“You’re a tough one to crack. Let’s give it another twenty.” Diwa kissed his knee through the fabric of his trousers, stood up, and went to find the ice cream.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thecharcuterie board had cost Diwa four hundred pounds.
Diwa knew this because he’d placed the order himself, from a website whose entire aesthetic suggested that its target demographic was people who wanted artisanal cured meats delivered in tissue paper with a handwritten note about the life history of the pig it had all been made from.
It had arrived forty minutes ago in a wooden crate that could have doubled as a coffin for a medium-sized dog, and he’d spent twenty of those minutes arranging bresaola in overlapping fans across a marble board he’d bought specifically for the occasion. Organic local honey sat in a small ceramic pot beside three varieties of fig jam. The cornichons were so perfectly uniform they looked as though they’d been selected by an algorithm.
Stephen was going to hate it.
Stephen was going to walk in, clock the four-hundred-pound spread on the kitchen island, and resent the fuck out of him. He’d conclude that Diwa was making up for his lack ofpersonality with his wallet. Which, fair enough, he sometimes fell back on in desperate times.
The drinks were another problem. He’d been standing in front of the fridge for the better part of ten minutes, cycling through options to offer Stephen. Beer felt too casual, as if he were trying to signal a laddishness he didn’t possess. Wine would confirm every suspicion Stephen already held about him and his wankery. Tea felt like he was putting on a costume, though proximity to Colin had made him a pro at brewing up a proper builder’s.
He considered offering nothing at all. Just answering the door and letting Stephen ask for what he wanted. But that felt hostile, or at the very least negligent.
Colin had told Stephen yesterday that the two of them were going away for five days, to a cottage in the Scottish Highlands with no neighbours within a mile. Diwa hadn’t been on the call, but Colin had rung him afterwards, his voice carrying the particular flatness that meant it had gone badly, and he wasn’t up for discussing it. Everyone involved in this conversation knew why they were going away.
Stephen had rung Diwa an hour later, and the conversation had lasted ninety seconds. His tone had been clipped and efficient, and he’d said he wanted to come round to Diwa’s to talk. He used a voice eerily similar to his omega father’s. One that indicated the matter was closed, and that no matter how Diwa might feel about this visit, Stephen was going to come see him anyway.
Diwa picked up his mobile and typed out a message to Ezra.
What’s the best practice for meeting the extremely angry adult child of your partner who is only two years younger than you and could probably end your life with a look?
The typing indicator pulsed for three seconds. Then a single emoji came back:
Diwa stared at it, put the mobile down, and kept himself preoccupied by moving the honey pot two inches to the left.
The knock came at ten past four, two sharp raps that could have been delivered by a bailiff.
Diwa checked his hair in the hallway mirror, decided he looked like someone trying too hard, and ruffled it. This made him look like someone trying to look like hewasn’ttrying too hard, which was worse, but another flurry of knocks stopped him from lingering to fix it.
Stephen stood on the steps in a navy peacoat with his hands in his pockets. “All right?”
“Hey! Come in, come in.” Diwa stepped back, his arm sweeping the hallway in a gesture of welcome so expansive it nearly clipped the coat rack. “How was the drive? Did you find parking okay? There’s a residents’ bay round the corner but it’s permit only, so if you’re on the street you might need to…actually, I can move my car if you need me to.”
“I got the Tube.” Stephen stepped over the threshold, and began a methodical visual sweep of Diwa’s home.
Diwa had been braced for a punch. He’d half-rehearsed a response to a punch. Something measured, something that communicated that he understood the impulse and bore Stephen no ill will for it, while also making it clear that he was an alpha, and was not above delivering a few upper cuts himself. It was just that he’d prefer not to.
But now Stephen wasn’t punching him. Instead, he looked at the hallway the way a forensic team looks at a crime scene. His eyes moved from the coat rack to the shoe rack to the mat by the door, cataloguing each item as he built a case for mortally hating Diwa. He had already zoned in on Exhibit A.
Colin’s boots were on the rack beside Diwa’s trainers. The steel-toed work ones, scuffed and thin-soled, sitting where they’d lived for the past month. Next to them, a pair of batteredslip-ons Colin wore to pad around the house. Stephen’s gaze rested on the slip-ons for three full seconds, clearly having recognised them.
He moved down the hall. Diwa followed, his hands finding his pockets. In the living room doorway, Stephen paused, and Diwa followed the line of his gaze to the armchair by the window, where Colin’s cardigan was draped over the back. It was a shapeless, oatmeal-coloured thing, bobbled at the cuffs, with a button missing on the left side. It smelled of his soap and skin, and Diwa picked it up and held it against his face whenever Colin wasn’t in the house. The other night, he’d kept Colin in the cardigan while he fucked him against the breakfast banquette, the oatmeal wool rucked up to his waist, Colin’s hands braced on the table.
That probably wasn’t a memory he should be thinking about in the presence of Colin’s son.
“Well.” Stephen turned back to him, hands still in his coat pockets. “Your set-up looks cosy.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” The words left Diwa’s mouth at twice their intended speed. “I’ve got water, obviously, tea, coffee, or there’s lemonade?”
Stephen’s eyebrows rose. “Lemonade would be lovely, thanks.”
The bottom dropped out of Diwa’s stomach.
He did not have lemonade. He had never had lemonade. The word had materialised from whatever part of his brain handled panic-induced improvisation, and now he was committed to it. He turned towards the kitchen with the purposeful stride of someone who absolutely knew where his lemonade was, Stephen falling into step behind him, and pulled open the fridge with a confidence that evaporated the instant the interior light hit the shelves.
