Chapter Twelve Razor #3
“Yeah.” He gave a short laugh that never made it past his throat.
Nerves, not humour. “I’d had some rather upsetting news and dealt with it in the very healthy manner of two bottles of Rioja and a generous pour of Rare Cask.
And in that delightful haze, I read your message as…
positive. Warm. Something it clearly wasn’t. ”
Cold settled in my chest. “I see.”
He nodded, eyes fixed on the canal as if it might rinse him clean. “I seem to keep making that mistake around you. So, please accept my apologies. Maybe it’s an east–west divide thing.”
“Maybe.”
Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe we were the same kind of coward when it came to grief. Looking for somewhere to put it. Someone solid to lean into. A body instead of silence.
“So, yeah.” He exhaled, shoulders dipping. “I came to the club thinking you’d be waiting for me. Which… obviously was insane. And when you weren’t, I drank more. Because that’s what one does when one’s an idiot.”
Jesus.
I’d done the same thing, hadn’t I? Different night. Same instinct. I’d gone to him after Levi’s vigil with the same half-formed need. Not for answers, not even for comfort. Just to not be alone with it.
He frowned, blinking back into the present. “Is it always that busy in there?”
“On a Friday, yeah.”
“Right. And they’re all…” He gestured vaguely, suggesting drink. Laughable really.
“That’s a quarter of what they’re on.” I held his gaze when I said it.
“Right. Of course.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Brilliant. A barrister who works in criminal defence forgets what drugs look like in the wild.”
My mouth twitched before I could stop it.
“Well, whatever it is you sell, it works. Gets them utterly delirious. I got accosted. Propositioned. And I think I might’ve been too drunk to hold myself upright.”
“Hm.”
“Somehow, I ended up on the dance floor. Things are…” He winced. “…vague after that.”
I looked back out over the canal. The oil-slick shimmer on the water. A moorhen cutting through it like it didn’t give a fuck what floated on the surface. My jaw tightened, worrying my teeth on the inside of my cheek.
I remembered too much.
I wasn’t going to give him details he didn’t need.
When I turned back, I kept my voice even. “What bad news?”
“Hm?”
“You said you’d had upsetting news.” I tilted my neck. “What was it?”
“Oh.” He knitted his brows. “My father. He… he has cancer. Lung cancer.”
My chest gave. Sharp and sudden. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Oddly, I’m more annoyed he didn’t tell me.
Everyone else has known for months. And while I realise I haven’t exactly been son of the year recently, and have made a point of…
rebelling within comfortable, well-funded boundaries, I still thought I might have heard about it.
” He shrugged. “Perhaps in the Hale-Fitzroy press release.”
“You have a family newsletter?”
“No. I was being facetious.” He huffed again. “Though the WhatsApp group often reads as if it’s been professionally edited.”
I pushed off the rail and stepped closer. “Do you always talk this much when you’re hungover?”
“Yes. I’m a barrister. It’s what we do. Talk our way out of bad situations.”
“You’re very good at it.”
“Thank you. I’ll tell my KC supervisor to add that to my review.”
I snorted. Then straightened. “I have to go out.”
“Right. Yes. Of course. If you let me get dressed, I’ll—”
“Stay.”
He blinked. “Sorry?”
“Stay here.” I shrugged as if it didn’t matter. As if I hadn’t thought about it at all. “I’ve got food. Somewhere. Water. My hangover cure is full-fat Coke and a Ginsters. You can judge me later. Or tell me what you want, and I’ll grab it while I’m out.”
“You… want me to stay here?” He looked genuinely thrown. I didn’t blame him. “While you go do whatever it is you do on a Saturday?”
“I need to go clean up some shit I should’ve handled last night.
” A pause. Truth, but not all of it. “It won’t take long.
And honestly, full disclosure, I’m not convinced you walking out of here right now wouldn’t come back to bite me on the arse.
” I raked a hand over my scalp. “So if you could just hang on until I get back, assuming I’ve made the coast clear, it’d ease my mind. ” I met his gaze. “Work for you?”
The look on his face answered before he did because he smiled.
“Well… if it eases your mind,” he said through a grin, “I’ll reluctantly oblige.”
“Reluctantly?”
“I have a life, you know.”
I cocked my head, studying him. The deflection. The bravado. The way his eyes gave him away anyway. Then I closed the distance properly. And I dumped my hands on his waist. I didn’t kiss him, despite the pull of his mouth, the want curling sharp and insistent in my gut.
Instead, I lifted him.
Dragged him clean off the ground.
His breath left him in a startled rush, but his body answered instinctively.
He wrapped his legs around me, sliding his arms up around my neck as if he’d been waiting for it.
That’s when I kissed him. Not rushed. Not rough.
Just sure. And I carried him back inside, across the open space, until the bathroom door was the only thing left between us and everything else.
I nudged it open with my foot, set him down under the shower, then reached past him to turn the water on before either of us could overthink it.
Then I took his fucking clothes off and gave him what he needed to forget.
By the time I left him there, clean, breathless, wrung out under the steam, I didn’t know whether he’d sobered up. But I knew one thing for certain: whatever he’d come to me for last night, it wasn’t just that anymore.