship with, Percy’s brother’s god-sister. She didn’t have a crush on Percy at all. Joe liked her a lot.

Percy threw down another letter. “Aubrey again.”

Joe knit his brow slightly.

“Aubrey,” said Percy with the third, adding a smug smirk.

“Is something wrong?” It had only been a month or two since last they’d met. Not long for such an accumulation of correspondence.

“She wants my soup recipe,” Percy drawled. “And I’m not going to give it to her.”

“She’s written you three letters in as many weeks about soup?”

Percy nodded sharply. “She thinks I’m being unreasonable, but she wants to cook soupe à l'oignon in spring.” He scoffed loudly at the thought.

Joe squinted. “And you won’t let her… because?”

With an even harsher squint directed right back at him, “It’s a winter soup. That’s disgusting, Joe.”

“Isn’t it up to her when she eats soup?”

“Aubrey,” Percy narrated as the next letter fell into the pile. “Not if it’s my soup.”

“Just give it to her—” Joe sighed out, only to be cut off by a loud exclamation.

“Aha! Look, one from Evelyn.” Percy ripped open his brother’s letter, an envelope stuffed full of several pages fully covered in elegant handwriting, then, “Oh.”

“Mmm?” Joe raised his handsome eyebrows.

He received lightly pursed lips and a side-eye in response. “It’s mostly for you.”

With a smile spreading across his face that he was hopeless to hide, “Really?”

“Mmm. Really.” There was a slightly joking but slightly miffed grimace as Percy threw the letter down on Joe’s excessively beautiful abdomen, stretched back in the bed with the sheet barely covering him as he was. Percy leaned down and kissed him. He kissed him again. He kissed him once more and went back to his letters.

One last envelope remained, which Percy flipped over to read the return address on. His face fell, and he shoved the letter into his pocket without a word. Catching Joe’s eyes on him, there was an attempt at a smile, quickly shut down by a mixture of whatever was going on in his head and slight embarrassment.

“Who’s that one from?” asked Joe.

“Only…” The slightest pause, as though he considered saying something else. “Only Anna.”

“Ah.”

Percy’s tea was placed down and forgotten. He turned his back on Joe, and he crammed himself secretively into the window seat without another word.

Joe hated the immediate physical reaction he had, but his heart already beat a little harder in his chest, and his stomach felt as though he’d just eaten six bricks for brunch. In his discomfort, he pulled the sheet higher and placed his own tea down, but Percy turned his head to look back within a few seconds.

“Did you want to come?” He waited there, slightly anxious-looking. “To the window seat?”

“No,” Joe lied.

“Mmm.” Percy returned to his letter.

It was none of Joe’s business. None of his business at all. Whatever was between Percy and Anna was between them, and it was complicated. Very complicated. And Percy had a right to his secrets and his old relationships. Even if she was someone he had probably been in love with. Even if he was with Joe now…

What was the protocol for that sort of thing? Joe hadn’t a clue. Was he allowed to ask where the two of them stood with each other? Or was that needy and possessive? But Anna was Joe’s friend too, wasn’t she? Not like she was Percy’s ‘friend’. She hadn’t written Joe a letter. A letter like the one Percy needed to smuggle away to read alone.

Joe lay in bed and stared off into space, thinking the same thoughts over and around until he was stunned out of his reverie by papers falling onto his stomach.

“Read it.” Percy wandered back across the room to take up his teacup. “Something’s wrong.”

Without another word, and with a good deal of surprise, Joe took up the letter from Anna and read. No flirting. No cute private jokes. Not much of anything. A rundown of how things had been, some thoughts on the books she’d been reading, the usual reflections on what someone might be up to on holiday, and some requests for book recommendations from Percy.

Joe was relieved to find it all so impersonal. It could have been addressed to him or to anyone else. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

“It’s not what she says, it’s what she doesn’t say,” Percy responded, tying the knot back up tight in Joe’s stomach.

He threw the letter down on the bed with an irritated half-laugh. “What did you want her to say?”

“I don’t know,” said Percy, pacing. “Something of substance? That’s the kind of letter you write when you’re trying to not say something.”

