August - Chapter One

Jeremy woke with a thundering headache to find his room filled with sunshine and a back paw pressed into his cheek. “Y’know,” he said to Mozart, who was draped across his chest, “you don’t have to sleep on my face. It’s not a requirement.”

She didn’t respond, and he sighed, pushing her off. His room was already warm — almost as warm as it was when Colin spent the night.

His stomach swooped before erupting in butterflies, and his head thumped in reply. After crawling into bed the previous night, he’d spent over an hour on the phone with Jo, and it was close to three A.M. before he’d fallen asleep. Now, as he looked out of the window at the light blue sky, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if it had all been real. He shivered at the memory of Colin’s touch, the way he’d felt, sounded, tasted—

“Right,” said Jeremy loudly, catapulting himself out of bed, his face burning and his knees wobbly. “Time for a shower.”

When he got out, towel around his hips, he paused in the hallway, looking at the door to his mom’s room. It was ajar, and he could see that her bed was still made, the sheet and duvet tucked in and everything. Rochelle was notoriously inconsistent about making her bed, and only did so in moments of nervous energy. In fact, the bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in at all.

He frowned, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Mom?” he called out, loud enough that he could hear his voice ringing in the kitchen. “Mom?”

No answer. The cottage was silent, and Jeremy didn’t know what to make of this. He’d checked his phone — it was barely past noon — and his mom hadn’t texted him. If she hadn’t spent the night here, where was she?

The answer came to him as he was getting dressed, and he laughed. Angus. That was where she was. On his way back to the bathroom, he whipped out his phone. Abandoned son accidentally sets fire to bathtub, he texted her.

Now, the problem of his hair. Jeremy stared at his reflection, and his head thumped some more. He still wasn’t used to looking like this, and he marveled at Winston’s blind faith that he would be able to recreate yesterday’s masterpiece. He shook his head, then ducked under the sink and went digging through his mom’s bin of hair-care products. Rochelle wore her hair natural, and she had tricky curls — somewhere between loose and tight. “This is my cauldron,” she’d said once when he was little, shaking the bin to make all the tubs and bottles rattle. “It makes magic.”

He picked out something that seemed promising — something with argan oil and shea butter. Jeremy rolled a little dollop of it between his fingers, then, watching himself in the mirror, tried to mimic what Winston had done the day before, working it gently through the long part of his hair, then shaking it out to get the curls loose and tall.

“That works,” he said, and made his way downstairs.

One pot of coffee and a small stack of toast later, Jeremy was feeling a little more human, even if his head still hurt. But as he looked out at the beach, at the waves rolling placidly into shore, he couldn’t keep his leg from jittering, couldn’t stop the butterflies fluttering through his stomach and down through the ends of his fingers. He couldn’t stop hearing the sounds Colin had made, feeling the ghost of his touch.

“Fuck,” he said aloud, and Mozart, in the middle of her post-breakfast bath, twitched an ear.

Jo had been shocked the night before. “Not so much because he finally kissed you,” she’d said, in a vast understatement of everything that had happened, “more because I never thought he’d actually have the courage to do it. Or that you’d have the courage to let him.” Jeremy supposed that really was all it took, in the end, just a bit of courage. But where did that leave him now?

“It’s the stupidest, most clichéd thing ever,” he’d said to her, at least twice, half-mumbled into the pillow. “I fall for a straight boy, and then he decides he wants to—”

“You need to talk to him,” she’d told him, probably ten times. “You need to figure out what happens now.” He remembered the way she’d paused, almost as if she were afraid of the words. “Do you want it to happen again?”

That’s a fucking stupid question, Jeremy thought, now as he had then. As if he’d turn down—

“Because if there are feelings on your end,” Jo had said, in her uncanny way of saying the most important thing, “but not on his, this is gonna be a shitstorm. A shitstorm of Category Four proportions. Especially if it keeps on happening. And you’ve still got another month before you leave for school.”

“I know,” he’d told her, and that was the kick of it all. He knew what she was saying was the truth, and it was something he couldn’t ignore. Because, yes, while it was all well and good to be hooking up with the mythic Gaelic god that was Colin MacGregor, was it worth it if his heart was probably going to be stomped into a million tiny little pieces?

Maybe, he thought, and then immediately wanted to shove his head in the oven.

But he was distracted by the front door banging open, and a thunderstorm appearing in the shape of his mother.

“Afternoon,” she said, kicking off her heels and dropping her purse on the floor. She was, surprisingly, in a fresh change of clothes and far less hungover than he’d expected.

“Hi,” he replied, resisting the urge to scoot away from her as she came into the kitchen. She’d only ever looked like this a few times before, and one of them was when a grant proposal she’d spent three months drafting had fallen through. “What’s up?”

“Robert MacLewan,” she spat, beginning to pace around the kitchen. She opened the fridge, dug through it, then slammed it shut again. “I’m going to murder him. Probably.”

“Okay, so there goes my plausible deniability.” Jeremy stared at her. “What happened?”

“That asswipe—” Now at the pantry, she dug out the jar of Nutella, followed by a spoon, then slammed the cutlery drawer shut. “He decides, on the day that we’re scheduled to go to press about the cross, that he’d rather wait another week or so, just in case.” She shoved a spoonful of Nutella into her mouth and continued pacing. “Never mind that I spent days drafting different press releases, prepping the castle for a higher volume of visitors, or that we’ve already sold the story to the local paper and The Guardian. If we push pause now, we run the risk of pissing a lot of people off, not to mention looking like complete idiots—”

“Mom,” said Jeremy, trying to sound placating, “I need you to take a breath.”

