Mickey nodded. “Forget about you and me.” He held up the envelope. “Wherever this came from, it’s not enough on its own. I can negotiate down from the two thousand we asked for, but without a payment plan for the rest and a commitment to make full rent from this point on, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“I can pay all that.”
“With what? Loan shark money? Cash from the road?”
“What?”
Mickey turned his gaze briefly to the ceiling and huffed out a breath. “Can we cut the shit? I’m not an idiot. And I’ve lived that motherfucking life. I know what dirty money looks like and what you’ve done to get it, and I’m telling you right now that you can’t use it to dig your mum out of this. It can’t happen that way.”
I’ve lived that motherfucking life. The coarse words stood out more than the rest, hooking claws into Benito’s heart that he couldn’t comprehend. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a taxi driver. Check my car for my Uber ID.”
“Uber doesn’t pay in rolled up bank notes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s not a cash business, bro.”
“Don’t call me bro. We’re not friends.”
Mickey snorted out a bitter laugh. “Trust me, it’s better than what I want to call you right now.”
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks. We’re done with that.”
Benito flinched. He leaned back against the closed front door, recoiling from the impact that felt worse than if Mickey had hit him. The nausea he’d brought home that morning reignited, and for a horrifying moment, he thought he might puke. Don’t look at him. But it was like asking a river to stop flowing. Benito was as drawn to Mickey as he’d always been, and he couldn’t look away.
Long seconds passed. Heavy moments cloaked in a dread Benito couldn’t stomach. He was drowning under the weight of Mickey’s stare. Suffocating. “You don’t know me,” he whispered.
Mickey’s face softened. “I know, man. I’m trying to do the right thing here, for everyone. Not just your mum.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my job. I want this resolved as much as you do. It’s gone on way too long.”
Benito choked on his own bitter laugh. “For you, maybe. I already told you I didn’t know about it until today.”
“For real?”
“For real. My mum poked your letter through the letterbox at me this morning.”
“Did you read it?”
“I tried. Couldn’t make most of it out.”
Mickey winced. “That bad? I got my boss to read it before I brought it here.”
Benito eyed Mickey’s suddenly stricken expression. Watched it deepen and then pass, as if it had never been there at all. “My mum spilt oil and coffee all over it, like she thinks that deletes it from the matrix.”
“Oh.”
“What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing.”
Liar. Benito let his gaze pass over Mickey again, lingering this time from his boots, to his jeans, to the navy-blue shirt he wore. And then his hands. Benito stared and pictured them as he’d last seen them, pressed against his own skin, rough and hot. Recalled Mickey’s dirty moan as they’d kissed against his front door, and then his hazy smile when they’d parted ways two blood-heating orgasms later. Benito had fixated on it for days. Dreamt of it.
We’re done with that.
Fuck.
Losing it to Rosetta’s bullshit felt like a slow death.
“How involved are you with this?” Mickey said. The interjection felt sudden. Invasive. But it wasn’t. It was a fair question.
Benito willed his shoulders to relax and his hands to uncurl from fists, but he couldn’t make it happen. His body was a live wire of painful tension. And he still wanted to throw up. “Are you asking me if this is a one-time thing?”
“You showing up with an envelope of dirty cash? Yeah, I guess. And I’m trying to figure out if you’re the person I need to discuss a payment plan with and your mum’s ability to make the rent going forward.”
“What if I’m not?”
Mickey breathed slowly through his nose. “Then I’m out of options. Your mum won’t talk to me. I’ve been trying for months.”
“And that’s your job, right? At the housing association?”
“I’m a housing officer at DOSHA.”
Benito forced himself to look at Mickey. “You didn’t seem like one. In the club . . .”
“We can’t talk about that here.”
“Why not? You don’t want anyone to know you—”
Mickey pushed off the railing, in Benito’s face before either of them could blink. “Stop.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t get to do that. I don’t care who knows shit about me, but you don’t get to make this about that when all I’m trying to do is my fucking job. I didn’t ask you to be here.”
Benito lost himself in Mickey’s hard gaze. Absorbed the angry tremors as he stared Benito down. They’d been this close before. More than once. But those moments had been fantasy come to life. Not the real world with its ugliness. “I didn’t know,” Benito whispered. “About any of it—the debt, my mum losing her job. And I didn’t know about you, I fucking swear, man. I had no idea.”
“I know you didn’t,” Mickey said. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
Benito knew that, but he couldn’t shake the fear that everything that had brought them to this point was an elaborate conspiracy. Karma’s a bitch, right? More than that, it was a certainty, and if life had taught Benito anything, it was that there was always further to fall.
“Hey.” Mickey leaned in further, crowding Benito even more, his chest so close Benito imagined his heartbeat thudding against his ribs. “Stay with me.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled in Benito’s throat. “I didn’t go anywhere.”
Mickey tilted his head. “Sure about that? You look like you’re about to puke.
Benito couldn’t deny it. Barnfield always left him claustrophobic, but right now, the walls were closing in on him. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Could only drown in Mickey’s broad shoulders and hot glare and wonder what the fuck his life had become.
Mickey backed off.
Benito shook his head. Don’t go. But he couldn’t find the words. His brain was scorched earth, stripped bare of coherent thought.
“We’re out of time,” Mickey said quietly. “I can’t get this cash paid in tonight or register the payment. The office is closed.”
“What?”
“It’s after five.”
“But—”
Mickey held his hand up. “Don’t panic. I can send an email to my boss—he’ll pick it up and place a hold on the account. But I’ll still need to negotiate down from two thousand and get his agreement on a payment plan.”
“Can you do that?”
“I can try. You said your mum lost her job. We don’t have that on record. Is she receiving UC?”