Chapter Twenty-Four
The charcuterie board had cost Diwa four hundred pounds.
Diwa knew this because he’d placed the order himself, from a website whose entire aesthetic suggested that its target demographic was people who wanted artisanal cured meats delivered in tissue paper with a handwritten note about the life history of the pig it had all been made from.
It had arrived forty minutes ago in a wooden crate that could have doubled as a coffin for a medium-sized dog, and he’d spent twenty of those minutes arranging bresaola in overlapping fans across a marble board he’d bought specifically for the occasion.
Organic local honey sat in a small ceramic pot beside three varieties of fig jam.
The cornichons were so perfectly uniform they looked as though they’d been selected by an algorithm.
Stephen was going to hate it.
Stephen was going to walk in, clock the four-hundred-pound spread on the kitchen island, and resent the fuck out of him. He’d conclude that Diwa was making up for his lack of personality with his wallet. Which, fair enough, he sometimes fell back on in desperate times.
The drinks were another problem. He’d been standing in front of the fridge for the better part of ten minutes, cycling through options to offer Stephen.
Beer felt too casual, as if he were trying to signal a laddishness he didn’t possess.
Wine would confirm every suspicion Stephen already held about him and his wankery.
Tea felt like he was putting on a costume, though proximity to Colin had made him a pro at brewing up a proper builder’s.
He considered offering nothing at all. Just answering the door and letting Stephen ask for what he wanted. But that felt hostile, or at the very least negligent.
Colin had told Stephen yesterday that the two of them were going away for five days, to a cottage in the Scottish Highlands with no neighbours within a mile.
Diwa hadn’t been on the call, but Colin had rung him afterwards, his voice carrying the particular flatness that meant it had gone badly, and he wasn’t up for discussing it.
Everyone involved in this conversation knew why they were going away.
Stephen had rung Diwa an hour later, and the conversation had lasted ninety seconds.
His tone had been clipped and efficient, and he’d said he wanted to come round to Diwa’s to talk.
He used a voice eerily similar to his omega father’s.
One that indicated the matter was closed, and that no matter how Diwa might feel about this visit, Stephen was going to come see him anyway.
Diwa picked up his mobile and typed out a message to Ezra.
What’s the best practice for meeting the extremely angry adult child of your partner who is only two years younger than you and could probably end your life with a look?
The typing indicator pulsed for three seconds. Then a single emoji came back:
Diwa stared at it, put the mobile down, and kept himself preoccupied by moving the honey pot two inches to the left.
The knock came at ten past four, two sharp raps that could have been delivered by a bailiff.
Diwa checked his hair in the hallway mirror, decided he looked like someone trying too hard, and ruffled it. This made him look like someone trying to look like he wasn’t trying too hard, which was worse, but another flurry of knocks stopped him from lingering to fix it.
Stephen stood on the steps in a navy peacoat with his hands in his pockets. “All right?”
“Hey! Come in, come in.” Diwa stepped back, his arm sweeping the hallway in a gesture of welcome so expansive it nearly clipped the coat rack.
“How was the drive? Did you find parking okay? There’s a residents’ bay round the corner but it’s permit only, so if you’re on the street you might need to…
actually, I can move my car if you need me to. ”
“I got the Tube.” Stephen stepped over the threshold, and began a methodical visual sweep of Diwa’s home.
Diwa had been braced for a punch. He’d half-rehearsed a response to a punch.
Something measured, something that communicated that he understood the impulse and bore Stephen no ill will for it, while also making it clear that he was an alpha, and was not above delivering a few upper cuts himself. It was just that he’d prefer not to.
But now Stephen wasn’t punching him. Instead, he looked at the hallway the way a forensic team looks at a crime scene. His eyes moved from the coat rack to the shoe rack to the mat by the door, cataloguing each item as he built a case for mortally hating Diwa. He had already zoned in on Exhibit A.
Colin’s boots were on the rack beside Diwa’s trainers.
