“Punching?”
“Me and Cass are quite good at it. No broken fingers between us.”
“When was the last time you punched someone?”
“Can’t remember. Cass punches people.” Nero pointed to the map of faded scars on his knuckles. “I punch walls.”
“Fair enough. Can we leave now?”
“How about we wait for that doctor?”
Lenny scowled. “How about we fuck the doctor off and get going? We’ve got a restaurant to open tonight, remember?”
TST’s imminent grand opening had slipped Nero’s mind. “They’ll manage without us.”
“How? If Tom and Cass are both here? Jake can’t do it on his own.”
Nero retrieved his phone from his pocket to text Cass. A message was already there, informing him that Cass and Tom had left the hospital, were headed to Vauxhall, and to call them anytime. “See? They’ve got this.”
Lenny’s frown deepened. “It’s not about them.”
Isn’t it?
It took Nero a moment to compute Lenny’s cryptic mutiny, but when the lightbulb came, it was blinding. The Stray Tiger, was it him, or Lenny? Or were they one and the same, pouring their hearts and souls into each other? And was that the point? That separately they were drifters, but together they’d made a home?
Nero had no idea. He pulled the tangle of leather and silver from his pocket and dropped it into Lenny’s damaged hand.
Lenny’s eyes briefly widened, and then he smiled ruefully. “Where on earth did you get those? I’ve been carrying them around for weeks, waiting for the right moment to give them to you.”
“They ain’t both for me.” Nero gently fastened the bracelet around Lenny’s wrist, and then hung the necklace around his own neck. “I love you, Lenny, now let’s get out of here and open a motherfucking restaurant.”
Six Months Later
Hampstead tube station still felt strange. Often, Lenny found himself standing across the road from it, staring through the crowds of commuters, and trying to picture the day he’d punched a man hard enough to break his own bones. Punched him. Ended him, and the nightmare he’d lived in for so long.
Not that he’d been living the nightmare when it happened, because by then he’d been in that blissful, wonderful haze of complacency where he’d honestly believed the danger was over, that he—Gareth Harvey—was safely locked up. Oh, how wrong he’d been. In the month that followed the attack on Lenny, details had emerged of the injuries he’d inflicted on his other victims, horrors Lenny still saw when his mind drifted if something—or someone—didn’t distract him.
It was Jake today. He fizzed like a firework and jostled Lenny’s arm. “Come on—wankers—stop staring. People will think you’ve caught my crazy.”
“You’re not crazy,” Lenny retorted.
“Nah, I just look it, eh?” Jake tilted his head to one side and pulled a face.
Lenny resisted the impulse to shove him, like he might’ve done Nero, and instead took Jake’s arm, and casually guided him across the road, though his attempts at subtlety were pointless. Jake always knew when he was being handled. Lenny released him. “Are you going home now?”
“Home? Hmm? Oh, home home? Yeah. I’m meeting Cass at Euston.” Jake fished his Oyster card from his back pocket. “What about you?”
“I’m going to drag Nero from the kitchen and go to bed, unless you need me for anything else?”
“Nah, go home, mate. And thanks for today. I know I keep calling you a bell job, but what I actually mean is that you make my life a million times easier.”
Lenny beamed, though he’d learned long ago that Jake’s vocal tics, however brutal, weren’t personal, and affected Jake more than anyone else. “It’s no worries. I like being your PA. It keeps me out of trouble.”
“Does it balls, but at least it’s the good kind of trouble, if that shit-eating grin I keep seeing on Nero is anything to go by.”
Lenny couldn’t argue with that. He saw Jake onto the right train and then made his way home to Vauxhall, to the newly renovated flat he and Nero had moved into just a few weeks ago. The door was at the back of the building, but Lenny couldn’t resist taking the alternative route through TST, absorbing the dying bustle of the bakery as it shut up shop for the night, and then the renewed buzz as the business moved seamlessly to the vibrant pizza restaurant.
Nero was easy to spot, dressed in the black chef jacket Lenny had bought him for his birthday, circling the pizza oven like a wolf protecting its young. Lenny took a moment to gaze at him before Nero sensed his presence and turned around. Working for Urban Soul, Lenny had seen many chefs come and go, but none were as glorious to watch at work as Nero. The instinctive way he moved around the kitchen was a special kind of alchemy, and some days Lenny truly missed the heady summer days they’d spent holed up in Pippa’s kitchen. Some days, because he could live without the smell of cooking clinging to his skin.