“Breathing is for losers,” she hissed, but she sat down next to him and sucked on her spoon some more. “I just don’t get it. If he wanted to wait a little longer, why not tell me yesterday? The day before? Literally any day before today?”

“Because he’s a Scot. He’s dramatic. And he’s probably panicking, something like this might make the island implode.”

Rochelle pinched the bridge of her nose. “We. Need. The tourism. And the exposure. Desperately. He knows that. He knows that, and he still insists on behaving like an—”

“Asswipe,” Jeremy supplied. “Got it.”

“I just.” She swallowed noisily, and stared down at the tabletop. “I took a big risk in coming here, you know? And they took a big risk in hiring me. They could’ve gone for any number of candidates from Britain, Lord knows there are plenty of them, but they chose me. They wanted someone from the outside, someone who wouldn’t be intimidated by tradition or aristocracy or whatever the fuck else.” She scooped another glob of Nutella onto her spoon. “And I’m doing good work, I really am. I believe in this place. So why is he fighting me so hard on this one?”

Jeremy felt a pang. His mom didn’t deserve this kind of bullshit, and he almost said as much. “Give him a few days,” he said instead. “It’s probably just last-minute panic. This story is the biggest spotlight this island has ever had.”

Rochelle made a non-committal grunt and stuck the spoon back in her mouth. “How was the rest of your night?”

Jeremy immediately blushed, so hard that his ears were boiling hot. “Good,” he said, then coughed and stood up, dishes in hand. He went over to the sink and turned on the water. “I had a lot of fun with Aggie and everybody.”

“Sure looked like it. I hope you didn’t get too drunk.”

Jesus Christ. Jeremy’s heart dropped to his feet, and he stared at the faucet, hoping for a swift, painless death.

“Oh, stop freaking out. You’re half-legal in this country, besides, there was alcohol everywhere. If you were going to drink, I’d much prefer you’d do it at a ceilidh instead of a rave. Or even a house party, Jesus, those punch bowls are frightening.”

“Okay,” Jeremy squeaked, and immediately started scrubbing his dishes.

“What time did you get back?”

“Around one.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Where were you?”

Rochelle cleared her throat. “I stayed with Angus.”

“Thought so.” Somewhere under his embarrassment, Jeremy felt a prickle of discomfort. “That’s all the detail I need.”

“Well, since you’re here.” He heard her stand up and go back into the hallway. Then, there was a soft thud. “It looks like Colin left his drum at the manor. Angus figured you’d see Colin before he would.”

The dishes were clean now, so Jeremy didn’t have an excuse not to turn around, his cheeks still warm.

There, on the table, was Colin’s bodhrán and its matching stick. It was his first time seeing the instrument up-close, and it was worn but taken care of — he could see where the wood had been repaired on one side, a few newer stitches in the skin, neat and perfect. Very Colin, he thought, then immediately hated himself for thinking it.

“So are you? Seeing him today?”

“I don’t know.”

Rochelle shrugged and stood up, twisting the jar of Nutella shut. “Whenever, then.” She put the jar back in the pantry and reached behind him to put the spoon in the sink. “I’m going for a walk, clear my head.” She stepped closer, giving him a small smile, and brushed her fingers through his hair. “It really does suit you.”

“Thanks,” he said, and forced himself to breathe as she put her boots back on, because that was what Colin had said the night before, and he couldn’t stop feeling Colin’s fingers grazing across his scalp, pulling him closer. From a great distance, he heard the door shut and the silence that meant he was alone.

What the fuck happens now? he thought, staring at the bodhrán.

He had no idea when he would hear from Colin again, or if he ever would — even on an island this size, ghosting was possible if you really put your mind to it. The thought of texting him seemed like one of the top ten worst ideas the world had ever known, not that Jeremy was being dramatic or anything.

What do you say to someone when you had their dick in your mouth the night before and now you had one of their most prized possessions on your kitchen table?

Jeremy groaned aloud, turning on the spot and aiming a kick at the cupboard under the sink. It was then that he spotted it — a dull shine in the corner of the sunroom. Something he’d seen when he was moving his boxes, and hadn’t thought about twice.

“Mozart,” he said, reaching for the door to the sunroom. “I’m going out.”

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Back when he and Jo were younger, third grade maybe, they would play a game called “Betcha Aren’t Stupid.” The way the game worked: you’d go back and forth, daring each other to do something until the something got so stupid that you would have to do it immediately. “Betcha aren’t stupid enough to climb that fence,” Jo would say, dragging a stick on the ground as they walked home from school. “Betcha aren’t stupid enough to eat that leaf,” Jeremy would say. “Betcha aren’t stupid enough to steal a gnome from that guy’s lawn.” “Betcha aren’t stupid enough to eat all the Oreos before dinner.” And so on and so on.

Now, as he coasted down the slight slope of the valley, the fresh Scottish air whistling through his hair, Jeremy reflected that this was probably one of the stupidest things he’d ever done. Not in the least because it had been years since he’d last ridden a bike, and the chain had already scraped across one of his calves. He felt it prickle, felt it throb, but ignored it, even though the chain was pretty rusty and he might die from tetanus or something medieval like that.

That would be poetic, and super duper gay, he thought, then snorted. He was blasting Led Zeppelin through his headphones as he pedaled, and Robert Plant’s wailing was almost enough to keep him from thinking too hard about what the fuck he was doing.

