Chapter Eighteen Razor
Chapter eighteen
Razor
I don’t know what possessed me to sit on Tristan’s doorstep.
Instinct, maybe.
The same part of me that knows where to stand in a room when a blade comes out, or when someone’s about to crack. The part that looks for exits and shadows and places feeling… safe.
And Christ, this wasn’t safe.
I knew that. I’d known it all week.
Days of shit stacking on shit. Jobs that should’ve been clean turned complicated.
Decisions I didn’t want to make but made anyway because that’s what happens when you’re the one people look at and wait for.
When Razor has to show up and Richie gets locked in a box somewhere dark and quiet so he doesn’t fuck things up by feeling anything.
I’d stepped fully into it this week. Did what needed doing.
Said what needed saying. Signed off on things that would echo later whether I liked it or not.
Had Doyle on my back, too. Him and me doing jobs together.
Me, watching and learning the harder side of the business.
Cormac wanted me to see it. What waited for me on the next rung up the ladder.
And all the while, I kept telling myself the same thing:
Tristan doesn’t belong in this.
That weekend was a mistake.
Park it. Leave it there. For his sake. For mine.
Except I hadn’t parked it.
It had followed me. In the gaps between calls. The silence following after the jobs were done. And in the moments when there was nothing left to react to and my head started filling in the blanks.
So here I was.
On his doorstep. Like some fucking idiot. Like a man who didn’t know where else to put himself when the noise finally caught up.
I pushed up onto my feet when I heard him. Footfall, breath, the faint hiss of music bleeding from earbuds. He slowed, tugged one bud free, then the other, dragging his phone out of the pocket of his running shorts.
And fuck.
He looked… clean.
Golden with sweat and effort and real life, his body burning things off the proper way instead of letting them rot inside. He ran because it made him feel alive, not because he was trying to outrun something. Not because the world behind him carried guns and knives.
And me?
I was a stain just standing there.
This was his building. His doorstep. His world. And I’d turned up with mine clinging to me. Not my own blood or bruises this time. No. Worse. Someone else’s. Those that only come from catastrophic decisions I can’t undo.
He looked at me.
And my chest buckled, sharp and ugly, because I could see it hit him all at once. The surprise, the worry, the why are you here he didn’t say out loud. I shouldn’t have come. I knew that even as my mouth opened.
“Hey.” My hands were useless at my sides, feeling the pull of him and the recoil at the same time. Wanting to step closer. Wanting to step back. Wanting to apologise and wanting to disappear.
I didn’t want him to see me like this.
Yet somehow, he was the only person I trusted to see me like this.
“Hi.” Tristan stopped a careful distance away, as if proximity itself might be a mistake. He looked different in running gear. And it made the ache under my ribs flare sharp and stupid.
“Sorry to just…” I gestured vaguely at the door, the building, him. “Turn up but…”
The words died before they made it out. Because the truth sitting in my head was too honest to say out loud.
I need you.
I don’t know where else to go.
The world I live in has finally caught up with me.
“I’ve not heard from you.” He checked his phone as if it might suddenly light up with all the messages I should’ve sent.
“No.” My voice came out rough. “I’ve been away.”
He lifted his gaze. “Away where?”
“Somewhere I couldn’t take my phone.”
He bowed his head, nodding once. He didn’t ask for more. He didn’t need to. Pupil Barrister Tristan Hale-Fitzroy, according to his business card still in my car, would understand exactly what that meant. No GPS. No trace. No evidence I’d existed anywhere for days at a time.
A thug, doing what thugs do.
He folded his arms, hugging himself, and I saw the war play out behind his eyes. Duty versus instinct, sense versus the part of him caring far more than he wanted to admit.
“Why are you here?”
I could’ve lied. I was good at that. I could’ve deflected. Flirted my way past the tension. I could kiss him. Carry him upstairs and bury myself in him, the way we’d been doing to each other for a while now.
But I couldn’t.
Instead, I did the one thing that felt vaguely honest.
I rubbed a hand over my face, feeling suddenly exposed. “I’ve been running on fumes. Needed somewhere quiet for five minutes. Somewhere that ain’t… everything else.”
I met his gaze then. Held it. He said nothing.
“If that ain’t okay, I’ll go.”
I meant it. That was the difference between the Razor I’d been this past week and the man standing on Tristan’s doorstep.
