Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
M ac
“Am I dangerous?” I ask my best friend two hours later.
“Hell yeah,” he replies with a grin. “I only stay your friend as it’s safer than being your enemy.”
It’s the sort of answer I’d expect from Nolan, so I don’t know why I asked it really, except that Darla’s words have been driving into me like a thousand cuts since she said them. I know my own demons, I just don’t like having them stated out loud. To my face.
Nolan’s grin fades and he cocks his head at me, his legs slowing on the bike across the gym.
“Has this got anything to do with why you’ve been pummelling seven shades of shit out of that punching bag for the last twenty minutes?”
I flex my hand, the sting in my knuckles just bearable, but if I carry on, I know I’m going to break the skin. I should’ve taped them really, but I just wanted to hit something.
“It’s just something someone said,” I reply, not willing to get into it, not even with Nolan. I’m just grateful he agreed to the short text I sent before I drove back to Oxford, to meet me at the gym.
“Do you want me to beat them up for you?” he says, and I manage to let out a small laugh, some of the pent-up tension finally easing. It’s an old joke, going back to the first time we met, that first week of university when we both knew no one. He was sitting on a bench in university parks reading a book. Some older students stopped and teased him—nothing that was likely to get out of hand but it made me mad anyway. By the time I’d got over there, they’d moved on, but I checked he was okay.
“Mackinley West.” I introduced myself.
“Nolan Hughes.”
“Were they giving you grief? Do you want me to beat them up for you?’
He laughed, “No, but thank you.” Then I caught what he was reading— Rainbow Boys .
“Great book,” I said, sitting down on the bench next to him, finding a kindred spirit for the first time since I’d arrived in the city. And our friendship has lasted nearly twenty years.
I join him on an adjacent bike, giving my hands a rest but still needing to expend some energy. We’ve been gym buddies as long as we’ve been friends. Nolan’s the only one who knows the whole truth, and that he still remains my friend astonishes me, though I know it’s not because he’d rather not be my enemy.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, resuming his pedalling, and I match him.
“Not really,” I reply, and I know without looking at him that he’s giving a little nod. He would hear me out if I wanted to talk, but he also knows that for the most part I can’t talk about what bothers me. A lot of the time it’s work related and the official secrets act prevents me from confiding in him. I love that he accepts that. It makes him an easy friend to be around.
“Bad case, huh?” he asks, and a simple yes would put an end to the conversation, but despite my previous comment, I can’t let it go yet.
“Sort of,” I say obliquely, and I feel his eyes on me. He knows me well enough to know that if I haven’t shut the conversation down completely then there’s more to it.
“You’re going to make it hard for me, aren’t you?” he says, and I speed up and get into the zone, ignoring him. I hear him snort next to me and increase his pedalling so we’re almost racing side by side. After fifteen minutes, I’m done. Finally the anger has worked itself out, and I slow down, taking a few minutes to cool down. He too reduces his speed but doesn’t stop completely.
Nolan has been my best friend long enough for us both to know how this will play out. Every time we need to talk about something, we go to the Gilded Goat—a small out-of-the-way pub. It’s the first place we ever talked to each other about our families, what bothered us, and how we felt like we didn’t fit in with most of the other students. Even after we graduated it continued to be our place. I shower, taking my time, enjoying the hot water washing away the sweat and easing my aching calves and the tightness across my knuckles. Nolan comes into the locker room a few minutes later and showers as well, and we’re able to talk about frivolous subjects as we dress, keeping the bigger stuff until we’re ready. He tells me about a new camera he’s interested in buying for his photography, wondering whether he’ll be able to get a good deal on it in the Black Friday sale in a few weeks.
Once we exit the gym, we both turn towards the Goat, the words and the invitation not required. If Nolan didn’t have the time to talk, he would’ve told me by now. We enter the pub. It’s a gem of a place that most people never find—enough to keep it going, though, thankfully for us—but it’s usually empty enough so we can have the snug at the back to ourselves.
The small room is old fashioned, with dark wooden panelling and equally dark benches and barstools. The walls are painted a dark burgundy and have a few horse brasses hanging from the black beams, completely out of character for the inner-city pub, but it’s probably deliberate to keep away the more affluent and up-market people. It suits us fine. The carpet is heavily patterned in a way that no type of stain would be visible, and as far as we can remember it’s never been changed in the years we’ve been coming here.
