Chapter Fourteen Razor
chapter fourteen
Razor
Suddenly there was air.
Cold. Sharp. Real.
It hit my face as I stepped out of the courthouse, as if the world had been waiting to remind me what it felt like to breathe without permission.
For a second, I just stood there, lungs dragging it in, not trusting it.
Not trusting that I wasn’t about to be turned around, shoved back inside, told I’d imagined the whole thing.
Bail.
Didn’t feel like freedom. Not really. Just a longer leash.
But whatever, I was out.
Then I saw Lennon. Hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, shoulders set, leaning against his motor as if he’d been there a while.
Waiting. He stilled when he clocked me. Took me in.
Properly. Whole. Upright. Out. I didn’t expect anything from him.
No hug. No clap on the shoulder. I’d already fucked his life once just by being in it.
Dragging all this back to his doorstep again… that wouldn’t earn me a welcome home.
He had a life now. Plans. Something clean.
A life that didn’t involve court lists, remand wings, and men like me.
Still…He’d shown up.
But not gonna lie, his silence sucker-punched me.
The way he watched, face closed, bracing for impact instead of relief.
Then he jerked his chin towards the car, and that was it.
Our reunion. I glanced behind me. Looked around.
No sign of Tristan or anyone. So I got in.
Lennon started the engine. Then he took a breath and pulled away from the kerb.
London slid past the windows. Ordinary. Oblivious.
After a while, I couldn’t bear the silence or the distance between us, and I said the words that felt way too late and a little redundant, “Sorry. And thank you.”
He shut his eyes, then opened them and tightened his grip on the wheel. “Jesus, Rich. All I hope is that you’ve learnt something through all this.”
“I have.”
He glanced at me. “Yeah? What?”
The words came out before I could sand them down. “That this life ain’t for me anymore. I don’t want it. Don’t need it. That I’m expendable, and any wrong move I make bleeds straight into the people I love.” I swallowed hard. Forced myself to keep going. “And I’m really fucking sorry about that.”
The car stayed quiet for a few seconds. Traffic noise filling the gap.
“Okay.” Lennon peeked at me. “That’s a start.”
“I wasn’t carrying.”
He arched an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t.” I turned towards him. “I know there’s no reason for you to believe me.
I know what I am. I’ve been a dealer. An enforcer.
I won’t dress it up. But that day? I wanted out.
I was stepping back. I took a gamble. Double-fucking-bluffed it.
Thought if I showed up empty, it’d buy me room to say I was done.
Cormac didn’t like that. He threw this at me instead. ”
Lennon didn’t interrupt. But he didn’t let me off the hook either.
I didn’t deserve to be.
“It was a setup.” I glanced back out of the window. “And I walked into it because I thought I could control the fallout. Thought I could keep it from touching anyone else.” I shook my head. “I was wrong.”
The car rolled on, the city indifferent as ever.
Lennon exhaled through his nose. “You don’t get to be done because you want to be, Rich. You knew that the moment you kept climbing higher.”
“I know, but I’m trying to be honest about it. For once.”
He was quiet for a second. Then, “That’s another start, I suppose.”
I glanced at him. And there was the faintest lift at the corner of his mouth.
Not quite a smile, not yet, but near to one as there had been in a long time.
I mirrored it without thinking. A reflex.
We drove on like that, the city sliding past, Lennon filling me in on Keeley, on Mum, Amara and the twins, where they were.
And, more importantly, who had fixed all this.
I couldn’t even wrap my head around the gratitude. It sat too big in my chest, unshaped and dangerous. But then he pulled up outside his house, he killed the engine but didn’t get out straight away.
He glanced down at his hands. “There’s something else I hope you know.”
“What?”
“Him. That fella. Your defence brief. Tristan Hale-Fitzroy.” He glanced at me. “I hope you know what you’ve got there.”
He didn’t give me the chance to respond as he opened the door and got out, leaving me sitting there with that sentence ringing through my skull.
Eventually, I followed him inside, all the way to the kitchen where he was filling the kettle, moving as if this was any other morning and not the day my life had cracked open and rearranged itself.
I swallowed. “Len?”
“Yeah?” He flicked the switch to boil.
“I’m gay.”
Lennon looked up and held my gaze.
One beat.
Two.
My heart slammed so hard it hurt, and I couldn’t even pin down why.
