Steady Hands
Chapter four
The shooting range at Holland and Holland was tucked into the Surrey countryside, a forty-minute drive from London through rolling green hills and narrow lanes lined with hedgerows.
Blake drove, his window cracked open, the warm summer air filling the car with the smell of cut grass and wildflowers.
Liam sat in the passenger seat, talking without pause. “The thing about clay pigeons,” Liam was saying, gesturing with his coffee cup, “is that they’re completely unpredictable."
"Well, no, they’re not. They follow a set trajectory."
"But they feel unpredictable. It’s the speed. Your brain tells you it’s going one way, and by the time you’ve processed that information, it’s already somewhere else.”
“That sounds like returning a serve,” Blake said.
“Exactly! That’s exactly what it’s like.
Except with a serve, you don’t get to blow it to pieces.
” Blake laughed. It was a sound that surprised him — not because he didn’t laugh, but because it came so easily.
He had known Liam for less than two weeks, and already the man had a way of disarming him, of slipping past the careful, practiced exterior that Blake presented to the world.
The range was beautiful — a wide, open field bordered by ancient oaks, the sky above a pale, washed-out blue.
A gamekeeper met them at the entrance, a weathered man in his sixties who handed them ear protection, safety glasses, and a pair of Beretta over-and-under shotguns that felt solid and reassuring in Blake’s hands.
The weight of the gun was familiar. The last time he had held one, he was sixteen, standing on the manicured grounds of the Greenwich Country Club with Tyler beside him, both of them squinting into the Connecticut sun.
Tyler’s father had taught them — a patient, methodical man who believed that every young man should know how to handle a firearm with respect.
Blake had been good. Tyler had been better. But Blake had loved it — the focus, the stillness, the single moment of absolute clarity when the clay disc launched into the air and everything else fell away.
A memory surfaced, unbidden and sharp. He was fifteen, standing on the fifth station at Greenwich, the sun beating down on his neck.
Tyler was beside him, trying to show off for a group of older girls who had wandered over from the tennis courts.
Tyler had mounted the gun with an exaggerated flourish, called “Pull!” in a voice an octave deeper than his usual register, and fired.
He had missed the clay entirely, but the recoil had knocked him backward, his foot catching on a discarded shell casing.
He had gone down hard, landing flat on his back in the dirt, the Beretta pointing safely at the sky but his dignity entirely destroyed.
The girls had giggled behind their hands.
Blake had laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe, doubling over, tears streaming down his face.
Tyler had lain there for a moment, staring at the clouds, before finally starting to laugh too.
It was one of the last pure, uncomplicated memories Blake had of Tyler — before adolescence complicated everything, before the expectations, before the pool party at Tyler’s house the day before Blake left for Paris, when Tyler had been drunk on tequila and had kissed him in a guest room, and everything between them had changed forever.
“Ready?” the gamekeeper asked. “
Ready,” Blake said.
The first clay launched with a sharp crack, arcing across the pale sky. Blake tracked it, his body settling into a stance he hadn’t used in over a decade, the stock pressed firm against his shoulder, his cheek resting against the cool wood.
He fired.
The clay shattered, a puff of orange dust against the blue.
“Bloody hell,” Liam said, his mouth hanging open. “You said you were decent.”
“I am decent.”
“That was not decent. That was obscene.”
Blake smiled, ejecting the spent cartridge. “Pull.”
Another clay launched. Blake tracked it, adjusted, fired. Another clean hit.
“This is humiliating,” Liam said, watching with a mixture of awe and theatrical despair. “I’ve been coming here for a year and I hit maybe one in three. You haven’t touched a gun in — how long?”
“Twelve years.”
“Twelve years! And you’re hitting everything! This is deeply unfair.”
“Try leading it more,” Blake said, stepping back to let Liam take his position. “You’re shooting where it is. You need to shoot where it’s going to be.”
“That’s very philosophical for a man holding a shotgun.”
“It’s the same principle as tennis. Anticipation.”
Liam raised the gun, his stance slightly awkward, his elbows too high. Blake reached over, gently adjusting his grip, lowering his front elbow.
“There. Now keep your head still. Don’t chase the clay with your eyes — let it come to you.”
“Pull,” Liam called.
The clay launched. Liam tracked it, fired. Miss.
“Bollocks.”
“Again. Slower this time. Don’t rush the trigger.”