The steel-toed work ones, scuffed and thin-soled, sitting where they’d lived for the past month.
Next to them, a pair of battered slip-ons Colin wore to pad around the house.
Stephen’s gaze rested on the slip-ons for three full seconds, clearly having recognised them.
He moved down the hall. Diwa followed, his hands finding his pockets.
In the living room doorway, Stephen paused, and Diwa followed the line of his gaze to the armchair by the window, where Colin’s cardigan was draped over the back.
It was a shapeless, oatmeal-coloured thing, bobbled at the cuffs, with a button missing on the left side.
It smelled of his soap and skin, and Diwa picked it up and held it against his face whenever Colin wasn’t in the house.
The other night, he’d kept Colin in the cardigan while he fucked him against the breakfast banquette, the oatmeal wool rucked up to his waist, Colin’s hands braced on the table.
That probably wasn’t a memory he should be thinking about in the presence of Colin’s son.
“Well.” Stephen turned back to him, hands still in his coat pockets. “Your set-up looks cosy.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” The words left Diwa’s mouth at twice their intended speed. “I’ve got water, obviously, tea, coffee, or there’s lemonade?”
Stephen’s eyebrows rose. “Lemonade would be lovely, thanks.”
The bottom dropped out of Diwa’s stomach.
He did not have lemonade. He had never had lemonade.
The word had materialised from whatever part of his brain handled panic-induced improvisation, and now he was committed to it.
He turned towards the kitchen with the purposeful stride of someone who absolutely knew where his lemonade was, Stephen falling into step behind him, and pulled open the fridge with a confidence that evaporated the instant the interior light hit the shelves.
Diwa stared into the fridge for long enough that the energy-saving alert beeped at him. He moved the Tupperware aside, as though lemonade might be hiding behind it, and then moved it back.
“Problem?” Stephen asked, from somewhere behind his left shoulder.
“No! No problem. Just…I think I’m out. Of lemonade. Which is annoying, because I definitely had some.” He closed the fridge and opened it again, like the second look was going to produce different results. Predictably, it did not. “I could go to the shops? There’s a Tesco Metro really close by.”
“A Coke’s fine, then.”
Diwa grabbed the Coke from the door shelf, set it on the counter, and turned round to find Stephen already at the island, his coat still on, one hand selecting a piece of bresaola from the charcuterie board.
The way to a Huxley’s heart, it turned out, was always through food.
Stephen shrugged off his peacoat, draped it over the back of the stool, and sat down at the island. He worked through the bresaola in overlapping folds, three at a time, before moving on to the aged Comté.
“This is good,” he said, around a mouthful of cheese, his eyes still on the board. “Where’s it from?”
“A place in Borough Market. They do a raw milk Comté that’s aged about eighteen months.”
Stephen turned the wedge over in his hand, bit into it, and chewed while his gaze moved across the charcuterie board like he was auditing it. He selected a cornichon, ate it, and reached for the Manchego.
“Right,” Stephen said. He set the rind down on the marble. “You’re going to Scotland with my father for five days. Walk me through it.”
Diwa pulled out the stool opposite him and sat.
“We’re going to be staying in a cottage within the grounds of a heat retreat in the Highlands.
It looks isolated, but there’s a full emergency notification system throughout the cabin.
Someone from the medical team can be with us inside twenty minutes to provide assistance, round the clock.
A cleaning crew comes in daily while we’re out walking or he’s resting in the sage room, and meals are delivered to the door each morning.
Your father will be well taken care of.”
Stephen’s jaw worked on another piece of Comté, his gaze fixed on the marble countertop between them, his thumbnail tracing the faint grey veining. “And if something goes wrong? If the heat’s too much for him, or if he needs serious medical attention?”
“Then there’s a doctor on site. An omega specialist who’s part of the retreat staff.”
Stephen nodded, reached for another slice of bresaola, folded it in half, and ate it. “Do you even know what my dad’s been through?” He didn’t meet Diwa’s eyes as he posed his question.
