Page 28 of His Until Christmas

A foundation sweatshirt swamps her. She clings to Rex’s grandfather like he’s the only safe harbour left in the whole world for her, and I almost feel a heavy blue cloak swish around me. “It doesn’t matter if Gran hardly ever leaves the house since...” I lift my chin the way Gramps taught me. “I make sure she gets to see plenty of?—”

“Lights and sights. So she doesn’t have to miss out.” Reece doesn’t probe beyond that. He only adds a quiet, “The bigger and brighter the better? No wonder New York is on your shortlist.”

He walks on.I don’t. I can’t now he’s neatly summarised a driver I haven’t told anybody, but understanding what motivates people is his specialty, isn’t it? The next photos prove it.

This series is set on French beaches where Ian has caught Reece steering parents towards safer options as the artist he recruited keeps their kids busy by drawing brighter futures withthem. Those art supplies were only a column on an expenses spreadsheet until I saw who Reece trusted to use them. Now he tilts his head at the worried mother in that photo, but he mentions my own. “Your mum...?”

“Keeps Gran company? Yes. Dad too. As much as they can around their work.”

Reece pauses, and this is quieter, even though we’re the only visitors to this section. “Does she get any help with?—”

“She’s got me.” The silk he wrapped me in was as light as a feather. What cloaks me now is heavy. It drags as I study another photo without really seeing the people in it.

He follows me and murmurs, “Of course she has you. I’m just saying how people who get stuck sometimes need help from more than one person.”

He’s referring to another photo that only now comes into focus. There I am in a castle kitchen. I’m also surrounded by sticky notes, and even more cover the front of the refrigerator. I used it as a whiteboard at a meeting, I remember.

So does Reece.

“You crunched the foundation year-end numbers in a different way than Rex. You didn’t break down what the project spent like he did. You factored what it cost us all in terms of time and travel. Then you read us a riot act about our work-life balance. How Rex couldn’t keep up his old banking workloadandexpand the foundation. You’d already worked out a new schedule for him. Then you did the same for me so I got more time doing my play-therapy work. It was you who said we should stop relying exclusively on volunteers and hire more permanent help. Do you remember how you justified spending that money?”

I do.

He voices it for me. “Because neither of us could save anyone if we were struggling to keep our heads above water.”

“I’m not drowning.”

“Of course you aren’t. You’d plan ahead so it couldn’t happen.” He uses the next photo as proof. “Like here.”

I’ve seen this one so often. It’s the same image Rex always stops at. For the second time today, I notice what has been right in front of my nose the whole time—Reece is at the same castle kitchen table as me, and I don’t see either of his brothers in his expression. All I notice is what Ian might as well have used a zoom lens to highlight.

Reece gazes across the table.

At me.

That was almost a year ago. Today, he looks at me the same way in a Soho gallery a whole world away from Cornwall. His voice is still low-pitched and gentle. “You told us we didn’t have to make rescues alone. How I wasn’t the only person on the planet who could help children play or draw away their trauma. That I should keep my eyes open for someone with the same outlook, so I did. I’m just reminding you, Jack. And I’m reminding you that cities don’t have the monopoly on lights and sparkle either, not even New York or London. Maybe think about that if it’s your driver for relocating.”

“I’m not trying to rescue anyone.”

He’s already moved on.

I hurry to catch up, about to tell him that I’m not leaving London purely to fill Gran’s phone with glitter. He stops me by letting out a soul-deep sigh in front of the only other photo of me in this gallery.

I’m at the kitchen table again, mid-breakfast meeting this time. I can tell by what Cornish sea air always does to my hair, and I can’t help touching it now even though my reflection in the glass promises I’m neat and tidy.

Seeing myself like this—as rumpled as Reece—is disconcerting. Ostensibly, I’m minuting this meeting for Rex onmy phone. I know that isn’t why I grin down at my handset. The reason is right there across a breakfast table in a castle.

Reece.

Perhaps the sight of a shared breakfast is what prompts him to steer me away from this exhibit. He follows his nose to find the gallery café, and that’s where I discover that neither of us could face eating earlier this morning.

Reece piles a tray with gingerbread covered in festive sprinkles and I carry coffee cups to a table offering a view of puffed-up pigeons. We eat in silence until Reece sets down his cup to pull out his phone in a reminder of what was in that last photo.

He meets my eyes. His are no longer stormy. They’re as soft as his voice. “You were smiling at what I sent you, weren’t you?” He lays his phone on the table, open on the chain of words that used to start my mornings. He doesn’t read a word aloud for me to respond to with a feeling. He tells me about one of his own.

“We started this game at our very first dinner together. You, me, and Calum, until the time zones meant he dropped out. Then I had months of waking up only to you. Yes, we emailed about foundation business. But the weekend when you brought Ian down for that photoshoot was the first time I’d seen you face-to-face in ages, and I couldn’t believe how good it was to see you. How it felt like I knew you better than anyone else around that table.” He looks up from his phone. “Or how I really wanted to know you even better.”

His smile is somehow helpless, and who the fuck cares that he’s creased and crumpled or that gingerbread crumbs dot his sweatshirt. Wintry sunbeams gild Trelawney trademark fairness and…

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