“Who are you….” He paused for second, trailing off, as something like recognition lit up his eyes. He looked like he knew me, which made me feel weird. Running a hand over his stubbled jaw, he swore under his breath. “Fucking hell, Lille.”

“You know Lille?” I questioned breathlessly, my heart rate picking up as I stepped closer.

“Yeah, I know her.” He nodded to the back of the tent. “Come with me.”

Instead of leading me out to the front, like the woman had instructed, he led me in the opposite direction. We exited the tent and he stopped, pulling out a smoke and lighting up. He side-eyed me, not saying a word.

“Um….” I began, feeling nervous. He might have been sex on a stick, but he was also scary and intimidating. These days I was used to hanging around my clients (who were all women) and my little boy. Men were an area I was completely out of practice with. Of course, I had my brothers, but I didn’t see them very often.

“How did you know to come here?” he asked.

Anxious, I fumbled in my bag. “I got this letter.”

Now he was swearing again. “For fuck’s sake.”

I frowned. “What?”

He seemed apologetic. “I’m sorry. My girlfriend likes to meddle. You shouldn’t have come.”

“You’re Lille’s boyfriend?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh.”

My voice grew so quiet it was practically a whisper. “Do you…do you know King?”

His eyes went sad, like he felt sorry for me. Something thick and heavy lodged in my throat. Was I too late? Had his self-destructive path reached its end? The thought took the strength right out of me. I was about to ask him what had happened when another man exited the tent. He was tall, too, but with shorter hair and a smarter dress sense. He was also very handsome, and I wondered just how many drop-dead gorgeous men just so happened to be hanging around this circus.

“What’s happening, bro?” he said. American. It was becoming hard to keep up with all the accents. Before the first man, whose name I still didn’t know, could answer, the American’s eyes wandered to me. He took me in quickly, shrewdly, and seemed to immediately recognise who I was. It didn’t take him a few minutes like it had the first man. And his reaction to me was a whole lot different, too. A wide, almost giddy smile spread across his lips.

“Holy shit! It’s you,” he said with a gasp, and came to put his hands on my shoulders, squeezing them as he beamed down at me. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Okay, now I was confused. “Uh, me neither?”

“I’m Jay,” he went on. “The grumpy one’s Jack. He’s my brother. Crappity crap, you’re real, Alexis. You’re a living, breathing woman. For a while there we thought you might be a ghost.”

“Hold up a sec,” Jack, the grumpy one, interrupted. “Don’t fucking tell me you were in on this, too?”

Jay rolled his eyes and grinned. “Of course I was.”

“And Matilda?” Jack asked.

“Nah, it was just me and your woman. We were kinda sneaky about it.”

“This isn’t a joke, Jay. This is serious. King isn’t….”

“King will be fine,” Jay intoned meaningfully, turning his head to his brother before looking back at me. “Once he sees his beautiful Alexis, he’ll be doing fucking cartwheels.”

“No, he won’t.”

“He will.”

“He won’t.”

Seriously, I was going to get whiplash going back and forth between these two. I interrupted loudly, hands on hips. “Will one of you just bring me to him?” I stated, my voice on the shaky side.

Jay’s face went serious. “Yeah, sorry, come with me.”

“I’m going to find Lille,” Jack muttered before stomping off. He sounded like he had a serious bone to pick with her, and I didn’t fancy being Lille right then.

I tugged on Jay’s shirt sleeve and he stopped walking to face me. “What’s wrong, darlin?”

I bit on my lip, emotion filling my lungs and my eyes growing watery. “How is he?”

“Ah, shit, babe, don’t cry,” he said, and stepped forward, startling me when he pulled me into a hug. I’d been alone for so long, lonely, and this stranger hugging me just made things worse. His kindness was more than I could handle as I let him embrace me. It felt good to have a man close, to smell one, clean and warm. I couldn’t have anticipated the emotional effect it would have on me.

He began rubbing the centre of my back soothingly, and I tried my best to blink away my tears. I stood back, shaking my head. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve been searching for him for years. This is all a little much right now.”

Jay’s brows drew together in empathy as he let out a gruff breath and placed his hands on his hips. He stared at the ground before meeting my gaze. “Look, I’m not gonna lie. He’s in a bad way. Lille didn’t exactly say it explicitly in her letter, but fuck, your man’s got a serious drink problem. I’m gonna take you to him, you’re gonna see him, but he sure as hell isn’t gonna be the same as you knew him. You need to prepare yourself for that, Alexis, okay?”

I inhaled, and even though his words were a grave warning, there was something reassuring about them. “Okay.”

Jay nodded, satisfied. “Good. Now, this isn’t going to be easy, but I think that if he sees you, if he knows you still exist, then we can all work together to pull him back from the brink. You’ll be the catalyst. You’ll be the goal for him. I mean, if he knows he can have you back, then I think he’ll even do all the hard work himself.” A pause as he eyed me. “He can have you back, right?”

Without thinking, I nodded. Then I simply stared at him, absorbing everything he’d just said. A silence fell between us. Memories bombarded me, all the things that King had been through in his life.

Jay’s voice was a soft whisper, his eyes flittering over me, studying me like I was a book and he was straining to see the words. “Jesus, Alexis, what the fuck happened to him?”

My face went sad. “So much and too fast. I have a feeling he still doesn’t know that he didn’t do what he thinks he did.”

“What does he think he did?”

I wasn’t sure what it was about this guy, but he had a way of pulling all the information right out of me. My voice was a whisper when I replied, “He thinks he killed someone.”

Jay absorbed this quickly, his posture stoic. “But he didn’t?”

“No, he didn’t. He should have. If anyone deserved to kill that bastard, it was King, but he didn’t.”

“Christ.”

“Jay.”

“Yes?”

“Take me to him. Please.”

“Okay, darlin’, okay. Come on,” he said, and threw his arm protectively around my shoulders. He led me farther from the circus tent and towards a cluster of mobile homes camped out nearby. In the centre of them was a large open-air gazebo with tables, chairs, and a few gas cookers. There were a couple of people milling about, but not many. My eyes scanned the space frantically, desperate for a glimpse of King. Jay stopped walking, and so did I.

That’s when I saw him.

He was so changed, I wasn’t even sure how I recognised him, but I did. My heart would know him anywhere, in any guise. He sat on a bench, his body slumped over the table, his fingers clasped around a bottle of liquor. His hair was long and dirty, his face heavily shrouded by a beard. He wore filthy, unkempt clothing, a grey jacket with a woollen jumper beneath, worn jeans and muddy boots.

I couldn’t believe this was the same man who once sat in his office overlooking the Thames, a ruler of his own universe, the best at whatever he set his mind to. Now he was reduced to a homeless drunkard, completely unrecognisable. I really didn’t understand how the world worked sometimes.

At thirty-three, he’d been at the top.

Now thirty-nine, almost forty, he was at the bottom.

And yet, his very presence still made my heart pound, still made my lungs fill up with too much air. He was alive. He was breathing. And I didn’t care what form he took, so long as I could have him back. My legs gave out, but Jay steadied me. I couldn’t take my eyes off King, and he didn’t even know I was there.