Page 9 of Crave

I tightened my grip on the wheel, jaw locked. “Biding my time.”

“Laters.” Tyler hopped out, trying for a swagger even though he was hurting. I watched him go, knowing Courtney would ice him out and lecture him before morning. He’d spin some bollocks story about fighting off a group to save face, because she’d go nuclear if she knew he’d earned that broken nose by mouthing off to me.

So I pulled off and headed back to the block. Let him have his moment.

Not before jumping out at the local Co-Op and stocking up on a carton of baby milk.

Then it was on to Tower Estate, Hackney. The place I’d come up and was still tied to me no matter how much cash I carried in my pocket. Four grand easy on a good night. And tonight was one of those nights. Didn’t matter, though. No way to rinse the concrete out of my blood. And those towers rising black against the sky, slabs of grey piled on grey, windows glowing in patches where curtains hadn’t been nailed up, were mine. Yeah, the stairwells reeked of damp and diesel, spray paint curling off the walls where old tags bled into new, and there was always a light busted, a door hanging on one hinge with some flats pulsing grime out their windows till three a.m., but it was home. Where people knew me. Counted on me. And kept their mouths shut as long as I kept the corridors clear of chancers.

That’s how I bought loyalty.

I took the stairs two at a time, concrete echoing under my trainers, up and up until I hit the eighteenth floor. I was out of breath sure, but it was better than standing boxed in a steel coffin stinking of piss. At the top, the corridor stretched narrow, walls painted once-upon-a-time cream, now yellowed with smoke and grease, and my door waited halfway down, metal scuffed, frame patched where it’d been kicked in twice before.

Inside there wasn’t much, either. Technically it wasn’t mine. It belonged to my mum. Or, well, the council loaned it to her when I was born. A two-bed place she never escaped. And as long as she and my sister Keeley were here, so was I.

I let myself in, checked Mum’s room first. She lay half-buried under the duvet, hair a bird’s nest, one arm slung over her eyes as if she couldn’t face the world. On the bedside table sat an empty vodka bottle. Usual sight. But I’d seen worse. Seen her worse. Still hit me like a gut punch, though.

“Ma?” I kept it to a whisper. You don’t shout at the dead, and you don’t shout at the person you once begged to take care of you. “You alright?”

She groaned and rolled away, throwing her other arm over her face. So I went in, lifted the bottle she’d be clawing for later, and carried it through to the kitchen. The place was chaos. Baby bottles stacked beside rusting pans, steamers with no lids, and broken shit cluttered across the counter. I put away the baby milk, then rinsed a glass, filled it with water, took it back to Mum’s room, and set it down on the bedside. I slipped a couple of fifties under it, too. She wouldn’t thank me. She never did. But she’d use it.

Maybe not for the right things, but enough to keep her alive another day.

The living room was next. Keeley was curled on the sofa, patting her baby’s back in a half-asleep rhythm. My sister. Pregnant at fifteen, a mum at sixteen. Some grim cliché out of a council report.

“What you doing out here?” I whispered.

“Darren couldn’t sleep with the noise.” She nudged her chin towards her bedroom across the hall.

“You’re fucking kidding me.” The words came sharp, a blade in my throat. “He’s kicked you out to the sofa?”

That sofa was mine. Had been since Kee got too old for us to share a room. Same reason I took to the streets when I was a kid. And why I crashed at Tyler’s, fucking a girl I had no interest in. Sometimes, when I look at my sister now and what she’s left with, I wish I’d stayed in that tiny box with her, kept her closer, then she wouldn’t have ended up pregnant before she’d even finished school.

Regret’s a slow thing. Sits behind your teeth and waits.

What I should have done then is book a room. Have a proper bed. Quiet telly. No piss in the carpet. And a bloke on the other side of the sheets who gave me something I didn’t have to explain. I could forget who I was for a bit. Play at having what weren’t meant for me: a warm body, a decent fuck with someone I could go down on without thinking what it made me. But the alley kept looping in my head, and the way that rent boy looked up at me at the end. His cocky little smirk, as if he’d chosen it.

Pissed me off.

Pulled at me too.

Loosened the tightness in my chest I didn’t want undone.

For a second, I wanted his number. A hotel and him… that would’ve been perfect. Not just the hit but the other things I never said out loud. But I don’t do seconds. Not anymore. And not with some bloke taking cash on a street corner. That’s why the rules exist. Why I’m still alive. And why it rattled me knowing he’d swallowed me down as if he wanted it. That’s not how it works. Shouldn’t have been. Tonight, that rule cracked.

And for one stupid second, a weak, gnawing part of me wanted to leave it broken.

But I buried it to spin and slam open the door to Keeley’s room. My stomach turned for a different reason then. Darren, seventeen going on permanent disappointment, all attitude, no substance, sprawled on my sister’s bed. The skinny little runt who dressed as if he was running a line when he couldn’t even run a bath, with his sharp buzzcut he thought made him look hard and patchy chin fluff he refused to shave, Darren was a wannabe badman wrapped in knock-off swagger.

I was about to lay it on thick when a box half-hidden beside the bed caught my eye. I knew what it was without looking. But I fucking crouched anyway and flipped the lid. Metal winked back at me. A gun, broken into pieces. Barrel, slide, magazine, all tucked neatly in bubble wrap. Not for show. Not a toy.

Real steel, stashed under my roof.

My blood went ice and fire all at once. First Tyler, now this. Kids sitting on iron. The one thing I swore would never cross my doorstep, never touch my line. Blades I could live with. Every estate kid carried steel, part of the game. But guns? That was the hard line. No crossing it. No second chances. Only one crew moved with that kind of weight, and everyone knew their name.

“Wake the fuck up.” I kicked the bedframe so hard Darren jerked upright. “You got some fucking explaining to do.”

“Fuck, Razor!” Darren tried for brazen, scrambling for the act but failing miserably when I hauled him to his feet by the hood of his jumper and got right into his ugly mug.