I scowled back. “If you were listening in, why’d you need to ask? Besides, it’s none of your fucking business.”
Rick cleared his throat. He stood, solid and quiet behind Arne, a concerned look on his face. “But it is our business, Dante. As your friends.”
“Guys… Please.” I just wanted to be left alone, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.
“Dante, you fucking stupid, moronic, self-pitying tosser!” Arne chose to lead with that. Rick winced, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. “He wants to be with you. Blake Marshall wants to be with you! And not just to fuck. What the fuck’s your problem with that?”
“Do you feel anything for Blake?” Rick asked, a calm request compared to Arne’s spitting fury. “I mean, Jesus, if you don’t welcome the attention, I’ll have a word with him. No one’s going to hassle the Haven guys, I can tell you.”
This was all too much. Good and bad, I was being pulled all over the bloody place, and it felt like an elastic band suddenly snapped in my chest. “Yes, I feel something for Blake. Dear God, I do! More than I can say, and definitely more than I want to discuss with you two right now.”
“Awww.” Arne—damn him—was smirking. “See, Rick? I knew it!”
“That sounds great…” Rick began.
“No!” I interrupted. “I can’t just drop everything and chase him all the way to Scotland, can I?”
“Drop the fuck what?” Arne said, eyebrows raised. “Not like you have anything to do except join us solitary rent boys in eating and drinking too much, watch Micah and Tom enact a gay Die Hard Christmas special, and wait for the next piece of building to fall on your fucking diva head—”
Rick growled.
“—sorry Rick, I’m sure we won’t have another crisis just yet, mebbe I meant to say—”
“Because it can’t work!” I shouted over him, ignoring his nonsense. “It won’t work! Because I’ve been here before, and the guy said he wanted me, and would look out for me, and he fucking didn’t, he crapped on me and my dreams and plans and left me in the fucking gutter to rot!”
They stared at me, mouths open. The lobby rang with the echo of my anger and pain. The background murmur of noise from the bar also ceased. Great, now everyone was listening in.
“Dante, it’s all right,” Rick said. That was all. But he also reached out, grabbed me, and pulled me into a bear hug.
“It… damn.” Arne was uncharacteristically tongue-tied. “You told me some of that, right? But that wanker wasn’t the same as Blake.”
“I know,” I said, words muffled against Rick’s shirt. “I know that now.”
“Huh?”
“Arne’s right. You’re both right,” I said softly. There was a wet patch on Rick’s shirt which, embarrassingly, may have come from my tears. “I don’t have anything else to do. I don’t have anything to stop me going where I want, when I want. With the man I want.”
“So, what’s stopping you?” Rick said softly, his eyes twinkling down at me.
Money, a ticket, somewhere to stay when I get there… But my heartbeat was racing at the thought of seeing Blake again.
“It’s Christmas, man,” Arne said. He’d gone from avenging angel to sappy fairy godmother in seconds. “You gotta make the most of it.”
“Though the Die Hard homage sounds pretty tempting.” Rick couldn’t hide his grin.
I pulled away from him, pushed my hair back off my forehead. “What station do the trains to Edinburgh go from?”
“King’s Cross,” Tom said, sauntering past us and over to the desk. “You can get onto the platform with your Oyster card, if you don’t have a full ticket. You know, there are all kinds of alcoves, if you want some entertainment while you wait—”
“Have you got him a gift?” Liam interrupted, appearing behind Tom, Pyotr at his side.
Everyone was grinning at me, which would have been creepy if it wasn’t so heartening. Perhaps I wouldn’t make it to Scotland, but the least I could do was see Blake off. Dammit, I should apologise, too.
Arne nudged my arm. “Go get your coat, it’s brass monkey weather out there. We can sort everything else out between us.”
THIRTEEN
That bollocks in romance movies where the main character runs along the platform at a London terminus, waving to their lover, begging for them to stay, throwing themselves into his arms amid floods of tears and protestations of true love…?
Like I said. All bollocks.
In an always-busy London, only days from Christmas, and where the snow was just starting to fall again, Kings Cross was like bedlam. Under its huge vaulted ceiling, surrounded by the noise and rush of thousands of people who just wanted to get to their destination and damn anyone in their way, I couldn’t have spotted an elephant in pink trousers, let alone a solitary Blake Marshall. I was pretty sure I’d checked for the right platform, and he’d told me the train time. Even so, despite running across the whole damn concourse and almost knocking over a group of continental schoolchildren, I missed the goddamn train by minutes.
I stood on the platform watching it pull away, my hands on my thighs as I gulped for breath, cursing the London Tube that had got me here so damn slowly, the cold weather that brought so many bulkily dressed tourists and their luggage across my path, the fact I was such a scared, sulky brat I’d let him go, thinking I only saw him as another punter. I stumbled back out through the barrier—having explained to a harassed guard that yes, I was being bloody awkward—and started the trudge back across the concourse to the Tube.
“Dante?”
The voice was incredulous, but I’d know that accent anywhere. I turned to see Blake staring at me.
All I could say was, “Why the hell aren’t you on the train?”
He smiled. “I missed it. Well, I would have missed it. Shit, it’s complicated.”
We were a few feet apart, but other commuters kept knocking into us. It made perfect sense to step right up to him. He smelled of snow and woollen cloth and that subtle cologne, and I used the phrase he liked so well. “Tell me.”
His eyes darkened. “I couldn’t go. I wanted to come to the Haven. To see you. To talk to you.”
“What? But the job… and you can’t miss Christmas with your family!”
He lifted a hand as if to touch my face. “I know, but there are other things than family. Other families, for that matter.”
“Jesus, Blake.”
He chuckled. Maybe he liked the flush that had suffused my whole face. “Well, it gets even more embarrassing. I took a cab to the Haven, where they said you’d just left. That cheeky young boy in the Santa shorts, dressing the tree? He told me you were on your way to sample Kings Cross’ alcoves, whatever that means. We must have missed each other by minutes. So, I came straight here to look for you.”
“But now you’ve missed your train.”
Blake rolled his eyes. “Yes, well. There’s more. I just picked up my tickets at the office, took a proper look, and my booking wasn’t on the 16.30 but is on the 6.30 this evening. So, I’m two hours early anyway. My PA doesn’t always wear his glasses, damn his vanity.”