The rules he’d carved into himself held firm. No one had stayed the night since then, and absolutelyno onecalled him Daddy.
No one willeverget close enough to break me again.
Max sprawled in the chair, staring at the ceiling. He whispered into the silence, low, certain, and unconvincing.
“I’m not your Daddy.”
The flat gave no answer, only the faint groan of the radiator, like a chain dragged across stone.
The whisky glass was half-empty when Max’s phone lit up, Theo’s name on the screen.
He thought about ignoring it, then dismissed the idea. He never ignored Theo. He thumbed the answer button. “Yeah?”
Theo’s voice was low, clipped, with that hint of Edinburgh restraint Max always found strangely comforting. “You busy?”
Max watched the city lights stutter across the windowpane. “Nope. I was out a while ago though.”
There was a pause. Theo knew him too well. “Did you do a scene tonight?”
“Yeah.” A beat. “It was fine.”
Theo didn’t push, though Max could feel the unspoken questions hanging between them. Instead, he shifted gears. “Julian’s audition was something, wasn’t it? He’s got precision under all the theatrics. If he can rein it in, he’ll be good.”
Max smirked. “Rein it in? Come on, youlovedit. He’s a brat. Sebastian’s got a streak of that too. This could be fun.”
A rustle of papers on the other end, then Theo’s dry tone filled his ear. “You’re not going to flirt witheveryonein the group, are you?”
Max chuckled. “Only the ones who flinch when I say ‘good boy’.”
He expected Theo to laugh with him. Instead, silence fell between them. When Theo finally spoke, his tone was soft, bordering on cautious. “Just don’t lose yourself again.”
Max gripped the glass. He stared at the condensation trickling down, watched it break apart under his thumb. “I don’t have anything left to lose.”
Before Theo could answer, he ended the call. The flat was silent again, the city’s pulse muffled by thick walls. Max set the glass down and held his phone close to his mouth. The voice memo app was still recording, its red light glowing.
He hummed again, a low, steady, disciplined sound. But this time, something broke through. Words. A lyric he hadn’t meant to let slip.
You wanted control / so I gave you the fire / but I burned too.
The words hung in the air, fragile as smoke. Max froze, listening to his own voice through the playback, and for a heartbeat he let himself admit the line was more truth than melody.
Then he hit delete. Erased. Gone. No one would ever hear it.
He set the phone down, went over to the bed, and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. His chest rose and fell, his breath heavier than the silence around him. Finally, he whispered into the dark, the words dry in his mouth.
“I’m not your Daddy.”
The ceiling didn’t argue.
Chapter Seven
The dive barin Brighton had a stage no bigger than a coffin lid, illuminated by spotlights that flickered as if they were afraid of the dark. Milo Harrison tuned in the half-shadow, testing a string with his thumb until the note settled.
He opened with something upbeat because that was what this place liked: four chords, and a chorus they could pretend to know. But even the bright songs bruised in his throat. His voice came out aching and textured, as if it had learned to carry grief the way some people carried keys. When he climbed a line, it wasn’t to show off; it was to see if there was air up there.
The crowd was small, comprising couples pressed into corners, a cluster at the bar, and a drag queen still in half-contour, nodding along as though she was measuring time for him. They didn’t cheer much, but they listened. Milo sang as if he was alone, because that was how the songs came—private at first, only public after they’d stopped hurting quite so loud.
Halfway through, he let a silence sit where a bridge should go. He could feel the old habit of apology on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t give it voice. He strummed once, twice, and let the room breathe with him. The amp buzzed faintly, a secondheartbeat. Someone laughed softly at the bar, then someone else shushed them, and the admonition felt like a blessing.
