Page 83 of Claim

Big. Bright. Unmistakable.

He laughed too. Not taking the piss, nor even surprised. But a laugh that released the air from where it’d been trapped for probably years.

“I know, bruv.” He crossed the room in two strides and grabbed the back of my head, pulling me into a hug that was solid and anchoring and unavoidable. “I fucking know.” Then he kissed my temple, and I broke.

I cried. Properly. So did he, I think. But before either of us could say anything stupid, the knock at the door came.

Reality, right on cue.

It was the tagging firm. They fitted my ankle tag while Lennon stood off to one side, arms folded, jaw set. The plastic closed around bone with a dull click, like a leash. And a heavy reminder that none of this was finished.

When they left, Lennon passed me a bundle of sheets and a duvet.

“For the spare room.” He nodded towards the stairs. “Shove the two beds together. Make a double. As doubt you’ll fit on a single anymore, right?”

“I been sleeping on less than that inside.”

“Yeah. Guess you have.”

I took them and headed up.

The spare room held two singles set parallel. Future-proofed. Ready for the twins once they outgrew the cots crammed side by side in Lennon’s room. The sight of it punched low in my gut. It echoed too closely to the room he’d shared with Levi when we were kids. Same narrow space, same intention of making room where there wasn’t much to spare.

This was a kids’ room.

His boys should have been in here.

The chest of drawers beside the beds held everything needed for growing babies. Nappies, ointments, muslins, folded clothes. Proof this space had already been claimed, even if the bodies weren’t in it yet. And here I was, dragging the beds together, taking up room that wasn’t mine to take. They might be babies now, still in their parents’ room and waking through the night. They wouldn’t know. But trials dragged. Time stretched. And I had no idea how long I was going to be stuck here, tagged and tethered to Lennon’s house, breathing in space belonging to someone else’s future.

The guilt settled heavy and sour.

I felt like shit for it.

But I focused on the practical job of making the bed, pushing them together as I quite fancied being able to starfish. Then I was halfway through wrestling a double duvet into its cover when the door went again. I sighed. Probably more paperwork. More rules. More reminders of how narrow my world had become.

The door shut. The house went quiet.

“Who was it?” I called down, shoving a pillow into its case and chucking it at the end of the bed. When there was no answer, I called again, “Len?”

Then a figure emerged from the stairs and my heart leapt straight into my throat. Because there he was. Tristan. In the doorway.

My Tricky.

He didn’t move though.

Neither did I.

The space between us felt charged, as if the air had thickened into something we could choke on. And I don’t know what I’d expected this to feel like. Relief. Closure. Some clean, cinematic click where everything slid back into place. Instead, it felt like standing on the edge of something unstable. As if my body had recognised him before my head had caught up. Every instinct I owned had broken rank.

He swallowed. Hard. His throat worked as if forcing something down that didn’t want to go. “Lennon went out to get—”

I didn’t let him finish.

I crossed the space between us and took him by the back of the head, tangling my fingers in his hair, and kissed him.

Not soft. Not tentative. Brutal and wired.

Then I hauled him inside, kicked the door shut behind us, and pinned him to the back of it with my body and my mouth and a hunger that didn’t negotiate. Our teeth knocked. His breath broke. The little sound he made wasn’t a word; it was a fracture, and I felt it in my chest as if he’d reached inside me and torn it loose.