I slide into a booth while Nolan goes to the tiny part of the bar that’s accessible from this room. The rules have always been that the person who needs to talk doesn’t pay, certainly not for the first round anyway. I watch him as he waits patiently for the barman to come round from the main bar to serve him. It wasn’t all that long ago, earlier this year, we were in here as he told me about how Cliff had broken up with him, just as he planned to propose. Although he never mentions it, he still has a haunted look about him, and I know he hasn’t got over having his heart broken yet. He still manages to smile at me as he puts a couple of pints down on the table and slides in opposite. I swear these bench seats have moulded to our shape after the number of hours we’ve spent here over the years.
He lifts his glass and makes a little toasting gesture, and I reciprocate and take a deep swallow of the cool amber liquid, like it’s some sort of ritual. Which I guess it is, as it heralds the way for talking to begin.
Nolan takes his time, having a drink and putting his glass back down on the table.
“So, someone thinks you're dangerous and it’s sort of work related,” he says as if he’s thinking it over, but I know he’ll already have been running it through his mind while we were on the bikes. “But being considered dangerous is not what you wanted in this situation.”
I grimace slightly and see his lips curl as he knows me too well. “Which means there’s someone who you think is or could be important to you.”
I stay quiet, even though I’ve allowed us to come here... given him this opening for us to talk. And I want to, but I can’t give too much away. I shouldn’t even be thinking about Levi, never mind entertaining any thoughts about him. But if I don’t, I feel like I’ll go mad.
“Did they call you dangerous?” he asks and I shake my head. Levi is every bit as capable of harm as I am, something I shouldn’t find attractive, but even the look he had in his eyes that day has had me waking up sweating and hard too many times in the last week.
“Is it about a guy?” Nolan asks, and as I meet his eyes he breaks out into a broad triumphant grin. He takes another drink, giving himself time to think. I could just tell him, but this game is one we’ve played often and I enjoy it as much as Nolan does.
“So tell me, who activated your knight in shining armour mode?”
I almost splutter into my drink.
“Oh no, this is nothing like that,” I say vehemently, because it can’t be. I felt the pull towards Levi before I knew who he was and his significance. Before . That word is one I’ve repeated to myself over and over since last week, so much I almost believe it.
“This is definitely not Shane all over again,” I mutter lowly, and Nolan sits back and looks at me.
“I never said it was,” he says, and I know he’s caught me, seen through me. I close my eyes because I don’t really want to be reminded of it... The one person who broke my heart.
It was when I was still in university—my final year. Shane was a few years younger than me, just in his first year, and he was beautiful, with black hair and an elfin smile. I met him when he was running down the street towards me, being chased by some large guys. I pulled him behind me and faced up to them. He’d got caught up in a minor drugs ring, one on the periphery of the larger one I later found out associates of Winstanton were involved in. He was pretty innocent and naive and got involved way over his head. Once those perps had been caught we started a relationship, and we were together for two years—me, a newly qualified detective, while he finished university. Then it started to go wrong. He couldn’t handle my job, we argued a lot, then he left and broke my heart. I remember his parting words.
“Mac, you know in the fairy tales, when the damsel is saved, the story ends. The knight doesn’t keep going out rescuing more people while the damsel has to sit at home wondering whether their knight is going to come back to them or not. I can’t cope with it, the not knowing if I’m going to open the door to two of your colleagues giving me bad news.”
I know he had a point, but being a detective is who I am, and I can’t give it up. I’ve never let myself get close to anyone else since—I couldn’t go through that again—and I’m not going to get close to Levi. I don’t think he even likes me, despite what happened in the alley. What I need to do is get him out of my head.
“No, it’s nothing like that. I just want to find a way to forget about him because whatever I want can never happen.”
“You have it that bad, huh?” Nolan says without a hint of humour.
“I’m fucked,” I say, my shoulders slumping. I decide the game has gone on long enough and tell Nolan everything—well, as much as I can because I can’t disclose anything about the case. But enough so he gets the idea.
After he’s listened to my tale, he delivers his very unhelpful advice.
“Yeah man, you’re fucked.”