Chapter Fourteen Lines in the Dark #2
Freddie wiped a hand over his mouth, swallowed thickly.
Nodded. He got it. Becca was on his side.
Whatever. And now the case was being taken out of their hands.
Job done. He sat back, closing his eyes for a second, listening to the controlled chaos unfolding around them.
The rustle of kit, the clipped orders, the low static of radios.
Any minute now, they’d go. They’d hit that house. When the breach order finally came— hard entry authorised —Freddie stayed in the car, watching the raid unfold like a man underwater. Doors kicked in. Shouts. Heavy boots pounding inside.
Becca buzzed beside him, already scribbling notes, glancing at the live radio chatter.
Freddie couldn’t hear her. He’d made his choice tonight.
Crossed a line. Not for himself. For Nathan .
For Alfie. Ironically, the kid who’d split them up in the first bloody place.
For something he hadn’t realised he was still aching for until Nathan fucking Carter had kissed him in the dark and made everything spin.
He had to hope no one noticed what he’d done. Because if they did, his career, his reputation, his whole life— gone .
Was it worth it? Worth risking his entire life for one kiss? For Nathan Carter?
Freddie wasn’t sure he could answer that.
Didn’t know if he wanted to.
* * * *
Nathan got Alfie home, shoving him through the back door into the kitchen. The room swallowed them whole. Too bright. Too normal. And far too small to hold everything tearing through Nathan’s chest.
He was livid. Panicked. Gutted by guilt so fierce it made his hands shake.
And couldn’t turn it off .
They warned him when he left the army during briefings, debriefings, endless handouts thick with clinical words, that moments like this would crack him open.
That the body didn’t know the difference between a battlefield and a living room when the adrenaline hit.
That the panic, the rage, the helplessness would come back no matter how much time had passed.
And now it was here. Roaring through his bloodstream with nowhere to go.
Out there, in the thick of it, he would’ve had an outlet. A sparring partner. A target. Another soldier who understood he wasn’t really angry at them , but at the fear, loss, and impossible stakes.
But here?
Here he had none of that .
He had a fourteen-year-old boy trembling in front of him with that same look Nathan had seen a hundred times in younger recruits hauled from burning vehicles, bleeding and shaking and wondering what the hell they’d done wrong.
He couldn’t shout.
Couldn’t lash out.
Couldn’t give in to the animal urge clawing at the inside of his ribs.
He would not, under any circumstances, be his old man.
All Nathan could do was clench his fists uselessly at his sides, while the boy he was supposed to protect shook, realising, maybe for the first time, how deep in the shit he really was.
Christ. What kind of father saves his kid just to scare the life out of him?
Nathan forced himself to breathe. Forced the words through teeth he wanted to grit until they cracked.
“I’ll ask you this once.” He held Alfie’s gaze and the fear present in those too-young eyes had him reeling in anguish. “Did you know what you were walking into?”
Alfie swallowed. Hard. Lips dry. Cracked. Body locked rigid with tension. But he said nothing.
That silence told Nathan everything .
“Did you not learn anything?” Nathan gritted his teeth. “Living with your mother?”
“Fuck you.”
Nathan didn’t flinch. He wasn’t angry, not really. The fear ran too deep for that. It hollowed him out from the inside.
“I’m not saying it to slag her off.” He stepped closer. “I’m saying it because you know . You saw it, Alfie. What it did to her. What it still does. ”
Alfie’s jaw locked.
“You wanna act like a big man?” Nathan cocked his head. “Pushing gear into kids’ hands? Same as those bastards did to your mum? You remember what that looked like? The rot? The ruin? You wanna be part of that ?”
Alfie didn’t move.
“You think you’re stacking paper, yeah? Every note in your pocket’s soaked in someone else’s blood. Another kid left watching their parent disappear. Another house gone quiet except for the sound of pain .”
All Alfie did was swallow.
“That what you want, Alf?” Nathan widened his eyes. “That the man you’re becoming?”
The silence that followed felt as if something had broke. Maybe it had always been broke. Nathan’s heart thudded against his ribs, heavy with panic. He couldn't let it end there. Couldn’t lose him.
“What do you want from your life, Alf?”
Alfie looked at him, unreadable. A flicker. A shrug, perhaps. Certainly a deflection. Maybe nothing at all. It wasn’t enough.
Nathan stepped in again, closer than he should’ve, crowding the moment.
“You can’t want this? You can’t want to be one of their fucking runners. You can’t .” He ran a hand through his hair, helpless. “Talk to me. Please. Say something . You don’t have to fix it all today, but fuck, Alf, don’t shut me out. Not now.”
Still nothing.
Nathan felt the air leave him.
“I’m trying here. I know I’ve missed a lot.
I know I don’t get to fix this overnight.
But I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.
So talk to me. Scream at me. Tell me to fuck off properly if you want, but don’t say nothing.
