Chapter Nineteen Tristan
Chapter nineteen
Tristan
I know, I know.
I broke my own rules.
I smashed straight through the mantra I’d been repeating all week and let him in again after swearing to myself I wouldn’t.
But how could I not?
He hadn’t come to me swaggering or demanding or pretending to be fine. He came undone. Frayed at the edges. Carrying something heavy enough it bent him in half.
And he came to me.
Who was I to shut the door in his face?
So yes, I resigned myself to the pain. And the knowledge that whatever this was going to do to me, it would make my breakup with Ollie, two years of pretending I was in love only to be betrayed in the worst way, feel like a paper cut by comparison.
This would break me when it ended.
But I still wanted to see if it was worth all that pain.
After the shower, I dressed. Threw a few things into a bag without much thought. Clothes, toiletries, phone chargers, the detritus of impulsive leaving then rushed out to the car, engine idling. I shoved my bag in the back on got in the passenger seat.
Razor tapped his dash screen to turn it to the satnav. “You gonna tell me where we’re going now?”
I reached across him, tapped the screen, and keyed in a postcode. The route bloomed across the display in a wash of blue.
“Go.” I settled back.
He glanced at the time. At the sat nav. Then at me. Curiosity flickering across his face. Then he pulled away from the kerb.
London carried on around us at first. Traffic lights.
Buses sighing at stops. People spilling out of pubs in shirtsleeves, summer-heavy and loud.
But gradually the streets widened, the buildings thinned, and the air changed.
The windows came down, music went on, low and old and lazy.
And Razor drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting loose on his thigh as the motorway emptied into long, open roads.
I watched him without him noticing. The slow unclenching of his jaw.
The way his shoulders sank, fraction by fraction, as if his body were finally conceding that nothing was about to jump us.
His eyes stopped darting between mirrors and lanes and lifted instead to the long stretch of road ahead, to the open sky.
After a while, he said, “This is the furthest I’ve ever been outta London.”
I turned to look at him. “You’ve never left? Been on holiday or anything?”
He shrugged. “Did a few jobs out Medway. Got as far as Stevenage once.” He glanced down at his fingers tapping a rhythm on his thigh. “No holidays. That wasn’t really a thing. Didn’t have the cash.” He glanced at me sideways. “Go on. Tell me all the places you’ve been.”
I didn’t want to. Not because I was ashamed of them, but because I didn’t want to sound as if I was proving a point. Or worse, apologising for a life I hadn’t chosen.
“Holidays were… normal, I suppose. Skiing most winters. Summers in the south of France. Italy. Dubai. School trips. Further flung places with Henry and the gang. I’ve travelled, yes.”
“I’ll bet.” He tightened his grip on the wheel, and the sharp edge of comparison crossed his face. “So where are we going, then?”
“The Chilterns.” I leant back against the headrest. “My grandfather bought a handful of cottages years ago. Most were done up and sold on. A few are kept for family weekends. This one…It needs work. I’m not even sure it’s entirely habitable.
But I know the keycode, and it’s been empty long enough that no one will know we’re there. ”
“How out of the way are we talking?”
“Very.” I smiled. “No neighbours. No road noise. It’s all trees, a terrible track, and a gate that never quite shuts. Garden backs onto a private lake.”
“A lake?” He glanced at me.
“Of course. Swans and everything.” I winked. “Can’t eat them though. They belong to the king.”
He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “Course.”
By the time we turned off the main road, the sun was high and heavy through the branches. The lane narrowed to barely more than a suggestion, dust rising in soft plumes behind us. Leaves brushed the sides of the car. The radio crackled and fell away.
Then the trees broke.
And Grandfather’s cottage sat alone at the end of the track, set back from a sweep of untamed grass and low stone walling slumped with age. Red brick darkened by time. A slate roof dulled to blue-grey. Windows catching the light and flinging it back in brief, blinding flashes.
Razor cut the engine and a bird startled out of a hedge. Heat shimmered above the ground. The air smelt of sun-warmed earth and wild growth. Then he reached for the door.
And we stepped out of London.
The heat followed us, thick and late-summer heavy, pressing down as I circled round to the gate.
The gravel crunched underfoot. No traffic noise here.
No voices. It was only the low rustle of trees, leaves whispering as if the place were waking up after a long sleep.
The keybox was half-hidden beneath ivy and I peeled it open, thankful no one had the fortitude to change the code.
