Page 45 of That Defining Moment

Hamish picked up one of the carrots with a fork and mushed it into the tines with the slightest pressure of his finger. He set the fork down.

“Absolutely not.” Lysander pushed the tray to the far edge of the bed, his lip curling. “I’ve just been assaulted and hospitalised and they want me to eat something that looks like it died twice.”

“It might taste better than it looks.”

“It won’t, Hamish. Stop being such a fucking optimist.” Lysander ignored Cassian’s scandalised gasp and folded his arms across his chest. “I want Nando’s.”

Hamish was already reaching for his jacket. “What do you want?”

“A whole chicken. Lemon and herb. Halloumi. Corn on the cob. Two garlic breads.” Lysander ticked each item off on his fingers. “And the frozen yoghurt. Not the cheesecake: the frozen yoghurt.”

“Right.” Hamish pulled his jacket on and turned to Cassian. “Cass, you coming?”

Cassian looked torn between the two fixed points of his existence.

“Go with him, Cass.” Lysander’s eyes were already drooping, his head sinking deeper into the hospital pillow, the adrenaline finally loosening its grip. “Make sure he gets us a good dessert.”

Cassian stood and crossed to the bed. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to Lysander’s temple, his lips resting against the one small patch of unblemished skin above Lysander’s eyebrow.

Hamish watched them from the doorway and committed the image to memory: Cassian standing over Lysander in a bloodstained dressing gown, tucking him in beneath fluorescent strip lighting in a curtained bay of the Royal Melbourne, both of them battered and bruised and still, somehow, looking after each other.

He held the curtain aside for Cassian, and the two of them walked out together.

Cassian stayed close enough to Hamish’s side that their elbows knocked together every few steps all the way to the car park. Hamish held the car door open and waited while Cassian folded himself into the passenger seat, the light-blue robe pooling around his bare legs.

The buckle of Cassian’s seatbelt wouldn’t catch. Cassian jabbed it into the latch, missed, and then sat there pressing it against the wrong part of the mechanism.

Hamish reached across and guided the metal tongue into the slot until it clicked home.

“Thanks,” Cassian whispered.

Hamish pulled out of the car park and turned onto Royal Parade, heading south towards Fitzroy. The traffic was light enough that he could have made it in ten minutes, but the amber lights caught him twice on Nicholson Street and he didn’t push through either of them.

Cassian’s fingers went to the seatbelt buckle again. He pressed the release button with his thumb, felt the mechanism give, then pushed the tongue back in. Click. Release. Click. Release.

“You doing okay, Cass?”

Cassian nodded so vigorously that his fringe fell into his eyes. His thumb pressed the release button again. Click. Release.

Hamish let a block pass. “You sure?”

Cassian’s teeth closed over his lower lip, pressing hard enough to blanch the skin beneath the dried blood. His hand stilled on the buckle. He fixed Hamish with a look far too intense for how close they were sitting.

“Lysander said something to me,” Cassian said. “Before the medical people came.”

Hamish kept his eyes on the road and his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. “He was hurting, Cass. Whatever it was, if it was about kicking balls, or gouging someone’s eyes out, that’s because of how upset he was. Don’t let it get to you.”

“He said I was never going back there.” The words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other. “He kept saying it. Over and over. On the footpath, with all those people standing around us, he just kept saying it.”

Hamish indicated left onto Johnston Street and waited for a gap in the oncoming traffic. “That’s right,” he said. “You’re never going back there. You’re never seeing Charles or Uriel again, Cass. Sander and I will make sure of that.”

The indicator ticked in the silence. Cassian’s hand had left the seatbelt buckle and settled in his lap, both palms turned upward on his thighs.

“So I can stay with you?” His voice had gone quiet. “Forever?”

Hamish turned into Johnston Street and drove past a pub whose outdoor tables were crowded with people who were all having far better evenings than he was.

“Not forever, Cass.” He glanced across and found Cassian watching him, his bottom lip quivering. “Not because we don’t want you with us, but because it’s mine and Sander’s job to make sure you know you can go and be out there on your own. That you don’t need us to function.” He slowed for a pedestrian crossing where a woman was dragging a reluctant terrier across the road. “But until you decide what you want to do, where you want to be, and who you want to be with — yeah. You’ll stay with us.”