Well, that was true. No flirting. No cute private jokes. Not what Joe had expected, either. But the last thing he needed was Percy reading between Anna’s lines. “She’s clearly fine.”

“What does Evelyn say?”

“I haven’t read it yet.”

Percy gave a directive nod towards the hefty letter, so Joe sighed and took it up. The letter was long, meandering, written over several days. It was warm and funny and very much like Evelyn. Percy offered an occasional scowl at Joe’s various smiles and laughs and intermittent blushes until he finally set the letter down. “It’s maybe a little guarded, but he seems fine, too.”

“A little guarded.” Percy waved his finger at the letter. “That’s not like Eve.”

“It’s just a letter. He’s got a lot on?—”

“Anna,” Percy interrupted. “What does it say about Anna?”

The colour this time was not a blush, but a flush of anger. “Nothing. Hardly anything.”

“From Eve? There you have it. Something is wrong. We have to go back.” Percy put on his watch, began gathering his mail, making as though he were about to leave for the airport right then and there.

Joe sat up in disbelief. “Over that? Over two letters that say nothing at all?”

“Yes,” Percy said simply.

“Percy…” Joe watched him scan the room for anything that might belong to them, though they’d had no time to unpack much. “Percy, stop.”

Full of distraction, Percy spared him half a glance. “What is it?”

“What do you mean ‘what’? We’re here for a reason. We’ve got dead teenagers to investigate, a ghost trapped in a skull, zombies, Cleo murdering people?—”

He was at the wardrobe, throwing his clothes into a suitcase. “Don’t worry. We’ll take the skull with us. If we go now, we have a few hours before they’ll discover?—”

“Percy!” Joe’s furious tone finally halted Percy’s movements. He looked across, but in a vexed way, like he’d just heard the worrisome whining of a mosquito. “Is this an Anna thing? Because…” Joe hadn’t once wanted to ask it, because he was terrified of the answer he might get, but the question slipped out. “Do you love her?”

Lightning fast, Percy turned away, eyes searching the room again, but this time seeming to see very little of it. “They’re our family. If they need us, they come first.”

“Eve’s your family, not Anna.”

The words flew out of Percy’s mouth, fast and sharp. “Can we not make this about your petty jealousy, just this once? You’re becoming a bore.”

Percy had always had a tongue like a viper, but he didn’t turn it on Joe. Not once. Until then. And Joe crumbled on contact. He fell silent, and the look on his face was worse for Percy than the blow had been for Joe, but Joe couldn’t have known that.

Percy was on the bedside in a heartbeat, even as Joe was trying to extricate himself from the sheets. “Stay. Please.”

Joe, feet on the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to Percy, waited, unsure, the unprecedented nature of the thing sending him into a spin. He felt the weight of Percy as he leaned across, but he refused to look back at the sound of Percy’s carefully gentle voice.

“I’m sorry. I’m very worried about both of them. If they don’t have each other, then they’ll fall apart, and… That’s something I know too well…” On a long exhalation, without reaching for Joe, he finished with, “He cannot cope without her.”

“And I’m sure you wouldn’t mind being there in time to pick up the pieces.” It was a bitter jibe that drew equal vehemence from Percy.

“How can you say that to me?”

“Do you love her?”

The response, this time, was fast and firm. “I love you and only you.”

But in quick succession, “You would say that.”

Percy’s fury was barely repressed as he shot back, “Of course I’d say that, it’s true. I can imagine how this looks to you?—”

“It looks exactly like you want to be the rebound when they break up.”

Finally it boiled over. “What the fuck is that?” Percy snapped. “She’s my friend and I’m worried about her, and that should be okay. I should be able to talk to you about this. But if it’s not Anna, then it’s Cleo, or Giordano, or goddamned Debbie. I’m trying—really, I am—but sometimes it feels like no matter what I do, I’m never going to be good enough for you.”

Joe turned back, his eyes flaring in anger equal to Percy’s, but with a jab of guilt in his gut. “That’s not true.”

