Chapter Twenty-One Razor #2
But Keeley had tried for her Maths and English whilst at that unit. Got herself onto a beautician course. She got a trade. Something solid. All made possible because of Tristan.
The thought of him tightened my throat.
Mum called occasionally, too. She’d finished rehab and moved in with a friend she’d met there. A bloke. I didn’t ask questions. Didn’t want details. But Keeley said she’d visited, said he seemed decent. Had a job. Turned up when he said he would.
That counted for something.
I lifted the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”
“Richie…”
My stomach dropped clean out of me.
“Tris…” I almost couldn’t get his name past my throat.
“How’s the new digs?”
My legs gave up on me. Properly. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, knees pulled in, Lennon’s phone clenched in my hand.
Lennon nodded at me, his smile not for getting rid, but for knowing what hearing that voice would do to me.
Then he stepped outside, shutting the door behind him to give me the privacy to fall apart.
I hadn’t been able to see him. Nor speak to him.
Part bail conditions. Part ongoing trial. Part survival.
I’d had scraps of information filtered through Lennon, through Imogen, through people who chose their words carefully.
I knew he’d gone from the hospital to a private place to recover.
Then back to his parents’ place out west. I knew he was okay.
That he’d healed. That he was expected to return to work soon.
But Imogen had been clear. As a witness, as someone tangled in the same case, there was no version of this where we could be anywhere near each other.
And honestly, I’d believed six months was plenty long enough for him to realise he was better off without me. That I didn’t belong in his world. That I had nearly cost him everything and this endless waiting was one sided.
I’d made my peace with that.
I was grateful he was alive. That he was well. That loving me hadn’t broken him beyond repair.
But I’d be lying if I said his absence hadn’t stung.
“Small,” I said, my voice still rough.
“But it’s yours.”
“Yeah.” I bit my lip. “It’s mine. How are you?”
“Bored out of my mind.”
I snorted. “What, even with all that luxury you live in?”
“It’s a well-rehearsed myth that money relieves monotony.”
“Says someone who has it.”
He laughed. “True. You’re right. You win.”
I glanced around at my dingey bedsit. “Ain’t sure I have.”
The silence following wasn’t awkward. It was necessary. A moment to recalibrate. Listen to each other breathe. To know we were both still there. Alive and kicking.
Then I couldn’t help myself. “Miss you, Tricky.”
“Miss you too, Richie.”
I smiled, the name sounding exactly right in his mouth.
“Anyway,” he cleared his throat, “the reason for my call… the Hale-Fitzroys would like to extend you an invitation to dinner.”
I furrowed my brow. “You what?”
“Dinner. Here. You. Me. And various members of the Hale-Fitzroy clan who wish to express their gratitude for me not dying.”
“Are you taking the piss?”
“No. Apparently, they rather like me alive. Who knew, eh?”
I snorted. “I meant the dinner. You can’t be serious?”
“Are you busy?”
I barked out a laugh, the sound half disbelief, half something dangerously close to happiness. “My diary’s been empty for months.”
“Well, come to dinner and we might change that. Hale-Fitzroy’s don’t tolerate bone idleness.”
I drew in a slow breath. It sounded unreal. Me, invited to his family’s table. Me. The man his father had once tried to bury. The man he believed should be buried.
“Are you sure?”
“If travel’s an issue, we’ll send a car. Be ready for six.”
“Tris—”
“Yeah?”
Of course, I wanted to see him. And not just to touch him again, though that was there, simmering under the surface. But more because I wanted to hold him. Check he was okay. Feel him in my arms and breathe him in. I hadn’t pictured our reunion to be so…formal. Not with how we started.
But the need to see him outweighed my fear.
“What the fuck am I meant to wear?”
He laughed. Warm. Familiar. “It’s just a house, Richie. I wouldn’t care if you turned up in grey joggers.”
“That might genuinely be all I own.”
“Then wear them.”
“Fuck…” I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed the phone briefly to my forehead, then lifted it back to my ear. “Alright. See you later.”
“I’ll be waiting, Richie.”
I smiled. “Yeah? I have been too.”
I ended the call and stayed there on the floor, pressing the phone to my forehead as if it might steady me. Lennon came back in, took one look at my face, and chuckled.
I glanced up at him. “Fancy going shopping?”
He rolled his eyes, then reached down and hauled me back onto my feet.
The way he’d been trying to do for years.
* * * *
A few hours later, I was sitting in the back of a black Range Rover probably costing more than every place I’d ever lived put together, dressed in a version of myself I barely recognised.
