Chapter Twenty Five #2
You wanted...” Burning, ugly words rose up in Sasha’s throat. He
had never meant to say them—sworn inwardly never to contaminate
himself or Laurie by acknowledging out loud what he had seen. Words
like those were for normal couples, not for paupers who’d married
the prince. How could you lay a hand on
that guy, they would say. Don’t touch me. Don’t ever come near me again.
Laurie
wasn’t a prince. He was a human soul, raw and bleeding in the
fading light. Sasha was raw too. “You wanted someone else,” he said
flatly. “Someone else to suck your cock, and God knows what else,
and you got him.”
Laurie
lurched forward. He threw his hands out in front of him as if he
would have fallen otherwise. “Christ,” he rasped. “It was once. It
was Wes Lombard. Bailey died, and...”
“I know about Bailey. I’m sorry.”
“And I got drunk and stoned, and Wes and Nicole Delgado set me
up.”
“Laurie, don’t fuck with me. Don’t fuck with yourself. Say the
word and I’ll hunt down Wes and Nicole and kill them with a Roma
shiv, but you wanted the drink and the drugs that got you there. Just
you.”
Their
tableau was complete now. Laurie looked up, hollow-eyed, sick.
“This is where Mama Luna died, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Because my father and his thugs came out here and scared her
to death. Because I told them where to find the camp. I’ll never
forget the look in your eyes when you found out. You never forgave
me for that, but you never...” Laurie swallowed hard and coughed.
“You never told me how angry you were. That you were angry at all.
It’s the same now—about Wes, and what I did. You’ll talk to me
about drugs and desires, and how I have to handle them. But you
won’t tell me how pissed off and miserable you are that I slept
with another guy. You’ll be calm and intelligent and sane, but
you’ll never forgive that either. Ever.”
Sasha stared at him. “All right. You betrayed me, you bastard.
You ended my life when I saw that fucking tape. Bits of me died. Is
that what you want? Is that what normal people say?”
Laurie
curled up. He clasped his hands across the back of his head. One
sob racked him then another. “I don’t know!” he choked. “I just
know... Oh, Sasha! I’m so fucking sorry!”
Sasha
crawled to meet him. They came together at the centre of the
circle. Sasha put his hand into the hair at Laurie’s nape, closed
his fingers tight in its rich silk. He drew Laurie’s head down onto
his lap. He leaned over him. They were right out in the open, which
was stupid—which violated all the laws of the hunted fox, but Sasha
would shield him. He stroked Laurie’s hair, clenched his free hand
in the fabric of his coat. “I did what I wanted, too,” he said.
“When I found out about Stefan, I mean. I thought I was being...
brave and noble, leading him away from you. But in the end it was
easier for me to face the danger alone than to share it. That’s
all.”
“Don’t.” It was barely more than a grunt. Laurie rubbed his
brow against Sasha’s thigh. He got an arm out of their tangle and
grabbed Sasha’s wrist as if he’d never let it go. “You don’t have
to say that.”
“I do. Because you’re not my child—not my treasure, to keep and
hide away. You’re my...” He hesitated, struggling, rocking Laurie
lightly. “God, I hate English. My
partner... That sounds so cold. My other
half, my other soul. And you wanted to walk at my side. To be my
comrade.”
Laurie
got his head up. “Yes. Yes.”
“I was waiting for you, to tell you that. If I asked you to go
now, because it was right and I needed you to—would you do
it?”
Laurie
gritted his teeth. “Yes,” he said brokenly. “Is that what you
want?”
“No. I want a comrade. And... you’re wrong, you know. Wrong
about the forgiving.”
***
Laurie
walked at Sasha’s side, across the heath and away—finally, forever
away—from the circle. Sasha touched a fingertip to the back of his
hand, indicating the sweep of woodland turning grapeskin purple in
the dusk. The touch communicated urgency, the sense of their
exposure out here in the open. Laurie’s heart was bumping raggedly.
Pain and joy were clashing like cymbals in his skull. Reunion and
grief, the cleansing sting of Sasha’s anger, and after it... Laurie
didn’t know what had come after. It had felt like love, like
unearned absolution. Sasha pointed out a track between the beeches,
and they ran for it side by side.
