“Me too.”
Alexei plucked the unlit cigarette from my fingers and placed it between his lips, shifting it from one side to the other with a slide of his tongue. “Is what I thought.”
“Why?”
“I do not know.”
A charged silence swamped us. Alexei didn’t ask for details, but something inside me broke and I let it all out for the first time since I’d dropped it on Mateo. “When I was six, we spent a summer living with my uncle. He sold dodgy car parts to the gorgers. This bloke worked for him and slept on the chalet deck sometimes. My mum was always gone and my uncle drank himself into a coma every night, so there was no one to notice what he did when the sun went down.”
Alexei passed me the lit cigarette. “You told no one?”
“When I was six? No... I didn’t know it was wrong, and then I forgot about it, I suppose. It’s like it fell out of my head. I was weird about sex, especially with men, but I didn’t know why.”
“What changed?”
I brought the cigarette to my lips. It was fucking disgusting, but the noxious burn kept me tied to the earth. “Appleby. I heard him. Then I—I fuckingsmelthim, and it all came rushing back. I picked up an anvil and he was dead before he hit the ground.”
“How did you feel?”
“I don’t remember. Ironic, eh? Cos I can’t forget the rest of it anymore. It’s there every time...” The rocks in my throat came back. “You know.”
Alexei nodded and accepted the cigarette I held out. “That gets better when you are with the same person.”
“Or people.”
“Yes. But there is only one Mateo.”
I let out a bitter laugh and knocked my head on the concrete behind me, closing my eyes, hiding in plain sight from Alexei’s electric stare, so different to Mateo’s but no less alive, despite what he thought of himself.
In that, Alexei and Mateo, theywerethe same.
“He knows?”
I opened my eyes. Alexei had got up and moved away from me, but I remained under his spell. And I knew who he meant.Mateo.“Yeah. I told him the night you gave me those injections.”
“Ah. That is why he punched the window?”
“More or less.”
“It is good that he knows, believe me.” Alexei leaned on the balcony rail, the summer breeze ruffling his hair. “Is hard sometimes when not even I know something is... affecting me. Confusing. For them and for me.”
He was wide open, letting me see deeper inside than I’d ever dared hope. But I was too caught up in my own head to look. I let it happen—I let it go—and the moment passed.
I was drifting again when he came closer and crouched in front of me, a bike key dangling from his elegant fingers.
“You should go,” he said.
“Where?”
“Wherever you need to be. The Ninja is downstairs. You can take it.”
“What about you?”
“Do not worry about me, chaplain. Or anyone else. You shouldgo, now, while we can still make these choices.”
The foreboding lacing his words should’ve scared me, but my hands were steady as I took the key from him and we rose together. Something unspoken passed between us, something perhaps no one else would ever understand.
Then I stepped past him and made for the balcony door. My hand hit the metal handle, heated from the summer sun. My heart was in a hurry, but I stopped and turned. “Are you going to tell Cam and Saint what I told you?”
