Page 88 of That Defining Moment

“Sorry!” Cassian called after her. “Your dog is beautiful! Is he allowed sugar?”

Hamish pinched the bridge of his nose.

Lysander reappeared and Cassian launched himself off the step and set out along the pavement at a clip that put him six paces ahead within seconds, his attention already snagged by a florist’s bucket display on the corner.

They fell into step beside each other. Hamish kept his hands in his pockets and matched Lysander’s pace. Their shoulders collided on a narrow bit of pavement where the bins had been put out.

“Sorry,” Hamish and Lysander said at exactly the same time.

They walked on. At the next kerb, Lysander’s shoulder pressed into his arm again, and this time neither of them moved apart. The contact held all the way across the road and onto Portobello.

Cassian had stopped twelve feet ahead to crouch beside a ginger cat sitting on a doorstep, cooing at it.

“I got rid of the recording with Dane,” Lysander said. “And I started again. I want to tell the story of my family instead.”

Hamish watched Cassian scratch the cat behind its ears. The morning light caught the pale crown of his head, turning it briefly silver.

“I’m proud of you, Lysander.”

Lysander’s jaw shifted once. Ahead of them, Cassian had abandoned the cat and was pressing his face against the window of an antique shop, his breath fogging the glass.

“And I’m sorry,” Lysander said, “for calling you a coward because you wouldn’t be like Dane and tell me what to do.”

Hamish nodded, then reached across and wiped a streak of dried drool, crusted to a shine, from Lysander’s mouth with his thumb.

Lysander batted his hand away. “Get off.”

“You’ve got spit on your face, Sander.”

“So? I just gave you a heartfelt apology.”

“And it was delivered beautifully, even with a slug trail on your cheek.”

Lysander scrubbed at the spot with his own sleeve, glaring at him, and Hamish almost smiled before the rest of what needed saying caught up with him.

“Some of it was true, though.” He kept his gaze on Cassian, who had moved on from the antique shop and was now standing at the edge of the pavement waiting for the two of them. “What you said about me just standing by and watching. With Cass and the Family of Light.”

Lysander went quiet.

“I filmed them for weeks,” Hamish said. “I got my footage. And I knew, not suspected, Sander, I knew that something in that compound had gone badly wrong for him.” Hamish shook his head. “I told myself I was being professional. Maintaining objectivity and respecting his autonomy. All of that was true, but I still feel like I should have done something sooner.”

The pedestrian light changed, and Cassian bounded across the road without looking, nearly giving Hamish a heart attack right then and there. They’d need to have words about that later.

“It haunts me. And I’m trying to make up for it every single day he’s with me,” Hamish said.

Lysander leaned harder into his arm.

“Is that why you let him eat the shit he does?” Lysander asked.

Hamish looked at Cassian, who had reached the other side of the road and was already scanning for the Proving Ground shopfront, bouncing on his toes with anticipation.

“Yeah,” Hamish said. “Partly.”

Lysander knocked against his shoulder once, hard enough that Hamish had to correct his balance, and they crossed the road together.

Cassian called back at them, walking backwards now. “I’m getting Tala her own Chelsea bun.”

“No you’re not,” Hamish called after him. “You’ll just end up eating it yourself.”