Chapter Eleven Tristan #2
Or the sound of his voice when he said my name like a mating call.
But the harder I tried, the more it came back. The heat of his breath, the rough press of his lips against mine, the kiss I hadn’t offered but already knew I’d crave again.
And again.
So I had a blissful wank and fell asleep in my own mess.
* * * *
When I woke, it was late morning, and I was in that strange half-dream state where the room still felt foreign and everything from the night before hovered like uncleared smoke.
And for a while I laid staring at the ceiling, replaying every second.
The mark on my jaw pulsed in time with my heartbeat. I touched it. It still ached.
By ten-thirty, I’d made up my mind.
Henry had already gone. Another day at the hospital, another twelve-hour shift spent trying to make sense of other people’s pain.
Zara was on the phone when I went downstairs to make coffee, she waved, not noticing, then grabbed her bag and slipped out to whichever module she was attending.
So I pulled up Ollie’s timetable on my laptop.
I didn’t need to check it, not really. I knew his routine better than my own.
He’d have a macroeconomics lecture on Mondays, ten till twelve, in the Drayton Building.
He’d grab a flat white after, then cut across the main quad to pretend he’d forgotten my existence and how we usually had lunch together.
Then tonight, he had rowing practice with the team and they all met in the Champion’s Arms for a pint after.
Some things, unlike people, were predictable.
I decided to avoid my own class on Criminal Justice and the Modern State, and the thesis update with Professor Calthorpe if I’d been feeling particularly masochistic, as I wasn’t in the mood to dissect sentencing disparity while half my brain replayed the sound of a man’s voice telling me I was a dirty little pretty boy. Plus the bruise was still angry.
As was I.
So I ditched class and went hunting instead.
I left Clerkenwell on foot, cutting up through Theobalds Road while London shook off its hangover.
It was that odd lull between rush hour and routine when couriers shouted into traffic and cafés steamed up with the smell of burnt beans and wet coats.
The pavements glittered with last night’s rain, reflecting the bleached grey of the sky.
It was a twenty-five–minute walk, give or take.
Long enough to sober my thoughts, not long enough to silence them.
By the time I reached Bloomsbury, the city had changed skin.
University College London was its own small empire.
Motion and noise and too many lives colliding at once.
The quad thrummed with footsteps and laughter, coats brushing, coffee cups steaming in cold hands with pigeons lining along the steps waiting for scraps.
The air smelt of rain, stone, and caffeine, and that dense, familiar London mix clinging long after I’d stepped indoors.
Inside, the corridors stretched in that familiar, maddening mix of old marble and glass, a campus halfway between history and progress, never quite choosing which to be.
I found a spot near the Drayton exit, leant against the wall beneath a faded careers poster and pretended to scroll through my phone.
There, I waited.
Every echo of footsteps sounded like him.
Every laugh in the hallway pulled at my nerves.
The logic-driven part of me, the one trained to analyse motive and consequence, tried to frame this as interrogation.
Information gathering. Nothing personal.
But that was bullshit. Because underneath all the rationalising, the betrayal clenched harder.
And by the time the lecture doors opened, my pulse beat louder. Colder. Measured.
I’d learnt a lot of things from my father, one of which was how to corner guilty parties.
Ollie appeared. Perfect hair, pressed coat, a smirk that had once felt like home, and every ounce of composure I’d built cracked straight down the middle.
He laughed with his course mates, hands gesturing, voice smooth, as if nothing had happened over the weekend.
As if he hadn’t walked out of a two-year relationship and left me picking up the pieces outside my own house.
He paused to hold the door open for someone, eyes sweeping lazily over the hall, then catching on me. “Tristan,” he said, as if it was a coincidence.
I pushed off the wall, slipping my phone into my pocket. “Oliver.”
His smile twitched, uncertain. “Well. This is… unexpected. I’d assumed you’d forgo our lunch ritual.”
“We have unfinished business.”
Ollie blinked. And his friends glanced between us, reading the air, before he dismissed them with a breezy, “I’ll catch you up.” They clapped him on the shoulder, muttered their goodbyes, and vanished down the corridor.
Ollie tilted his head towards a quieter corner, that same unbothered stroll he’d perfected. The walk of a man who’d never once been told no and actually believed it.
“You here to throw more of my things at me?”
I didn’t bother with the act. “Were you fucking Benji?”
He flinched, then laughed. A cruel, breathy chortle he used when caught out. “Oh, come on. Me? Benji? The man can barely stand unless someone’s filming him.”
“Performing’s exactly your thing.” I stepped closer. “You and he went to that club in Hackney before, didn’t you? What were you doing? Don’t lie to me, Ollie. What the fuck are you involved in?”
He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Tris. This is exactly why we didn’t tell you. We knew you’d go full cross-examiner.”
