Epilogue Richie
Epilogue
Richie
One year later
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to waking with an alarm.
I’d never been much of an early riser. When you’re a drug dealer, most of the work comes at night. There’s no reason to see dawn unless you’re still up counting cash, eyes burning, hands stinking of metal and smoke and money.
Even before that, before all the shit keeping me wandering Hackney streets well into darkness, I’d never been one for mornings.
No alarm in our flat growing up. Mum worked nights, so she’d be dead to the world by morning.
Dad, when he’d been around, didn’t really have much of a work ethic to learn from.
Not sure he even had worked. And school was something I drifted in and out of when it suited me.
I barely made it in for first lesson most days, only to fuck off by lunch. No one gave a toss to stop me.
Things change, though.
People change.
But when the alarm shrilled through the bedroom I was currently sleeping in, my heart kicked hard against my ribs before my head caught up.
It was that hard split second where my body thought I was back where I had no control.
Back in a box where time didn’t belong to me.
Someone else deciding when I woke, when I moved, when I ate.
Okay yeah…technically, someone else was still deciding when the alarm went off. When the day started. When we got up and moved and showed up where we were meant to be. Only this time, I’d chosen it. Wanted it.
Turned out, I liked it that way.
Giving my life over to Tristan wasn’t half bad.
The low, steady hum of London outside the window and the warmth of his body pressed along mine, soft sheets twisting around our legs, was something I’d very much got used to waking up to.
We had a proper mattress, too. One of those memory foam ones that had long since taken the shape of us and refused to let go.
So I was very much settled here for the long haul.
Tristan, half-asleep, lifted his arm out from under the duvet to silence the alarm.
Long fingers, familiar movement, wrist brushing my chest as he fumbled for his phone.
The sound cut off, replaced by quiet again, and I reached for him, curled my arm around his waist and dragged him back against me, burying my face between his shoulder blades.
He made a small, protesting noise meaning absolutely nothing and settled anyway.
“Five more minutes then,” he muttered, voice rough with sleep.
“Dangerous talk,” I said into his skin, low and lazy.
He huffed a laugh, breath puffing out warm, and covered my hand with his. No rush to pull away. No flinch. Fingers lacing, easy as breathing.
That was still the strangest thing.
Not us…but the ease of us.
The flat itself felt like that too. Lived-in, softened around the edges.
Not the show-home perfection it had been when he first bought it, all clean lines and unused rooms. Now there were my boots by the door instead of hidden away.
A spare mug that had become my mug because he hated the chip in the rim.
My hoodie permanently slung over the back of the chair because he kept stealing it and I’d given up pretending to mind.
It was still his flat, though. Couldn’t pretend otherwise.
His name on the mortgage. Angel, Islington.
Third floor in a converted block with stairs always smelling faintly of polish and someone else’s dinner.
I’d helped him choose it six months back, when I was still rattling around in that piss-hole bedsit south of the river.
We’d been going back and forth for months.
Me staying here, him tolerating mine for a night at most, and neither of us pretending it wasn’t obvious which place felt safer.
Giving mine up was a risk though. Once you handed a place like that back to the council, you don’t get another one if things went sideways.
Not with my history. My record. So I clung onto it while we…
figured out whether we could even work out of the shadows.
And it didn’t happen all at once. But, eventually, I just started staying longer.
A night became two. Two became most of the week.
Then one morning I realised I had a side of the wardrobe.
I told myself it was practical. Easier to get to the gym from here.
Closer to the youth centre. Lies that barely deserved the name.
We both knew what it was.
Us.
Settling. Becoming something that stayed.
That forever we both branded about.
So a month ago, I handed the keys to my bedsit back and moved in properly. Gave up my lie-ins. Took on alarms. Chose this life, mornings and all.
Tristan slipped out of my arms and left me drifting in the warmth he’d left behind.
I hovered there for a minute, half-asleep, until I heard the shower kick on down the hall.