“Pull.” Track. Fire. The clay cracked apart, a satisfying explosion of orange against the sky. “YES!” Liam shouted, pumping his fist. “Did you see that? Did you bloody see that?”
“I saw it,” Blake said, grinning. “Nice shot.”
“I’m a natural. A late-blooming natural.”
They shot for two hours, working through several rounds, Blake hitting with a calm, remembered precision that drew admiring glances from the gamekeeper, Liam improving steadily under Blake’s patient instruction.
Between rounds, they sat on a wooden bench, drinking tea from a thermos and watching the clouds drift across the Surrey sky.
“Can I ask you something?” Liam said, his voice quieter than usual.
“Sure.”
“When you kissed Andre at the US Open. On the court, in front of everyone. Were you scared?”
Blake considered the question. “Terrified.”
“But you did it anyway.”
“I didn’t think about it. That’s the honest answer. I didn’t plan it. I just looked at him, and I couldn’t pretend anymore.”
Liam nodded slowly, turning his tea cup in his hands. “That’s brave. I know people say that word too easily, but I mean it. That was genuinely brave.”
“It didn’t feel brave. It felt necessary.”
“That’s what bravery is, isn’t it? Doing the necessary thing when every part of you wants to run.”
Blake looked at him — at the earnest, open expression on his pale face, the startling green of his eyes — and felt a sudden, unexpected warmth.
He had spent so many years surrounded by people who wanted something from him — his father wanting perfection, sponsors wanting marketability, the press wanting scandal.
Liam wanted nothing. He was just sitting on a bench in Surrey, drinking tea, asking honest questions.
“You remind me of someone,” Blake said.
“Good someone or bad someone?”
“Good someone. My best friend from home. Tyler.”
“The one who taught you to shoot?”
“His father taught us. But yeah. Tyler.” Blake paused. “We lost touch for a while. Things got complicated.”
Liam didn’t push. He just nodded, took another sip of tea, and said, “Well, you’ve got me now. I’m a terrible shot and I talk too much, but I’m very loyal.”
Blake smiled. “I’ll take it.”
While Blake and Liam were in Surrey, Andre and Talia were in the studio.
Talia had come to see the space for the first time, and she moved through it with the careful, reverent attention of someone who understood what it meant to have a room of one’s own.
She studied the canvases stacked against the walls, the jars of brushes, the palette crusted with dried paint, the north-facing window that filled the room with its honest, unforgiving light.
“This is where you make things,” she said, running her fingers along the edge of a half-finished canvas.
“This is where I make messes,” Andre corrected.
“Same thing.” She turned to him, her dark eyes serious.
“Show me what you’re working on.”
Andre hesitated, then pulled a large canvas from behind a stack of smaller pieces. It was the painting he had started the day he met Talia — the abstract in blues and grays, now shot through with streaks of vivid green.
Talia stood in front of it for a long time, not speaking.
“It’s not finished,” Andre said, suddenly self-conscious.
“It’s beautiful,” Talia said quietly. “It looks like the sea during a storm. Or maybe the sky just before one.”
“I don’t know what it is yet. Sometimes I don’t know until it’s done.”
“That’s how acting works too. You start with the words on the page, but you don’t really know the character until you’ve lived inside them for a while.”
They spent the afternoon in the studio, Andre painting while Talia sat cross-legged on the floor, running lines for the next production.
The silence between them was comfortable, productive — two people engaged in their separate crafts, drawing energy from each other’s presence without needing to fill the space with words.
At some point, Talia set down her script and said, “I want to cook for you.”
Andre looked up from his canvas. “Cook for me?”
“For all of you. You and Blake. At our flat. Liam and I have been talking about it. A proper dinner. I’ll make my mother’s moussaka.”
“I would love that.”
“Good. Saturday. And I want to bake something for dessert, but I’m usually terrible at baking. Mostly everything I make comes out flat and sad.”
Andre set down his brush, wiping his hands on his jeans. “What do you want to make?”
“Scones. Proper English scones. My grandmother used to make them, and last year I worked hard trying to follow her recipe to the letter. They have to be exactly right — crisp on the outside, soft in the middle, and you absolutely cannot overwork the dough.”
“I know a little about dough,” Andre said, amused.
“A little?” Talia raised an eyebrow. “You grew up elbow-deep in flour. You told me you could make a croissant before you could ride a bicycle.”
“French pastry, yes. English scones are a different animal. My father considers them an insult to butter.”