This wasn’t a confession. It wasn’t shame.
It was older than that. Deeper. This was me wanting to be seen.
Wanting him to know all of me. The parts I’d buried because I thought I had to, the parts still knotted with guilt over Levi and what he’d been to me, and the part now tangled up with a man who’d risked everything he had to get me here.
Here. Free. Terrified.
Suddenly, Lennon smiled.
Big. Bright. Unmistakable.
He laughed too. Not taking the piss, nor even surprised. But a laugh that released the air from where it’d been trapped for probably years.
“I know, bruv.” He crossed the room in two strides and grabbed the back of my head, pulling me into a hug that was solid and anchoring and unavoidable. “I fucking know.” Then he kissed my temple, and I broke.
I cried. Properly. So did he, I think. But before either of us could say anything stupid, the knock at the door came.
Reality, right on cue.
It was the tagging firm. They fitted my ankle tag while Lennon stood off to one side, arms folded, jaw set. The plastic closed around bone with a dull click, like a leash. And a heavy reminder that none of this was finished.
When they left, Lennon passed me a bundle of sheets and a duvet.
“For the spare room.” He nodded towards the stairs. “Shove the two beds together. Make a double. As doubt you’ll fit on a single anymore, right?”
“I been sleeping on less than that inside.”
“Yeah. Guess you have.”
I took them and headed up.
The spare room held two singles set parallel.
Future-proofed. Ready for the twins once they outgrew the cots crammed side by side in Lennon’s room.
The sight of it punched low in my gut. It echoed too closely to the room he’d shared with Levi when we were kids.
Same narrow space, same intention of making room where there wasn’t much to spare.
This was a kids’ room.
His boys should have been in here.
The chest of drawers beside the beds held everything needed for growing babies.
Nappies, ointments, muslins, folded clothes.
Proof this space had already been claimed, even if the bodies weren’t in it yet.
And here I was, dragging the beds together, taking up room that wasn’t mine to take.
They might be babies now, still in their parents’ room and waking through the night.
They wouldn’t know. But trials dragged. Time stretched.
And I had no idea how long I was going to be stuck here, tagged and tethered to Lennon’s house, breathing in space belonging to someone else’s future.
The guilt settled heavy and sour.
I felt like shit for it.
But I focused on the practical job of making the bed, pushing them together as I quite fancied being able to starfish.
Then I was halfway through wrestling a double duvet into its cover when the door went again.
I sighed. Probably more paperwork. More rules.
More reminders of how narrow my world had become.
The door shut. The house went quiet.
“Who was it?” I called down, shoving a pillow into its case and chucking it at the end of the bed. When there was no answer, I called again, “Len?”
Then a figure emerged from the stairs and my heart leapt straight into my throat. Because there he was. Tristan. In the doorway.
My Tricky.
He didn’t move though.
Neither did I.
The space between us felt charged, as if the air had thickened into something we could choke on.
And I don’t know what I’d expected this to feel like.
Relief. Closure. Some clean, cinematic click where everything slid back into place.
Instead, it felt like standing on the edge of something unstable.
As if my body had recognised him before my head had caught up. Every instinct I owned had broken rank.
He swallowed. Hard. His throat worked as if forcing something down that didn’t want to go. “Lennon went out to get—”
I didn’t let him finish.
I crossed the space between us and took him by the back of the head, tangling my fingers in his hair, and kissed him.
Not soft. Not tentative. Brutal and wired.
Then I hauled him inside, kicked the door shut behind us, and pinned him to the back of it with my body and my mouth and a hunger that didn’t negotiate.
Our teeth knocked. His breath broke. The little sound he made wasn’t a word; it was a fracture, and I felt it in my chest as if he’d reached inside me and torn it loose.
He tasted of coffee and restraint.
I kissed him harder, wanting it all.
Weeks of concrete and cameras. Of hands that weren’t his.
Of nights where his name had been the only thing I hadn’t had to give up.
Every unsent thought, every swallowed word, every hour spent imagining this exact moment went straight into my mouth.
And he fisted his fingers in my T-shirt as I slid mine up his spine, dragging him closer and letting him groan against my lips.
Then he broke away to breathe, resting his forehead on mine. “I can’t…” He closed his eyes. “I really can’t.”
“Reckon you can.”
“I shouldn’t then. Really fucking shouldn’t.”