Then I dragged myself up. Didn’t want him thinking I was some layabout sprawled in his bed all day.
Not when he was out there doing real things.
I shoved on some boxers and went through to the kitchen, flicked the kettle on, set his coffee and toast going.
Because that was the bloke I was now. Domesticated.
Reliable. Someone who made breakfast instead of excuses.
A while later he came in, suited and ready for court, tie knotted, hair damp. Looking every bit the barrister he’d fought to become.
“What are you doing up?” He passed behind me, running a hand over my arse before kissing the side of my neck.
“Been up since you tried to murder me with that alarm.” I handed him a mug over my shoulder.
He smiled. “You love structure.”
“I tolerate it. For you.”
He took a sip, then set the mug down to wrap his arms around my waist, pulling me back into him. “What are your plans for the day?”
“Gym.” I turned and kissed him, sliding my hands under his blazer to feel him. “Lennon’s got the kids in early. Couple of school groups booked in.”
He nodded, already half in his day, and reached for the toast I’d made him, biting into it while checking the time on that very expensive watch of his.
One day, I’d get him something of my own to give.
Not heirloom-posh, not something passed down through generations.
Something earned. Something that meant us.
That thought sat in my chest most mornings. Kept me moving.
Gave me a goal to reach for.
Cause my work didn’t pay much. Not in the way my old life had.
Lennon and I ran Levi’s Gym in Hackney. Though it wasn’t just a gym anymore.
Tristan’s sister-in-law had come through in a way I’d never forget, helping us turn that crumbling council shit hole into a proper youth centre.
New flooring, proper ring, weights not rusted to death.
Offices. Classrooms. Showers that worked.
It was a charity now. Official. Registered.
Paperwork and safeguarding and funding bids and all the stuff I’d never thought I’d understand.
We got referrals from schools, youth offending teams, social workers.
Kids who were halfway down the wrong road.
Kids who needed somewhere to burn it out, punch it out, talk it out.
We ran boxing sessions, mentoring, workshops about what the streets actually cost. No glamour, no bullshit.
I told them the truth because I’d lived it.
Lennon handled the training. We both did talks in schools too.
Classrooms full of teenagers who thought gang life looked shiny until you explained the parts they never put on Instagram.
Funding came in the way it always does for places like ours.
Piecemeal and hard-won. Small donors. Local grants.
A couple of bigger charities who liked what we were building enough to back it properly.
Enough to keep the lights on, the doors open, and pay us a wage to cover the basics.
On paper, Lennon and I were listed as directors, which still made me laugh if I looked at it too long.
In reality, we kept our pay to minimum and poured the rest straight back in.
Into the kids. The building. And making sure the place kept running long after we were done for the day.
We even had staff now. Monica on reception, running the front desk with the sort of calm authority keeping everything from descending into chaos.
A handful of trainers on zero-hours who drifted in for evening sessions.
Volunteers who showed up week after week because they believed in it.
Some of them had lived the same life we were trying to steer kids away from.
The life I’d lived. Some had records of their own for some other reason.
Some were coppers giving up their free time because they knew locking a kid up wasn’t the same as giving them somewhere else to go.
It meant we could keep the place open late.
Not quite round the clock, but long enough for if someone didn’t want to go home, or didn’t have one to go to.
Giving them somewhere safe to land, rather than be coerced into a drug den by opportunists with no bleeding heart like mine.
Community support officers sent kids our way sometimes, too.
Gave a quiet nudge in our direction instead of a warning.
And yeah… every now and then one of those names would show up later in a case file Tristan was working on.
Full circle, in a way that made chest ache if I thought about it too hard.
Was honest work, though. Hard work.
But work that counted.
Lennon still kept the building-site job, which meant most of the day-to-day stuff landed with me.
Turns out running a charity ain’t that different from running a line.
Schedules. Stock. People. Risk. Paperwork instead of paranoia, but the bones of it were the same.
You kept things moving, kept everyone safe, spotted trouble before it kicked off. Different stakes. Better ones.