Page 82 of Claim

The words came out before I could sand them down. “That this life ain’t for me anymore. I don’t want it. Don’t need it. That I’m expendable, and any wrong move I make bleeds straight into the people I love.” I swallowed hard. Forced myself to keep going. “And I’m really fucking sorry about that.”

The car stayed quiet for a few seconds. Traffic noise filling the gap.

“Okay.” Lennon peeked at me. “That’s a start.”

“I wasn’t carrying.”

He arched an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t.” I turned towards him. “I know there’s no reason for you to believe me. I know what I am. I’ve been a dealer. An enforcer. I won’t dress it up. But that day? I wanted out. I was stepping back. I took a gamble. Double-fucking-bluffed it. Thought if I showed up empty, it’d buy me room to say I was done. Cormac didn’t like that. He threw this at me instead.”

Lennon didn’t interrupt. But he didn’t let me off the hook either.

I didn’t deserve to be.

“It was a setup.” I glanced back out of the window. “And I walked into it because I thought I could control the fallout. Thought I could keep it from touching anyone else.” I shook my head. “I was wrong.”

The car rolled on, the city indifferent as ever.

Lennon exhaled through his nose. “You don’t get to be done because you want to be, Rich. You knew that the moment you kept climbing higher.”

“I know, but I’m trying to be honest about it. For once.”

He was quiet for a second. Then, “That’s another start, I suppose.”

I glanced at him. And there was the faintest lift at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile, not yet, but near to one as there had been in a long time. I mirrored it without thinking. A reflex. We drove on like that, the city sliding past, Lennon filling me in on Keeley, on Mum, Amara and the twins, where they were.

And, more importantly, who had fixed all this.

I couldn’t even wrap my head around the gratitude. It sat too big in my chest, unshaped and dangerous. But then he pulled up outside his house, he killed the engine but didn’t get out straight away.

He glanced down at his hands. “There’s something else I hope you know.”

“What?”

“Him. That fella. Your defence brief. Tristan Hale-Fitzroy.” He glanced at me. “I hope you know what you’ve got there.”

He didn’t give me the chance to respond as he opened the door and got out, leaving me sitting there with that sentence ringing through my skull.

Eventually, I followed him inside, all the way to the kitchen where he was filling the kettle, moving as if this was any other morning and not the day my life had cracked open and rearranged itself.

I swallowed. “Len?”

“Yeah?” He flicked the switch to boil.

“I’m gay.”

Lennon looked up and held my gaze.

One beat.

Two.

My heart slammed so hard it hurt, and I couldn’t even pin down why. This wasn’t a confession. It wasn’t shame. It was older than that. Deeper. This was me wanting to be seen. Wanting him to know all of me. The parts I’d buried because I thought I had to, the parts still knotted with guilt over Levi and what he’d been to me, and the part now tangled up with a man who’d risked everything he had to get me here.

Here. Free. Terrified.

Suddenly, Lennon smiled.