He slows. Doesn’t stop. ‘What?’
The words are in my throat. They’ve been there for weeks.
‘I think I’ve—’ My voice. Smaller than I planned. His cock still inside me, his weight still on me, that focus still on mine. ‘I think I’ve fallen in love with you.’
His hips stop, his breath stops, the whole flat stops—boiler, rain,I love youhanging between us. His eyes change first. Hetraces my cheekbone with his thumb, always this thumb, always this cheekbone.
‘Me too, Ewan.’ Lancashire. ‘For a while now.’
The kiss is different—no collision, no urgency. This one is wordless, and I mean it.
He starts to move again. Slow. The rhythm has changed, deliberate, chosen, tender. He watches me. I don’t look away.
I come saying his name. Proper, not the surname, not the title, justLaurence,slipping out in a voice I don’t recognise, lower than performance, rougher than strategy, the voice under all the voices—the Lewisham in it.
He follows. Deep inside me, he was buried at my neck, the sound bitten off against my skin. My legs are around him. His hands were gripping the sheets beside my head. The shudder through him and into me, and somewhere it doesn’t stop.
After, still inside me, softening, his breath against my collarbone, my hand in his hair. The boiler, the rain, his heart against my chest.
‘Say it,’ I whisper. He lifts his head, looks at me, glasses fogged and crooked.
‘I love you,’ he says. Clear. ‘Is that sufficient, Carrick?’
It undoes me—theCarrickafter everything, tenderness only this man could manage. ‘Sufficient,’ I say. ‘Barely.’
Both of us grinning like idiots, his cock slipping out of me, the gracelessness of that moment, and not caring.
He rolls off, and I curl into him. His arm around me, heavy, intentional.
His pulse under my ear. The flat, the rain, him, breathing.
I leave at eleven, the shower shared, him washing my hair, his kiss at the door slow. Chorlton at night, the cold hitting my damp hair and the shock welcome. Victorian terraces in their rows under amber streetlamps, the pavement wet and the air cold.
The smile won’t leave—stupid, uncontrollable—and I walk with time to kill and the fact of being loved still settling into place.
My phone buzzes, Laurence.Get home safe.
Three words. Someone is checking that you got home.
I type back:Already miss you.Send it. Don’t delete it. The old Ewan would’ve deleted it, too much like handing someone the coordinates to the vulnerable bit. Ewan presses send, puts the phone in his pocket, and walks through Chorlton with wet hair and a sore arse.
The tram stop. I wait. The rain starts properly now, committed, northern rain that means business. My hood stays down, let it come.
Behind me, fifty metres back, in the shadow of a parked car: the glow of a phone screen. A photo was taken. Another. Three hours in the cold, watching. This is Ronan’s patience.
The observation misses me.
I’m looking at the sky and smiling and thinking aboutit for a while now, in his voice.
The tram comes, and I get on. The doors close.
The phone screen behind the car goes dark.
Feet on wet pavement, walking away.
Towards the green door, where the name on the buzzer will answer every question a brother ever needed to ask.
The following day at four thirty-five on the clock is when the knock becomes real.
