Chapter Twenty-Two
Colin lay on his back with his hands laced across his chest and stared at the ceiling.
Six months ago he’d slept here every night without registering the silence, or the emptiness of his bed.
Now his body had got used to Diwa’s presence, and Diwa’s bedroom.
The emperor mattress that swallowed him like a cloud, the smooth-as-liquid sheets, and best of all, the steady breathing of an alpha sleeping beside him.
He’d gone soft on it. Surrendered to the luxury of someone else’s bed like a stray cat that gets one meal off a stranger’s doorstep and immediately forgets how to hunt.
The spring under his right hip dug in. He shifted, and the frame groaned.
He’d never noticed the groaning before Diwa.
Or the springs, the sag in the centre, or the way his lower back seized up in the first ten minutes of every morning until the hot water from the shower loosened it enough for him to be able to bend over and get his boots on.
This mattress had been with him for fifteen years, and it had been fine.
It had been perfectly bloody fine, right up until Diwa and his fucking delicate spine.
He could still smell Diwa on the pillow.
His chest ached for the body that came with it.
He pressed his face into the cotton, breathed in once deeply, and then turned the pillow over to the cold side because he wasn’t going to lie here sniffing his alpha’s pillowcase at two in the morning like a besotted teenager.
By half four he’d given up thinking that he’d be able to sleep.
Every position he got into hurt. His shoulder blades ground against something hard and angular when he lay on his back, his hip found the same spring when he turned left, and when he curled onto his right side the frame listed so badly he could feel the gradient.
He stared at the car park lights and did not think about how many mornings he’d woken up stiff and sore and chalked it up to the job.
All that kneeling and lifting was just doing a number on his ageing body.
His alarm went off at half six. Colin sat up, and a muscle in his lower back cramped so hard he went rigid.
He showered standing under the hot water for longer than he should have, letting it work at the knot below his left shoulder blade. His mobile sat on the bathroom shelf, the screen dark. Diwa hadn’t sent any messages or tried to call once. He checked it twice before putting it back, face down.
Well. He’d done it, then. Pushed hard enough that the lad had taken the hint and gone.
He dried off, got dressed, and walked out of the flat, because the alternative was standing in his bathroom feeling like a fainting bloody heroine in a period drama. He’d gone his whole life without indulging that kind of nonsense, so he wasn’t about to start being a weepy soft thing now.
His job for the day was in Hackney, renovating a two-bed flat that a pair of solicitors from Sevenoaks had bought outright for their nineteen-year-old daughter.
Colin’s crew were laying engineered oak across the living room and hallway while the girl supervised from a velvet sofa that still had the plastic wrap on its arms. She had strong opinions about the direction of the grain.
By eleven o’clock Colin had stopped kneeling and started lowering himself down, one hand on the floor, the other braced against his thigh, like a man twice his age. Dave, who was running the trim, asked him if he was all right and Colin snapped at him to mind the skirting board.
He checked his mobile at lunch, and there was still nothing from Diwa. Colin put it away and ate his sandwich standing up in the girl’s kitchen, because sitting down meant having to get up again and he wasn’t confident his back would cooperate.
By the end of the day Diwa still hadn’t rung.
Colin took the Overground to Stratford and changed for the District line, and there were no seats on either.
He stood with his hand on the overhead rail and his holdall between his feet while the carriage threw him sideways at every junction, each jolt landing square in his lower back.
A teenager’s rucksack caught him between the shoulder blades at Upton Park and he had to breathe through his nose until the stars cleared.
By the time he got his key in the lock at the flat, his back had set into something that felt less like a set of muscles and more like a single solid concrete slab.
He dropped his bag in the hall, filled the kettle, and stood at the counter waiting for it to boil while the empty flat sat around him.
A week passed, and the want of Diwa didn’t fade.
Colin had been banking on it fading. He knew how to be alone. In fact, he used to prefer it.
He’d been fine before Diwa. He needed to remember that. He’d been functional, and managing. Sure, the mattress wasn’t perfect, and his body ached from crown to sole at the end of every working day. But that was just what forty looked like when you were an odd-jobs man.
On Friday, after eight hours stripping wallpaper in a conversion in Bow, he left the job with his holdall over his shoulder and his lower back screaming. At Mile End station he tapped through the barrier and got on a Central line train heading west to Notting Hill Gate.
His heart was going so hard by the time he reached Ledbury Road that he was afraid he’d have some sort of cardiac event before he ever got to see Diwa again.
He knocked twice, and stood there with his work bag cutting into his shoulder and his hands hanging at his sides, and for one terrible, lurching second he thought: what if Diwa doesn’t open the door?
What if Diwa never wants to see him again?
The yellow door opened, showing Diwa in joggers and a T-shirt, barefoot, with his hair flat on one side as though he’d been lying on the sofa. He took one look at Colin and his arms opened to receive him.
Colin walked into them without hesitation.
Diwa’s arms closed around his back. Colin pressed his face into the alpha’s chest, and the week he’d spent bracing against everything fell away.
“I might need a new mattress,” Colin said, into the cotton. “We can go to the Ikea in Wembley.”
Diwa’s arms tightened around him. His mouth pressed against the top of Colin’s head, and he breathed in deep, his chest expanding against Colin’s, holding the breath for a long moment before letting it go.
“I was so scared you weren’t coming back to me.
But I didn’t want to chase you, Colin. I didn’t think it’d be right. ”
Colin’s fingers loosened in Diwa’s shirt, and he tipped his head back far enough to look at him.
“I’ve got a chip on my shoulder,” he said.
“About people doing things for me. About needing help.” Colin took in a deep breath, bracing himself for his admission.
“I spent most of my life being someone’s charity case, Diwa.
Everyone around me just kept deciding what I needed and handing it over whether I wanted it or not.
It’s hard for me to tell the difference between that and someone who actually gives a shit. ”
Diwa’s thumb traced a slow arc against his spine.
“I know the difference with you,” Colin said. “I’ve known it for months. I just couldn’t let myself have it without a fight.”
Diwa kissed his forehead. “That’s huge character growth, Colin. I’m so proud of you. Really. You’re giving off massive breakthrough energy right now.”
“Piss off.”
“And you did it all without the years of therapy I had to go through.”
Colin’s hand came up and covered Diwa’s mouth. Diwa’s eyes creased into a smile above his fingers. The alpha laughed against his palm and pulled Colin’s hand away from his face, even as he kept hold of his fingers.
“Will you let me buy the frame?” Diwa asked. “Because we’ll both be using it, and I intend to fuck you very thoroughly on it. Frequently. And I’d like something solid underneath us when I do.”
Colin scowled at him, picked his bag up off the doorstep, and pushed past him into the house. “Yeah, all right. Now shut the door and order us something to eat. I’m starving.”