Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Liam
Ican’t stop smiling.
I’m sitting in the waiting room of the probation office, surrounded by the familiar institutional atmosphere of government buildings everywhere.
Fluorescent lights that buzz slightly, cheap chairs in that particular shade of green that’s supposed to be calming but just looks depressing, and the pervasive smell of disinfectant mixed with despair.
But none of it can touch me today. Not the hostile looks from the security guard, not the way the other people waiting carefully avoid eye contact, not even the way my skin crawls at being back in a place with locked doors and people in uniforms making decisions about my life.
Because Nicky kissed me.
Actually kissed me. Put his mouth on mine and meant it, kissed me like he’s been wanting to do it for years, kissed me like I’m something precious instead of something broken that needs fixing.
I touch my lips without thinking, remembering the way his mouth felt against mine. Soft but demanding, gentle but desperate, everything I’ve been dreaming about since I was eighteen and too scared to put a name to what I was feeling.
He called me his boyfriend this morning.
Not directly, not in some grand declaration, but in the easy way he made coffee for both of us and asked if his “boyfriend” wanted eggs with his toast. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Like we’ve been together forever instead of just figuring it out last night.
Boyfriend. The word sits warm and strange in my chest, unfamiliar but perfect. I’ve never been anyone’s boyfriend before, never had the chance to learn what that means, what it feels like to belong to someone who actually wants you.
“Walker, Liam.”
The bored voice of the receptionist cuts through my reverie. I look up to see her pointing toward a corridor with the kind of dead-eyed expression that comes from years of processing human misery for minimum wage.
I get to my feet, still buzzing with the kind of giddy energy I haven’t felt since I was a kid on Christmas morning.
Even this, the humiliation of proving I’m still behaving myself like a good little ex-convict, can’t dampen the euphoria that’s been coursing through my veins since I woke up in Nicky’s arms.
The corridor is exactly what I imagined a probation office would look like. Narrow, beige, lined with identical doors that could lead to anywhere from counseling sessions to drug tests to meetings where they decide whether you’re worthy of remaining free.
“Ms. Harris, room four,” the receptionist calls after me without looking up from her computer.
Room four is a small office that feels even smaller thanks to the overwhelming presence of filing cabinets, stacks of paperwork, and a desk that’s seen better decades.
Behind it sits a woman in her late forties with graying hair pulled back in a practical bun and the kind of exhausted expression that suggests she’s seen it all and been disappointed by most of it.
She doesn’t look up when I enter, just gestures vaguely at the chair across from her desk while she continues typing something on her ancient computer.
“Liam Walker,” she says without glancing away from her screen. “Released from HMP Brixton on...” She pauses, scrolling through whatever file she’s got open. “November first. Served five years for death by dangerous driving and other related charges.”
Each word hits like a slap, reducing five years of hell and everything I’ve survived to a few clinical sentences in a government database.
But even that can’t completely kill my mood.
Because whatever I was when I walked into Brixton, whatever I am now that I’ve walked out, I’m also someone who gets to go home to Nicky at the end of the day.
Someone who gets kissed good morning and told he’s loved and called boyfriend like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Current address?” Ms. Harris asks, finally looking up from her computer with the kind of mild interest you might show a mildly interesting piece of paperwork.
I give her Nicky’s address, watching as she types it into whatever form she’s filling out. She doesn’t ask if it’s permanent or temporary, doesn’t seem to care whether I’m sleeping on someone’s sofa or have an actual home. Just records the information and moves on.
“Source of income?”
The question I’ve been dreading. Because what am I supposed to say?
That I’m completely financially dependent on someone who earns his money doing things I try not to think about too carefully?
That I’m a grown man who can’t even afford his own groceries because five years in prison has left me completely unprepared for basic adult life?
I feel heat creep up my neck, and I know I’m blushing. “My boyfriend is taking care of me.”
The words slip out before I can stop them, and the moment they’re in the air, I freeze. Boyfriend. I’ve said it out loud to a stranger, made it real in a way that goes beyond just the two of us figuring out what we are to each other.
