Chapter Nineteen Tristan
Chapter nineteen
Tristan
What I’d meant was that Razor had a chance to clear himself.
But as the words replayed in my head, I realised what I’d done.
I’d given him insider information.
Information that could let him obstruct an active police operation, conceal evidence, and walk free while others went down.
I’d told him how to outmanoeuvre the law.
Every principle I’d ever studied, every lecture on ethics, every courtroom I’d observed, had just gone up in smoke.
I could dress it up as moral nuance, tell myself I was helping a man escape a corrupt system, that I’d given him the chance to start again. But I knew the truth.
I’d done it because I wanted to save him.
Because I wanted him to stay.
Here. With me.
My father’s chambers would never tolerate this version of me.
The one who slipped into East London alleys and kissed danger until I tasted blood.
If I didn’t follow the family path, would the path disappear completely?
The Hale-Fitzroys didn’t fund rebellions.
And I’d been dancing with danger even before this moment.
The realisation hit as he pushed himself out of bed then doubled over with a sharp groan.
“Fuck.”
I leapt up, throwing my arm around him before I could think. “You shouldn’t move.”
“I need to get my shit together.” He winced, clutching his ribs. “Need to sort this.”
I nodded, though every instinct screamed to stop him. To keep him here.
“Where’s my gear?”
I pointed to the corner where his clothes, bloodstained and torn sat in a heap, then to my desk where I’d left his phones and other nefarious bits and pieces. He limped over, checked both burners. Tossed one. Kept the other. Then glanced at me over his shoulder.
“You might not wanna hear this.” He raised his eyebrows. “Less you know the better, eh?”
He was right. And the tone alone told me he was slipping back into lieutenant mode.
Sharp, calculating, untouchable. The armour was back on.
And I couldn’t bear to see it. Not after the hours before, when he’d been something else entirely.
When he’d spoken about Levi, his mother, his sister.
When I’d seen the man beneath the reputation: burdened, loyal, guilty, human.
And how I’d been the one to bring it all back.
It struck me, as I turned away and reached for a pair of lounge bottoms, that yes, I’d been drawn to the danger of him at first. The thrill of it.
The risk. But after seeing what lay under all that steel, I realised how easily I could fall for him.
“Do you drink coffee?” I asked as if this was any other morning after.
“Yeah. Two sugars.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Famished.”
He was punching in a number, one he clearly knew by heart. I caught the low rumble of his voice as I moved towards the door.
“I’ll find you some clothes.” I glanced back at the man I’d handed a get-out-of-jail-free card to and the faint, crooked smile he gave me as he murmured into the phone set my world alight.
“Yeah. I’m alive…” Then he was back into his world.
In the kitchen, I moved on autopilot. I made the good coffee, shoved two slices of Zara’s artisan sourdough in the toaster.
Real butter, the good jam, smeared it on as if forgetting the world for a second.
I piled it on a plate, wrapped the mug in my hand, and crept back upstairs.
I paused at the bedroom door and listened through the gap, suddenly feeling like an intruder in my own home.
“Yeah…get the stash and take it somewhere far. Don’t care where, just far.
Then destroy all phones. Burn any traceable link to Ghost or Cormac.
Take the runners off the line…yes, Tyler, off the fucking line.
No one sells. Everyone gives you their stash and cash.
I want nothing on the street. You get me? Nothing. Leave Cormac to me.”
There was a rustle, a hiss of breath, someone speaking in the background. Razor scrubbed a hand through his cropped hair. “That little prick. Alright, send someone to find him. Bring him to me.”
I thought he was done so I pushed open the door.
He was on the phone, punching numbers. He spun as it went to his ear and looked up at me.
Still naked except for white gauze wrapped around his ribs.
I shouldn’t have stared, but I did. I wasn’t sure how many more chances I still had left to see him like that.
And not just physically. His expression when he caught me was guarded.
Not soft; as if the man on the line was a lens he couldn’t afford to lower.
“Yes, boss.” He lifted the handset, eyes flicking to mine as I set the tray on the desk. “I’m breathing… a safehouse.” His tone was clipped, controlled, but his gaze slipped away as he spoke. “I have something better…information. Yeah. I’ll meet you for a sit down at Joe’s caff.”
He hung up and exhaled, shoulders tense, looking for a second as if the world might finally cave in.
“Coffee.” I nodded to the desk. “Toast and jam.”
“Thanks.”
Razor flipped the phone, popped the SIM out, and crushed it between his fingers. Then his eyes found mine again. “Can I take a shower?”
I gestured towards the en suite. “Sure. Go ahead. Excuse the blood around the tiles.”
He snorted. Turned. Then came back. And I watched him drain the coffee, bite into the toast and before I could process it, he leant in and kissed me.
It hit like an aftershock.
But he pulled back, a flicker of awareness crossing his face, then he turned away.
The gauze came loose in his hands as he stepped into the bathroom, leaving the door open.
I stood there with my coffee cooling in my palm, watching the water cascade over his shoulders, streaking down the bruises and dried blood along his ribs.
I told myself not to look. Not to want. Not to care.
Then his voice came through the room, “Couldn’t give me a hand, could ya?”
I glanced up. He was half-turned, struggling to reach the dressing at his side. The water had loosened it, pink-tinged and threatening to tear. He didn’t need me to wash him. He needed help cleaning what he couldn’t reach. And maybe someone to keep him standing while he did.
