Diwa put his arm around him. Colin’s head pressed against the dip of his collarbone where it always ended up, and his breathing settled. Diwa pressed his mouth to the top of Colin’s head and stayed exactly where he was.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Colinshifted against Diwa’s shoulder. “M’sticky.”
The sheets were ruined, slick and sweat soaked through to the mattress protector, and the skin of Colin’s inner thighs was tacky where Diwa’s come had dried between rounds. Diwa’s own stomach was crusted with it. The room smelled of the two of them so thoroughly that opening a window would have constituted an assault on the Scottish Highlands.
“Stay there,” Diwa said. “I’ll run the bath for you.”
He filled the bath, carried Colin through because his legs weren’t up to it yet, and lowered him into the water. Colin’s breath hissed between his teeth as the heat hit his arse, swollen and tender from days of use, before his body settled and his head tipped back against the rim of the bath.
Diwa knelt on the tiles and washed him. He worked a flannel across Colin’s shoulders, down the length of each arm, and over his chest. Colin watched him through half-closed eyes and said nothing.
When Diwa reached between his thighs with the flannel, careful around the soreness, Colin’s hand came up and rested on the back of his neck, his fingers light against the skin. Diwa stayed where he was, kneeling on the cold tile, the bathwater running warm over his wrist, and didn’t move until Colin’s hand slid away.
He helped Colin out, wrapped him in the biggest towel the cottage had to offer, and sat him on the edge of the bed while he went to make tea and toast and strip the sheets. His mobile had been off, tucked in the side pocket of his holdall, and he fished it out now to send Stephen the daily update.
The screen came alive with sixty-three notifications.
Fourteen missed calls from Ezra. Nine voicemails. A wall of text messages, escalating in urgency fromCall me when you get a secthrough toD, pick up the fucking phone.
Diwa scrolled through them with his thumb, paused, and typed out a one-line reply to Stephen —Day 5. He’s back and doing well.— before switching the mobile off again and putting it back in the holdall.
That was just Ez being hectic. There must have been some sort of board flare-up. Ezra’s considerable talents could handle it without Diwa’s input for another few hours while Colin finished the last of his tea and let himself be driven home.
? ? ?
Theywere back at Ledbury Road for less than an hour when the rapping on the door started, sharp, and delivered with enough force to rattle the letterbox.
Diwa came down the stairs at a jog and opened the yellow door to find Ezra filling the frame, the airline tag from Heathrow still dangling from the carry-on in his fist.
Ezra shouldered past him into the hallway. His eyes swept the kitchen doorway, found Colin at the island, and his whole bearing shifted between one step and the next.
“Hi, Colin. Good to see you again. Glad you’re well.” He meant it, too, which made what followed worse. His head swung back to Diwa, and whatever warmth had been in his face a second ago was gone. He jerked his chin towards the study. “In there. Now. We’ve got to talk.”
Diwa glanced at Colin. Colin’s eyebrows had lifted over the rim of his mug, but he said nothing.
Diwa followed Ezra into the study. The door clicked shut behind them.
“Youstupidfucker.” Ezra’s voice hit the walls. “Why don’t you ever just fucking answer your cellphone?”
Ezra’s hands were shaking. That was the thing Diwa couldn’t get past, standing in the doorway of his own study while his best friend paced the length of the room.
This was a man who had once, on a fact-finding trip to Turkmenistan, fed a strip of cured meat to the president’s pet jackal because the president had offered and refusing had not seemed like the right move. He was a man who had renegotiated a Series C at four in the morning in a Mumbai hotel suite while running a fever of thirty-nine degrees, and suffering from a serious case of the Bombay Belly. Ezra Holberg’s hand had held steady on both occasions.
“The former team leads filed on Tuesday. Two days after you went dark on us.”
Diwa’s stomach turned over. “The Oakland firm?”
“The Oakland firm.” Ezra lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed above the dark circles, his shirt collar creased fromsleeping in it on the plane. “And they have your remediation proposal. The full document, D. They have all the details about your retroactive hazard pay plan, independently administered mental health fund, third-party audits chosen by the workers’ council. They have every word of it.”
The room contracted around him, pulling inward until there was nothing in the study but Ezra’s voice and the coldness spreading through Diwa’s chest.
“They cited it in the complaint.” Ezra’s jaw worked. “As evidence that the company’s own chairman had acknowledged systematic harm to workers and proposed a quarter-billion-dollar remediation package. They’re framing it as an internal admission, Diwa. Fromyou, the person right at the top.”
Diwa sat down on the arm of the sofa. “Who leaked it?”
“I don’t know.” Ezra’s voice cracked, and he turned away to face the window, one hand pressing against the back of his neck. “I don’t know who leaked it, and right now I don’t care. The board called an emergency session, and I have been trying to reach you, calling you, texting you, leaving voicemails that I will never fucking live down, and you didn’t pick up. Not once.”
