“Fast isn’t bad,” Tom says. He laughs softly. “Craig, I’m forty-two. I’ve been slow for a very long time.”
“Slow can be safe.”
“Safe can be lonely.”
Craig rubs his thumb over the phone’s case. He wants to tell Tom that loneliness is better than drowning. He wants to say that some houses look like rescue boats until you climb aboard. He wants to say a lot of things that will sound like interference because they are interference.
“Okay,” he says at last. “If you’re staying, text me the address.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a detective and I worry. It’s my love language.”
Tom snorts. “Your love language is spreadsheets and suspicion.”
“Both saved my life,” Craig replies. “Humour me.”
Tom hesitates, then rattles off the postcode. Craig memorises it automatically; his brain is a filing cabinet that never closes. He types it anyway.
“Don’t drink too much,” he says. “Don’t… don’t try to win anyone over. Be exactly as lovely as you are and then leave enough of yourself for yourself.”
“You think I’m lovely?”
“I think you’re a nightmare,” Craig says, soft as a smile, “and lovely.”
There’s a pause. Craig can hear the decision settle in Tom’s chest. “Okay,” Tom says. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Do. Or I’ll file a missing-persons report and embarrass you on local news.”
Tom laughs for real this time. “You would.”
“I would.” He swallows. “Night, mate.”
“Night.”
The line clicks dead. The kitchen feels bigger. Craig stares at the phone, then flips it face down like it could incriminate him. He knows what he’s supposed to feel: supportive, trusting, proud of Tom for leaning into something new with his eyes open. And a part of him does feel that; a good, clean part that wants Tom happy and whole.
But there’s another part, the part that has stood at too many doors because someone ignored a feeling, the part that has watched smart people walk into rooms they didn’t come out of. That part is meaner and more practical. That part would burn bridges if it kept Tom from drowning on the other side.
His mind, traitor that it is, circles back to Daniel.
He knows the version of the story Tom tells himself: Craig, the loyal friend, the patient ear, the gentle nudge that helped him, supported him to leave his abusive ex.
It is true, but it is not the whole truth.
The whole truth has splinters.
The whole truth lives in locked drawers in his head.
He told himself he did what he did because it was the best thing for Tom. He still tells himself that, because the alternative is admitting something uglier. There was a moment, a specific moment, when he stopped being a friend and started being an architect.
Last week, he’d crossed the line again. Slipped Tom’s phone from the coffee table the moment he left the room, thumbed the screen open, and blocked Daniel’s number without hesitation.
A small domestic crime, committed with all the precision of a detective who knows how to make evidence vanish.
He told himself it was necessary — triage. Daniel was a trigger, a wound that kept tearing open. Craig couldn’t watch Tom bleed himself out one more time.
And yes, maybe that was part of it.
