Chapter Eleven Tristan
Chapter eleven
Tristan
It took a while to pull myself back together after that.
I stayed there in the alley behind my house, surrounded by the bins and the pile of Ollie’s crap I’d thrown out only days ago, just trying to breathe.
And despite me being amongst Ollie’s shoes, his broken lamp, and a shirt half buried in rainwater, it all felt as if it was from another life.
As if I’d shed the man who’d owned those things somewhere between the wall and Razor’s mouth.
Jesus Christ.
Razor.
Even the name had me in goosebumps.
I’d gone from the sensible, long-term boyfriend of Oliver bloody Montgomery to whatever the hell I was now. Someone who let a stranger—no, not just a stranger, a brute—punch me in the face then drop to his knees in the same breath.
Fuck.
My jaw throbbed. The blood on my lip had dried sticky, sharp with that metallic taste of bad decisions. I touched it, winced, and waited for the guilt to come. It didn’t. Nor did the shame. Or horror. All that was left was a dizzy pulse of what I’d done tingling under my skin.
I should’ve been disgusted. I wasn’t.
I felt alive for the first time ever.
And fuck, if that wasn’t one of the best, most obscene, most electric things anyone had ever done to me.
I’m no virgin. No saint. Hardly a wallflower either, that much had already been proven the first two times I’d crossed paths with him.
But that? That had been something else. Behind my own house, in my own street, trousers around my ankles.
His eyes fixed on me and watching my cock twitch and leak while he held me there, pinned, with nowhere to go.
Fuck. It wasn’t fear I’d felt. It was raw, unfiltered, unholy lust. Burning through reason and making me grateful to be ruined by it.
If he’d told me not to move, I wouldn’t have. If he’d stopped, I’d have begged him to start again. I’d have stood there like that, exposed and weak, for as long as he wanted to keep me there. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
I dragged a hand down my face, trying to erase the thought and failing miserably.
My forehead throbbed in time with my jaw.
So I bent down, grabbed my laptop bag from the mess I’d dropped in the scuffle, and tried to walk back onto the street as if I hadn’t just been blown against my own garden wall by a man who’d punched me first. My hand trembled as I fumbled for my keys, but I finally managed to get the door open.
The sound of clattering came from the kitchen.
Plates, probably, or Henry attempting to cook again.
I shut the door quietly, trying to steady my breathing.
“Tris?” Henry’s voice carried from the kitchen. “That you, old boy?”
After the voice I’d just had in my ear, Henry was so posh it hurt. He could make a death sentence sound like an invitation to brunch.
“Uh… yeah.” My voice cracked. “Just got in.”
I barely made it two steps before he marched out, hospital lanyard swishing, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair mussed from a long shift.
“Can you believe I’ve been at the hospital all bloody day and not a single person…” He stopped dead, eyes widening. “Bloody hell, what happened to you? Have you been mugged?”
I tried for a smile. It probably looked more like a grimace. “Nothing like that. Wrong place, wrong time.”
Henry frowned. “You’ve got blood on your face.” He moved closer, scanning me the way he would one of his patients. “And your jaw’s swelling. Sit down before you keel over.”
“Henry, I’m fine.”
He ignored that completely and ushered me to the edge of the stairs and put me on the bottom one like a naughty child. He flicked on the lamp. And when he returned to inspecting my face, the scent of hand sanitizer and coffee, hospital corridors and exhaustion, got me back to reality.
“Was it a fall? Or, Tris, were you assaulted?” He leant back on his heels. “Or, Jesus, was this your father…? God, did one of your fights turn physical?”
“No. No, Henry, honestly. It wasn’t Father.”
Henry waited a moment. “Good. Not that I could imagine him swinging at you but…Jesus, Tris. What the fuck happened?”
“Honestly, nothing.”
“Wait there.” Henry exhaled, then headed off to the kitchen, muttering under his breath about London being a cesspit. He came back with a first-aid box and a clean flannel. “Hold still.” His tone softened into his practiced doctor voice. “You might’ve cracked something. Let me check.”
He tilted my chin up, and I had to force myself not to flinch. His touch was careful, but it burnt all the same. He didn’t know what he was touching. Didn’t know that the man who’d done this hadn’t taken anything from me, but something out of me.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Not really.”
He raised a brow. “Liar.”
I almost laughed, but it caught halfway up my throat.
He dabbed gently at the corner of my lip. “You should get this checked properly. There’s a fracture clinic at Hammersmith—”
I caught his wrist, a little too hard. “Please. Drop it.”