White top. Clean one. Fitted overshirt that didn’t smell of anyone else’s life.
Dark jeans that still creased when I moved.
New boots that hadn’t learnt my step yet.
Fresh cut. Clean shave. Even fresh boxers.
The full transformation, courtesy of the first benefits package I’d ever seen that didn’t come with a knife hidden inside it.
I’d scrubbed myself raw in the poxy little shower at the bedsit, mould and all, then stolen a tester of Hugo Boss from Boots because apparently that was what I was meant to smell like now.
Clean. New. Revived.
London slid past the windows in streaks of colour and light, and I chewed my thumbnail, the first real craving for a cigarette I’d had in months hitting hard. I didn’t have time to tell the fella to pull into the nearest petrol garage so I could get my fix as the car slowed. Then it stopped.
I looked up. “Fuck me.”
“Excuse me, sir?” The driver glanced over his shoulder at me.
I gestured weakly out the window. “This is… this it?”
“The Hale-Fitzroy residence.” He nodded. “They’ll be expecting you.”
Yeah. That was the problem.
The house rising behind wrought-iron gates did not belong on the same map as me. Cream stone. Tall windows glowing warm behind heavy glass. Perfect hedges. A sweep of garden looking assembled from flat pack rather than grown.
It wasn’t a home.
It was a statement.
I got out of the car half convinced this was some elaborate mistake. Or worse—a setup. Courts hadn’t finished me, so maybe Wolfe had found another way in. Invite me here. Close the gate. Clean ending.
The other half of me didn’t care.
Not if Tristan was inside.
I blew out a breath and pressed the buzzer.
A woman’s voice came through the speaker. “Gate’s open. Please come to the door.”
I glanced up and clocked the camera trained straight on me, so I smiled. Badly. Then the gate slid open, and I walked up the path, boots crunching softly on pale gravel that probably got hoovered.
The door was huge. Heavy. I’d bet it hadn’t ever been kicked in.
I stepped onto the tiled porch and raised my hand to knock.
It opened.
A woman stood there in a neat black dress and a white apron. Housekeeper, I guessed. Everything about her said efficient, discreet, and absolutely not surprised to see me. “Mr Slade?”
“Uh…yeah.”
She opened the door wider. “Please, come in.”
I crossed the threshold and walked straight into the biggest fucking house I’d ever seen. Light poured down from a glass dome somewhere high above. Marble floors. A sweeping staircase curving up with plants the size of small trees. Oil paintings in heavy frames. Statues on pedestals.
It was beautiful.
And it wasn’t for lowlife scum like me.
“May I take your coat?” The woman held out her hand.
I wasn’t actually wearing one. Coats were expensive. This was an overshirt cardigan thing that Tristan had said I looked homely in, and I wasn’t sure if I was meant to keep that on. “Uh—”
“It’s all right, Mrs Linton.”
That voice cut through the room as if it had a direct line to my chest.
I turned.
And there he was. Standing a few feet away, having come in from a side corridor as if this were all perfectly normal. Chinos. Soft blue shirt. Sleeves rolled. Hair styled the way it always was when he wanted to pretend he hadn’t tried.
Tristan.
Alive. Upright. Colour in his cheeks. No blood. No bruises. No damage.
“I’ll take it from here.” He smiled at the housekeeper.
She nodded and disappeared without a sound.
And I couldn’t stop staring at him.
“Welcome.” He gestured grandly, almost in mockery, at the lavishness from which he came.
I didn’t think. Never had been good at that. And I crossed the space between us, sliding an arm around his waist, the other coming up to the back of his neck, and kissed him.
Didn’t ask. Nor pause. And couldn’t give a fuck who saw.
If he pushed me away, I’d take it.
If his family walked in, fuck it.
If this whole place collapsed on top of us, at least I’d have this.
But he didn’t push me away. He kissed me back.
Sliding his hands up my neck, pulling me closer, as if the waiting had killed him too.
The kiss didn’t last long, though. It broke into something quieter.
Messier. And I buried my face into the warm space beneath his jaw, his arms tight around the back of my neck, and we stood there, in the middle of that vast, perfect house, holding each other.
No words.
No audience.
Him in my arms and the solid, living proof that he was okay. And the way he held me back, not out of politeness or obligation, but because he wanted to. Needed to? That did me in.
I sniffed, sharp and stupid.
“Hey.” Tristan stroked his hands up and down my neck. “It’s all right. Honestly. They’re not that frightening.”
I pulled back enough to look at him. He smiled as if choosing lightness on purpose. I fucking loved him for that.