Chapter Nineteen Tristan #2
I shrugged and swam a few lazy strokes, letting the cold work its way through me.
We’d had a pool at the Mayfair house. I’d spent whole afternoons in it growing up, gliding back and forth to quiet my thoughts, to feel my body instead of my head.
I’d swum in rivers and lakes too. Port Meadow when I was at Oxford, mostly.
Early mornings. Cold water. I missed it.
I surfaced near him and braced my arms on the edge of the deck. “Come on. It’s a lake, not your canal.”
“Still looks like shit floats in there.”
I tilted my head, studying him. He didn’t look disgusted. Not really. It was a shield. A way of keeping distance without admitting why.
And suddenly it clicked.
If he’d never had holidays as a kid, chances were he’d never been taken swimming either.
Pools cost money. Lessons cost money. Even knowing it was something you could do came from a place of assumption.
Open water swimming might be free, but it wasn’t exactly a pastime you picked up growing up on a council estate in inner-city Hackney.
I’d been cushioned, yes. But I wasn’t blind.
“Can you swim?” I asked.
A beat. “Not properly.”
I gestured with my hand. “Then let me teach you.”
“Fuck off.”
I laughed and scrubbed water from my face. “You can’t tell me the big bad Razor’s afraid of a little water? It’s waist height at the edge.”
He stared at me a second longer. Then he stood and came closer, crouching. He slipped his fingers under my chin, lifted my face, and bent down to kiss me. “I’m Richie.”
“So I see.” I smiled. Then I grabbed his wrist and dragged him in.
He went in with a startled shout, water exploding around him, jeans and all. When he surfaced, spluttering and swearing, he waded towards me, crowding my space.
“You’ll regret that.”
I didn’t.
Because I got to wrap my arms around him. He caught me easily, the kiss turning warmer, deeper, water lapping around us as the sun pressed down from above. The moment narrowed. Heat and water and him. The strange, giddy rightness of being outside. Being alone. Being…us.
Then, without warning, he broke away and hauled me up to throw me back in the water. I went under with a startled yelp, coming up coughing and blinking to the sound of his laugh.
Fuck. It was infectious. Bright. Unrestrained.
I swam back at him and tried to dunk him by jumping on his shoulders. Failed spectacularly. He caught me instead, hands firm around my waist and sent me splashing back through the water. I came up laughing, hair in my face, moving towards him again.
He vanished beneath the surface.
A second later he was there, close, lifting me clean out of the lake before setting me back on the edge of the deck. Water streamed from me. He stepped in between my legs, bracing his palms beside my hips, and rose up to kiss me. Warm. Unrushed. As if there were nowhere else he needed to be.
Eventually, he hauled himself out, jeans soaked through, denim heavy and dark, and he had to wrestle with them, swearing under his breath.
So I helped him peel them free and we ended up in a breathless heap on one of the loungers, laughing, his arm draped around me, my head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder.
And for a while we just lay there, watching the drift of cloud overhead.
Breathing. Letting the moment settle into our bones.
Then, glancing over to the surrounding trees, quiet but no less profound, he said, “I need to get out.”
I stilled. Lifted my head.
“I mean the Firm,” he added, as if there were any doubt.
I tucked back into him. “Can you?”
He dragged his fingertips down my back, making me explode with goosepimples. “There’re a couple of options. None of them clean.”
That told me enough. “Such as?”
“I could step back. Go quieter. Let someone else take the heat. Untangle myself bit by bit.” He sighed. “But that only works if they let me.”
“And would they?”
His hand stopped moving. “Not without payment.”
I didn’t ask what that meant. I knew what currency his world dealt in.
“And the other option?”
He tipped his head back, drifting his gaze past the lake, the cottage, out towards the line of trees and the life he didn’t belong to. “The other option is to burn the whole thing down.”
“Is that possible?”
He shrugged. “Not without consequences.”
I let it rest there.
I didn’t want to hear any more. Not the methods.
Or the bargains. Certainly not the bodies or the leverage or the blood-price his world always demanded.