The silence stretched, thick and loaded.
Tristan let out a breath, dropping his gaze to the step between us. He didn’t look at my face. He looked at my shoes. My hands. Taking in the tension coiling through me I hadn’t even tried to hide.
Then he looked at me. “You look wrecked.”
“I feel it.”
He held my gaze. Long enough for the fragility to surface.
Then he moved, skirting past me as if proximity itself was dangerous.
As if he didn’t trust himself not to reach out.
I caught his scent as he passed. Salt and sweat from the run, soap underneath.
Clean. Alive. Everything I wasn’t right now.
And I stepped closer without thinking. To be near him.
He unlocked the door, hesitated, and I saw the fine hairs lift at the back of his neck, the way his body reacted before his head caught up.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Wait here.”
Then he slipped inside, leaving the door ajar by a few inches.
I could’ve followed him. But I didn’t. I stayed put. Listening to his footsteps up the stairs to his flat, the sound grounding and unbearable at the same time. I waited, bracing myself for him to come back down with an apology and a firm no. I would have taken it. I’d told myself I would.
Then the door opened again, and he held out a small rectangular card. “Go put that on your car.”
I stared at it.
A visitor’s parking permit.
My chest loosened unexpectedly and I exhaled a quiet laugh before I could stop myself, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Cheers.”
I crossed the road, unlocked the Audi, shoved the card against the windscreen and while I did it, I checked the burner.
Shouldn’t have. There were messages. But I couldn’t deal with any of them then, so I shoved it in the glove box and when I turned back, Tristan was waiting, head tilted, making space without saying it.
He let me in.
Into his building.
His life.
And into something I didn’t deserve and didn’t want to name.
“Do you want anything?” He shut the door to his flat and gestured towards the sofa. “Drink? Eat?”
“Uh, only if you are.”
“I just ran ten miles. I’m on water for a bit.”
“Cool.” I nodded too fast. “Water’s good.”
Jesus Christ. I sounded fucking pathetic.
He came back with two bottles and handed me one. I didn’t open it. I held it, twisting the plastic, grounding myself in the pressure. But I watched him drink, the line of his throat working, the ease of it. And when he caught me staring, I looked away as if I’d crossed a line.
Then I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking my head, trying to dislodge the noise in it. “I’m…” Fuck. “I’m sorry.”
He twisted the cap back onto his bottle, still standing, as if he didn’t know where he was allowed to be. “For turning up?”
“No. Well, yeah. That too. But on Sunday. My sister. I didn’t handle that well.”
He bowed his head, gripping the bottle the same way I was gripping mine. As if it were a shield. Then he sighed, scrubbed a hand through his hair, and sat down hard on the coffee table opposite me, sweaty arse imprinting the expensive wood.
“I knew you weren’t out.” He kept his eyes on the label. “So I couldn’t have expected you to have handled it well.”
I tilted my head, studying him. “I ain’t some closet case. I know exactly who and what I am. I ain’t confused or have some internalised phobia shit. It ain’t none of that.”
“I know…”
“It’s survival. I ain’t got the luxury to give anyone anything they can use to water down the man I need to be. That includes my sister.”
“I said, I get it.”
“Do you?”
He cut a glance towards the balcony, as if he needed the air. If he smoked, I’d bet he’d be out there already. I wanted to be. But I needed to be here. In front of Tristan. Making him understand.
He turned back to me. “I appreciate how reactions like that are… instinctual.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
If he were, it meant I meant nothing.
And right then, I wasn’t sure which would tear me up more. That, or the things I’d done all week because Razor had been required and Rich hadn’t been allowed anywhere near the job.
“I get it.” He took another drink, refusing to really look at me. “I’m not na?ve. I can be rational about this. I know what this is.”
“Know what what is?”
“This.” He gave a vague gesture. “This thing. Us. I know what this is to you.”
I tilted my head. “Do you?”
He hesitated, then peered at the floor. To his lovely, nice trainers. “I know what it isn’t.”
“And what ain’t it?”
He looked up then, as if he’d found his courage in the cruel reality of it all. “It isn’t holding hands in the street. Nor is it Sunday lunches and introductions to the family.”
“And you want that?”
He laughed under his breath. “Fuck, Razor—”
“Don’t.” The word came out fierce.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t call me that.”
He froze. Waited. Then, “What do you want me to call you?”
Good fucking question.