Chapter Eight Razor #2
“Didn’t say I was fixing it.” I swiped a bit of drool from Maisie’s chin. “Said I’d sort something. I know people. Might be someone can talk to his brief. Make sure they don’t hang him for more than he did.”
“He did enough.” Keeley adjusted the bow on Maisie’s bald head. “But he’s still her dad.”
The baby chose that moment to grab a fistful of my shirt to jam in her mouth as if trying to eat her way out of this whole mess. Keeley watched us for a second, a crease cutting through all that teenage armour. “You’ll really try, yeah?”
My throat tightened. “Yeah, Kee. I’ll try.”
I had no idea what that meant. Try what? Fix it? Smooth it over? Pretend it wasn’t already spiralling? All I knew was that whatever I did would land me right back where I always seemed to end up—wedged between loyalty and survival, and the immovable force of Cormac O’Rourke.
Darren wasn’t just some idiot runner who’d got greedy.
He was my sister’s boyfriend. Father to my niece.
Family, whether I liked it or not. But he’d still crossed the line.
He’d walked into a rival crew’s territory with the Firm’s secrets sitting heavy on his tongue.
In any other circumstance, that would’ve been the end of him.
Clean. Quiet. Permanent.
Maisie let out a loud gurgle. Proper echo-y, wet.
And the sound shot up into the rafters, bouncing off the high ceiling so sharply it spun every head in the first few rows.
Lennon looked back first, eyes focusing on me, steady and unreadable.
Amara turned too, her smile small and sweet.
Lennon then gave a single nod, tight and heavy, and turned away again, back to the picture of his brother glowing in the candlelight.
And a flash, a punch of memory I didn’t go looking for, stabbed me in the chest.
That night Levi’d kissed me.
I’d known I was into fellas long before that.
Had the usual scraps of experience, tucked into shadows and never named.
But Levi… that was different. I was eighteen, him seventeen, staying over at his house after some late-night FIFA tournament gone to shit.
Lennon was out cold on the mattress beside me, snoring.
I got up to take a piss and nearly walked straight into Levi coming out of the bathroom.
Half-asleep, half-smiling, leaning on the doorframe as if he’d been waiting for me.
We had a moment. And he was close enough I could smell the mint on him.
Then he kissed me. It weren’t clumsy. Nor even hesitant.
Nah… he was sure. Surer than either of us had any right to be at that age.
And Jesus, it hit different. Hit deep. Made the ground tilt under my feet in a way messing around in shadows never had.
After that, it stayed exactly where he left it.
Out of sight. Behind closed doors. Never a relationship, nothing anyone could point at.
Pretty sure he was seeing others too. Didn’t matter. We pretended it wasn’t anything.
I swore I’d learnt my lesson.
That I’d never let myself slip or let something small turn into something that could swallow years of my life.
But here I was, staring at a picture of the boy who taught me exactly how fast that could happen, and knowing I felt the beginnings of it again. That stupid tug under the ribs. The one that doesn’t listen to logic. Doesn’t care if I’ve already been burnt.
I didn’t want to believe it.
Didn’t want to admit it.
But part of me knew I was setting myself up for the same fall with Tristan. And I couldn’t tell if that scared me…or if some wrecked part of me wanted it, anyway.
The vigil began and I lost myself in the rhythm of that instead.
In the hymns. The scripture. The poems I pretended I knew what they meant.
And when it ended, everyone flooding out into the warm evening, I handed Maisie back to Keeley and watched her join the others drifting towards the church gates.
At the front, Lennon was still there. Bent over the pram.
A double buggy, a proper sturdy thing, strapping the twins in.
Could’ve been the one I bought them, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.
Amara came over, touched my arm, then left with Keeley and the aunties.
Lennon stayed.
I watched him light a candle for his brother.
And I don’t know what possessed me, but I walked down the aisle.
Big-boy bollocks. Stupidity. Guilt. Take your pick.
The closer I got, the smaller I felt. But I took a candle from the rack, lit it from his flame, and stood beside him.
Shoulder to shoulder. Both of us gazing at Levi’s picture surrounded by twinkling light.
We didn’t talk.
Silence between us used to mean trouble.
Him pissed off; me acting as though I didn’t care.
But this… this was different. This silence felt like standing on the edge of something too deep to measure.
Hatred and blame tucked away to allow for the grief.
Shared. Unspoken. And somehow that was worse.
I could handle him hating me. I deserved his anger.
Welcomed it, even. But him being gentle?