But Ms. Harris doesn’t even blink. Doesn’t look up from her typing, doesn’t ask for clarification, doesn’t show any interest whatsoever in this piece of information that feels monumentally important to me.
“Hmm,” she grunts, fingers clicking away at the keyboard. “Any employment prospects?”
The casual dismissal stings more than outright hostility would have.
This thing that feels so precious and new and life-changing to me, this relationship that’s literally keeping me sane, that’s given me a reason to keep fighting when everything else feels hopeless, is just another box to tick on her form.
“I’m... looking,” I lie, because the truth is that I’m nowhere near ready to handle job interviews or workplace dynamics or any of the social interactions that normal employment would require. The truth is that just getting through each day without falling apart feels like a full-time job.
“Support network?” She continues, still not looking at me.
“My boyfriend,” I say again, and again she shows no reaction. No curiosity about who this person is, whether they’re good for me, whether this arrangement is healthy or sustainable or anything other than a line item in a database.
“Any substance abuse issues since release?”
“No.”
“Mental health concerns?”
I almost laugh at that one. Mental health concerns. Like the nightmares and panic attacks and suicidal ideation are just minor inconveniences rather than the defining features of my daily existence.
“I’m managing,” I say, which is technically true if you count clinging to Nicky like a life raft as managing.
She types something else, then finally looks up at me with the kind of professional disinterest that makes it clear this interview is nearly over.
“Right. Next appointment is...” She flips through a paper diary, running her finger down dates without any apparent system. “January fifteenth. Same time. Don’t miss it, and contact this office immediately if you change address or get arrested.”
That’s it. Ten minutes of questions that reduce my entire existence to a series of checkboxes, and now I’m dismissed until next month when we’ll go through the exact same routine.
“Any questions?” She asks, but she’s already looking past me toward the door, clearly eager to move on to the next case file.
“No,” I say quietly.
“Good. You can go.”
I stand up, legs unsteady beneath me. Not from panic or fear this time, but from the strange deflation that comes from having something precious made ordinary through sheer bureaucratic indifference.
The walk back through the corridor feels longer than it did coming in. The other people in the waiting room look exactly the same. Tired, defeated, marking time until they can escape back to whatever passes for normal life in their worlds.
But I’m not like them, am I? I have somewhere to go. Someone waiting for me. Someone who loves me enough to call me his boyfriend and mean it.
I’m practically bouncing down the stairs of the probation office, taking them two at a time in my eagerness to get back to Nicky.
He’s waiting in the car outside, he insisted on driving me even though I lied and told him I could manage the tube, and the thought of seeing his face, of telling him about my boring appointment and having him actually care about the answer, makes everything else fade into background noise.
I’m digging my new phone out of my pocket to text him that I’m on my way when a hand clamps down on my shoulder.
“Well, well. Look what we have here.”
The voice freezes my blood. Deep, gravelly, with that particular accent that screams violence and casual cruelty. I know that voice. I’ve heard it whisper threats in the dark, heard it laugh at things that should make any decent person sick.
I turn slowly, already knowing what I’ll see but hoping desperately that I’m wrong.
I’m not wrong.
Wayne Thompson stands behind me on the stairs. On the featureless landing I just ran past. The door to that exit still swinging behind him.
Wayne Thompson just strolled into the same stairwell I’m in and I was so distracted by wanting to text Nicky that I didn’t even notice.
Wayne Thompson is here, grinning that same predatory smile that used to make my stomach turn in Brixton.
He looks exactly the same. Early forties but already lacking most of his teeth.
A tall, broad-shouldered, thick-set man, with arms covered in prison tattoos and dead eyes that find amusement in other people’s pain.
My cellmate for two of the worst years of my life. Not the only person who hurt me, just the first.
“Hello, Pretty Boy,” he says, and the nickname hits me like a physical blow. “Didn’t expect to see you here. Thought you wouldn’t get out for a while.”
I can’t speak. Can barely breathe. My whole body has gone rigid with the kind of fear that bypasses rational thought and goes straight to pure animal terror.