“Tell me what?”
He gave a low laugh, but there was something tight beneath it.
“You think you’re different. You think because you’ve read a few case studies on systemic bias and crime and class, you actually get it.
You wanted your little tour of the underworld, just not too close to the smell.
” He glanced away, lowering his voice. “We weren’t doing anything dangerous.
Something new. People do it all the time. ”
“Do what all the time?” I gritted my teeth. “Clarification, please, Oliver.”
“Parties. Highs. Connection. It’s incredible. You’d love it if you could unclench long enough to try.”
I stared at him.
“Chemsex,” he said as if I hadn’t cottoned on about half an hour ago.
It hit like a slap. Not because I didn’t know what it was.
Of course I did. I’d read the case studies, written essays on the intersection of risk and compulsion, studied the behavioural loops making people trade safety for sensation.
I even knew Ollie had dabbled prior to me.
But reading about it and hearing it from him were two entirely different things.
Ollie. My Ollie. The one who’d lectured me about control and appearance, who couldn’t come unless the lights were off and the sheets were Egyptian cotton, he’d been out there, sweating under neon, high off his face, fucking strangers as if he’d found God.
And I hadn’t even been invited!
Not that I wanted to go.
Not that I’d ever have said yes.
Still, he’d gone looking for something he hadn’t found with me.
Something rawer. Freer. Filthier. And that lodged deep in my chest, just behind the bruise Razor had left on me.
Maybe that’s what this had all been about.
Not betrayal, but exclusion. He’d found the edge, and I was still pretending to live in the middle.
Always in the bloody middle.
That middle child syndrome Father said I suffered from out for all to see.
But the worst part was I understood it. The want to dissolve into something bigger, to stop thinking, stop performing, stop being good. And for the first time, I wondered what it would be like to lose control that completely. Not to think, not to hold back. To feel. Be consumed.
The flash of the alley had me realising I was already halfway there.
I got back to the questions. “So you started scoring in Hackney?”
Ollie shrugged. “Benji knew someone who knew someone. Everyone in his scene does. You know that. Drama students. And we weren’t shifting kilos.
We were just buying cheap and clean. East’s the place for that stuff.
Not your overpriced Soho dealers. They rip you off for the same shit with a prettier label. ”
My jaw tightened. “And you didn’t tell me because…?”
“Because you’d have gone all bleeding-heart lawyer on us. Sat there quoting statutes about intent to supply. You want the thrill, Tristan, but you don’t want the stain. You like to watch the gutter from a safe distance.”
“Benji got jumped because of that distance,” I said, my voice colder than I meant it to be. “Two men cornered us outside that club. He’s in deep, Ollie. Deeper than you think.”
Something flashed in his eyes, a split-second fracture. Guilt, maybe. Or fear, quickly lacquered over with disdain. “That’s not on me.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why did you go back anyway? Trying it out for yourself?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
Because for a heartbeat, I wasn’t sure what I would’ve said.
But he kept talking, as if filling the silence would make it disappear. “Benji was meant to shift what was left, pay them off, and move on. I don’t control what he does after.”
“You don’t control anything,” I snapped. “You just start fires and pretend you didn’t strike the match. Where is it, Ollie? The stuff. The money.”
“Gone, Tristan. All of it. And honestly?” He smirked. “The stuff we sold wasn’t even that good. Cut to hell. Dodgy. So we didn’t bother keeping it. We flushed what was left and called it a night.”
I stared at him. The words didn’t sound like truth.
They sounded rehearsed. A lie practised in front of a mirror so he could look someone dead in the eye while saying it.
He’d always been good at that. Lying beautifully.
And my gut twisted. With anger, sure. But threaded through it was uglier.
Disappointment. That same old ache of wanting to believe him when I knew better.
Ollie had always treated danger like a holiday. Something to dip into, pose with, then walk away from once it got messy. He could afford to. People like us always could. We didn’t get our hands dirty; we paid someone else to do it.
“If they’re coming at him for money,” Ollie straightened his collar, “it’s not as though he hasn’t got the means to pay for it.
” He glanced down at me. “Or you can, if you’re worried this will touch your precious little name.
” He buttoned his coat. “But I’m done. Over.
As are we.” Then he walked off, leaving the smell of his cologne and cowardice hanging in the air.
And fuck, I was raging.
Because I knew it wasn’t over.
If Ollie and Benji had crossed a line they didn’t even know was one, Razor’s line, and taken what wasn’t theirs, Razor wouldn’t let that slide.
He wasn’t built that way. I knew this. Knew this from textbooks and the cases my father prosecuted.
He wouldn’t care about Ollie’s excuses, or his perfect smile, or how expensive his coat was.
Razor dealt in balance.
Proof. Payment. Blood, if it came to it.
And there was some part of me desperate to see it.