I was a criminal barrister; I knew the broad routes of how people got out.
But the moment he put language to it, it wouldn’t just be his anymore.
It would live in me. Sit in my mouth. Stain my hands.
And I couldn’t have that here. Not now.
This was too perfect. Too rare. This moment of sun-warm skin, quiet air, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear was what it could be if the world weren’t already waiting to close in around us.
Even if this, us, could never last, I wanted it.
So I wanted this memory, what I would be left with one day, untainted.
But by the time the light began to tilt, hunger crept in.
I set Razor the task of getting the fire pit going in the hope to barbecue whatever I found at the local shop.
Then I took Razor’s keys and drove to the nearest village, windows down, the air thick with cut grass and heat.
I came back with steaks, bread, a salad I hadn’t intended to buy but had felt morally compelled to, and a bottle of Rioja.
Razor was barefoot in the grass, an axe in his hands, an old radio crackling out nineties garage tracks that he was very definitely singing along to.
His clothes lay slung over the back of a lounger, drying in the sun.
He wore nothing but his boxers and a faint sheen of sweat where sunlight caught on ink and muscle as he lifted the axe overhead.
The motion was beautiful.
And I stood there watching him work with a sober sense of awe. It was the quiet competence of him. The ease. The way he seemed to inhabit his body differently here, as if he weren’t braced for anything at all.
He finally noticed me. “See something you like, rich boy?”
“Absolutely.”
He peered over beneath his lashes. “Name your price then.”
I smiled. “How about you get the fire going and we’ll talk terms.” I lifted the bags. “I have offerings.”
He set the axe aside and crossed the grass to me, taking them from my hands. Then he leant in and kissed my cheek. Quick, thoughtless, and ever so intimate.
I tilted my head. “Perhaps you should dance for me, too.”
He snorted, then dipped his head to my neck and half-sang the old garage tune blasting from the radio into my ear as he circled his arm around my waist. I dropped the bags. And somehow, impossibly, I danced with him there in the garden to some half rap, half garage number.
I hadn’t known he could be like this.
This unguarded. This easy. This perfect.
And I was suddenly, acutely aware that I was in danger of never being able to see him as anything else again.
“I’ll get the fire going.” He tapped my arse as he stepped away, a ghost of a smile on his mouth.
Then I watched him build it with instinctive care, stacking the split logs so air could move between them, using his lighter to coax flame into life. He crouched close, forearms resting on his knees, feeding it patiently until it caught, until it held.
I busied myself with the food. Seasoned the steaks.
Tore bread with my hands. Poured the wine into two mismatched glasses scavenged from the back of a cupboard.
By the time we carried everything outside, the air cooled.
Smoke lifted in pale ribbons. Firelight replaced daylight and we cooked over the makeshift pit and ate outside, perched on crates and old chairs, knees brushing every time one of us shifted.
“When did you learn to do all this?” I nodded at the fire. “Chop wood. Build fires. I doubt you were a boy scout, right?”
He flipped his steak, watching it sizzle. “Yeah, you’d be right.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “Lennon. He was a boy scout.”
I stayed quiet, letting him have the space.
“We used to steal bikes and ride out to Epping Forest. Had this… camp. If you can call it that. Old sofas someone had dumped. Bit of tarp. We’d build fires, burn whatever we could find. Steal marshmallows from the newsagent. Drink warm beer and pretend we were off-grid.”
I smiled. “Sounds… sorta nice.”
“It was.” He glanced up at me, then back down again. “Felt like no one was watching us. Or waiting for us.”
My chest tightened. “You miss him.”
Razor shrugged, but it wasn’t dismissive. “He’s better off without me.”
I nudged his knee with mine, letting it rest there.
The heat bled slowly out of the day. Smoke and salt and summer clung to our skin.
Above us, the sky faded from blue to bruised rose, then deepened again, until the first stars dared to show.
And for a while, all there was were flames, and food, and the quiet, fragile gift of him telling me something real.
The real world felt very far away.
When night closed in, I took him inside and up to one of the old rooms. Fresh sheets.