Don’t walk away from me when I risked everything to get you out of there. ”
Alfie narrowed his eyes. “You want another fucking medal for that, do ya? Just for showing up? That what you get in the army, is it? Turn up and they give you another pin to sew on your fucking camo? The I Woz Ere badge?”
Nathan didn’t rise to it. He’d taken worse hits than this.
“No. I don’t want a medal. I want my son to stop throwing himself down the same black hole that nearly swallowed his mother.
” Nathan sighed. “I know I’ve got no right to expect trust. Or respect.
But I’m still your dad. And I’m not about to stand here while you tear your life to pieces just to prove I don’t matter. ”
Alfie looked away, jaw clenched, nostrils flaring. He dragged a hand through his hair like he didn’t know what to do with the anger.
“It’s late.” For this conversation. Maybe for everything. “You’ve had enough for one night. And so have I.”
“Ain’t tired.”
“Does it look like I care?”
Alfie’s head snapped back to him, eyes blazing. But Nathan didn’t budge.
“Go to bed.”
Alfie didn’t move.
“Upstairs. Now! And you’re with me from now on. I’ll take you to and from school, and you’ll work in the garage after. You don’t leave this house unless I say so. You get me?”
“Whatever.”
Alfie stumbled past him, brushing his shoulder, but Nathan caught his arm. Not roughly. But firm enough to stop him dead. He squeezed, needing him to feel it, needing him to understand .
“Count your lucky stars you get to sleep in a bed tonight.” He glared at him poignantly. “You were two minutes away from a cell.”
Alfie yanked his arm free, not before tilting his head, giving Nathan a knowing look. “Funny how you knew that, innit?”
Nathan let go. Watched him storm off, the house shuddering under the angry pound of footsteps and the slam of his bedroom door. Then he slapped his palms flat on the kitchen counter, hunched over it, fighting to steady the furious thundering of his heart.
The soft tread of boots made him stiffen.
“You did the right thing.” Ron tapped him on the back as if he was still twelve. “Gotta be stern with these kids, or they’ll take you for a mug.”
Nathan swallowed the bile rising in his throat.
He wanted to scream at him. Tell him he’d spent his entire childhood scared of that sternness.
Of the fists slammed onto tables, the sudden eruptions he hadn’t understood were symptoms of a father still living in the trenches in his head.
That fear hadn’t taught him respect. It taught him how to hide.
How to lie. How to smuggle pieces of himself under the radar because he’d never been brave enough to tell the truth.
The way he’d hidden Freddie .
Under a pier. Wrapped in his sheets. In his heart .
Buried him so deep Nathan sometimes wondered if he was still whole under all that shame. Maybe that was why he’d stayed away so long. Because he didn’t know how to be different.
And now?
Looking up the stairs where Alfie had disappeared, feeling the silence curdle around him, Nathan wasn’t sure he ever would.
* * * *
The raid wrapped just after midnight.
Freddie, along with Becca, were pulled back to the station with the rest of the team for the debrief.
A freezing, fluorescent-lit conference room smelling of instant coffee and tired coppers.
CID were buzzing around, bagging the evidence.
DI Carrick prowled between the units, hands behind his back, waiting for someone to slip up.
Freddie kept his head down. Logged his observation notes. Wrote as close to the party line as he could manage without outright perjury.
Time blurred in a sea of statements. Reports. A short bollocking about operational discipline over the radio where Carrick’s gaze lingered on him a second too long. Did he know he’d lied? He couldn’t. He would eventually, but right then, he’d be working on his instincts.
Freddie pushed through it.
One minute at a time.
By the time he clocked off, the sun bled grey over the rooftops outside. Night shift officially ended at seven in the morning and Freddie slung his stab vest into his locker with more force than necessary, aching for his bed. And a world where none of this had happened.
He was halfway down the corridor when a call stopped him in his tracks.
“Webb.”
He stopped. Turned.
Thank fuck it was Becca. Leaning against the corridor wall, arms folded, hair a mess under her beanie, eyes bloodshot from tiredness. But still sharp. Very sharp.
“You gonna tell me what the fuck happened? ”
Freddie tried to play it off. Shrugged. “Tense night. Shit happened.”
Becca pushed off the wall, stepping closer until they were almost chest to chest. “We saw Alfie Carter go into that house. Yet he didn’t come out of it in cuffs. And you left your station.” She didn’t blink. “You lied on comms. Lied in your log. Lied to me!”
Freddie said nothing.
There was no point.
“Don’t think Carrick won’t clock it when he reviews the footage.”
Freddie exhaled, long and rough, scrubbing a hand through his hair.
“I had to get him out, Becks. Kid don’t belong in there.”
Becca shook her head slowly, a tired smile ghosting over her mouth. “You’re a good copper, Fred. Too good. That’s gonna be the death of you, you know that?”
“Yeah. I know.”
Becca tipped her head back, looking up at the strip lights, as if weighing what she was about to say. Then she clapped him once on the shoulder, firm.
“Hope he was worth it.”
With that, she left him standing there, exhausted, guilty, and wondering how many more lines he’d cross for Nathan bloody Carter.