“Why didn’t you?”
Jonah gave a one-shouldered shrug. He wriggled down the roof so that he could lie back on the tiles, bracing himself with a foot against the gutter.
Ben looked at him, his own hands, the roof tiles, and then out, over the night city. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were?” As if that was the most important thing, but it was the answer Ben needed now.
“I didn’t want to.” Jonah’s voice was calm and remote. “I didn’t want you to know. I wanted you to see me. Not a windwalker or a practitioner. Not a thief. Not what I do, or what I can do, just who I am. Just Jonah, who loved you. If I’d told you—what would I have said? By the way, lover, I walk on air. By the way, I’ve been stealing for a living since I was twelve. By the way, you can’t trust me.” He stared up at the sky. “I didn’t want that to be true. I wanted to be someone else. With you.”
Ben clamped his lips together, squeezed his nails into his palms.
“I’m not very good at planning,” Jonah went on. “I should have known I couldn’t stay in one place, or if I did, that I had to travel further to steal more safely. I didn’t. I wanted to be with you, not go off to steal in Manchester or Birmingham. It was stupid. I do know that, but I…believed it would work, I believed in us and we seemed to be charmed. Until they found me.”
“They found you, and you ran,” Ben managed. “You used me and you left me behind, and they put me in prison for it.”
The night lay between and over them like a quilt.
“Was it bad, in gaol?” Jonah asked at last.
That question was so enraging, so utterly Jonah. “Yes,” Ben said distantly. “It was very bad.”
“And you lost your job.”
“Dismissed with dishonour.” The words were sour in his mouth. “They stripped me of my post, while people watched. The landlord evicted us. My parents disowned me.”
“Oh God.” Jonah had met Ben’s parents, dropped by with him for tea. Nice chap. Our Benedict’s pal. “Oh, Ben.”
“They’ll never speak to me again.” Ben had to swallow hard against that thought. His voice shook. “I lost them, I lost everything when I lost you. When you left me behind.”
Jonah stared at the moon. “I want to tell you why,” he said at last. “Why I ran then.”
Ben felt the anger rise. “You already told me.” He mimicked Jonah’s voice. “You always run.”
Jonah sat up, a quick, fluid movement that made Ben flinch with an instinctive fear of the drop that yawned below them. “I don’t ask you to like it or to forgive me. I don’t expect that. But if you’ll listen—”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to know!” Ben shouted. “I don’t want to know what was more important than me!”
His voice echoed flatly off the roof tiles. Below them, a dog gave a single gruff yelp.
“I could tell you—” Jonah began.
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. The way you left me there, you sent me to gaol as surely as if you’d testified against me. There’s nothing you can say that would change anything.”
“It won’t change that. But if you understood—”
“I’ll never understand. Or, no. I already do. You said you loved me, but you saved yourself. That’s all there is.”
They stared at each other, lost in hurt, the three feet between them a chasm.
“Will you meet me?” Jonah asked at last.
“What? Why?”
“Let’s say Regent’s Park. Queen Mary’s Gardens, tomorrow at four. If you were ready to listen to me, I could tell you things, and if you’re not, we’ll…talk about something else, I suppose.”
“Is there anything else to talk about?”
“I don’t know.” Jonah pulled his knees to his chest, hunching over himself. “Maybe not. We could find out, if you come.” He glanced at Ben, hesitant and silenced, and went on, “Well, I’ll be there. And if you’re not there, I’ll be there next Wednesday at four, and the next, and the next, until I have to leave London, which may happen. But I’ll keep coming back, when I can. In case you want to hear.”
Ben rubbed his hands over his eyes. He felt drained. “Jonah…”
“I can’t do much else,” Jonah said. “I made all the wrong decisions. I’m not very good at planning. I made a terrible mess of you, of us, but I can give you some sort of explanation, when you want to hear it. Or if you want to hate me forever and never know why, you can do that too. I don’t have many choices left.”
“And what if I turn up tomorrow with the Met and the justiciary for you?”
“Then I’ll run.”