Windows open to the night. The house creaked softly around us as if it knew what was coming and approved.
We barely made it to the bed before our mouths found each other.
Tangled. Unhurried. All heat and breath and hands learning familiar ground again.
Clothes went. Skin met skin. And he climbed over me, warm and solid as I passed him the lube, condoms long gone now.
He prepared me and slicked himself, then eased inside me.
I caught his face between my hands and kissed him as if I could press everything I felt straight into his mouth.
“I like Richie…” I whispered against his lips.
“Say it again.” He thrust deeper, forehead to mine. “No one says my name like you.”
My chest caved. “Richie…”
I wrapped myself around him and let the night take us.
Let him set the rhythm. Kiss me until I forgot where I ended and he began.
Until my legs shook and my body spoke in nothing but want.
Until there was only sweat and breath and the quiet, relentless intimacy of him claiming every part of me I offered.
And I offered all of it.
* * * *
But Sunday came far too quickly.
We spent it drifting from the bed to the shower.
From the shower to the kitchen. From the kitchen to Razor discovering another thing that didn’t quite work and fixing it.
The radio stayed on. Songs bled into one another.
Sometimes he sang. Sometimes he just moved with the noise, stealing a kiss from my lips, my cheek, the back of my neck.
It was so ordinary it made my chest ache.
Because we had to leave.
We put the cottage back into its careful stasis. Covered the furniture. Closed the windows. Turned off lights that had only just come back to life. I locked the key back into the box at the gate, fingers lingering on the cold metal.
Then we got in the car and left.
And Razor returned, inch by inch, the closer we got to London.
I was so close to asking him to turn around. Saying fuck it to pupillage and pedigree and the life that had been mapped for me before I’d learnt to write my own name. To choosing him. The man who chopped wood and sang along to the radio, danced with me, and let me see him unarmed.
But if I did that, we wouldn’t have that life.
My father would never forgive that kind of rebellion.
So maybe if I kept my mouth shut, if we just carried on as we were, we could come back. This place could be ours in stolen pieces. We could keep pretending there was a life for us, as long as we didn’t try to live it out loud.
When he pulled up outside my Baron’s Court flat, nausea rolled low in my stomach. “Coming in?” I angled my head. “You can stay if you don’t mind getting up obscenely early. I’m in court first thing.”
I could almost hear the argument in his head. If he left, he would go back to who he had to be. If he stayed, he might not be able to. And that carried consequences far heavier than mine ever would.
But he nodded, and we went inside.
I made dinner out of whatever was left in my cupboards.
We ate on the sofa. He watched television while I had to open my laptop and get on with the work I’d neglected again.
Then later, in bed, he curled behind me and drew me back to him, tangling our fingers together, fitting himself to me with quiet familiarity.
I passed him the lube and there was nothing rushed in it.
Nothing taken. Just him easing into me with the certainty he could. Whenever he wanted. Whenever he needed.
After a few unhurried movements, he tightened his grip around my hand and breathed, unguarded, “Fuck, Tris… I didn’t know I could feel like this.”
I threaded my fingers into his hair, drawing him closer even though there was no space left, and said, truthfully, “Me either.”
He stilled a moment. Then held me tighter. Slower. Gentler. And whatever it was we were doing shifted into something neither of us were brave enough to name.
Afterwards, he kissed my shoulder and fell asleep.
I stayed awake longer, though. Listening to the steady pull of his breathing, committing him to memory. Feeling the way he held me. The warmth of his mouth at my neck. The shape of being wanted without performance.
It felt too rare to sleep through.
Morning came anyway.
And he handed me my tie without being asked, concentrating as he knotted it. Then downstairs he stopped me at the door, pressed his forehead to mine, and kissed me in broad daylight.
“Go get some criminals off their charges,” he said.
“That’s not exactly what I do.”
“Convince me otherwise.”
He kissed me again, then walked away.
My grin lasted all the way to Baron’s Court station.
Until a car rolled up beside me and the rear window slid down.
“Tristan.” Lord Wolfe smiled like his namesake. “How about that breakfast, hm?”