Chapter Eighteen Razor
Chapter eighteen
Razor
I must’ve crashed after.
Body gave out.
Pain’ll do that. Pain and exhaustion and being a complete fucking idiot.
If I’d stayed awake, I’d have had to face it. The mess I’d made. Getting stabbed. Running instead of fighting. Leaving Darren. The warehouse. Cormac’s name rotting on the pavement. He’d rather I’d bled out there than legged it like a scared little cunt. But I did. I ran.
And where did I run?
Here.
To him.
Don’t ask me why. Wasn’t thought-out. Weren’t planned, either. My head weren’t right. And it’s not like I came here for another round, though Christ knows that would’ve been easier to explain. No, it was something else. Unconscious. Instinct. Some part of me believing this place was safe.
Then I’d woken. Groggy, sore, bandaged up in clean sheets that weren’t mine. And there he was. Tricky. Sitting by the bed as if he’d been watching all night.
That fucked me up worse than the knife.
He didn’t know me. All he knew was that I was trouble.
A thug. Someone who deserved every punch that found me.
He should’ve called the filth, or an ambulance, or both.
Instead, he’d patched me up. Slept beside me.
Got his posh mate to play doctor. Which, yeah, was another situation I’d have to sort. Him knowing my face wasn’t ideal.
Then there was last night. What we did.
Not the usual quick and dirty shit. Not what I’m built for. That was different. Slow.
Close.
Too close.
That weren’t supposed to happen. That’s for people who get to want things. Not for blokes like me who trade it or take it rough enough to forget. But he’d looked at me as if I was worth something. And fuck, I’d let him. I’d even given him my name. Richie.
Stupid move.
Sure, it’s not my full name, but it’s still too much.
Too personal. Razor’s safe. Richie’s not.
Though, to be fair, I’d rather he say he was getting a piece of Rich than Razor.
But I’d hope he’d know not to say either.
And I had to figure out what the fuck I was doing there before Cormac or Ghost’s lot figured it out for me.
I should’ve left the moment I opened my eyes and daylight was there. He lived in a place I’d never touch. Law books. Clean kitchens. Futures with shape. If I wanted any of that, I’d have to be someone else.
I didn’t know who I could be without the Firm.
Tricky smiled at me from the next pillow, hair all mussed, eyes soft in that way that made it impossible to move, and I looked back at him, caught in the quiet. If this were a film, there’d be strings swelling under it. All we had was my stomach rumbling.
And a knock on the door.
“Tris?” A bloke’s voice, muffled.
Tristan scrubbed his face, sat up. “Uh…yeah?”
“Zara and I are heading off. You…okay?”
“Yeah…yeah. All good, mate. Thanks, Hen.”
Silence. Then footsteps away, muffled voices and a door slamming.
Tricky looked back at me. The sheet had fallen low on his waist, and my eyes followed it before I caught myself. I sat up against the headboard, pain flaring down my ribs, giving me a reminder of why things like this, men like him and places like this weren’t for me.
“I really fucking hate to say this,” I nudged my chin at the door, “but does he know who I am?”
Tristan laughed. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“You know enough.”
“I mean, I know your name. But that’s all.”
“That’s not the bad part. The worse is him going round saying Razor’s in bed with his mate.” The second the words left my mouth, pain tore through my ribs. I hissed, grabbed my side. “Ow—fuck.”
Tristan reached across me to the bedside table, grabbed the pills, whatever he’d been dosing me with for however long I’d been here, and pressed them into my palm with a bottle of water.
I swallowed them down, breath shuddering out of me.
And when I looked back at him, he’d sort of collapsed inward.
His shoulders dropped; his lips pulled thin; the light behind his eyes dimmed.
And I hated the feeling punching through me right then.
That sick twist low in my gut telling me I’d made him feel small for wanting me.
He lay back down beside me, propping himself on one elbow, gaze lowered to the crumpled sheets between us. “I’ll assume,” he said quietly, “that that wasn’t about my safety. More that you’re not… out.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face “That ain’t even a thing in my world.”
“All drug dealers straight, are they?” he asked, a sharp little edge under the tease.
“If they’re not, they keep it shut. Street’s got rules and that one’s gospel.”
“Wasn’t one of the Kray twins gay?”
“Are you comparing me to the ultimate east end gangland legend of Reggie Kray?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“Wish I had his influence so people wouldn’t care.”
“But they do.”