Percy’s immaculate chin lifted in challenge. “It is, though, isn’t it? I’m sorry I have a past. I’m sorry that didn’t involve you, but had you not been quite so faithful to your God, had you put me first like I wanted to put you first, then nothing ever would have happened with Anna. If you would have chosen me, I would have chosen you, and we would have been together from the start.”

“Like how Anna was with your brother?” The words Joe spoke shocked him into silence, and he badly wished he could cram them back in. It wasn’t remotely fair, and he knew it, but he was too angry to give an inch by apologising, despite Percy’s silent, withdrawn face.

He did the only thing he could think to do, and he fled the scene. He gathered some clothes and disappeared into the ensuite, slamming the door and leaving Percy to sit alone in the room to contemplate the many mistakes he’d made. Or hadn’t made. Because they both knew Percy’s brother was as good as dead when Percy took up with Anna, in whatever way he did. In whatever way had made him just as obsessed with her back then as he claimed to be with Joe now.

Joe wrenched the shower on and tried to get a grip of himself. Yes, he was jealous. Insanely jealous. But he had been doing so well. So well with all Percy’s admissions and love affairs, and even if it drove him up the wall to think of Percy with all those people, he believed Percy when he said it meant nothing. He could see the way he fit with Percy so perfectly, in the way no one else could.

Almost no one else.

Because there Anna was and would always be. That little bit darker than Joe. That little bit more dangerous and probably more exciting for it. Forbidden. Off limits. The one person Percy couldn’t have. Someone with breasts and hips and female lips that Joe wondered if Percy missed. Someone who was an atheist, and who, in so many ways, would compliment Percy…

By the time Joe was dressed, fixing his hair, he was calm enough to see how unreasonable he may have acted, but not nearly calm enough to control it. He had no doubt that once he walked through that door, he’d find Percy packed, fully dressed, ready to run back to Anna.

Joe refused. He wouldn’t go with him. He was never going to be Percy’s second choice. He would send a message that he didn’t even need Percy, untrue as it was. But he wanted Percy to believe it. To know that if Anna threw Percy over, there would be nothing to come back to. That Joe would be somewhere in Europe for what was left of his vacation leave, and he would be… doing something. Anything. Anything that didn’t involve Percy.

Joe, head held high, thrust the door open, expecting to see their suitcases in the doorway, but no. He saw only Percy, still half-undressed, watch off and set down beside him, writing at the desk.

Joe was both relieved and perplexed. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t look up. “I’m sending Aubrey the recipe. Like you said. It’s really up to her when she wants to make it. Even if I think it’s a travesty.”

He scrawled at his paper, while Joe felt perfectly undecided about what to do. Poke the beast? Give in to the anger? Let him get away with it as though he hadn’t done a thing wrong? “I’ll see you later.”

In one quick shift, Percy’s eyes fell on Joe’s clothes. Black. With his white collar. Dressed for church. He sent a glower towards the cross on the hill. “I thought it was important to you that we work this morning.”

“You seemed to have other things on your mind.”

Percy’s gaze darkened as he settled it back on Joe. “I have you on my mind. And nothing else. And now you’re going to run out on me for that bullshit?”

“That bullshit?”

“We have things to discuss. I’m here, putting you first, and as usual, I’m way down your list.”

“Way down my list? I have all of two things in my life.”

“And there you go again, running off after this crap.” He threw a hand towards the cross, his voice returning to the same incandescence it held before Joe had left him to cool down. “It makes you feel awful, you won’t live in my house because of it, it took you forever to even look at me, and now one argument and you go running back to God. You throw your jealousy at me like I’ve done anything wrong, but I’m never your first choice, nor have I ever been. Not like you are mine, every single time. If anyone has a right to be jealous, it’s me.”

“You? Jealous?” Joe laughed bitterly. “Percy Ashdown, jealous. The man who simply reaches out and takes everything he wants in this life, without regret or consequences, imagines he has any idea what it’s like to be jealous. Please.”

Joe was on the other side of the bedroom door within seconds, ignoring Molly’s wheezes as he walked out of the pub, splashing through the puddle of her blood, to make the miles-long walk to the distant cross on the hill, to prove some stupid point to Percy that he was no longer sure he wanted to prove at all.