Streetlights flickered on the far side of the woods, the
quiet Middlesex suburb whose citizens never knew the Romani dramas
unfolding on the heath where they walked their dogs and brought
their kids to fly kites in the summer. The lights were amber
fireflies through the branches, and then the leaves thickened and
they were gone. Laurie breathed the night-time fragrance of damp
soil and moss, a scent of England so deep-laid into his memory that
he hadn’t registered it until his exile’s end. The track narrowed,
beginning to twist among roots. He stumbled, eyes adjusting to the
dark, and Sasha waited for him.
“I’m making a noise. We need to be quiet, don’t we?”
A smile,
a dark-eyed nod. “It would be better, yes.”
“How do I do it?”
“Place your feet carefully. Make sure you’ve got a gap in front
of you to move into, enough space that you won’t rustle branches.
You’re doing okay, actually.”
“Not bad for a gajo?”
“That’s right. You’re earning your Roma colours in all sorts of
ways. How did you know to track me down here?”
“Someone told me you knew about Stefan.” Laurie shifted,
uneasily caught Sasha’s gaze in the twilight. “Someone whose
secrets you’ve probably sworn to guard, even though she’s not too
careful about yours—or mine.”
“Oh, my God. Clara... You heard from her? Is she
okay?”
“She followed you home from LA. Your promise to be good sounded
fishy to her, probably because she’s an expert in crossing her
fingers behind her back. She came with her dragon, however, who
turns out to be an Interpol agent. She’s in protective custody at
Scotland Yard.”
Sasha pressed a hand to his mouth. A burst of horrified
laughter here would send up pigeons, blow the game even further
apart than a scarlet Mercedes. “She followed me?”
“Not quite. She was on the same plane. Dracinsky only kept the
cork in her to prevent a mid-flight incident.” And then I met your mother outside our flat.
Laurie couldn’t find words or a way to tell Sasha
this, not now. When this blood-hot night was over, maybe. “So I
figured that, if you knew Stefan was on the loose, you might come
back here. It was a guess. The only lead I had.”
“It’s not that you’re a bad liar. You swept me across the
Atlantic with your last story, didn’t you? But you’re different
when you’re holding back from me.”
“I won’t after tonight. I swear. What are we out here to
do?”
“Oh, Laurie. I wish you’d let me keep you safe.”
“I know you took the gun from the flat. Do you have it with
you?”
Sasha
nodded. “You can tell me where you really got it now.”
“I guess I can. Gunari sold it to me.”
“Gunari?” Sasha shivered. “When you went to see him about the
darozha. Okay. And it was Gunari who told you...”
“That Stefan’s trial fell apart. Yes.”
“I saw Gunari earlier, heading towards this track. I don’t know
what he’s doing here, but I don’t like it. He looked scared out of
his wits—and so should you be, probably. Listen, then. I’ll tell
you what we’re out here for tonight, and then you can choose what
to do.”
“There’s no choice for me now, Sash.”
“Hear me out before you say that. I’ve been running from my
father for years. I didn’t want to testify against him but I did,
because I thought that that would be the end. And it wasn’t. I
should have known—words can never stop a man like that.” He brushed
a hand uneasily over his parka, and Laurie heard as if he’d said
it, only bullets can. “Justice can’t stop him. Interpol couldn’t. I’ll be
running—we both will—for the rest of our lives. And I want it to
stop.”
His voice shook. Laurie stepped forward and pressed one palm
to his cheek, an old gesture of comfort between them. Did Laurie
have a right to touch him any more? He didn’t know. His
absolution was unearned, his crimes beyond the reach of saying sorry or even
most desperately being it. He took him in his arms with
nettle-grasping courage. “All right. I understand.”
“Do you? Please, ves’tacha—one last time. Get out of here.
Leave him to me.”
“No. Just tell me what to do.”
Sasha
jolted with pained laughter. He grabbed Laurie hard, returned his
embrace awkwardly for a moment and then pushed him back. “If I knew
that, I’d know what to do myself. All I know is that I think he’s
here, holed up in a derelict building about half a mile further on
in these woods. And I have to find him and stop him. It feels like
my last chance.”