Because, truly, what the fuck was he doing.

I’m returning Colin’s bodhrán, he told himself, and his stomach did a funny jolt when he realized how close he was getting to Colin’s house. I’m just returning the goddamn drum, there’s nothing else to it, nothing’s gonna happen—

The sun beat down on his neck, and Jeremy was stupidly glad that he’d worn shorts and an old cutoff from camp. He was sweating from the heat, and he hoped that his hair wasn’t too dismal, because he definitely hadn’t thought this through. Turning up on Colin’s doorstep uninvited was one thing, but turning up uninvited reeking like an old tomato was another.

He stuck out a hand, signalling to the empty road that he was turning right, and there it was. He slowed down as he approached the farmhouse, then felt another funny jolt in his stomach, because the drive in front of the house was empty — Colin’s truck was missing.

Idiot, he told himself, his heart pounding in his ears, embarrassment crawling up his spine, he isn’t even home. Can you leave a bodhrán out in the heat—?

Then, he looked around, and noticed that the sheep were clustered around the entrance to the barn beside the house.

The sheep turned to look at him, and then his stomach dropped to his knees, because Colin was standing there in the middle of them, not twenty feet away, bucket in one hand and a hammer in the other, staring at Jeremy and looking absolutely thunderstruck. He was also shirtless, and Jeremy tried to ignore the sheen of sweat on his skin, the tight lines of his tattoo.

Jeremy pushed his headphones onto his neck. “Hi,” he called out, and absolutely did not wobble as he slid off the seat, clinging on to the handlebars for balance. The sun shone high up above, merciless and bright.

“Yankee?” Colin was approaching now, coming to the fence. “What are you—?”

“Your drum.” He waved a hand at the back of the bike, where he’d rigged the bodhrán and its stick with some twine. “You left it at the manor.”

Colin paused at the fence, just a few feet away, taking him in with a glance. Jeremy couldn’t help but stare back, feeling exposed and jittery, and then.

Then.

He saw the tiny shadow at the base of Colin’s neck. The hickey he had left the night before. It bore into his skull, a very real reminder that last night had actually happened, and now—

“Right,” Colin said, after a beat or three. “Well, thanks.”

Shit, Jeremy thought, and fought a wave of panic. “I thought you might be missing it. Can’t have a ceilidh, can’t play an army off to war. Y’know, the little things.”

That got a smile. “Right.” Colin looked him up and down again. “What are you wearing?”

“What do you mean, what am I wearing? I’m wearing a perfectly normal pair of shorts and a perfectly normal shirt—”

“I don’t think those are shorts.” Colin leaned against the fence, his forearms all out and about. “Those are Speedos that have got you fooled.”

Jeremy snorted, hands on his hips. “I’ll have you know they are very comfortable and very aerodynamic, asshat—”

“Oh, aye, they are that,” said Colin, staring at Jeremy’s legs, and there was a flash of heat in his gaze that absolutely did not make Jeremy shiver. “What’s that? On your leg?”

He twisted, saw the scrape on the inside of his calf. It was longer than he’d thought, and the drying blood was a dark crimson. “Nothing, just the bike trying to fight me—”

“You’ve got a lot of enemies, Yankee.” Colin dropped the bucket and hammer, grasped the rungs of the fence, and swung himself up and over, landing gently on the ground. Jeremy caught a whiff of Colin’s sweat, clean and sharp, along with — cinnamon?! — and tried not to actually swoon.

When their gazes met, Colin was smiling, sort of. “Come on,” he said, jerking his head towards the house. “Bring the bodhrán.”

“Okay,” Jeremy said, hastening to untie it as Colin opened the front door and went inside. He followed, instantly grateful for the cooler air. Like every other house on the island, Colin’s didn’t have A/C, but its position in the shade of the valley made a clear difference. Colin toed off his work boots and propped them on the shoe rack, then instead of heading to the left into the kitchen, he went to the right, down the hall towards a white door.

Jeremy swallowed, taking off his headphones and leaving them, Darla, and the bodhrán on the bench in the hall.

Behind the white door was an equally white workroom, with several intimidating machines, racks of shiny metal tools, and a big exam table. Colin was off to the side, washing his hands in a little sink, and he looked up as Jeremy stepped in. “Sit,” said Colin, nodding at the table.

“Why?” said Jeremy, but he did it anyway, feeling like he was in a doctor’s office. “I’m not an animal, y’know—”

“Could’ve fooled me, in those shorts.” Colin turned, one hand full of bandages, the other holding a bottle of antiseptic and a washcloth.

Jeremy, to his horror, blushed. “No, you don’t have to—”

But Colin ignored him and knelt on the floor, eye-to-eye with his calf. “Needs to be cleaned,” he said, splashing the antiseptic onto the cloth. “If your leg gets infected, they’ll have to chop it off.” He pressed the cloth to Jeremy’s leg.

Jeremy hissed at the burn. Clearly, it was the old-fashioned stuff — lots of alcohol. “Who would do the honors?”

“Head families of the clan,” Colin replied, going after the rest of the scrape. His touch was ridiculously light, even careful. “It’s an old tradition.”

He could feel Colin’s breath on the skin of his knee. “Well, anything I can do to keep tradition alive.”

Colin huffed, then silence fell, punctuated only by the sound of their breathing, the swipe of the washcloth.

Jeremy felt like he was at the top of a cliff, ready to go over at any moment, his stomach in knots and his body consumed by Colin’s closeness, by the heat of his touch. Pull yourself together, he told himself, not that it helped. Then Colin was swapping cloth for bandages, and the latex was firm and dry on Jeremy’s leg, sealing the scrape away.

