Page 88 of Corrupt

As I rounded the corner and my building came into view, my pace faltered, then slowed entirely. Because there, on my doorstep, as if carved out of the exhaustion I’d been trying to outrun, was Razor.

The entire scaffolding of resolve I’d built over the last week collapsed with one brutal look up of those soft brown eyes.

Chapter eighteen

Razor

I don’t know what possessed me to sit on Tristan’s doorstep.

Instinct, maybe.

The same part of me that knows where to stand in a room when a blade comes out, or when someone’s about to crack. The part that looks for exits and shadows and places feeling… safe.

And Christ, this wasn’t safe.

I knew that. I’d known it all week.

Days of shit stacking on shit. Jobs that should’ve been clean turned complicated. Decisions I didn’t want to make but made anyway because that’s what happens when you’re the one people look at and wait for. When Razor has to show up and Richie gets locked in a box somewhere dark and quiet so he doesn’t fuck things up by feeling anything.

I’d stepped fully into it this week. Did what needed doing. Said what needed saying. Signed off on things that would echo later whether I liked it or not. Had Doyle on my back, too. Him and me doing jobs together. Me, watching and learning the harder side of the business. Cormac wanted me to see it. What waited for me on the next rung up the ladder. And all the while, I kept telling myself the same thing:

Tristan doesn’t belong in this.

That weekend was a mistake.

Park it. Leave it there. For his sake. For mine.

Except I hadn’t parked it.

It had followed me. In the gaps between calls. The silence following after the jobs were done. And in the moments when there was nothing left to react to and my head started filling in the blanks.

So here I was.

On his doorstep. Like some fucking idiot. Like a man who didn’t know where else to put himself when the noise finally caught up.

I pushed up onto my feet when I heard him. Footfall, breath, the faint hiss of music bleeding from earbuds. He slowed, tugged one bud free, then the other, dragging his phone out of the pocket of his running shorts.

And fuck.

He looked… clean.

Golden with sweat and effort and real life, his body burning things off the proper way instead of letting them rot inside. He ran because it made him feel alive, not because he was trying to outrun something. Not because the world behind him carried guns and knives.

And me?

I was a stain just standing there.

This was his building. His doorstep. His world. And I’d turned up with mine clinging to me. Not my own blood or bruises this time. No. Worse. Someone else’s. Those that only come from catastrophic decisions I can’t undo.

He looked at me.

And my chest buckled, sharp and ugly, because I could see it hit him all at once. The surprise, the worry, the why are you here he didn’t say out loud. I shouldn’t have come. I knew that even as my mouth opened.

“Hey.” My hands were useless at my sides, feeling the pull of him and the recoil at the same time. Wanting to step closer. Wanting to step back. Wanting to apologise and wanting to disappear.

I didn’t want him to see me like this.

Yet somehow, he was the only person I trusted to see me like this.