Page 51 of Cassian is Getting Out

“So I just wait,” Cassian said.

“You wait. You show up. You stop performing a one-man variety act at someone who can’t hear your sets.” Felix narrowed his eyes. “And I’m just giving you examples of what I like to do, yeah? I don’t actually think you should buy Ruari a dog.”

“I knew that,” Cassian said, far too quickly.

Ivar smirked at him over his crispbread.

“I did.”

Felix’s hand landed on the back of Cassian’s head, the touch fleeting, before Felix rounded on Ivar to complain about the stink of the cod roe.

Chapter Nineteen

He’d run Richmond Park at six in the morning in November, frost on the ground and his breath coming in white plumes that stayed a stride ahead of him. That was the memory his brain kept serving up. Seven miles across the deer park before the gates opened, when London was still dark at the edges and the path was his alone.

He’d done it in thirty-eight minutes once during pre-season, back when his knee was still good. At the top of the hill by the Isabella Plantation he’d looked out across the city and known exactly what shape his life would take.

His career would peak at thirty-two, thirty-three if his body held. He’d fuck his way through his twenties, taking his pick of models and influencers, while the tabloids ran his name alongside theirs. Money would arrive in quantities that made his mum go quiet when he tried to explain the terms of his contract.

Retirement would turn up eventually, and he’d slide into punditry or coaching or open something: a gym, a restaurant, one of those ventures ex-athletes open to prove the peak wasn’t behind them.

He’d managed a decent run of it before his knee blew apart against Wolves. He had nothing to complain about: he’d had his years at the top, earned enough to buy the freehold on Proving Ground and the flat above it, set himself up for a life that would have made the kid from Bordesley Green weep with gratitude.

It should have been enough. He could count the years, tally the goals, add up the bank balances until the numbers proved beyond argument that he’d won at life. But doing the maths never helped.

Somewhere beyond the bedroom door, a voice was talking.

It had been there for a while. The words arrived without their edges, soft and shapeless, the way sound went when you heard it through water.

Cassian. The omega’s voice moved through the flat, warm and relentless, filling every room as Ruari lay in sheets that had taken on the smell of his unwashed skin.

Lips brushed his forehead.

“Hello, alpha. I’m still here waiting for you.” Cassian’s fingers found his cheek, tracing the stubble he hadn’t touched a razor to in however many days it had been. He kissed Ruari’s hair. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Please finish your food.”

The front door clicked shut downstairs, but Ruari stayed where he was.

He hauled himself upright eventually. He propped himself up on his elbows first, then made the slow pivot until his feet reached the floor and his knee sent up its usual grinding complaint. The tupperware of food sat on the bedside table with the lid half off. He ate standing up, forking cold longganisa and rice into his mouth without tasting either.

Tomorrow he’d talk to Cassian properly. He’d get up before Cassian arrived, shower, pull on a clean shirt, come downstairs and be behind the counter when Cassian walked in. He’d slide over a pastry, and watch Cassian eat, and for sure that’d lift the clouds over his head.

He could do that. He could manage tomorrow.

He should call Hartwell, and take the tablets he’d been skipping for weeks. His mobile was on the kitchen counter where it had sat for days, and his medication was in the bathroom cabinet, twelve steps from the bed.

Just twelve unobstructed steps. Twelve steps to the bathroom was nothing to a man who used to cover eleven kilometres a match without noticing.

Ruari lay back down and pulled the blanket to his chin, telling himself that he’d take them when he got up for a piss.

Days arrived and left while the flat accumulated the evidence of Cassian’s visits: tupperware stacked by the bed, a fresh glass of water replacing the one he hadn’t touched.

Cassian talked. He filled the flat with sound, his voice pitched bright against the room’s silence. Each visit ran the same programme: the tupperware delivery, the forehead kiss, the monologue, then the click of the front door.

Then the programme changed.

The talking thinned out. Cassian arrived without fail, but the running commentary that had accompanied every visit quietened. He stopped trying to fill the room. He sat with his back to the headboard, mobile propped on his knees, and queued up Love Island at a volume so low that the contestants’ voices were just a murmur of vowels beneath the flat’s silence.

He just went on tending to the small tasks. He still refilled the water glass, turned Ruari’s pillows, and tugged the blanket straight where Ruari’s legs had bunched it.