“There you are, you hooligan.” Colin straightened up, tossing the filthy cloth and bandage wrappings onto the table. His cocky smirk was back, warm and soft at the edges, and Jeremy was shocked by what he could see in Colin’s face — Colin was usually like a puzzle box, the shades of his emotions tucked away from view, but here was the flicker of uncertainty, coupled with something darker, needier. “You should be more careful,” Colin was saying, and he was staring at Jeremy’s mouth.

Jeremy forced himself to take a breath. Then another.

He was conscious of how close they were — he could sense the heat radiating from Colin’s skin, from the arms that bracketed him to the table, freckled and pale giving way to light tan. He looked at the chest that was less than a foot away from his, the slope of Colin’s nose, the dim purple of that goddamn hickey, the ruddy stubble, the eyes that gazed down at him, wondering.

This moment was so like the night before, and yet not. There was no urgency, and yet.

Jeremy looked up at Colin, meeting his clear, piercing blue gaze. And then, feeling the cliff disappear from beneath his feet, he closed his eyes and leaned in, pressing his mouth to Colin’s neck, right over the bruise.

Colin’s gasp was small.

Jeremy hummed in reply, shifting to mouth at Colin’s chest, his clavicle — the skin was sun-warm and salty, supple, firm. His hands came up to Colin’s hips, holding him steady, and that seemed to break something. Colin’s hands were suddenly in his hair, on his back, gripping his shoulder as he kissed his way up Colin’s neck. Finally, their lips met.

Gone was the shy, unsteady Colin of the night before. He kissed like he drove — with his whole body, with a warm, steady precision that left Jeremy gasping. Jeremy had never been kissed like this before, like they might die if they parted, like they had all the time in the world to keep falling, to keep chasing each other. It made his knees wobble, his stomach drop. But then Colin was doing something very nice to the spot under his ear, and, well.

“Not here,” Colin gritted out, and Jeremy could only nod in reply, let himself be pulled out of the clinic, back down the hall, past the kitchen, around a corner.

Colin practically threw Jeremy into his bedroom, the door slamming into the wall. Jeremy caught a glimpse of a few bookshelves, a Moody Blues poster, the crumpled mess of Colin’s kilt from the night before, but then he was falling across a very soft mattress and Colin’s hands raked across his torso as he muttered, “—fucking shorts—”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Jeremy almost giggled, adrenaline sweeping through his veins, and he threw his glasses in the general vicinity of Colin’s nightstand before pulling him in for another kiss. He thrilled at being able to do that — pull Colin in, tangle his fingers in his hair — and loved the way Colin pressed him down into the bed, using his full weight to keep him pinned, to do unspeakable things to the place where Jeremy’s neck met his jaw. He gasped against Colin’s temple, clinging to his back, his shoulders, his hips, then Colin was reaching for his fly and, well.

Afterwards, they lay there, slowly getting their breath back, limbs tangled, sweat drying. Jeremy stared up at the ceiling, at the patterns made by the sunlight beaming through the blinds. He was coherent enough now to notice that Colin’s room really was quite bare. Apart from the Moody Blues poster, a few photos of animals, and a snap of Colin and Aggie holding up a huge fish at the harbor, it was almost impossible to tell that the room was actually his.

Holy shit, a voice kept chanting in his head. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. Because it had happened again. Not even twenty-four hours later and here he was, his foot falling asleep where it lay under Colin’s calf, precisely where Jo had warned him not to be. Well, not in so many words.

But what happened now?

It wasn’t just a fluke, Jeremy reminded himself. This was twice now. And if he were a gambling man, he’d bet on it happening again.

Colin broke into his reverie. “Uh, I thought you said.” He stopped, and when Jeremy turned his head, he was surprised to see Colin blushing. The red flush across his cheeks and his nose reminded Jeremy of the sunburn, of damp sheets and relentless moonlight. “I thought you said,” Colin tried again. “That you hadn’t had sex before.”

Now it was Jeremy’s turn to blush. “Well, I. Not really. There were some guys back in D.C., but we never did anything like—” He cleared his throat. “Last night was my first time doing that.”

“Oh.” A beat passed, and Colin almost smiled. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Jeremy really was blushing now. This was not at all something that he’d thought Colin would want to talk about. They were getting awfully close to the question of why Colin suddenly seemed to have such a keen interest in the less-fair sex, and the last thing Jeremy wanted was to talk about preferences and feelings—

“I like your room,” he said instead. “It’s empty and devoid of all character, but in a nice way.”

Colin snorted. “I don’t spend much time here.”

Understatement, Jeremy thought. “If I hadn’t seen your bed, I would think you slept in the chicken coop.”

“Worse places. It’s warm.”

“Wow, okay, so you’ve definitely slept in there.”

“What happens in winter stays in winter.”

“No doubt.” He looked around a bit more, and noticed an old wooden desk by the door. There were a few stacks of notebooks and papers, some pens, and a Gaelic-to-English dictionary. “Are you actually studying something? Like, now? During the summer?”

Colin sighed through his nose. “A-levels, Yankee. Got to put in a few hours a week, at least. Aggie has a color-coded schedule.”