“Yes,” Diwa said. “He’s told me.”
Stephen’s head came up. His expression cycled through, fast and ugly, exposing his horror at the thought of his father’s worst secret sitting with another person, while also conflicting with his recognition that Colin had to have felt incredibly safe with Diwa to even share the information with him.
“He told me in that way he has,” Diwa went on, keeping his voice low. “He didn’t dress it up.”
The omega’s knuckles went white. Stephen’s throat moved, but nothing came out.
“I’m going to take care of your father, Stephen.”
Stephen didn’t answer. He pulled the plate back towards him and picked up a piece of Manchego.
“I don’t want you to take care of him.” His voice had gone flat.
“That’s mine and Lysander’s job. We owe him that.
Do you know what it took for him to keep us?
The care system wanted to take us. They kept trying, kept sending people round, and he was fourteen years old sitting in meetings with social workers telling them he could manage.
And he did manage. He managed on nothing, and the least I can do is make sure nobody ever ruins his life again. ”
“Is that what you think I’m going to do?”
Stephen’s jaw tightened. “How do you see this ending, Diwa?” He leaned forward on the stool, his elbows on the marble, and the question landed like a hostile cross-examination.
“You’re twenty-eight. He’s forty. You’re a literal billionaire, and he’s a handyman who takes the bus to work.
We’re not living out a rom-com. There’s no guaranteed happy ending. So what’s the plan?”
Diwa turned his water glass on the marble, watching the condensation track a slow arc across the stone.
“I don’t have one. I’ve never not had a plan,” Diwa said.
“I’ve had a five-year projection for every major decision I’ve made since I was nineteen.
I set myself revenue targets, growth models, exit strategies.
I should be terrified right now.” He let go of his glass.
“But the moment your dad puts his bag on the hook by the bedroom door, nothing else really matters. He takes care of me, and I take care of him, and it just works.” He met Stephen’s eyes.
“So, full transparency; I have no plans, Stephen. I’ve just got him. ”
Stephen’s throat moved. His hands had gone still on the countertop, and Diwa could see the fine tremor running through his fingers.
“Can you understand why hearing that is terrifying for me?” His voice cracked on the last word, and he looked away, blinking hard.
“Yeah,” Diwa said. “I’m terrified too, Stephen.
Of ever being the kind of alpha who could hurt him.
What happened to your dad…that’s not something that he’ll ever be able to leave behind.
It’s a part of him. It always will be. And I’ve got to be the kind of man who can help him hold onto that without ever adding to the weight of it. ”
Stephen pressed the heel of his hand against his eye, sniffed once, and started picking through the offerings on the charcuterie board again. “As long as you understand what your job is,” he muttered.
“I do.”
Stephen shot him a baleful glare. “No wonder my dad’s been putting on weight, if you feed him like this all the time. I think you’re trying to make him slow and docile so he can’t leave you.”
“Yup. That’s the tried and true method of control for Filipino mothers.”
“Daddy pulled that on me and Sander as well.” Stephen’s lip curled into a shaky smile.
“You need to message me every day while you’re up there with him.
” Stephen wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist, his jaw set.
“Every day, Diwa. I need to know he’s all right.
I need to know what’s happening.” He glanced sideways at Diwa.
“You probably think I’m some sort of daddy’s boy freak. ”
“I think that the way you watch out for him really shows off what an amazing father he’s been to you, and that you love him exactly as much as he deserves to be loved,” Diwa said. “And I’m fucking terrified of ever crossing you because of that, Stephen. That’s a fact.”
Stephen’s mouth twitched. He reached for the Comté. “Good. You should be. Ryland’s a scientist, you know. He’s very clever, and he listens to a lot of true crime podcasts about unsolved murders. He’d do anything for me.”
Diwa nodded, reached for the board, and put three more pieces of Manchego on Stephen’s plate.