Page 90 of Crave

I sniffed, trying to sort myself out. Told myself to get a grip. I weren’t Richie anymore. I was Razor. And Razor don’t fucking cry.

I knew I was though.

“When I was about nineteen, him eighteen we were… yeah, I guess you’d call it a thing. Back then it didn’t feel like that. We were kids. Mucking about. Pretending it was nothing.” I wiped the treacherous tear I’d tell myself hadn’t been there. “But it wasn’t nothing, though. Not to me.”

Tristan didn’t say a word. He watched. And somehow that made it worse.

“Len didn’t know. Or maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t want to see it.” My voice cracked. I coughed it back down. “And to be honest, I’m glad about that cause….”

Tristan’s hand froze where it rested. “Cause why? What happened?”

I swallowed, throat raw. “He died.” The words dropped like lead. “Twenty years old.” I forced it all out. “And I’m the one who got him the gear that did it. Bad batch. Cut with something it shouldn’t’ve been.”

I let out a laugh. A breath. A sob. I don’t even know.

“So yeah. Lennon can’t stand the sight of me. Don’t blame him. Don’t matter that I don’t push that shit now. Or that I keep my line clean. It’s too late for that. Too late for him. Too late for me.” My chest felt tight, every breath scraping. “Day of the funeral, Cormac gave me the Hackney line. Said I’d earned it. ‘Highlighting the dodgy batch,’ he called it. Bonus cash, too. Gave me the car. Promotion for killing the only person I ever—” I stopped. Swallowed it down. “Didn’t have a choice but to take it. What else was I supposed to do? Go clean? There’s no clean way out once you’re that far under.”

I stared past Tristan, at the blank wall, voice barely more than a rasp. “Lennon built a life. Beautiful girl, kids on the way. I built this. A career putting poison in people’s veins.” Didn’t matter if I refused to push heroin. Poison was poison. I still made the world worse just by breathing in it. And I took Tristan’s hand, pressed it flat over the tattoo on my chest to hammer home the point. “That’s what it means. Poisoned heart. That’s what I’ve got. What I earned. And it’s the only thing I’m good for.”

Tristan held my gaze, then I let his hand go and he traced the ink again, as if realising it for the first time. “I’m so sorry.”

I lifted his hand again, brought it to my mouth and kissed his knuckles. A small, stupid thing meaning way too much. I didn’t want the apology. Or the sympathy. I didn’t deserve it. Yet my stupid held back grief grabbed hold of it.

“My life, innit?” I shrugged. “Don’t go thinking too much about me, yeah? I ain’t the kind that sticks.”

He shifted onto his knees beside me and peeled back the bandage. I hissed as air hit the wound, but he ignored it, focused, hands steady, then reached for the antiseptic wipes, the smell sharp in the air, and went to work cleaning me up.

“Though now…” I watched him work me over. “I’ve fucked up the only thing I am good at.”

Tristan looked up at me. “What would you be if you weren’t…what you are?”

“What do you mean?” I hissed as my ribs stung under his touch.

“If you had a choice. What would you be? What would you do instead?”

He wanted me to say ‘better’. I could feel it, practically see him forming those words with his lips as he cleaned me up. He wanted to believe people didn’t have to be the sum of what they’d survived. But some people didn’t have a choice.

“I don’t have a choice if I want to keep my family safe.”

Tristan fell back on his knees. Held my gaze. “But if you did.”

I shrugged. “I dunno. What do people like me get to do? Lennon builds houses. Maybe I’d do that. Good at grafting. Fixing shit.”

“So…run a business?”

I snorted. “Sure. Underneath all this shit I’m Alan Sugar.”

“You could be.”

“Cormac wouldn’t let me peddle anything he didn’t own. And will go fucking ballistic when he finds out how badly I’ve fucked this up.”

“Seems to me then, it’s more dangerous being in it, than out of it.”

I hissed again as Tristan wrapped fresh gauze around my ribs. “You think I don’t know this life ends one of two ways?”

I could admit the truth in my head: prison or a grave. No one asked boys like me what they wanted to be. And no one ever would unless I tore the whole bloody system apart first. Wanting was a luxury. Sure, I saved where I could. There were the envelopes hidden in Keeley’s wardrobe. Money I’d been squirrelling away for if there ever was a time I could run clean. But they were temporary, those thoughts of fleeing. As if I was trying to build a future out of a matchbox.

Tristan sighed. “Looks like you survived what plenty other people wouldn’t. I’d say that puts you squarely in the ‘still doing alright’ category.”