Then I unlocked the door and pushed inside.
Dust hit first. Stale air and old plaster and I stepped in to flick a switch—
Nothing.
I exhaled. “It’s…not luxury.”
“I’ve stayed in a lot worse.” Razor came up behind me. “Way worse.”
I tried another switch. The light blinked, buzzed, then finally steadied, throwing the room into reluctant life. A sitting room suspended in time: a sagging sofa draped with a faded throw, a low table, shelves half-filled with books no one had touched in decades. Dust lay thick on every surface.
“This might not have been my best idea.”
Razor snorted. “It’s quiet. I’ll give you that.”
God, it was quiet. No traffic. No sirens. No people.
Just us.
“It’s got four walls and furniture,” Razor said. “It’s a palace in my eyes.”
“It needs work.”
“Like what?”
“Well.” I gestured vaguely. “The lights don’t work, so electrics might be dodgy. Which probably means there might not be any hot water. And knowing my family, everything that requires effort has been ignored.”
“And you don’t know how to fix any of that?”
“Me?” I laughed. “I was raised by staff. If something wasn’t working, it was fixed before I’d ever know.”
“Mad, that.” He rolled his eyes. “All that money and no one showed you how to change a fuse.”
He moved past me, testing switches, opening cupboards, crouching to peer beneath the sink. “The power’s on but something’s tripping it. And your tap’s got a leak.” He glanced up from the cupboard. “Got a toolbox?”
“I…probably? Somewhere?”
He found it without my help beneath the stairs. Old. Half empty. Missing half its contents. Then he got to work under the sink.
I hovered uselessly. “You…know how to fix this stuff?”
He twisted a bolt. “I was dragged up in a council gaff where stuff breaks. All the time. And when you ain’t got no money, or staff, you either learn to fix it or you live without.”
He went back to work.
And I stood there watching him.
I’d always known there were layers to him. Beneath the brute force and reputation there was a man who knew how to do things. I just hadn’t realised how I would feel seeing it.
Useless.
And…absolutely smitten.
So I forced myself to move, opening windows, coughing as dust rose into the light.
Shook the sofa covers out in the garden.
Wiped down surfaces that hadn’t been touched in years.
Behind me, metal clinked softly. Water ran, then stopped.
And every so often Razor called for something.
A cloth. A torch. A towel. And I brought it.
We moved around each other easily, trading tools, brushing hands.
I watched him fix the leak with a strip of rubber and reset the fuse with a muttered curse ending in a satisfied grunt when the lights held.
He crouched at the boiler, coaxing it back to life.
“Least we might get a warm shower,” he said, straightening his back.
By the time the cottage felt less like a mausoleum and more like somewhere a body could exist, the afternoon had thickened into heat. The sun pressed in through every uncovered window, heavy and relentless, turning the air syrupy and bright.
“Come on.” I headed for the back door.
The garden sloped away into long, untamed grass and hedgerow, opening out onto a narrow wooden deck reaching straight into the lake. The water lay dark and glassed over, broken only by the shimmer of sun across its surface and the slow drift of green beneath.
Razor dropped onto one of the old loungers with a faint groan and dragged his sweat-drenched T-shirt over his head, then kicked off his trainers and socks.
I stepped onto the warm boards of the deck, the heat of the day still stored in the wood and looked out over the water.
It sparkled deceptively, bright and inviting.
So I stripped down to my underwear and angled my head at the lake. “You coming in?”
Razor pushed himself up on his elbows, staring at me as if I’d suggested we jump off a cliff. “You’re joking.”
“No.”
He gave me a look that said I’d lost my mind, then dropped back onto the lounger instead, bare feet, bare chest, dark jeans riding low on his hips.
Fuck knew why that sight still hit me so hard, but it did.
My attention snagged helplessly on the familiar sprawl of ink across his skin.
The serpent at his side, the poisoned heart over his chest. Sunlight caught on muscle and scar alike, and warmth uncoiled low in my stomach.
I didn’t give him time to see what he was doing to me.
I dived.
The lake closed over me in a cool, shocking rush, the world turning instantly dark and soundless. When I broke the surface again, I gasped, slicking my hair back, skin alive with cold.
Razor sat up.
Watching me.
“You’re missing out.” I splashed water in his direction.
“On hypothermia? Or whatever Victorian-era disease you can catch from open water.”
“Fun?”
He snorted.