“How can I stay? You won’t talk to me, and . . . I—” Lenny pressed his thumbs into his eyes. “I can’t live in silence while you tear yourself apart. It’s killing me.”
Lenny didn’t know how true it was until his voice cracked and weeks—months—of pent-up frustration boiled over. Tears coursed down his face, and he fought to keep his wracking sobs inside. “Nero, you gave me my life back, but I need you to live too. Can’t you see that?”
The eerie quiet on Nero’s end of the line went on so long Lenny feared he’d gone, then another bone-weary sigh reached him, and defeat weighed heavily in the air. Lenny hung his head, the tears still coming, and let the phone slip from his ear. If Nero couldn’t hear him now, he never would, and what did that mean for both of them? Lenny couldn’t imagine this strange new life without Nero, and even as the walls of the flat closed in on him, knew his heart would never let him leave.
“Lenny.”
Lenny sniffed and looked at his phone. Somehow, Nero was still there. He brought it back to his ear. “What?”
“I’m gonna drive the bus home later when I sober up. Go to bed. We’ll talk when I get home.”
“Talk?”
“Yeah . . . talk. I can’t be who you want me to be, Lenny. Maybe by tonight, you’ll understand why.”
Nero really did hang up this time. Lenny’s heart plummeted painfully into his stomach, and the first strains of a blistering hangover brewed as he stared at his phone’s blank screen. He’s coming home. He wants to talk. Ten minutes ago, it had been all Lenny had wanted, but now the prospect filled him with dread. “I can’t be who you want me to be.” Was that Nero shutting them down? Until he came home, Lenny had no idea, and the impending wait felt like the end of the world.
He dropped his phone on the floor and flopped back on the couch. The recent nights when Nero had got up and left him in bed, Lenny had found him in this exact position the following morning, passed out in front of Storage Hunters. It wasn’t a programme Lenny had ever watched, but it always seemed to be on. He found it and curled up on the sofa with the remote. His brain felt too wired for sleep, but as the sky outside began to lighten, his body gave up. Sleep consumed him. He longed for dreams of Nero, but none came.
Lenny woke at lunchtime to streaming sunlight and an empty flat. He paced around to be sure, but came up blank. Nero wasn’t home, and there was no sign he’d come back and gone out again while Lenny had slept.
Despair nearly sent Lenny to his knees. He went to the bedroom and retrieved his phone. The screen was blank—no messages or missed calls. In desperation, he checked WhatsApp, but Nero had been offline since he’d read Lenny’s message eight hours ago.
Logic told Lenny that Nero had likely fallen asleep in Vauxhall, stretched out on the couch in the newly refurbished office. With the business mere weeks from launch, there’d been plenty of Urban Soul staff who’d done just that recently. But not Nero. Wherever and however late he’d worked, he’d always come home. Every night. Until now.
Lenny rang Nero’s phone, his heart clattering against his diaphragm, but the call went straight to Nero’s automated voice mail. Cursing, Lenny hurled the phone across the room, sweat beading his brow. His hands shook and his stomach churned. Damn you, Nero. How had they gone from the safest Lenny had ever felt to this . . . insanity?
Fuck this.
Lenny jumped in the shower and rinsed away a night of sweat, booze, and tears. His body ached, and his head thumped a constant reminder that mixing drinks and angst never ended well, but the temptation to curl up and die in the bathtub was outweighed by a primal need to hunt Nero down and put this shit to bed once and for all. He dressed in the first clothes he found, grabbed his Oyster card, and charged downstairs. The side exit would’ve taken him straight outside without having to face anyone, but habit took him past the office and straight into Steph’s path.
“Ow!” Steph recoiled and rubbed her shoulder. “Where are you off to in such a hurry? I hope it’s to the bar to pay for the vodka you pinched last night.”
Shit. Lenny had forgotten about his IOU. “It’s not pinching if I pay for it, is it?”
“Bloody hell, you’re as bad as Nero. At least you’re not wearing last night’s clothes, though.”
“What?”
“Nero,” Steph repeated, eyeing Lenny like he’d crapped in her handbag. “He crawled in an hour ago, but I’ve had to send him into the kitchen.”
The kitchen? Lenny frowned. Cass had lost the bet to run the kitchen the day after the staff night out, and his misfortune had given Nero the entire day off—a day Lenny had hoped to spend in bed, together, before his tiny world had imploded. “Nero’s working?”
“Yep. He looks rough, but that’s what you get for staying out all night pissing around with that stupid bus—”
Lenny pushed past Steph and hurried along the corridor. Civvy clothes in the kitchen during service was strictly forbidden—unless you were Cass and did whatever the fuck you wanted—but Lenny didn’t care. A wrathful Nero was better than no Nero. Hell, any Nero was better than nothing, despite Lenny’s ever-present certainty that whatever affection Nero held for him just wasn’t enough on its own.
“Whoa, Lenny, man.”
For the second time in as many minutes, Lenny charged headlong into a coworker. This time, it was Jolen, who seemed far less bothered than Steph had been. The quiet man simply stepped aside, though Lenny was sure that his grin was the same as the one he’d flashed last night when he’d left Lenny and Nero kissing on the bar’s smoking terrace. Bastard. Did everyone know Lenny was head over heels in love with Nero? Everyone except Nero?
Lenny didn’t have time to contemplate a sensible reply. He stumbled into the kitchen in time to catch Nero roaring at an unfortunate waiter.
“I don’t give a fuck whose mistake it was! Get it out of my fucking sight!” Nero shoved a plate across the pass so hard it was only the waiter’s trembling hands that kept it from flying out the other side and shattering on the floor.
The waiter disappeared, presumably to rectify the error, and Nero turned back to the grill, his expression an alarming combination of his volatile temper and an intense exhaustion Lenny had never seen in him before.
Lenny stepped behind the line and put himself between Nero and the grill. “What are you doing down here? Where’s Cass?”
