Page 75 of Corrupt

I shook my head, eyes fixed on the white swirls in the dip. “No. We both know he did… but he never wanted to with me.” A breath left me, softer than I meant. “I’m not really sure what to make of that.”

Razor quirked a brow. I noticed his foot waggling, tapping out a restless rhythm. His head tilted a little, eyes fixed on me as if he wasn’t used to deciphering such things. So I looked up. Met his gaze. Held it. And for a long moment, neither of us said anything.

Then, eventually, because the silence was too sharp to sit in, I asked, “Do you want me to go?”

“No.”

Firm. Immediate.

Thank fuck.

He picked at the corner of the takeaway box, then cleared his throat. “You should call your old man, though.”

I let out a short laugh. “And say what? ‘Hi Dad, I’m not coming home because I’m spending the night with a criminal’?”

“Tell him whatever.” Razor shrugged, eyes on the food. “But the man’s got cancer. And you were… you know.” He gestured vaguely towards the bed, towards us. “Fucked up enough over it to get fucked.” He looked down again, dipping the last chip and tossing it in his mouth, lifting his eyebrows as if to pretend the moment wasn’t nearly as loaded as it was. “Literally.”

I watched him for a long second, trying to decipher not the words but the shape around them. He wasn’t accusing me. He wasn’t joking either. He was circling something he didn’t know how to ask. Didn’t know if he was allowed to ask. Training to be a barrister, and being a son of one, taught me how to hear what’s missing. How to catch the hesitation. The implied fear. The space where an answer hasn’t been spoken yet.

And right there, in the gaps between Razor’s words, was the real question:

Did you come to me because you wanted me… or because you were hurting?

A question Razor would never actually ask. Not outright. Not sober. Not ever. And he kept his eyes on the empty box. It hit me then, he wasn’t trying to push me away. He was bracing for the possibility that last night, and today, meant nothing to me… while it might have meant too much to him.

Fuck.

If that was true, if he’d felt something, I didn’t know how to hold it. Didn’t know what to do with it. This was supposed to be one-sided. I’d made peace with that. I’d been sprinting headfirst into heartache since the moment I met him. I’d told myself a thousand times that a man like Razor Slade could never, would never, fall for me.

But if…

“Do you…” I breathed in, steadying myself the way I would before asking a dangerous question in court. “…think that’s why I came to you? Because I was upset?”

“You told me it was.”

“And…there wasn’t any part of you that thought maybe it was a deflection?”

That got his attention. He turned his head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” I swallowed. “What if that part was just… convenient? A cover. An excuse to see you. To ask for something that got me closer to you.”

His breath hitched, but I saw it.

I pushed on because I had to. Or maybe it was him. Making me. Letting me. “Because maybe, somewhere deep down, somewhere I don’t like to go often, for fear of the consequences, I wanted you. Just you. Like this. Not bleeding. Not angry. Not fighting battles I don’t understand.”

Razor exhaled, narrowing his eyes as he processed whatever the hell I’d just admitted. And my heart raced as if I’d sprinted here, not crawled across the sheets.

“That’s a lot of words,” he finally said.

I laughed under my breath. “Yeah. Occupational hazard.”

I shifted up onto my knees, then over him, straddling his hips. His hands went straight to my thighs automatically, as if touching me was instinctive.

“So,” I stroked my fingers down his chest, “you’re more of a kinaesthetic learner?”

He blinked. “A what?”

“A hands-on learner.” I kissed his neck, and he tilted it for me without thinking. “Role-play. Physical demonstration.”