19. Henri #3
They moved through the aftermath in silence. Wiping skin, rinsing mouths, the ensuite sink running too loud for the small space. David tugged at his ruined dress shirt, the fabric clinging damply to his chest. He peeled it off, cheeks flushed, and held it out awkwardly.
Henri took it without a word and crossed to the linen closet tucked beside the sink. The door opened on neat rows. Spare shirts, pressed and folded, stacked alongside towels. He dropped David’s soiled one into the laundry bin for collection and pulled out a crisp white replacement.
“Here.” He passed it over.
David slipped into it, the cotton hanging too large, sleeves swallowing his wrists, shoulders drowning in the extra fabric. It made him look impossibly young, swallowed whole by someone else’s life. Henri’s gaze caught on it despite himself.
Patricia was going to have questions when David returned to them in a different colored, too-large button-down. Henri mentally grimaced at the lecture forthcoming.
David smoothed the hem, buttoning it clumsily, pocketing his phone as if ready to walk out. That was when Henri stopped him.
“Have a seat.”
Henri led the way back into the office and reclaimed his chair behind the desk, posture settling into practiced authority. He gestured toward the pair of seats opposite.
David crossed the room and lowered himself into one. The same chair Gabriel had occupied minutes earlier. The ghost of his brother’s scrutiny clung to the space, sharpening the wrongness of David sitting there now. Posture straight, eyes lowered, every inch of him bent toward obedience.
It made Henri want to shake him. It made him want to cover him with a blanket.
“Leave him,” Henri said, leaning forward. “Whatever you think Marc is, walk away. I’ll fund you. Tuition, housing, anything. Just get out.”
There was a long pause before David shook his head, small but certain. “I don’t want out. He’s… good to me.”
The words stunned him. Henri searched for the lie, the fear, but David’s voice carried neither.
“Good to you?” Henri forced, incredulous. “Marc?”
“I like the rules,” David said, cheeks flushed but steady. “I like knowing what’s expected. I like the way he takes care of things. I like… when he’s pleased with me.”
Henri’s chest clenched, brittle. David was describing Marc the way Henri would describe Michael. The rules as structure, obedience as safety, care woven into control. Hearing Michael’s language applied to Marc was obscene.
“You don’t understand,” Henri snapped. “Marc doesn’t care about you. You’re useful. For now. That’s all. The moment you stop—”
“I know what I am,” David cut in. Quiet, but unyielding. “I’m not deluding myself. But I also know what I want. What I need. Marc gives me that.”
“He’ll destroy you,” Henri whispered.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe that’s my choice.”
Choice. The one thing Henri had never been given. David was walking into the trap. Henri had been thrown. It made all the difference. It made no difference at all.
Henri’s hands clenched on the desk. He wanted to shake David, to scream that what felt like structure was a trap, that Marc’s care was a noose disguised as a safety net.
But David’s eyes held the same certainty Henri had seen in the mirror years ago, back when he’d still believed he could manage Marc, could make it work.
“You won’t listen,” Henri said, voice raw. “You think you understand what you’re signing up for, but you don’t. You can’t.”
“Maybe,” David said quietly. “But it’s still my choice to make.”
Henri had never had a choice. David was walking in with his eyes open, and somehow that made it worse.
“Get out,” Henri said, exhausted rage making his voice shake. “Just… get out.”
David rose and left. The door clicked shut with obscene politeness.
Henri sagged back. The room smelled of paper, wood, and the ghost of things without names. His hands shook once before flattening against his thighs.
London washed over him. Michael’s mouth at his throat in the shower, laughter over coffee, the warmth of dawn beside a body that asked for nothing but presence. The memory glowed with impossible brightness, beautiful and unreachable.
His phone buzzed. Two words.
Good boy.
He set the device down carefully, as if it might explode, and stood. The mirror over the credenza showed a stranger: tie skewed, cheeks flushed, eyes too old. He fixed what could be fixed. Shirt smoothed. Tie straightened. Expression neutral.
The calendar alert chimed on his computer. An earnings panel in three minutes. He gathered the EcoSphere printouts and stepped into the fluorescent silence of the executive hall.
But as he walked toward the conference room, Henri’s thoughts weren’t on integration timelines or ROI. They were on Michael’s hands in his hair, on the way Michael said his name like it meant something precious.
The memory was a lifeline he couldn’t reach, proof that somewhere, in some other life, Henri might be allowed to be more than useful.
He carried that thought with him all the way to the meeting room door.