9
It was the longest day in the world. Mickey was shaking by the time he got home. Or perhaps he had been all along.
He shut his front door and leaned against it, closing his eyes. It was too easy to recall how Benito had pushed against him just days ago, smothering him with rough kisses and bruising hands. It was far harder to stay in those stolen moments and avoid the monumental mess his day had become.
I need a fucking beer.Mickey didn’t move, though. His feet felt glued to the floor.Shit, shit, shit.How the hell had this happened? His mind flashed to the night he’d met Benito, to the moment he’d spotted him sitting alone at the bar in Freefall, and every microsecond they’d shared since, searching for clues—foranything—that could’ve led them here. But he found nothing. Benito had been Mickey’s wildest wet dream come to life, and now he was the estranged son of Mickey’s most difficult tenant, and almost certainly up to his neck in the kind of bullshit that still gave Mickey panic attacks.
You don’t know that. He might not be a road boy.
But common sense said otherwise. Benito had offered no explanation for the pile of cash he’d showed up with or the extra phone stuffed in his pocket. A phone that three years ago, on another estate, in another city, could’ve been Mickey’s.Fuck, he could almost smell his old life—the close city air, the permanent scent of dirty money on his fingers.
The white powder blocking his nose.
His fingers trembled. His jaw. Even his eyeballs felt unstable.
Mickey shook his head to clear it, but the voice in his head wouldn’t stop.Just one line. It’ll calm you down.Come on. Even round here, you know where to get it.
Fucking hell.
Mickey pushed off the door and meandered to the kitchen on heavy legs that didn’t match the renewed riot going on in the rest of him. He opened the fridge and reached for a beer, then changed his mind and moved to the kettle instead. Alcohol wasn’t on his list of vices, but using it as a crutch was a sure-fire way to put it there.
Fuck my life.
Mickey boiled the kettle and made tea. Then he retreated to the couch to try and make sense of the notes he’d made for Rosetta De Luca’s payment plan.
It was easier than he’d feared, given that Benito had typed most of them, slouched down on the landing of Barnfield Court, his full bottom lip caught between his teeth. Mickey had left him the Universal Credit forms to fill out for his mother and advised him to get a letter from her GP, but Benito hadn’t seemed hopeful about communicating with her any better than Mickey had recently.
Such a fucking mess.
And that was without considering the fact that Mickey had fucked her son six ways from Sunday in a sex clubandupstairs on his bed.Jesus fucking Christ.
Mickey’s handswouldn’tstop shaking. Cravings made his head spin, but he wanted more than a line of grainy coke. He wanted to go back to the world he’d woken up to—the one where his sex life and hisreallife were separate and the heat blooming in his groin was a safe place to be.
He wanted Benito.
He hated how they’d left things.
“I’m going to send all this to Isha in the morning. Hopefully by Monday, we’ll have something in place the council will accept.”
Benito was hard to read as Mickey reclaimed his phone and stood. He rose slowly, as if his spine was locked solid, and resumed his lean against the wall. “Is Isha the big boss you have to convince?”
“One of them. Dom’s not so bad, but he’s harder to get hold of at weekends. Isha is our best shot.”
“And if it works, you never have to see me again, right?”
Mickey forced himself to meet Benito’s dark gaze. “That’s the plan. Once your mum’s on track, I’m going to ask him to assign Barnfield to another HO.”
“Why not before?”
Unwilling to admit that no other housing officer would be willing to spend their Friday evening camped on a grimy stairwell fudging through emails, Mickey said nothing.
As though he knew, Benito made a low noise, then silence cloaked them.
Mickey felt it like an incoming storm. Benito’s dishevelled hair taunted him. He wanted to run his fingers through it and tug Benito into the kind of hug that never truly ended, but he couldn’t, for too many reasons to count. Aside from the obvious, mainly because it’d be weird as fuck. Their relationship was sexual. They weren’t friends or even acquaintances. Just blokes who’d hooked up once upon a time in a world where no one had jobs or mothers or whatever else was going on in Benito’s life right now.
As the thought completed, a phone buzzed. Not Mickey’s, and not the first one Benito fished from his pocket.
Coldness settled over Mickey’s heart, hesitant and fragile, but he clung to it with both hands, smothering the flickers of affection he’d felt for Benito since they’d met. After today, they were done. They couldn’t see each other again.