“You are a mythic god. An alien. Fucking Time Lord.” Too curious to stop himself, Jeremy slid out from underneath Colin and went over to the desk, looking down at the piles of work. His shorts were still undone and they hung loose on his hips, but he didn’t care. Colin’s handwriting was neat, tight, heavily pressed into the pages of notes. He’d seen Colin’s hadwriting before, but there was something different about seeing it like this — something personal, something hidden. “You’re telling me that you study on top of everything else?”

He heard the creak of the bed, the soft tread of Colin’s bare feet. “I don’t sleep much.”

“Unless you drink. I know.” Jeremy nodded, telling himself not to blush when Colin stood close to him, close enough that all he had to do was lean back and they’d be touching. He kept his gaze on the desk, some part of him too frightened to turn around. “Don’t you do anything for fun? Don’t you watch TV at all, ever?”

“Yes.” Colin sounded thoughtful, amused. “I watched telly with you, didn’t I?”

“I don’t think that counts.”

“I didn’t know you made the rules, Yankee.”

Jeremy huffed a laugh, feeling like a live wire and a piece of lead all at once. What happened now? How would they go back to whatever it was they went back to? Were they even still friends? Was this a friends-who-were-hooking-up situation? Jesus Christ, I need coffee, Jeremy thought, but then his brain switched off, because Colin’s hand was on his hip, just holding him there. Firm. Warm.

“Don’t you have,” Jeremy said, “the sheep—”

“They can wait,” said Colin.

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“I should’ve known,” said Jo, taking him in with a glance. The camera wobbled as she propped her phone on her desk. “You know this is, like, the worst idea known to man? Ever? In the history of the entire world?”

Jeremy snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yes, thank you, I know, but that didn’t stop me before and I don’t think it’s going to start working now—”

“He must be a pretty good shag,” she said, then raised an eyebrow at his expression. “What? I’m trying to use more British slang.”

“Please stop talking.” He shuffled through a short pile of sheet music for three different pieces, trying to get it back in order. “It’s done now, it’s happening.”

Jo, her nose in the crease of her SAT prep book, barely looked up. “And I’m guessing you guys talked about everything in explicit detail, so you know where he stands and he knows where you stand and if feelings are coming into the question at all—”

Jeremy plugged his ears. “I’m going to hang up.”

“Jesus Christ, you idiot.” But her expression was fond. “Did you lose a page?”

He was frowning down at the music, then at the floor of his room, which was somewhat of a catastrophe at the moment. “Yeah, two, somehow.”

“Have you checked under Colin’s kilt? I bet all kinds of things end up there—”

“Fuck off.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Looks like there’s something under your bed?”

He turned and dug around, then sat up with relief, missing pages in hand. “What would I do without you?”

“Crash and burn.” She was smiling as she circled answers. “What are you playing right now?”

“Bernstein Sonata. I needed a break from Brahms.” He waved the piece in question at the camera. He’d stocked up on sheet music before he’d left the U.S., and unless things started getting more interesting, he’d probably burn through it all before he left for school. Well, there were worse problems to have, anyway.

“Don’t we all.” Jo frowned at her book and erased something. “I can’t believe I have to go to school in three weeks. You’re so lucky.”

“I know.” Jeremy was getting a longer summer than any of the students his age in the U.S. and the U.K. “Watch, I’ll be bored to death by September. You’ll have to come and invade Scotland, spring me from the stone tower where I’m kept prisoner by hundreds of sheep.”

Below him, the door slammed, and he heard the sound of shoes hitting the floor as his mom called, “Jer? Are you here?”

“Yeah,” he called back.

“Is it all right if Angus stays for dinner?”

Jeremy looked at Jo, and Jo looked back at him, hands over her mouth and eyes shining with glee. She’d been trying to set Rochelle up on dates since they were six. “Yeah,” he called again, and Jo started squealing.

“What is it with this island?” she said, abandoning her SAT book. “You and Colin, your mom and Angus. It seems like a storybook summer.”

He hadn’t thought about that. “It’s just dumb luck. And there’s no me and Colin anything.”

“Right,” said Jo, but the look on her face made him frown.

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On Monday morning, Jeremy woke to a loud bang, followed by a poorly-restrained yell. “That sneaky son of a—”

“Mom?” he croaked, stopping in the doorway to the kitchen. She was at the table, hunched over her laptop. The empty coffee pot lay on the floor by the stove, and he realized where the loud noise had come from. “What’s going on?”

“He went public.” She took a deep breath through her nose. “He gave the papers the all-clear and put out the press release. Without telling me.”

It took a moment for Jeremy’s brain to catch up, and when it did, he sighed. Mozart appeared, rubbing against his legs. “Shit.”

Rochelle shook her head, absently clicking through a few things. Behind her, the morning sun blazed in a glow of orange and pink. He guessed it wasn’t later than eight o’clock. “My inbox has detonated,” she said. “I haven’t had this many emails since I fucked up a catalog number.”

“Shit,” he said again, and went over to pick up the coffee pot. He’d been up late trying to sketch out a melody that had been stuck in his head all day, and he definitely needed caffeine for this conversation. “That’s two strikes for Bobby MacLewan.”

That got a smile. “Bobby. Heh. Maybe I’ll start calling him that, really get his attention.” Rochelle’s eyebrows climbed her forehead. “I have an email from Dr. James Ratherty. Ratherty.”

“More detail, please.”

“He’s at Oxford. One of the most famous early British historians in the world.” She blinked at her screen as Mozart hopped up onto the table and lay down. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Sink’s that way.” He pointed with one hand, using the other to scoop coffee into the filter.

“Surreal.” Rochelle closed her laptop, drummed her fingers on the lid. “I have a feeling today is going to be awful.”

