Page 83 of Crave

Razor barely stirred, mumbling nonsense every now and then. Once or twice, he came to enough for me to lift his head and get a few sips of salt water down him. Then he’d sink back under, body trembling before it finally gave up and he fell back to sleep again. I gathered his clothes into a pile by the wall, not sure what to do with them. Every instinct told me to leave them. My father’s voice muttered about evidence. But another voice, quieter and far more dangerous, told me to wash them. Or burn them.

Instead, I emptied the pockets.

Two burner phones, both cheap and scratched. One tattered smartphone, screen cracked, a photo showing a dark-haired girl not much older than Amelia, holding a baby. I hoped to God that wasn’t Razor’s baby. A wad of rolled cash, an old lighter, a single house key. A flick knife. Small, clean, well-used. A handful of baggies: some empty, some not. No wallet. No ID.

No trace of who he was when he wasn’t this.

The burners rang constantly. Unknown numbers. I let them ring out.

I spent the rest of the day tending to him. When he woke, I made him drink. When he slept, I sat beside him. Henry checked another two times.

At nightfall, I stripped down to my boxers and slid under the covers beside him. His skin was hot against mine, his pulse thready under my fingertips. I told myself I was just checking he was breathing, counting heartbeats the way a medic would.

But I wasn’t.

I was lying to myself the same as I always did.

Because what I wanted wasn’t to save him.

It was to keep him.

* * * *

Forty-eight or so hours later, Razor jolted awake.

The room was dark, lit only by the faint orange spill of the streetlamp through the curtains. He gasped, coughed, shot his hand out, searching the space as if he didn’t know where he was.

“Hey—hey.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes and put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched so hard I thought he was going to swing. “Easy.” I raised my hands. “It’s me.”

I wasn’t sure if that meant anything to him. He hardly knew who ‘me’ was. But something in my voice must’ve caught because his breathing steadied, shoulders dropping. He blinked hard, trying to focus, then sagged back against the headboard with a hiss, one hand going to his ribs. He glanced at it, as if not remembering how it got there. He wasn’t fully back yet. All those strong painkillers Henry had got him must have been messing with his head.

He then nodded down at the gauze around his middle. “You do this?”

“Uh… no. That was my housemate.”

He squinted at me. “Didn’t you get rid?”

“Of one of them. Well, two now, actually.” I sighed. “Two left. Could still be like dominoes. We’ll see.”

Razor breathed out a laugh that turned into a wince. “How’s he know how to do all this?”

“He’s training to be a doctor.”

Razor snorted. “Course he is. Doctor, lawyer… what else you got in this place?”

“Technically neither of us are those yet. We’re learning. And Zara’s learning how to be a politician.”

He gave a low hum of disbelief. “Christ. It’s like Eton threw up in here.”

“Harrow,” I corrected automatically. “Though Zara went to Westminster.”

Razor gave a faint huff of amusement. “Sounds like I turned up at the right gaff.”

“If your plan was to get patched up badly, receive half-baked legal advice and a closing statement on how you had nothing to do with anything and it was all the previous leadership’s fault, then absolutely you hit the right address.”

Razor ignored me to lean forward and fumble with the edge of the gauze.

I pushed upright. “What the fuck are you doing?”