Chapter Twenty-Three Razor
Chapter Twenty-Three
Razor
I lay on my back on Tristan’s bed, the mattress soft, the sheets absurdly comfortable, with Tristan sprawled on my chest and me stroking his arm, wondering how the fuck I was ever supposed to get myself out of this.
It felt almost as impossible as getting out from under Cormac. Harder, maybe. At least with Cormac, I understood the rules. The punishments. The cost. I always knew what came next. This, though…this thing with Tristan, I hadn’t got a fucking clue.
It was physical.
Sure it was.
That much at least I could still pretend to understand.
I was desperately attracted to him. Wanted to do filthy things to him the way I’d just done, again and again, until it burnt itself out. And usually, that was enough. With Levi, with most people, it had been.
But something scratched at me.
Maybe it was age. Twenty-eight, and I’d spent all of it convincing myself that anything beyond the bed was a liability.
No point in getting involved when I was never likely to stick around.
I thought of Courtney, of the shit she put up with from Tyler.
Of how she could have lost him with one stupid mistake.
How could I drag someone into that? How could I let someone get close enough to get hurt?
And yet, here I was. Doing it anyway.
I couldn’t leave him alone.
And the worst part was realising it wasn’t just about sex.
I hadn’t come here for that. Not really.
The sex was…yeah. Bonus. Cheers. But I’d come here because I needed to feel like myself for five fucking minutes.
To have someone on my chest the way Tristan was now, warm and trusting, making me feel… human.
“Can you tell me where you’ve been?” He traced lazy lines over my chest, brushing my nipple with soft, thoughtless touches.
“Putting things right.”
He lifted his head, resting his chin on my chest so he could look at me properly. “Getting out?”
“Not yet.”
“But you’re trying to.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.”
“Have you always wanted to?” He peered up at me with those stupid blue, hopeful eyes. “To leave, I mean. Or was this always your… career path?”
I let out a low laugh. Couldn’t help it.
“Career path.” I shook my head. “That’s generous.
” I stared at the ceiling for a beat, then rolled onto my side and dragged the sheet up around us as a cool breeze slipped through the open window.
“Blokes like me don’t get options. We get a couple of doors put in front of us, and most of ’em are bolted shut.
This one wasn’t. It opened when I needed it to.
And I turned out to be good at what was on the other side. ”
He shifted closer, listening. Expecting me to carry on.
So I did, “I started at the bottom. Little things. Stuff I could pretend weren’t really dirty.
Hold this. Drop that. Pass it on. Run errands.
Easy money. Then I looked around. Saw the cars I’d never own, houses I’d never step inside unless I was robbing ’em.
Gear worth more than anything I grew up with.
And I thought, yeah. That’s it. That’s how I get us out the towers. ”
I ran my hand through his hair, felt the grit of product and sweat, the silk underneath. He didn’t interrupt. He waited. As if I deserved the space to keep going.
“They sell it clever. Those who recruit. Make it feel like a game. Every time you prove you can handle something, they give you a little more. Raise the stakes. See how far you’ll go.
And I went.” I clenched my jaw. “Like a bull seeing red. Needed to show I wasn’t useless.
That I was worth something. And for a while?
Yeah, I liked it. The buzz. The respect.
The money. Walking into a room and watching people shut up.
Told myself I was in control. Told myself I could stop whenever I wanted. ”
He stayed silent. That was worse than questions.
Cause it made me keep talking.
“Then I climbed high enough that the jobs stopped being clean.” I slowed my hand on his back. “That’s when I learnt what the punishments were if I did it wrong. And I learnt real fast how avoid being on the receiving end… make sure someone else was.”
I closed my eyes.
“So I did more. Moved more. Pushed harder. Took bigger risks. Learnt to lean people who were weaker than me were when I started. Then one day, I looked around again and realised where I was. The top. Only the punishments don’t stop. They just became mine to dish out.”
Images flickered. Tyler. The others. Fists and fear and obedience bought the only way this world understands. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Thought it’d be easier up here. Thought I wouldn’t have to see the rot anymore.
The kids with nothing, thinking this is their shortcut out.
The lies you tell yourself while you’re telling them it’s opportunity.
” My chest tightened. “But every time I swing, I lose something. And it never comes back.”
He shifted, his hand warm over my ribs. Grounding.
