Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Leo
I wake up alone.
It takes me a few seconds to register the cold space beside me where Archie should be. He’s not curled up against me like he usually is.
I pull on a T-shirt and track pants and go to find him.
Archie’s in the kitchen, wrapped in a robe, his hair still sleep-mussed. His skin is pale and there are dark circles under his eyes.
He’s standing by the coffee maker, his shoulders slightly hunched. He doesn’t look at me as I come in.
“Morning,” I say, hanging back. Every other morning, I’ve gone straight to him. Today, something stops me three feet short.
“Morning.” He busies himself with the coffee maker. “Do you want some coffee?”
“Sure.”
He makes it silently. There’s none of his usual chatter.
Just silence.
My stomach fills with dread.
I know this pattern. I’ve seen him do it before, every time we’ve skated too close to something real. He opens a door, lets me glimpse what’s behind it, and then slams it shut so fast the draft ruffles my hair.
But last night felt different. Last night, the door stayed open longer than it ever has.
And now it’s not just closed. It’s barricaded. It feels like he’s retreated somewhere I can’t reach.
“Archie.”
“Hmm?” He still hasn’t looked at me.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on. I’m making coffee. Although maybe it should be tea. That’s what British people do, isn’t it? It’s their national coping mechanism.”
“You’re acting…strange.”
“I’m not being strange. You’re being strange. You’re the one staring at me like I’m a puzzle that needs to be solved before breakfast.”
“Did I do something?” I ask carefully. “Did something upset you last night?”
Last night, he’d asked me to look at him. In all the times we’ve been together, he’s never asked for that.
“No. You didn’t do anything.” He sets a mug of coffee in front of me. “You were perfect. As usual.”
It’s the “as usual” that gets me. It’s delivered with the faintest edge, like being perfect is the problem.
“Archie—”
“Don’t.” He says it quietly. Almost gently. “Don’t, Leo. Don’t ruin this.”
“Ruin what?”
“Ruin what we have by trying to talk about it.”
I stare at him. He’s leaning against the counter, mug clutched in both hands, eyes fixed somewhere around my left shoulder. The robe is slightly too big for him, and he looks smaller than usual. Younger.
Vulnerable in a way he’d hate me for noticing.
“All of the people I’ve ever dated would be dying of laughter right now to hear me say this,” I say slowly, “but I actually think we need to talk.”
Archie stiffens.
The silence stretches between us like a physical thing. I can feel Archie pulling away even though he hasn’t moved. It’s a talent of his—to be present and absent at the same time. Body in the room, everything else retreating to a safe distance.
I want to push. Every instinct I have is telling me to push. To sit him down, make him look at me, to say the words that have been building pressure inside my chest since that moment at the party when my brain finally caught up with my heart.
I’m in love with you.
I want to stay.
I want this to be real.
But I look at Archie’s face, really look at it, and I see something that stops me cold.
Fear.
Real. Quiet. Deep.
He’s standing in this kitchen, wearing a robe that’s too big for him, holding a mug of coffee with both hands, and he’s terrified. Not of me. Of what I might mean.
Archie’s damaged. I don’t think I realized how much until this instant.
The thing about Archie is that he’s so good at the performance—the jokes, the charm, the dazzling intelligence deployed like armor—that it’s easy to forget there’s a reason for all of it.
He didn’t build those walls for fun. He built them because someone he loved walked away from him and didn’t look back.
He’s not pulling away from me.
He’s protecting himself from the moment I inevitably pull away from him.
“You’re going to be late for your meetings,” Archie says. “Go be intimidating and competent. I have an appointment at the hospital this afternoon, so I need to make sure I spend enough quality time with Netflix before I go.”
His voice has returned to something approaching normal. The consummate performer, the costume back on. Show’s over, nothing to see here.
His grin is almost convincing. But his hand is gripping the mug hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
I could push. I could refuse to leave. I could tell Archie I’m in love with him, that I want to stay in London permanently, build a life with him.
But I can see he’s not ready to hear it.
Not yet.
“Yeah,” I say. “I should get going. Good luck with your appointment.”
I leave my coffee half-finished on the counter. Archie doesn’t look up as I go to get dressed.
My mind is swirling as I catch an Uber.
I stare out the window at London sliding past—gray sky, red buses, the relentless churning of a city that doesn’t care about your feelings—and try to untangle what just happened.
Archie wants me. I’m sure of that. The connection we had last night, that was real. The way he went still and silent when I was inside him, like I’d found a place beneath all his noise and restless energy that he doesn’t show anyone else. That was real.
But wanting someone and being ready for someone are two different things.
I think about what Elizabeth said. “You look after our boy.”
Maybe looking after him doesn’t mean I should be pushing down every wall he’s built. Maybe it means being patient enough to let him take them down himself.
I don’t know how to be patient. I’m someone who identifies problems and solves them. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.
But Archie isn’t a problem to be solved.
I pull out my phone and check my calendar. My PA Tara has booked me a new client consultation this morning with someone seeking strategic advisory on an expansion into the European market. The notes are sparse: Referral from Gus Wilson in Conference Room B at ten a.m.
The conference rooms I rent are in a serviced office building near Liverpool Street.
They are clean and functional, the kind of space designed for people who need to project legitimacy without the overhead of a permanent office.
I found the space during my first week in London, and it’s served me well.
It gives a professional backdrop for Zoom calls with US clients and provides a meeting space for London-based clients.
I arrive fifteen minutes early because I’m always fifteen minutes early. It’s a habit born from the same place as my suits and the polished shoes. For a kid who grew up with nothing, I overcompensated with punctuality because it was the one thing that cost nothing.
I set up my laptop and arrange my notes, pouring two glasses of water from the carafe on the side table.
But I’m doing all these things on autopilot while my brain continues to replay the image of Archie’s carefully blank face in the kitchen this morning and how he’d clutched his coffee cup like it was the only thing keeping him upright.
Don’t ruin this.
What does he think this is? What does he think we have that’s so fragile it can’t withstand a conversation?
I check my phone. There are no texts from Archie, which is unusual.
Normally by now he’d have sent me at least three messages—a photo of a pigeon that he thinks looks like Mother Teresa, a random fact about medieval cheese-making, an unsolicited ranking of British biscuits from best to most disappointing.
The silence is louder than any of his noise.
I put my phone face-down on the table and try to focus. I have a client walking through that door in three minutes, and I need to be Leo Brennan, strategic consultant, not Leo Brennan, man who just realized he’s in love with someone afraid of being loved.
I straighten my tie and open a fresh page in my notebook.
At exactly ten o’clock, there’s a knock on the door.
I stand and button my jacket. It’s a reflex, my armor clicking into place. Then I cross the room.
But when I open the door, it’s not a benign new client I come face to face with.
Instead, the man standing there has a menacing scowl.
“What the fuck are you doing with my brother?”