“But you guys have been planning for this, right? How many surprises can there really be?” Coffee pot safely plugged in and percolating, Jeremy sat down across from her.

His mom chuckled without humor. “Yes. He’s lucky I can think on my feet. You know, Robert didn’t even tell me personally that he gave the all-clear? I woke up to a notification from the BBC app. That’s how I found out.”

“Wow. That’s, like.” Jeremy frowned, his brain chugging along. “Super rude.”

“Big time.” She looked at him again, and her gaze softened. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

He waved a hand. “It’s fine. I like being on the front lines of history.”

Rochelle caught the sarcasm and mimed banging her head on the table.

“So how many news people can we expect to show up tomorrow?” said Jeremy, petting Mozart until she began to purr. “Are they ready for how much tartan the people wear in this town?”

“I’m just hoping it doesn’t turn into a big circus.” She went about packing up her briefcase. “Some more tourists would be nice, yes, but I still haven’t figured out the whole dragon thing. I don’t want anyone—”

“—solving it before you do?” Jeremy jumped in, and grinned at his mom’s scowl.

“No,” she said, petulant, zipping up her laptop with more force than necessary. “Besides, that’s pretty unlikely. We’re the ones with the big secret dusty book up our sleeve, which is a better head start than anyone else has. It’s not like there are dragons on crosses anywhere else in Britain.”

“Right.” He fought off a blush. “Any progress on that?”

“Some.” Rochelle shouldered her briefcase. “Colin did a really good job. I’ll have some new scans ready for him tomorrow, if he’ll be here?”

Jeremy nodded. “When do we get to read it? The translation?”

She snorted, reaching over to give Mozart a pat on the head. “‘Read’ is a strong word. I’ll have the first ten pages maybe-digestible by this weekend, sooner if I don’t sleep, which.” Rochelle checked her phone again and sighed. “Might be more likely than not.”

Jeremy looked up at her and felt a pang of sympathy. He was sure this wasn’t exactly what she’d signed up for with the job. “You’re gonna do great today.”

Rochelle quirked an eyebrow and smiled. “You’re so nice when you’re still half-asleep.” She bent over and kissed him on the forehead. “Have a good day. And have fun with Colin!”

“Yeah,” he said, staring at the floor until he heard the front door close. Jesus Christ.

Jeremy hadn’t seen Colin the day before — his dad had kept him cooped up at the farm, since it was the end of the month and they had to balance the books. The thought of Colin stuck at home doing math was pretty amusing, and Jeremy told Aggie as much when he saw her Sunday night, after he rode the bicycle into town for some ice cream.

“Yeah,” she said, her nose wrinkling as she scooped a cone of Fudge Wham-Mallow for him. “Maths aren’t exactly… well. He really does try.”

Jeremy took the cone — this ice cream flavor was chocolate, with chunks of pretzel and swirls of marshmallow — and leaned back against the worktable. “How bad are we talking?”

“Like, nine times six is eighty-four.”

He paused to let that sink in, watching a young mother out on the patio catch her toddler’s ice cream cone before it hit the ground. “Wow. And his dad still makes him help?”

“Yup.” Aggie rinsed off her hands and shot him a look. “He makes Colin do everything, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Yeah.” He fidgeted. They were creeping up on the same, familiar territory again — the stuff that Colin never talked about and that Jeremy was too chicken to bring up. So he changed the subject, and they spent the last hour of her shift shooting the shit and watching the sun make its slow way to the horizon.

There hadn’t been any significant developments about the robbery. Whoever it was had broken a window in the back door and jimmied the handle loose — something almost anyone with half a brain could do, not that Patrick would admit it. Now, with the window repaired and a fresh security system in place, the general shop was scheduled to reopen on Monday. When Jeremy asked about her brother, Aggie looked up from locking the front door and shrugged.

“I think it upsets him,” she said. “More than he lets us see. It’s one thing to be a trouble-maker and have people laughing about it, but it’s another to have people you’ve known your entire life think you’re a criminal.”

“Is this the first time you guys have had any problems? This place isn’t exactly…”

“For the most part. My parents got some of the typical small-town grief when they first moved here — sideways looks and rumors and shit like that. And I was the only black kid in the primary.” She grinned suddenly. “Someone called me a name once and Colin pushed them into the dirt. Never a problem after that.” Aggie cocked her head, considering. “I don’t think Dunsegall has as much room for hate as other places, thank God. Otherwise I’d be telling a different story. What about you? The shit I hear about America, I don’t know if I’d want to live there.”

“D.C.’s D.C. It is what it is.” He shifted his weight, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Got called plenty of names growing up, but so did all the other Latino kids. That’s when we lived in a tougher part of town. It got better after we moved, but hell, some of it kept going all through high school.”

Aggie’s eyes were wide. “Really? Like what?”

“You know, beaner, cholo, taco truck. All the creative stuff. My favorite was when people called me an Oreo.” He had to laugh at that. He’d laughed every time he’d heard it, too, and so had Jo. “I’m not even black, and they called me an Oreo. I guess it’s ’cause of my mom, but even that’s a stretch.”

“What does ‘Oreo’ mean?”

Jeremy blinked at her. He’d never had to explain this to anybody before. “Oh. It’s, like, when you’re black on the outside and white on the inside? So people think you’re acting too white to be really black.”

“Huh.” Aggie joined him by the freezers, leaning against one. “That’s pretty fucked up.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “But hey, at least I have a delicious cream filling.”

