Chapter 25 #2
‘We have to face him.’ He stands. Pulls a shirt from the chair. Buttons it with hands that are steady because he’s making them steady. ‘Sooner or later this had to happen.’
‘Not like this.’
Another knock, louder still.
‘Whatever happens.’ He looks at me. Eyes clear. The glasses are on the bedside table, and without them his face is unguarded, younger, the face I see at 3 am. ‘We’re in this together. Yes?’
Together. He says it like there’s ground under it.
‘Yes.’
He walks to the door. I follow. Three steps behind. My heart, hammering is the wrong word. My heart is trying to leave my chest through my throat.
Laurence reaches for the handle. His hand doesn’t shake. Mine, at my sides, are not.
He opens the door.
Ronan fills the doorframe, bigger than I remember, not from growth but from anger, having a dimension and Ron occupying all of it. Jaw set, eyes scanning, he already knows. He moves past Laurence, finds me, takes me in an inside-out shirt, bare feet, hair that had Laurence’s fingers in it.
‘I knew it.’ Three words stripped bare, no explosion, no fist through the wall. Just Ron’s voice at its foundation. Just the verdict.
He steps inside. Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t wait. Laurence moves back, not retreating, making space.
Ron stands in the hallway. Looks at the coat hooks, my jacket, next to Laurence’s. Looks at the kitchen, two mugs on the counter, mine with the chip in the rim.
‘I knew it,’ he says again. But this time the voice cracks on it, a fracture so small you’d miss it if you weren’t his brother, if you hadn’t heard that voice break on the morning he drove me to Manchester and said call me if you need anything and meant don’t make me worry.
It’s not anger.
It’s pain.
In his face, something that has nothing to do with Laurence or me. Nothing to do with the bed or the shirt. Underneath. Raw.
Understanding hasn’t arrived yet.
The door is still open behind him. The gold light from the street falls across the hallway floor, the same light, and none of it is.
Three people in a hallway. Two in bare feet. One who followed his brother through Manchester and waited outside a green door for three hours and brought the cold in with him.
Laurence closes the front door. The latch catches, the flat seals shut.
He shifts that focus from Laurence to me: the assessment, the weighing.
The latch ticks as it cools. Then stops. Then: nothing. The silence of three people in a sealed space, holding their breath, waiting for the first one to exhale and shatter it all.
The living room is too small for this confrontation.
For the full weight of what we’ve done, laid out.
That’s the first thought. Laurence’s living room is twelve by fourteen and contains two Carricks and a career about to implode, and the space between us feels like inches when it needs to be miles.
Ronan hasn’t sat down. Standing by the window, blocking the light, casting interrogation-room shadows. Laurence is by the bookshelf. I’m between them—the middle.
‘How long.’ It’s shaped like a question, but it’s a deposition.
Laurence speaks, stops. Tries again.
‘Since autumn, Mr Carrick.’
‘I’m asking him.’ Ron’s eyes are on me. ‘How long, Ewan.’
‘Around… November.’
The face tightens, the reset happening. Autumn. Weeks into term. His brother, nineteen, in a city he doesn’t know, in his lecturer’s flat, and, ‘He’s your student.’ Ron’s voice turns straight to Laurence. ‘He’s your student, and you’ve been—what? Fucking him since October?’
Laurence flinches. I’m not sure if it’s the word or the accusation.
‘It’s not.’ Laurence starts. Stops. His hands are at his sides. The hands that grade papers, hold markers, hold me. ‘It’s consensual. I never forced him.’
‘Consensual.’ Ron’s mouth shapes the word. Shapes it again. ‘A thirty-one-year-old lecturer and a first-year student. You have a duty of care. You have a contractual obligation not to.’
‘I’m aware of my obligations.’
‘Are you? Because it looks like you forgot every single one of them the moment my brother walked into your house.’
‘Ronan.’ I move. My body between them before my brain catches up, chest facing Ron, back to Laurence. ‘Stop.’
‘You’re defending him.’ A crack in Ron’s face, not a break. Cracks again. ‘He’s groomed you and you’re defending—’
‘He hasn’t groomed me.’
‘Then what do you call it? You’re nineteen! He’s your lecturer! He has a professional duty.’
‘I know how old I am.’ Steady. My hands behind my back are not. ‘I know exactly how old I am and I know exactly what this is.’
