Page 10 of Crave

“Who gave you that to hold?”

“Fuck off. Don’t matter who.” He spat out the lie as if it were a coin.

“You’re one step from A&E, mate. Don’t give me that ‘I’m a dad’ bollocks either. You’re a pathetic one if you’re sitting on this.”

Keeley padded in then, rubbing the baby’s back as it nuzzled into her shoulder. “Rich—”

“Stay out of it, Kee.” I didn’t want her in the ring. Didn’t want her watching me make this choice.

Like Tyler had said, I should have dealt with him the day Keeley showed me that blue line.

“Fuck’s sake, Rich. Don’t hurt him. He’s got a college interview in the morning.” Her plea was soft and stupid and exactly what boys like Darren used as an excuse. I knew it was a lie. You don’t get offered college when you’re holding iron for Ghost. He’d told her that so she’d let him sleep in her bed, undisturbed by the baby that was half his.

So I asked again. “You tell me who gave you that to stash, and I’ll make sure you walk away with your bones intact. You don’t tell me, and I’ll make sure whatever’s left of you regrets it.”

He flinched, bravado draining. “Tripper…”

Yeah. That one landed.

Tripper wasn’t just a name, it was a warning. Leon “Ghost” Morris’s right hand, the man who enforced loyalty in the Fenboys. Ghost’s equivalent of my Tyler. I dropped Darren back onto the mattress and snatched the box from beside him, its weight ugly and wrong in my hands. Weapons meant escalation. But as I passed Keeley in the doorway, I paused. Took in her troubled face, and the little baby in her arms who didn’t deserve any of this, and bent to kiss the baby’s head.

“Make sure he gets to that college, yeah?” I brushed Maisie’s head with my knuckles, then turned, eyes cutting back to Darren. “You show me an enrolment form, proof you’re serious about a college course, and maybe I’ll let this slide.”

“What am I meant to tell Tripper?” Darren sniffed. “He’ll cut me if I don’t have it.”

“You come find me.” I fixed Darren with a look, the menace I’d earned in cheap, dirty alleys. It was a comfortable skin, but it chafed. Respect ought to be earned, not extracted with a blade. Regardless of my name. “And if he so much as leaves a mark on you, he knows he’s started a war with me. Tell Tripper that. He knows what that means.”

I smiled at Keeley, though she looked back at me as if I’d cursed her baby to grow up fatherless, same as us. Truth was, if Darren carried on the way he was, that’d happen without me lifting a finger. Least Keeley and Maisie had me. I was a better dad than the piss-poor one we’d had, or the one taking over Keeley’s bed cause his mum threw him out.

Tucking the box under my arm, I left.

And that thought of a hotel, clean sheets, and a pretty mouth replaying in my head? Gone. Burnt away. Same as everything else.

That life didn’t belong to me.

Never could.

Chapter three

Tristan

Did I tell my housemates about my little alleyway encounter?

Did I fuck.

By the time they tracked me down, I’d already got rid of the fifty quid. Handed it off to some homeless bloke on the corner. Henry would’ve rolled out the lecture, of course: how I’d only fuelled addiction, how it should’ve gone to a proper charity that could “manage it.” And irritatingly, he’d be right. But I’d needed that cash off my hands. It burnt too hot to keep.

Though honestly, if I ever ended up on the streets, which, let’s face it, was about as likely as Father stepping down from the Bar to become a busker, I’d want something to take the edge off too. A hit to make the nights shorter, the days blur quicker. We all did it, didn’t we? Only ours came wrapped in Mayfair guilt.

So no. I kept my little alley incident firmly zipped up. Not because of the cash, but because of the mortifying idea that anyone could mistake me for a rent boy and I hadn’t even realised that’s what was happening until it was too late. That I’d let myself believe in some ridiculous, desperate corner of my brain that the man I’d conjured up in my fantasies, the faceless brute I imagined when Ollie was banging my backdoors in, the one who starred in every filthy search that had ever got me off, had stepped out of the shadows at my lowest point and offered himself as a rebound.

Christ. When I thought about it properly, it was pathetic.

I was pathetic.

Utterly, stupidly pathetic.

Henry would break out the PowerPoint presentation: “A Comprehensive Guide to STDs You Can Catch from a Blowjob.” Slides and citations included. And that was the least of my problems, really. I’d already spent months tangled in every position with a man who clearly wasn’t as monogamous as I’d pretended to believe. At least tomorrow’s humiliating trip to the clinic could be pinned on Oliver, not some stranger in a piss-stained alley.