I shrugged. “It’s not shame. It’s… I don’t even know what. Survival, maybe. You give people something they can twist, they will. Any small thing they think ain’t right, they’ll use it. So you stay hard. Keep quiet. Say nothing.”
Tristan tilted his head. “So… no one knows? Who you sleep with?”
I gave a short laugh, more breath than sound. “Why d’you think I pay for it?”
That made his eyes drop. Fast. As if he’d remembered who I really was and how all this started. Good. He needed that reminder. We both did. No point in either of us getting twisted up over something that wasn’t built to last. I wasn’t built for it.
Even if part of me wanted to be.
“So really no one knows about you?” He glanced back up then, clearly wanting to poke that soft bruise that hadn’t ever healed despite the hardened layers I’d grown over time. “That you’re gay, bi…?”
Jesus. Persistent bastard.
I’d never said the words out loud before.
Never had to. But there was something about him.
This man who made me look where I didn’t want to.
Inside, where the things I’d buried still breathed.
My shoulders tensed. I hated this. Hated being seen.
This was why I kept distance. Why I never stayed.
The ones I paid didn’t ask. The ones I didn’t. .. best not to think about them.
“Gay, I guess,” I finally got out. “There’s been women, sure but…yeah. Blokes. If you’re looking for a label, there it is.”
He nodded, eyes searching mine. “And no one knows that? From your world. Friends, family?”
I shrugged. “Mate Lennon suspects. I mean, yeah. He knows. We just don’t… talk about it.” I stared down at my hands, twisting the sheet in my fist till my knuckles paled. “Don’t talk about much anymore.”
Tristan wriggled closer, the mattress dipping.
He slid his palm over my stomach, careful around the bandage, over the bruises blooming dark as ink beneath my ribs.
Then he dragged his thumb over my nipple, before drifting to the tattoo on my chest. The crowned heart wrapped in thorns, the dagger buried straight through it.
And when he touched that, just that, the world dropped out.
Forgot the room. The blood. What I was.
Because it was nice.
Dangerously nice.
I knew exactly what nice could cost.
“Why don’t you talk much?” he asked.
Not as dangerous as that question.
I dropped my head back against the velvet headboard, trying to beat sense into myself without moving an inch. How was I supposed to explain the history of a friendship that’d survived everything except the man I’d become?
“Doesn’t like my line of work,” I settled on.
Tristan flicked his gaze up, lashes low. “The drugs?”
“Yeah.” I exhaled. “Me and Lennon, we’ve been mates since nappies.
Same estate. Played football till it got too dark to see the ball.
Smoked our first stolen fags behind the garages.
I was there when he got scouted for West Ham, and when he got dropped.
There when he had his heart broken by Monica bloody Webster.
There when he met Amara, now she’s carrying his twins.
” I swallowed. “He’s my blood. But he won’t forgive me for what I do. And I can’t blame him.”
Tristan never stopped tracing circles over my skin with his soft fingers, following the outline of the dagger piercing the heart, over the thorns as if he understood exactly what they meant. His touch didn’t pry. It loosened. Easing me open without trying.
“Why not?” he asked. “If he’s that close, he must understand why you do it.”
I looked down at him, the lamplight catching gold in his hair, his eyes steady on me. As if trying to see through everything I’d built to keep people the fuck out.
“Why d’you think I do it?” I threw back.
’Cause he didn’t know shit about me. Only what I’d let him see.
For all he knew, I walked into some trap house one day and never walked out.
He didn’t know how hard I’d fought to stay clean of it.
How long I’d tried before Cormac dragged me under.
He didn’t know who I was doing this for.
’Cause it weren’t me.
He studied me, searching as if he could dig the truth straight out my chest. “Because you’re trapped.”
My throat went tight. Yeah. That hit. ’Cause only someone caged the same way could’ve seen it.
I huffed out a breath. “What makes you think that, eh?” I waved a hand around his room at the designer gear, the fancy plants, the bloody curated perfection of it all. “You reek posh, mate. Every inch of this place screams money.”
“Sentencing bias, remember?” He arched an eyebrow, a little defensive at me pointing out what he had over me. “That’s what I’m researching. How people from lower socio-economic backgrounds get harsher sentences, harsher lives. I read about it all the time.”
I snorted. “So you think you know me from textbooks?”
“No.” He shook his head, eyes darting away then back. “Not know you. I’d like to know you. Would really like to know you…all of you. But that’s not for research. That’s for me.”