“Ew.” She shoved him, hard, and he took a dive onto the floor, laughing.

Now, Jeremy looked at the clock and shook his head. He had a lot of time to kill before Colin showed up. Pity he didn’t have any Oreos.

“Yankee,” Colin said by way of greeting. He was idling in front of the cottage, and the windows in his truck were rolled down. It had stayed hot over the weekend, but a welcome breeze drifted in from the water. “You look right grumpy.”

“I woke up before eight, you do the math. Oh, wait.” Jeremy hopped up into the cab and slouched in his seat, swallowing the butterflies that had erupted in his gut. Ridiculous. “I forgot. Not your thing.”

Colin snorted, giving him a sideways smile. “I can do math.” He popped a u-turn, got them back on the road.

Jeremy stopped himself from staring at Colin’s hands. They were like the rest of him — beefy, but lithe; calloused, but somehow gentle. He kind of hated that he knew that, now. And that, apparently, he was incapable of thinking about anything else. “Twelve times seven?”

“Eighty-four.”

Jeremy blinked at him. “Aggie undersold your abilities.”

“Not really. I can do twelves, and tens are easy. Need it for measuring, don’t I?”

“I thought you only did metric over here.”

“Mostly.” Colin rolled his eyes. “Some of the older farmers never switched over. Measure their fencing and stuff in feet. Anyway.” He glanced at Jeremy. “Why are you grumpy?”

“Aggie made me want Oreos,” Jeremy said, which was mostly true. “And I don’t have Oreos at the house, so.”

“Yeah?” Colin turned them towards town, waved at the car passing them. “What’d she do?”

Jeremy recapped his conversation with Aggie from the night before, and soon enough, Colin was frowning.

“They called you what?”

“It’s not a big deal, Col. Happens to everyone.”

“That’s… somehow worse.” Colin sounded pained. They’d reached the main intersection in town, and he turned left.

The butterflies were back, and Jeremy wasn’t sure why. “Where are we going?” he said.

“I’m peckish.” Colin turned the next corner, then pulled into the parking lot of the gas station. Jeremy had never been there before, but it looked similar enough to American gas stations, except that the prices made zero sense. “Stay,” Colin said, then killed the engine and hopped out of the cab. Bemused, Jeremy watched him walk into the little shop, belatedly noticing that Colin was wearing a blue utilikilt that did far too much for his ass.

Well. At least things weren’t awkward between them. It was almost like any other day, Jeremy reminded himself as his stomach gave another dangerous flutter.

They’d passed a very enjoyable afternoon in Colin’s bed on Saturday, and Colin had given him a lingering kiss before he’d left. Jeremy had pedaled back to the cottage with jittery legs and a couple fresh hickies in places he’d prefer not to mention, almost unable to believe what had just happened. He’d gone to Colin’s house expecting to be brushed off, not—

“Here.” Colin threw something in through the driver’s window, then climbed in.

Jeremy stared at the familiar packaging. Double Pack! proclaimed red letters in the top corner. “Are these—?”

“Eat up.” Colin ripped open a bag of something called Bugles and switched on the engine.

“I didn’t know you had these here.” Christ, he needed to pay better attention in the grocery store. Though his mom wasn’t exactly pro-having cookies in the house, and usually avoided that aisle like the plague.

“Only got them a few years ago,” Colin said, then crunched through a handful of the trumpet-shaped chips. “Not quite my cup of tea.”

Jeremy looked at him, trying to sort through the variety of emotions he was experiencing. Confusion, surprise, and a seriously alarming amount of affection. It was just a packet of Oreos, for God’s sake—

He tore through the packaging and stuffed an Oreo into his mouth. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” A hint of red was sweeping across Colin’s features, but his eyes were firmly on the road. “So the story broke.”

“Yes,” Jeremy said, mouth still full, seizing on the new topic with relief. He told Colin about his mom’s exploding inbox, how Robert had gone to press without telling her, how she barely knew what to say now, given that she had far more information than she was letting on.

“See, that’s what I find so weird about this.” Colin drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and frowned. “Robert MacLewan isn’t normally such an arsehole. I don’t like the way he’s driving your mum round the bend, it isn’t like him.”

“Really?” Jeremy bit through his fifth or sixth Oreo and chewed. “Normally it’s Jo who says this, not me, but I smell a conspiracy.”

“Get off it.” Colin shook his head. “I’m sure there’s some sort of explanation. Is your mum ever going to tell him the whole truth? About the book and everything?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she’s decided yet.”

“I hope we get to be there when she does. I’m no historian, but there’s some crazy shit in there. He won’t know what to do.”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Really? Crazy shit? Like what?”

“It’s… I almost can’t explain it. It’s like reading a fantasy novel and a really weird version of the Bible at the same time. Plenty of stuff about God and whatnot, but there are all these passages about the dragons. Stories about how this island grew out of the fog and water, how the dragons used their fire to crack open the rocks to make soil for the crops.” Colin caught Jeremy’s expression and smiled. “I know, mental.”

“You only did the first twenty, thirty pages, right?”

“Around that, yeah.”

“I wonder if there’s anything in there about how these dragon-Christians became a thing. The book postdates the cross by a few hundred years, so there has to be some type of foundation story. I wonder who wrote it.” Jeremy frowned, his mind nagging at him, and he thought back to a few old conversations with his mom, one of them over a particularly memorable meal at P.F. Chang’s. “Col, there weren’t any monasteries on this island, were there?”

