Chapter 17
CRAIG
Craig stands at the kitchen window and watches the rain try to make a point of itself on the patio.
It’s that Bristol drizzle that isn’t committed enough to be dramatic but still insists on ruining plans.
The kind of weather he’s spent half his career standing in while cordons go up and statements get taken.
Twenty years in Avon and Somerset Police and drizzle is still the thing he hates most—not the blood, not the lies, not the nights that turned into mornings. The drizzle.
Phil wanders down the stairs, whistling something jaunty and unnecessarily jovial for a Wednesday evening.
“Big night?” Craig calls, not moving from the window. He can see Phil’s reflection, jacket on, hair done with the extra ten-percent care.
Phil steps into the doorway, tilting his head. “Just a drink,” in the tone of someone who knows exactly how loaded that sounds. “Possibly two. We live in uncertain times.”
“With?”
“Just that guy off Scruff — the one with the cute dog and the aggressively good lighting.” Phil says, smiling with the kind of softness that used to make Craig melt. “Friendly. Safe. No sharp edges.”
The word lands. Safe. It’s become their euphemism. Safe as in: not a risk to the scaffolding holding them up. Safe as in: this won’t hurt you. Safe as in: you won’t notice.
Craig forces a nod. He knows the rules because he wrote half of them.
Boundaries, check-ins, the little ritual conversations that make the big conversations less likely to explode.
He can give a good talk on ethical non-monogamy with examples, handouts and a Q his brain is a filing cabinet that never closes. He types it anyway.
“Don’t drink too much,” he says. “Don’t… don’t try to win anyone over. Be exactly as lovely as you are and then leave enough of yourself for yourself.”
“You think I’m lovely?”
“I think you’re a nightmare,” Craig says, soft as a smile, “and lovely.”
There’s a pause. Craig can hear the decision settle in Tom’s chest. “Okay,” Tom says. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Do. Or I’ll file a missing-persons report and embarrass you on local news.”
Tom laughs for real this time. “You would.”
“I would.” He swallows. “Night, mate.”
“Night.”
The line clicks dead. The kitchen feels bigger.
Craig stares at the phone, then flips it face down like it could incriminate him.
He knows what he’s supposed to feel: supportive, trusting, proud of Tom for leaning into something new with his eyes open.
And a part of him does feel that; a good, clean part that wants Tom happy and whole.
But there’s another part, the part that has stood at too many doors because someone ignored a feeling, the part that has watched smart people walk into rooms they didn’t come out of. That part is meaner and more practical. That part would burn bridges if it kept Tom from drowning on the other side.
His mind, traitor that it is, circles back to Daniel.
He knows the version of the story Tom tells himself: Craig, the loyal friend, the patient ear, the gentle nudge that helped him, supported him to leave his abusive ex.
It is true, but it is not the whole truth.
The whole truth has splinters.
The whole truth lives in locked drawers in his head.
He told himself he did what he did because it was the best thing for Tom. He still tells himself that, because the alternative is admitting something uglier. There was a moment, a specific moment, when he stopped being a friend and started being an architect.
Last week, he’d crossed the line again. Slipped Tom’s phone from the coffee table the moment he left the room, thumbed the screen open, and blocked Daniel’s number without hesitation.
A small domestic crime, committed with all the precision of a detective who knows how to make evidence vanish.
He told himself it was necessary — triage. Daniel was a trigger, a wound that kept tearing open. Craig couldn’t watch Tom bleed himself out one more time.
And yes, maybe that was part of it.
But it wasn’t the whole story.
Daniel couldn’t be allowed to get close again.
Not just for Tom’s sake.
Because if Daniel ever spoke — if he ever spat the truth of what Craig had done into the light —Tom would never forgive him. He would see Craig not as a friend, but as the hand that tipped the first domino.
Craig sits with that thought longer than is comfortable, the weight of it heavy in his chest.
He doesn’t regret it. Not yet.
And if it came to it again, he knows he’d wouldn’t stop at blocking a number.