Page 88 of Crave

I shrugged. “It’s not shame. It’s… I don’t even know what. Survival, maybe. You give people something they can twist, they will. Any small thing they think ain’t right, they’ll use it. So you stay hard. Keep quiet. Say nothing.”

Tristan tilted his head. “So… no one knows? Who you sleep with?”

I gave a short laugh, more breath than sound. “Why d’you think I pay for it?”

That made his eyes drop. Fast. As if he’d remembered who I really was and how all this started. Good. He needed that reminder. We both did. No point in either of us getting twisted up over something that wasn’t built to last. I wasn’t built for it.

Even if part of me wanted to be.

“So really no one knows about you?” He glanced back up then, clearly wanting to poke that soft bruise that hadn’t ever healed despite the hardened layers I’d grown over time. “That you’re gay, bi…?”

Jesus. Persistent bastard.

I’d never said the words out loud before. Never had to. But there was something about him. This man who made me look where I didn’t want to. Inside, where the things I’d buried still breathed. My shoulders tensed. I hated this. Hated being seen. This was why I kept distance. Why I never stayed. The ones I paid didn’t ask. The ones I didn’t... best not to think about them.

“Gay, I guess,” I finally got out. “There’s been women, sure but…yeah. Blokes. If you’re looking for a label, there it is.”

He nodded, eyes searching mine. “And no one knows that? From your world. Friends, family?”

I shrugged. “Mate Lennon suspects. I mean, yeah. He knows. We just don’t… talk about it.” I stared down at my hands, twisting the sheet in my fist till my knuckles paled. “Don’t talk about much anymore.”

Tristan wriggled closer, the mattress dipping. He slid his palm over my stomach, careful around the bandage, over the bruises blooming dark as ink beneath my ribs. Then he dragged his thumb over my nipple, before drifting to the tattoo on my chest. The crowned heart wrapped in thorns, the dagger buried straight through it. And when he touched that, just that, the world dropped out.

Forgot the room. The blood. What I was.

Because it was nice.

Dangerously nice.

I knew exactly what nice could cost.

“Why don’t you talk much?” he asked.

Not as dangerous as that question.

I dropped my head back against the velvet headboard, trying to beat sense into myself without moving an inch. How was I supposed to explain the history of a friendship that’d survived everything except the man I’d become?

“Doesn’t like my line of work,” I settled on.

Tristan flicked his gaze up, lashes low. “The drugs?”

“Yeah.” I exhaled. “Me and Lennon, we’ve been mates since nappies. Same estate. Played football till it got too dark to see the ball. Smoked our first stolen fags behind the garages. I was there when he got scouted for West Ham, and when he got dropped. There when he had his heart broken by Monica bloody Webster. There when he met Amara, now she’s carrying his twins.” I swallowed. “He’s my blood. But he won’t forgive me for what I do. And I can’t blame him.”

Tristan never stopped tracing circles over my skin with his soft fingers, following the outline of the dagger piercing the heart, over the thorns as if he understood exactly what they meant. His touch didn’t pry. It loosened. Easing me open without trying.

“Why not?” he asked. “If he’s that close, he must understand why you do it.”

I looked down at him, the lamplight catching gold in his hair, his eyes steady on me. As if trying to see through everything I’d built to keep people the fuck out.

“Why d’you think I do it?” I threw back. ’Cause he didn’t know shit about me. Only what I’d let him see. For all he knew, I walked into some trap house one day and never walked out. He didn’t know how hard I’d fought to stay clean of it. How long I’d tried before Cormac dragged me under. He didn’t know who I was doing this for.

’Cause it weren’t me.

He studied me, searching as if he could dig the truth straight out my chest. “Because you’re trapped.”

My throat went tight. Yeah. That hit. ’Cause only someone caged the same way could’ve seen it.

I huffed out a breath. “What makes you think that, eh?” I waved a hand around his room at the designer gear, the fancy plants, the bloody curated perfection of it all. “You reek posh, mate. Every inch of this place screams money.”