Page 60 of Corrupt

“Get some sleep.” I laid him back down on my pillow.

My pillow. Where I’d never put anyone. Never let anyone share it.

He sank into it as if he’d always meant to be there.

“Stay,” he mumbled. Same word he’d breathed at his flat. Soft, pleading, dangerous.

What I should’ve done was leave. Go back to the club, wipe the CCTV, handle the fallout, be the man Cormac paid me to be. But the way he looked at me. The way he reached for me even in his sleep…I didn’t stand a chance.

I stripped down to my underwear, lifted the covers, and slid in beside him.

He found me immediately, tucked himself into my chest, breath warm against my ribs.

He slept like that.

Eventually, so did I.

And for the first time in years, I didn’t dream of blood or fire. I dreamt of something worse. And far more dangerous.

Something I couldn’t admit I wanted.

* * * *

I woke before the light properly settled.

That was instinct. Habit. Years of coming up in places where sleeping too long meant losing ground. Even here—top floor, steel beams, thick walls—I came up sharp, heart ticking through threats that weren’t there.

The first thing I registered was weight.

Warm. Light. Curled into my side.

I didn’t move. Didn’t really breathe properly either. Because Tristan was in my bed.

He wasn’t sprawled, nor flung across the sheets the way he’d been last night, stripped of dignity and Rioja in equal measure. No. This version of him was folded into himself. Knees drawn up, mouth parted, lashes dark against skin still warm with sleep. Soft. Open. A living, breathing liability. Yet lying there beside him, watching the light bleed in as another brutal June sun rose without mercy, the only thought that lodged in my chest was: Mine.

It hit harder than it had any right to.

But how could it not? He wore one of my T-shirts. Black. Softened by wear. It drowned him, collar slipping low, sleeve twisted so I could see the hairs under his arms. The sheets were wrecked beneath us, smelling like smoke and sweat and him. Too clean, too sharp, too expensive for my life.

I stared at the ceiling and counted to ten.

It didn’t help.

The urge to touch him was a problem. The urge to stay was worse.

So I did the sensible thing.

I got the fuck out of bed.

I moved quietly, practically tiptoeing in my own bloody gaff, careful not to wake him. Then I grabbed my lighter and cigarettes, poured a glass of water from the kitchen tap and set it by the bed with painkillers. I paused, staring down at him again as if checking a body for breath. He frowned in his sleep. Shifted.

Fuck.

I got out of there. Walked straight through the open plan flat out to the balcony. Humid heat hit first. Then air. Then the view. Canal water thick and sluggish, sunlight catching oil sheens and floating rubbish like it was art instead of rot. I leant on the railing, elbows locked, then lit a cigarette and inhaled it.

Last night replayed in fragments.

I’d brought him home.