Standing that close, brushing my shoulder with his as if he was holding me up as much as I was holding him?
That nearly dropped me.
Then Lennon, quiet as a prayer, barely more than breath, said, “Miss ya, bruv.”
And yeah, he could’ve been speaking to Levi. To the picture. To the boy we both lost. But I knew he wasn’t. Not this time. He’d said everything he needed to say to Levi. In his speech. The hymns. When his hands shook as he lit his candle. So those words were for me.
“Yeah.” I bowed my head. “Miss you too.”
Lennon looked at me then and I met his gaze through my lashes, bracing myself and hating that part of me still wanting his approval. Wanting to be seen by him as something other than a cautionary tale.
“Y’know,” he sniffed, rubbing his nose, “I got a little hope for you recently.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Ain’t had that for you in a while.”
I dropped my gaze to my boots. Concrete, scuffed leather, anything but his face. Heat burnt behind my eyes, threatening to turn public and ugly if I let it. I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Crying was for people who believed it changed things.
Lennon dipped closer. “Thought you might have found a reason to walk away.”
That made me look up. Our eyes locked. His steady, mine anything but.
Then he turned to face the other way and put his hand on my shoulder.
“So I brought you here to remind you what’ll happen to him if you don’t.
” He gave my shoulder a small squeeze. Gentle.
Grounding. Nothing like the punches life had thrown at either of us.
“You can still tell me, bruv. I’ll hear it. ”
“You’re talking as if you already know.”
“Course I do. Don’t mean I don’t wanna hear you own it.” Lennon dropped his hand from my shoulder.
I shook my head. “So you can watch it ripple out there? Watch the word spread. And what happens to me when everyone finds out?”
Lennon turned back to me. “Big bad Razor scared of sticks and stones?”
“I’m scared of blades in the dark, bruv. Of man deciding I’m a liability and sorting it quiet.”
“Then bounce,” he said flat. “Simple.”
“It ain’t simple.” I let out a dry laugh. “You don’t bounce from this. You disappear. Or you get found.”
“Found how?”
“With something heavy pressed behind my ear. Or tucked in my waistband, not mine, but suddenly it is.” I held his stare. “You know how that plays out.”
Silence stretched between us.
“So you reckon staying makes you untouchable?”
“If I make myself essential? Yeah. If I’m the one holding the routes, the books, the product? No one bins the engine keeping the motor running.”
Lennon snorted. “No one’s the engine, Rich. Not in this game.” He tapped my chest with the back of his hand. “Not even Razor.”
Then he walked away, out into the crowd gathering on the steps, towards Amara, the twins, the aunties, the family he’d held onto with both hands. The life he’d built. The life he kept standing even when everything else fell apart.
I stayed where I was for a second.
Just breathing.
Badly.
A tear slid down my cheek before I could stop it. Traitorous thing. I wiped it away fast. Anger. Shame. Grief all tangled in my chest. Then I spun on my heel and got the hell out of the church.
As I stepped down into the heat and noise, someone shouted my old name across the grass. “Oi, Rich! You coming Jules’ afters or you too fancy for rice and peas now?”
Laughter followed. A couple of heads turned.
I lifted a hand in some half-arsed wave and kept walking. I couldn’t face another room full of memories and folding chairs. Couldn’t be Rich for them, not after Lennon had looked straight through all that and still said he missed me.
Back in my car, I sat there with the door shut and the silence crushing.
My throat tightened enough to choke on. That lump sat dead centre, refusing to budge, making it hard to breathe, hard to swallow anything except guilt.
The sun had dipped low enough for a shaft of light to cut through the window, landing square on the dashboard and lighting up a small rectangle tucked beside the gear stick.
I sniffed hard, wiped the last of the wet from under my eyes, and picked it up. Read it.
The warning was there. Clear as sirens.
Don’t drag him down with you.
But underneath it, slipping between the caution and the guilt, was something uglier.
Want.
No. Not want.
Greed.
I shifted, hooking my thumb into my back pocket and pulling out my phone. The screen lit my face as if it was asking me if I was sure. I unlocked it anyway. Opened the thread. Stared at the number from that card as if it might burn me.
I should’ve put it away.
Should’ve left it.
Instead, after a long minute, I typed.
So where’s this window of yours at now?
I hit send before I could delete it. Before I could remember all the reasons this was a bad idea.
It was fine, though.
Cause me and him? That was just sex. Two bodies and a locked door. No promises. No futures. No consequences that mattered.
A man like Tristan Hale-Fitzroy sure as fuck wouldn’t fall for someone like me.