Page 98 of Corrupt

He flipped his steak, watching it sizzle. “Yeah, you’d be right.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “Lennon. He was a boy scout.”

I stayed quiet, letting him have the space.

“We used to steal bikes and ride out to Epping Forest. Had this… camp. If you can call it that. Old sofas someone had dumped. Bit of tarp. We’d build fires, burn whatever we could find. Steal marshmallows from the newsagent. Drink warm beer and pretend we were off-grid.”

I smiled. “Sounds… sorta nice.”

“It was.” He glanced up at me, then back down again. “Felt like no one was watching us. Or waiting for us.”

My chest tightened. “You miss him.”

Razor shrugged, but it wasn’t dismissive. “He’s better off without me.”

I nudged his knee with mine, letting it rest there.

The heat bled slowly out of the day. Smoke and salt and summer clung to our skin. Above us, the sky faded from blue to bruised rose, then deepened again, until the first stars dared to show. And for a while, all there was were flames, and food, and the quiet, fragile gift of him telling me something real.

The real world felt very far away.

When night closed in, I took him inside and up to one of the old rooms. Fresh sheets. Windows open to the night. The house creaked softly around us as if it knew what was coming and approved. We barely made it to the bed before our mouths found each other. Tangled. Unhurried. All heat and breath and hands learning familiar ground again. Clothes went. Skin met skin. And he climbed over me, warm and solid as I passed him the lube, condoms long gone now. He prepared me and slicked himself, then eased inside me. I caught his face between my hands and kissed him as if I could press everything I felt straight into his mouth.

“I like Richie…” I whispered against his lips.

“Say it again.” He thrust deeper, forehead to mine. “No one says my name like you.”

My chest caved. “Richie…”

I wrapped myself around him and let the night take us. Let him set the rhythm. Kiss me until I forgot where I ended and he began. Until my legs shook and my body spoke in nothing but want. Until there was only sweat and breath and the quiet, relentless intimacy of him claiming every part of me I offered.

And I offered all of it.

* * * *

But Sunday came far too quickly.

We spent it drifting from the bed to the shower. From the shower to the kitchen. From the kitchen to Razor discovering another thing that didn’t quite work and fixing it. The radio stayed on. Songs bled into one another. Sometimes he sang. Sometimes he just moved with the noise, stealing a kiss from my lips, my cheek, the back of my neck.

It was so ordinary it made my chest ache.

Because we had to leave.

We put the cottage back into its careful stasis. Covered the furniture. Closed the windows. Turned off lights that had only just come back to life. I locked the key back into the box at the gate, fingers lingering on the cold metal.

Then we got in the car and left.

And Razor returned, inch by inch, the closer we got to London.

I was so close to asking him to turn around. Saying fuck it to pupillage and pedigree and the life that had been mapped for me before I’d learnt to write my own name. To choosing him. The man who chopped wood and sang along to the radio, danced with me, and let me see him unarmed.

But if I did that, we wouldn’t have that life.

My father would never forgive that kind of rebellion.

So maybe if I kept my mouth shut, if we just carried on as we were, we could come back. This place could be ours in stolen pieces. We could keep pretending there was a life for us, as long as we didn’t try to live it out loud.

When he pulled up outside my Baron’s Court flat, nausea rolled low in my stomach. “Coming in?” I angled my head. “You can stay if you don’t mind getting up obscenely early. I’m in court first thing.”

I could almost hear the argument in his head. If he left, he would go back to who he had to be. If he stayed, he might not be able to. And that carried consequences far heavier than mine ever would.