‘You don’t know anything.’ His eyes—bloodshot. He hasn’t slept. The skin under them is dark and pressed. ‘You think you do, because you’re smart, because you’ve always been smarter than everyone around you, but you don’t know.’
‘He hasn’t groomed me because I went after him.’
Silence.
Ron stares. Laurence tenses behind me, the stiffness radiating from his spine into the room.
‘I pursued him. I seduced him. I turned up at his office. I waited outside his lectures. I pushed and pushed until he gave in.’ My voice catches on the truth of them. ‘He tried to say no. He said no a lot. I didn’t let him.’
‘Ewan. Please.’ Laurence, behind me. Pained.
‘I’m not a victim, Ron. I’m not a child who got tricked by a clever man. I’m the clever one. I saw what I wanted and I took it and I’m not sorry.’
It collapses across his face.
‘And it’s not only sex.’
Everything stops.
‘I love him.’ My voice reduced. ‘And he loves me.’
Behind me, Laurence doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. But he finds me, reaches past my hip, fingers closing around my wrist, and the contact is everything.
Ron looks at our hands. Looks at my face.
‘He’s brainwashed you.’
‘No.’
‘This is textbook, Ewan. The power imbalance is the entire problem.’
‘I know about the power imbalance. I’ve thought about it. I’ve weighed it. I chose anyway.’
‘You’re nineteen. You can’t weigh the consequences.’
‘I can weigh whatever I want.’ Louder than I mean to. It echoes. ‘I’m not the version of me you keep in your head, Ron. I’m not twelve. I’m not the kid you drove up here in September. I’ve thought about this more than you ever will.’
‘Do you know what happens when this comes out?’ Ron’s voice drops.
Low. He’s done the research—two AM on his phone reading university policies and disciplinary codes.
‘Disciplinary proceedings. Internal review, he loses his position. Possibly his career. His name goes on a record that doesn’t come off.
And you, your grades get reviewed, your degree gets questioned, every mark he’s given you becomes suspect.
Everything you’ve earned gets an asterisk. Is that what you want?’
Each one. Sternum.
He’s right. I’ve known this. Knowing has never stopped me.
Laurence’s grip on my wrist tightens. Barely. Enough.
‘Why does this bother you so much?’ I say it, and the question surprises both of us. ‘It’s my life. My risk, my decision. Why is your reaction this?’
Nothing fits. Whatever this is, personal isn’t the container.
‘Because someone has to protect you from yourself!’
Ron’s voice snaps, and then breaks. Breaks on protect.
Pain.
I see it. Less than a second, the gap before the recovery. The thing in Ronan’s face I can’t name. His eyes aren’t on Laurence. They’re in the space between us. The hands, the joined hands. The naturalness of it. That’s the knife. The pain is wrong. It exceeds the situation.
He looks away. Runs both hands through his hair. The big tell. When the performance has cost too much.
‘You have no idea what you’ve done,’ he says. The voice is different now. The fury is gone. What’s left: exhaustion and a sadness so specific it has edges. ‘You have no idea.’
‘Then tell me.’ My voice. Smaller than the one that said I love him. ‘Tell me what I’ve done that’s so terrible. I found someone, he found me. We’re—’
‘You’re reckless. Both of you. And when it collapses.’ He stops. Swallows. The swallow is deafening. ‘When it collapses, I’ll be the one picking up the pieces. Same as always.’
Same as always, after Dad stopped talking. After Mum stopped trying. After every fight where Ron showed up with his jaw set and his car keys.
I want to argue. Want to say you don’t have to carry this. But the words die because he does. He’s been carrying it since I was a kid—the breaking.
Nobody moves.
The rain has started. I can hear it against the windows, Manchester doing its relentless thing, and somewhere in the building, someone’s television is on, canned laughter drifting through the wall.
Ron is by the window again. His reflection in the glass, distorted, older than twenty-six, burdened by the weight of what he knows.
Laurence’s hand on my wrist. Still there, still holding.
I look at Laurence. He doesn’t let go of my wrist.
I look at Ron, his reflection. His thumb rubbing the base of his left palm, the same tic from the bar, the same nervous circuit, and somewhere underneath the fury and the fear and the brotherly duty, there’s a frequency I can’t tune into. Don’t know where it’s coming from.
He turns from the window. His eyes are dry, but the effort of keeping them dry is visible in every muscle of his face.
‘I haven’t decided what to do,’ he says. All his defences stripped. ‘But I need you to understand this, Ewan. This isn’t over.’