Twenty Four.

I find him sitting by the sea monster mural. Someone has lit a fire in an oil drum, further down the slope. He flickers in its glow.

"Hey." I climb up and sit beside him, pulling my knees up and resting my head on them to look at him. The strain of this push and pull between us, rubs out my anger with him, leaving behind exhaustion. "Where'd you go last night?"

"I'm sorry."

I look up to the sky in an attempt not to roll my eyes. He spots it.

"Shit, I know I keep saying that, but it's true. I had to get out of there before I did something stupid."

"Like?"

He passes on that one and asks, "Is Angie okay?" instead.

"How'd you know about Angie?"

He shrugs and tears at the clump of grass by his trainers. "I waited to make sure you got back okay."

"Why didn't you come over? Talk to me?" I sit up straight, swatting at a few midges that have started to circle over us.

"It's better that I stay away."

"How'd you work that out?"

He sits forward and clasps his hands against his forehead. I see his knuckles, split red and raw. I want to ask about them, but I don't want to give him a reason to avoid answering the first question. He drops his arms and starts to talk to the view, town flickering to life, red sky at night. I want to know what is so bad he has to cut himself off.

"I have some stuff … to do with where I grew up, where I came from."

"And you think I couldn't handle it?"

"I don't think you should have to."

"But that's my choice."

He looks at me, hard enough to turn me inside out and upside down. I withstand it, reflecting it right back at him. A challenge. He turns away first.

"I've grown up in the system." He lets it float between us for a moment. "Got bounced around for years between foster parents and homes. Some good, some not so good. I met Jay at one of the group homes. He wasn't always bad news. Not like now. He had his moments though, but for a while we got on okay." His lighter appears, on off, on off. "We got into shit, ended up in trouble, but nothing major. It all changed when the old McAvey warehouse burned down. They used to make sweets there. The hard-boiled ones that break your teeth."

He smiles and then looks back to his hands, shaking it away like it doesn't belong. "Anyway, I had a reputation, the police were straight onto me the second they saw the smoke. We used to hang out there sometimes. You know, a place we could do whatever we wanted. Thing was, a couple of homeless people and some druggies lived in the basement for as long as they could before the police moved them on. The police hadn't bothered for a while, so … a couple of people died. People we kinda knew."

I try my hardest not to, but the image burns into my brain like a searing hot brand. "You got out okay?"

"We weren't there, and I didn't have anything to do with it. But we still got busted. They still wanted to blame me. Showing me the pictures of the victims." He shrugs, but the pain is a shudder across his features. "They couldn't pin much on me, but Jay was carrying an ounce of weed and with priors, he got nine months. Long enough to lose him."

I wonder what this means, but I can't stick needles in him to draw more information. I already have more than enough blood.

"Then Jay ended up in juvie again, for the same kind of stuff. I ended up here." He shifts almost imperceptibly, but his hand brushes up against mine in the grass. "Keeping you out of trouble."

"I'm used to all this." I wave at the tower blocks in the distance, the graffiti, the shadows. "You don't need to worry about me."

He looks like he doesn't believe a word.

"What happened between you and Jay, that you owe him?"

"He thinks he took the fall for me. He didn't, but that doesn't change what he believes. They got him for the drugs. He knew about me and fire. He didn't believe it wasn't me and always hated I wanted to be something else other than what we were born into."

When he says things like that I see my own mirror image.

"I guess in some ways I do owe him. But the things he's willing to ask for, their cost is too high."

"What does he want?"

"Doesn't matter because it won't happen."

I try to piece his disjointed history together to make a clearer picture, but like a magic eye, I can't see what's really underneath if I'm not looking at it in the right way. "You were in juvie, too?"

"For a while."

"But you said…"

"I lied."

"Why?"

"I lie to myself, too, sometimes," is all he says.

He passes the flame of the lighter back and forth across his skin. Hovering for what seems too long before he does it again. I'm about to reach out and take it off him, when it goes back in his pocket.

He reaches over and wraps his arm around my thigh, tugging me closer.

"What happened there?" I touch the pink edges of his damaged knuckles, he flinches but leaves his hand on my leg.

"A conversation."

I raise my eyebrows at him but he's decided sharing is over for now.

I think of a hundred other things I want to ask. But his eyes are like fingerprints against my skin and kisses on my lips. I shake my head. "You should have just told me the truth, it doesn't change anything." He's so close I feel the warmth of my own words bouncing off his skin.

He lifts a finger to my chin, tilts it up so my mouth is a whisper from his. "Can I kiss you?" he asks me again. He didn't have to, I'm already falling.

This time, he's slow and soft. My pulse rushes, a waterfall through my ears. He tastes like sugary pop and Wrigley's, smells like smoky fires and soap. He takes his time, hand wrapping around the back of my neck to pull me closer. I twist and climb onto his lap, his lips finding my neck with a groan, breath humid against my skin. My hands slide into his jacket, his warmth, as he cups my face, his kisses going deeper and deeper until I'm dizzy from not breathing.

We stay under the sea monster, until the stars appear, fighting a losing battle to be brighter than the world below. Nothing is brighter than us.

AN: Thank you, thank you. You're all awesome.

Love to my girls, Kim, Choc and Gemma for helping me get through this chapter.