“Don’t think so. If there were, we never learned about it in school. Why?”

Jeremy shook his head. “Back in the day, if you wanted anything written down, you needed monks. They were the only people with the education and the resources to make manuscripts and books. That all changed after the Germans invented the printing press, but that technology didn’t get to Britain until the fifteenth or sixteenth century.” He looked at Colin. “So if there weren’t any monks here, who wrote that book?”

“Maybe it’s like your mum was saying. Maybe there was someone in the chief’s family, or other rich people in the clan, who would do all that. Keep it internal, away from the Church.”

“I guess so.” Jeremy went for another Oreo. “If we accidentally stumble upon a secret group of monks hiding under the castle I’m gonna lose my shit.”

“I’d hate to see that,” said Colin, dry as a bone, and Jeremy grinned.

----------------------------------------

They went about the farm rounds — fixing more of Irene’s fence, checking on a horse that was on the tail end of some antibiotics, tracking down a few escaped chickens — and Jeremy was shocked by how normal it all was. He and Colin fell into their usual routine as if nothing had happened, and Colin didn’t try to push any boundaries. More than once, Jeremy half-expected a sneaky ass-grab or a stolen kiss, but Colin kept his hands to himself. Okay, Jeremy thought, as they headed back to the truck. It was past five o’clock, and the day was winding down. So this is what we are. The only thing that’s changed is what we do when we’re completely alone. He could work with that.

“I didn’t know you liked horses,” Jeremy said as they were driving back to town.

Colin’s face lit up. “Yeah. Love them.”

That was probably an understatement. In all his time of working with Colin, Jeremy had never seen Colin look the way he did when he was with the horses.

Captain was the name of the horse on antibiotics. He was getting over a touch of sepsis from a cut in his knee, but he’d immediately walked up to Colin, nickering in his face and nuzzling his arm. Colin had laughed and thumped the horse’s side, then went about giving him a thorough exam that was definitely overkill, murmuring in the horse’s ear the whole time. Devotion was evident in every line of Colin’s body, in the sweep of his hands and the wide, gleaming smile on his face.

“Thicker than thieves,” the farmer — Bennett, maybe — had laughed, scuffing his boot in the dirt. “Captain’s moody at the best of times, but get Colin in the barn and he’s all sunshine and daisies.” He watched Colin with a knowing eye, then called out, “Aye, Col, Duchess is due for some exercise, if you’ve the time.”

“Really?” Colin looked as if he’d won the lottery. “Give me five minutes.”

If Jeremy had thought that watching Colin drive a car or play the bodhrán was attractive, it had nothing on the way Colin looked riding a horse bareback through a sunny pasture, laughing with delight, his face flushed and his eyes bright.

Jeremy swallowed, shifting where he leaned on the fence. “He’s good at that.”

“Oh, aye.” Bennett nodded. “A natural. His ma brought him here almost as soon as he could walk, taught him everything she knew.”

Now that was not what Jeremy had expected to hear. He turned, staring at Bennett. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

“He gets it from her. A real talent on horses, Helen Boyd. She and Colin were the first ones to meet the Captain when I brought him home, and Colin came to ride almost every morning before school.” Bennett smiled then, the lines creasing in his good-natured, weathered face. “Even helped me muck out and stock the hay in the winters. Always showed up with his pockets full of carrots and apples.” His smile flickered. “Almost stopped seeing him at all, once she left. She was always the one bringing him, and his da didn’t have the time for it. Then he went off to school in Glasgow, so.” Bennett shrugged. “It’s nice having him back in the summers. Gives Duchess a real run for her money, better than I could do these days with this old hip.”

“Right,” said Jeremy, doing his best not to seem floored by what he’d just heard. He’d always assumed that Colin’s parents were divorced, irreconcilable differences like a million other parents he knew, but knowing that his mom had just picked up and left—

No wonder Colin never talks about it, Jeremy thought now, seeing the way Colin grinned at the horizon as he drove, the summer air warm and sharp with the smell of the sea. He wondered if Bennett’s farm was where Colin sometimes went in the mornings, then imagined what a ten year-old Colin looked like, and wondered how someone could walk away from him.

“Why don’t you own a horse, if you love riding?” he said, which was better than saying anything else that was on his mind.

“Ah, well.” Colin shrugged, and Jeremy saw that he was trying to be casual about it. “They’re expensive, need more work and space than we’ve got. And I’m only here in the summers, so. Doesn’t really make sense.”

“Gotcha.” Jeremy dug out the second-to-last Oreo and let his free hand hang out of the open window. A sharp breeze danced along his skin, a welcome contrast to the hot air, and he grinned. “Y’know, this is much more my kind of weather.”

“I can tell.” Colin’s voice was wry. “You’re not half as grumpy as usual. Although that could be the Oreos.”

“Speak for yourself, Oscar.”

“Oscar?”

“What, like you don’t have Sesame Street in this country?”

Colin went quiet for a moment, obviously thinking. “I do not live in a bin.”

“No, just the chicken coop.” Jeremy ducked Colin’s punch, laughing, then noticed that Colin had turned off the main road. They were coming up on the secret spot at the top of the cliffs, and his stomach gave an unhelpful flutter. Calm down, he yelled at himself.

Colin parked the car and undid his seatbelt. He turned to Jeremy, a gleam in his eye as he grinned, full of mischief. “You’re going to pay for that.”

Jeremy swallowed, his stomach taking a one-way flight to Antarctica. “Oh, really?” he said, even as Colin shifted closer. “Prove it.”