He sighed, the medic in him giving way to the friend. “It wasn’t Oliver, was it?”
I looked at him, and for a moment I almost said yes. It would’ve been easier. He’d have believed it, and in a way it was true. Oliver had started this, the domino effect that had tipped everything. But I couldn’t lie about that.
“No.” I grabbed the banister and pulled myself up.
“Tris, Oliver wasn’t good for you.”
“I know.” I adjusted my bag on my shoulder. “Took me a couple of years to work it out.”
“I did try to warn you. Repeatedly.” Henry gave a small, tired smile. “Better late than never. Imagine if you’d married him.”
“Yeah.” I managed something almost passing for a laugh, then turned for the stairs. “Hey, Hen?”
Putting the med kit away, he glanced over his shoulder. “Hmm?”
“Did you know about him and Benji?”
Henry went still. Half a beat. Then he looked up, neutral tone too controlled to be innocent. “In what sense?”
“Did you know they were sleeping together?”
Henry waited a moment. “If I’d had proof, I would have told you.”
“But you suspected?”
“They were…aligning.”
“Jesus, Henry. What the fuck does that even mean? And why not tell me?”
“Because you’d have told me to butt out.
You like evidence, remember? You don’t like me saying someone looks as though they’re a wrong’un.
You’d want a full report with exhibits. You’re a bloody lawyer, Tristan.
It’s why when you noticed his location pinging out east, I called the cab immediately. Provide us both with the proof.”
Annoyingly, he had a point. But still…
“Besides.” Henry snapped his first aid box shut and stood. “Benji’s off his face half the bloody time. He probably thought he was fucking both of you.”
I nodded, chewing on that. “Is he in?”
“No, he’s off again. Some travelling showcase thing with his theatre group.”
“Right.”
“I’m throwing some pasta on. Want any? Zara’s out with the girls. Could be a boys’ night in. Bit like Harrow again.”
Not quite like Harrow. Henry had gone off those nights now girls were allowed in.
I tried to smile, but my face ached too much to manage it. “Think I’ll get my head down. Long day.”
“Right-oh.”
He gave me one last look, that mix of worry and patience only Henry could manage, before heading back to the kitchen.
I lingered on the stairs a little longer, listening to the hiss of boiling water and the faint clatter of Henry moving around the kitchen, domestic sounds that used to mean safety.
Now they made me feel like a fraud. My lip stung, my jaw pulsed, and under the hum of it all, Razor’s voice echoed in my head. Dirty, pretty boy.
Why wasn’t I telling Henry? My oldest, steadiest friend.
The person who’d patched me up more times than I cared to admit, who’d seen every version of me and stayed?
I wasn’t sure. Not really. But the reasons I could name, the ones I could bear to look at, all sounded worse the longer I sat with them.
For starters, Henry would go straight to the police.
Of course he would. Duty, instinct, family training, take your pick.
An attack on “our sort” would go from a street scuffle to an official incident within the hour.
Someone in his family almost certainly sat on a Met oversight board or shared a members’ lounge with half the senior brass.
Which meant reports. Statements. A file with my name stamped across the top.
And once there was a file, my father would know.
Charles Hale-Fitzroy KC didn’t miss things like that.
A violent incident involving his son? He’d have the CPS loop him in before the ink dried.
He’d demand to see CCTV, push for charges, call in favours from the Home Office if he felt it “necessary for public safety.” And Razor, whatever he was and whatever world he came from, wouldn’t stand a chance.
Not against my father. Not the full weight of a prosecution designed to make an example of him.
I wasn’t blind to who Razor was. Dealer. Enforcer, maybe. Someone who lived by rules I didn’t pretend to understand. But the idea of him being hunted, cornered, destroyed because of me? It sat wrong. Lodged somewhere deep in the part of me I tried to ignore.
Why?
Because if I told Henry…
I’d never see Razor again.
And the truth I didn’t want to look at, the one crawling under my skin, was that I already wanted to. Whether I found anything out for him or not.
The second reason was simpler: Razor had told me not to.
And somehow, against all logic, that meant something.
So yes. It was complicated. Excruciatingly so.
I showered in my en-suite, scrubbing hard enough to sting, trying to wash off the night.
The alley, the taste of him, the part of me that hadn’t fought back.
All that massage and eucalyptus oil had been replaced by a memory far seedier and far more seductive.
But I killed the light, slid into bed, and told myself not to think about his mouth.
Or his hands.