Allen watched his face. Rick didn’t look happy about it, but he wasn’t refusing either. Rick shifted carefully, sliding out from under Allen. He reached for the nightstand, opened the drawer, and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper.
Allen sat up against the pillows and took them. “Is this new?”
Rick sat back beside him, their shoulders touching. “Yeah.”
Allen looked down and started reading. It didn’t take long to realize it wasn’t a song. It wasn’t lyrics. It read like a scene. A man in a café at a table. A conversation that turned into something else. He glanced sideways at Rick. Rick was watching him, his face blank.
Looking back at the pages, Allen kept reading. It wasn’t exactly them, but it was close enough. The details were shifted, but the feeling was familiar. The loneliness and the relief. The way the man on the page kept noticing things, and the way the other one kept staying.
Allen lowered the pages slowly. “This is… about meeting someone.”
Rick’s jaw hardened. “It’s not meant to be—”
“It is,” Allen murmured. Allen looked down again, then back up. “Is it about me?”
Rick’s eyes stayed on him. “Yeah.”
Allen swallowed, then nodded. “Okay.”
Rick’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes did. Relief maybe? Allen wasn’t sure. He put the pages on his lap and reached for Rick’s hand under the duvet, lacing their fingers together.
“That’s not what I expected you to write,” Allen admitted.
Rick smiled slightly. “What did you expect?”
Allen shrugged. “A song.”
Rick chuckled softly. “I can’t.”
Allen squeezed his hand once. “You can. You just don’t want to show anyone when you’re not sure it’s good.”
Rick didn’t deny it. “Maybe.”
Allen glanced at the pages again. “It is good,” he said. “It’s… honest?” He didn’t know what word to use to describe how he felt when reading what Rick had written.
Rick’s eyes stayed on him. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I’m not saying it to be nice,” Allen said. “I’m saying it because it’s true.”
Rick’s gaze held his for a long second, then he looked away. “Don’t tell your friends.”
Allen blinked. “I wouldn’t. I told you this is between us.”
Rick’s eyes came back to him. “Good.”
Allen nodded, then shifted closer, laying his head back on Rick’s chest. Rick’s hand found his back again, his fingers moving slowly over Allen’s skin.
Allen listened to Rick’s breathing and stared at the dark ceiling, the pages still warm on his lap. He didn’t know what it meant that Rick was writing this about him and how they met, but it made something inside relax. That scared him a little because it made him want more.
Chapter Fifteen
Sitting at the kitchen table, Rick checked the news on his phone. Cass was still the headline, so he opened one of the articles and scrolled until he found an update. No arrests have been made. Under that, the same vague lines about investigators reviewing CCTV and asking anyone in the area to come forward. He scrolled to the still image and stared at it longer than he needed to. A hooded figure in a hallway, head down, shoulders rounded. Nothing clear enough to pin on anyone real. He backed out and searched for Graham.
Graham’s death wasn’t getting the same attention now that some time had passed. It sat lower on local sites, buried under weather and crime and whatever else had happened since Rick had murdered him. He opened the first result and read it all the way through, then opened a second one and found the same copy-paste statement and the same lack of detail. No follow-up.
Good.
Putting the phone down, Rick sat there for a moment. The steadiness inside still surprised him. He’d expected something to catch up with him by now. Nerves, panic even, but instead, he felt normal.
