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Nikolas shrugged. “It’s free now. I pirated it.”
The shrug was more irritating than the reply. Ben narrowed his eyes, thinking. “You’re not going to tell me what’s wrong, what the phone call was about, and if you did you’d only lie, so I’m not going to ask.”
“Good for you, Benjamin.” It wasn’t so much the words this time, as the cut glass, mocking English accent Nikolas adopted to say them in that infuriated Ben.
“Is this about something I’ve done or said? Because if it’s not then why the fuck are you taking this out on me? Grow up. Turn this shit off and come to bed.”
Suddenly, Nikolas kicked his chair away from the desk and sprang to his feet, leaning into Ben’s face as he almost shouted, in bitter, clipped tones, “Leave me alone!” then added in a lower, far more menacing voice, “You are an anchor around my neck. I can’t breathe around you anymore. Go away!”
Ben would rather Nikolas had risen from his seat and struck him. That, he could have warded, returned, understood in some primal way as a man facing another angry man. But this?
Couldn’tbreathe?
The chasm that had begun to open in the car journey home cracked wider, and Ben felt a dizzying tumbling begin. This was the moment he’d been waiting for all their lives.
This was why he constantly reminded himself about how happy they were.
This was why he monitored Nikolas’s happiness, whether he was secure, relaxed—entirely his.
It was all a defence mechanism, a bulwark against the terrifying truth that he lived in a glass house—and always had since he had met Nikolas Mikkelsen.
One sharp wrong note, one stone thrown…
He’d merely been living in a time before the fall.
Ben rose to his feet—and his full height. But no man should have to face what Ben was in boxer shorts and bare feet. He wasn’t sure there was anything invented for the kind of wrath he wanted to inflict upon Nikolas for that comment.
Nikolas had paced away and was staring morosely out of the long window, which only showed back his own lean, tense reflection. With absolutely no emotion in his voice, he intoned, “I’m sorry. I’ve had too much to drink. That was unforgivable. You’re right. It’s bedtime.”
And he turned, without catching Ben’s eye, and made for the bedroom.
Ben closed his eyes. He was eight years old once more and he was entirely alone in a fragile world cracked open and broken.
The one who’d enveloped him with love had abandoned him.
It felt like the end of his world.
* * *
Chapter 37
Four Months Before April
Ben silently studied the indistinct figure as it slowly patrolled along the perimeter of the old wall. Wearing body armour and cradling a rifle loosely across folded arms, the police officer was scanning the woods where Ben lay concealed. It would not be difficult to slide past such a predicable level of guarding and approach the house this way.
He had done it a decade before, after all.
A ride from London fuelled by fear—fear that Nikolas would be taken from him before they’d even had a chance to begin. A dog’s body on the driveway stilling his heart with terror—a stark reminder of the transience of all things.
Ben had been living that impermanence for ten years now.
The guard stepped slowly away, oblivious to Ben’s presence, and he was glad. At that long ago New Year he’d been more than prepared to kill for Nikolas.
This time?
A British policeman?
He was glad he had another option.
