Page 191 of In Too Deep

Eventually, Jake turned off the main road and followed a rough track climbing towards the heather-covered ridge above the valley.

Harrison sat up straighter. “Where are we?”

“Best view in Yorkshire.”

“Bold claim.”

“Wait.”

The track ended at a grassy pull-in overlooking the expanse of the moors. Jake killed the engine. Silence grew around them. Then Harrison climbed out. And stopped. The view stretched for miles. Purple heather rolled across the hills in every direction beneath the golden light of evening, its flowering scents consuming the air. Deep valleys carved through the landscape below, while scattered sheep sat like tiny white dots in the vastness. The wind carried the scent of sun-warmed grass and distant peat. Far away, a train crossed a viaduct like a toy moving through the landscape.

Harrison breathed out softly. “Wow.”

Jake smiled, then came up behind him, slipping his arms around his waist and pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. “Told you.”

Together they carried their gear up the ridge and found a patch of grass overlooking the valley. The tent went up surprisingly quickly, mostly because Harrison turned out to be annoyingly competent at camping.

“You’ve done this before,” Jake said as he hammered in a peg.

“A few times.”

“With Chris?”

“Yeah.” Harrison looked up from crouched at the fixings. “At festivals.”

Jake nodded. Smiled. “Good.”

They then settled onto the grass with cold beers, packets of sausage rolls and pork pies between them, with a playlist drifting softly from the speaker beside Jake’s boot.

The sun sank lower across the moors. Gold gave way to amber. Amber melted into orange. Then the entire horizon seemed to catch fire, streaks of pink and violet bleeding across the sky above the distant hills. And whilst Yorkshire did that pretty magical thing in front of them, they talked. Not about Lauren. Or Roman. Nor even Robyn or Chris.

They talked about themselves.

Music. TV shows. The band. Harrison’s ridiculous coffee routine. Jake’s inability to keep a van running for more than six months without something falling off it and his disastrous habit of smashing phones. The places they’d wanted to visit. The things they regretted. The things they didn’t. Normal things. The sort of things people talked about when no one was trying to kill them. The sort of things that let two people slowly learn the shape of one another. And somewhere between the second beer and the sunset, Jake realised what they were doing.

Learning each other’s rhythm.

Darkness arrived gradually. The first stars appeared above the moors. Then another. Then dozens. Then hundreds. And the valley below became a scattering of distant lights while the world around them disappeared into shadow. The heather darkened to black. The wind softened. Everything felt vast and impossibly quiet.

Harrison lay back in the grass and tucked his arms behind his head. Jake rested his on Harrison’s chest, draping one arm across his stomach as they stared up at the endless sky. No roofs. No walls. No ceilings. Nothing overhead except stars. Eventually, Jake lifted his head. Their eyes met. And the kiss that followed was languid. The kind that had nowhere else to be. And Harrison raked his hand into Jake’s hair while the stars wheeled silently above them and the last of the music faded from the speaker.

The cold finally drove them into the tent, and they zipped the flap behind them and slipped beneath sleeping bags and canvas, wrapping around each other while the night stretched endlessly across the moors.

Outside, stars burned against the clear black sky.

Inside, Jake rolled Harrison under him.

And with every kiss, every quiet breath of his name, slow thrust into him, Jake fell a little deeper. Into this. Into Harrison. Into whatever the hell they were becoming together.

Maybe he was already too far gone to find his way back.

The thought should probably have scared him.

It didn’t.

Because for the first time in a long time, Jake wasn’t looking for a way out.

Epilogue