Page 96 of Corrupt

I tilted my head, studying him. He didn’t look disgusted. Not really. It was a shield. A way of keeping distance without admitting why.

And suddenly it clicked.

If he’d never had holidays as a kid, chances were he’d never been taken swimming either. Pools cost money. Lessons cost money. Even knowing it was something you could do came from a place of assumption. Open water swimming might be free, but it wasn’t exactly a pastime you picked up growing up on a council estate in inner-city Hackney.

I’d been cushioned, yes. But I wasn’t blind.

“Can you swim?” I asked.

A beat. “Not properly.”

I gestured with my hand. “Then let me teach you.”

“Fuck off.”

I laughed and scrubbed water from my face. “You can’t tell me the big bad Razor’s afraid of a little water? It’s waist height at the edge.”

He stared at me a second longer. Then he stood and came closer, crouching. He slipped his fingers under my chin, lifted my face, and bent down to kiss me. “I’m Richie.”

“So I see.” I smiled. Then I grabbed his wrist and dragged him in.

He went in with a startled shout, water exploding around him, jeans and all. When he surfaced, spluttering and swearing, he waded towards me, crowding my space.

“You’ll regret that.”

I didn’t.

Because I got to wrap my arms around him. He caught me easily, the kiss turning warmer, deeper, water lapping around us as the sun pressed down from above. The moment narrowed. Heat and water and him. The strange, giddy rightness of being outside. Being alone. Being…us.

Then, without warning, he broke away and hauled me up to throw me back in the water. I went under with a startled yelp, coming up coughing and blinking to the sound of his laugh.

Fuck. It was infectious. Bright. Unrestrained.

I swam back at him and tried to dunk him by jumping on his shoulders. Failed spectacularly. He caught me instead, hands firm around my waist and sent me splashing back through the water. I came up laughing, hair in my face, moving towards him again.

He vanished beneath the surface.

A second later he was there, close, lifting me clean out of the lake before setting me back on the edge of the deck. Water streamed from me. He stepped in between my legs, bracing his palms beside my hips, and rose up to kiss me. Warm. Unrushed. As if there were nowhere else he needed to be.

Eventually, he hauled himself out, jeans soaked through, denim heavy and dark, and he had to wrestle with them, swearing under his breath. So I helped him peel them free and we ended up in a breathless heap on one of the loungers, laughing, his arm draped around me, my head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder. And for a while we just lay there, watching the drift of cloud overhead. Breathing. Letting the moment settle into our bones.

Then, glancing over to the surrounding trees, quiet but no less profound, he said, “I need to get out.”

I stilled. Lifted my head.

“I mean the Firm,” he added, as if there were any doubt.

I tucked back into him. “Can you?”

He dragged his fingertips down my back, making me explode with goosepimples. “There’re a couple of options. None of them clean.”

That told me enough. “Such as?”

“I could step back. Go quieter. Let someone else take the heat. Untangle myself bit by bit.” He sighed. “But that only works if they let me.”

“And would they?”

His hand stopped moving. “Not without payment.”