So I set the mug down, slipped off my lounge bottoms, and stepped into the steam.
The air was thick with heat and the scent of him.
Soap, sweat, blood. I told myself I was only helping.
Keeping him steady, cleaning the wound, nothing more.
But the moment my hands found his skin, slick and hot under the water, I knew I was lying to myself.
I washed him. The slope of his back, the curve of his shoulder, the bruised plane of his ribs, careful where the wound pulled.
And I pressed my mouth to the dip between his shoulder blades.
His breath hitched once, a quiet sound swallowed by the water.
My pulse matched it. Then his hand found mine and he tugged it forward, guiding it lower.
I didn’t stop him.
From behind, I wrapped my fingers around his fierce erection, and he reached back, catching mine with the same desperate rhythm. We moved together, bodies close but faces turned away, steam ghosting between us as if that could hide what we were doing. What we felt.
We didn’t look at each other.
Didn’t speak.
Because acknowledging it would make it real.
And neither of us was ready for that.
I came first, spilling into his hand as he stroked me through it, slowing when I trembled and drawing out every pulse until I shuddered against him.
Then I focused on him. The heat, the sound he made when he tried to hold back.
His groans. The sharp hiss through his teeth when he was close.
And the thought that this might be the last time with him hit so hard I couldn’t breathe around it.
So I let go. Pressed kisses along his back, around to his front. Found his mouth. He took it instantly, spreading one hand over the back of my head to kiss me deeper. To entwine our tongues in a tangle of frantic want.
Then I sank to my knees and took him into my mouth.
His moan was wrecked, helpless. And he threaded his fingers through my hair as he pushed his hips forward, not rough, but desperate for more. Water streamed down my face as I looked up at him, hollowed out by the sight of me.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “You look so pretty like that. So fucking good.”
I did my best. Took him deep, worked my tongue, groaned around him when he caught the back of my throat. Even with his hand on me, he didn’t force it. He let me take him there.
And I did.
He came hard, spilling down my throat, and I swallowed, keeping a part of him with me.
Then he angled his head. “Get up here.”
So I stood and he kissed me, rough and urgent, the water pounding around us. Washing everything away, except the part of me that didn’t want this to end.
When we emerged, I dressed while he towelled off, then I checked the back of my wardrobe to find that old pair of joggers I’d bought once that were too big and never sent them back.
The only top I had that would even get around him was an old gym shirt, oversized on me but fitted him like a glove.
He stepped into them, then glanced at the stuff on the desk.
“Can I trust you to get rid?”
He meant the baggies. The phones. The evidence.
But it hit somewhere deeper. Rawer.
“Yeah.” I held his gaze, so he’d know he could. “You can trust me.”
He smiled. Nodded. Then moved over to the window next to him.
“Seriously, you can go the front way.” I angled my head to get in his line of sight. “No one’s in.”
“What if your neighbours see me?”
“They’ll think I scored quick.”
Razor snorted, then stroked his thumb along my jaw, soft and sweet in a way that nearly undid me. Especially when he said, “I’ll stick to the way I know.”
He meant the window.
But I heard everything underneath it.
He then dipped to climb through, winced, and pressed a hand to his side.
“Wait…” The word ripped out of me before I even knew I’d said it, and I caught the hem of his T-shirt, lifting it under the pretence of checking the dressing.
As if this was about bandages, not the terror clawing at my ribs.
Not the fear of letting him go. Or the dread that this window, this moment, this breath, might be the last time I’d ever see him alive.
“You’ll need to change that in a few hours,” I said, voice steadier than I felt.
“I will.”
He looked at me as I let the fabric fall. His eyes were dark, unreadable… but there was something there, brief and burning, feeling too much like a goodbye he wasn’t willing to speak out loud.
I couldn’t stand it.
I stepped closer and slid my hands around his neck, pulling him down until his breath warmed my lips. Until I could pretend we were still on the same side of this, the same world, the same impossible moment.
“You have a choice,” I whispered.
He closed his eyes, a rough, wrecked exhale leaving him, as if the idea hurt more than when the knife had torn into his flesh.
I dug my fingers into the back of his neck. “You can clear yourself and walk away.”
He gave a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. Hollow, splintering, trying to hide how much it shattered to even imagine leaving his world.
Then he leant in and kissed me.
Soft.
Tender.
Real.
A goodbye disguised as a kiss.
“Will I see you again?” I whispered into his mouth, closing my eyes because I couldn’t bear to see the answer break him. Or me.
It was madness, the way I felt.
A man I hadn’t known a week ago had lodged himself under my skin, into places no one had ever reached. I could pretend it was rebound. Pretend it was loneliness after two years with someone who never really wanted me. I could pretend Razor was a distraction, a phase, a reckless misfire.
But that would be a lie.
Because deep down, sickeningly deep, I knew the truth:
I wanted him.
Richie. The man beneath the violence. The man who bled on my sheets, who kissed me like he meant it, who fought so rough yet touched so tenderly it threw me off balance.
But he couldn’t live in my world. And I couldn’t follow him into his.
There was no middle ground. No bridge between Mayfair and Hackney.
We were a broken equation, doomed from the start.
And the sheer, brutal ache of that hollowed me out.
“See ya, Tricky,” he whispered against my lips.
And before I could move, before I could ruin everything by saying something unforgivable, he turned, ducked under the window frame, and was gone.
Taking my heart with him.
Leaving the room cold, and me standing there with my heart beating against nothing but absence.