“So yeah. I thought I wanted the big seat. Thought that was the goal. But it’s all smoke.
All borrowed power. And I’m dirtier now than I ever was.
Because now I know exactly what I’m doing.
I don’t want to keep being the bloke who breaks people and calls it business.
I don’t want to keep proving I can do this. No matter how good I get at it.”
I didn’t really answer the question of whether I’d always wanted to get out or if something had changed. Didn’t have to.
Because I was here, wasn’t I?
Tristan kissed my chest, a tiny, gentle thing that had me in bits. “So you’ll walk away?”
“I’m working on it.”
“How?”
I stared at the ceiling for a moment, then back down at him.
His eyes were steady. Patient. Not prying.
Not demanding. As if he wasn’t trying to pull answers out of me, but giving me somewhere to set them down if I had them.
He wasn’t na?ve. Not with the world he came from.
Not with the job he was training for. He knew the broad shape of how men like me left organised networks.
The leverage. The danger. The debts. He had to.
The problem was, I didn’t yet.
How the fuck was I meant to get out?
“I’m shrinking the circle,” I said. “Pulling things in tight. Making myself… less necessary.”
“If you’re less necessary, doesn’t that make you…expendable?”
“Yeah.”
“So…dangerous.”
I smiled, because of course it did. “Everything I do’s dangerous. This time it’s just… deliberate.”
He considered that, then nodded once, as if filing it away. “And after?”
“After…” I brushed my thumb along his shoulder, knowing full well that ‘after’ wasn’t really a thing. But I had to cling onto something, or I’d never crawl out. “I sort out my sister so I can disappear. Properly. Leave before I get pulled back in.”
His mouth softened at that. “You could… come here.”
I bent my head and pressed a kiss to his hair. “You don’t get to offer things like that unless you mean them.”
“I do.”
“And your world will welcome me in, will it? Your tuxedos and country cottages and double fucking barrel names and thwack, thwack, fucking thwack?”
He said nothing.
Didn’t try to dress it up. Didn’t lie.
So I pulled him closer and felt him settle against me.
I didn’t bother trying to work out how any of that was possible.
Some things I shouldn’t interrogate too hard if I wanted to keep them.
Instead, I let myself cling to the idea there might be a way.
That wanting it could be enough to start.
That hope, thin and dangerous as it was, might keep me moving.
Might keep me alive.
After a while, he shifted. “What was wrong? The thing you were fixing.”
I breathed out slowly.
I knew exactly what Tyler had done to earn Cormac’s punishment.
Why my name had been dragged back into it.
There’d been money on the table from someone high-end wanting something new, something with teeth.
Pretty Poison. Tyler had tried to reach me.
Couldn’t. Because I’d been with Tricky. So he’d made a call of his own.
Brought Kyan in. Started nudging things forward, probably thinking he was doing the right thing.
That was how you climbed. How we all had.
Of course, it hadn’t stayed quiet.
Cormac didn’t like surprises. Especially not ones with his product.
The punishment. Setting it right. Making sure the lesson was heard?
That part had been mine.
“Probably best you don’t know.” I pressed a kiss into his hair.
I felt him tense for a moment, as if he might push back. Then, “Can you stay?”
“If you want me to.”
He shifted closer, tightening around me, breath evening out as if the decision cost him something. That was answer enough.
So I stayed.
And we slept tangled together, the night folding in around us, his body warm and trusting against mine while my head stayed stubbornly awake, trying to work out how I was meant to make any of this fit into a life that had never left room for it before.
* * * *
Morning came too fast.
Grey light crept in around the edges of the curtains, London waking up whether I was ready for it or not.
Tristan was still asleep, curled towards me, one hand fisted lightly in the sheet as if he’d reached for me in his sleep and missed.
His face was slack with it, unguarded in a way that made my chest tighten.
For one dangerous second, I considered staying.
But I could hear the vibrating.
My burner. I’d brought it in this time. Cause fuck yeah, I’d learnt my lesson.
Be on call no matter what, no matter where I was.
So I eased myself out from under Tristan’s arm, found my jeans and pulled out the phone.
I shoved on underwear and went out to his front balcony, desperately wanting a cigarette to answer, but they were back in my car.
So I hit answer. “Cormac.”
“Morning,” he said, too pleasantly. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”