He wanted Benito.
He hated how they’d left things.
“I’m going to send all this to Isha in the morning. Hopefully by Monday, we’ll have something in place the council will accept.”
Benito was hard to read as Mickey reclaimed his phone and stood. He rose slowly, as if his spine was locked solid, and resumed his lean against the wall. “Is Isha the big boss you have to convince?”
“One of them. Dom’s not so bad, but he’s harder to get hold of at weekends. Isha is our best shot.”
“And if it works, you never have to see me again, right?”
Mickey forced himself to meet Benito’s dark gaze. “That’s the plan. Once your mum’s on track, I’m going to ask him to assign Barnfield to another HO.”
“Why not before?”
Unwilling to admit that no other housing officer would be willing to spend their Friday evening camped on a grimy stairwell fudging through emails, Mickey said nothing.
As though he knew, Benito made a low noise, then silence cloaked them.
Mickey felt it like an incoming storm. Benito’s dishevelled hair taunted him. He wanted to run his fingers through it and tug Benito into the kind of hug that never truly ended, but he couldn’t, for too many reasons to count. Aside from the obvious, mainly because it’d be weird as fuck. Their relationship was sexual. They weren’t friends or even acquaintances. Just blokes who’d hooked up once upon a time in a world where no one had jobs or mothers or whatever else was going on in Benito’s life right now.
As the thought completed, a phone buzzed. Not Mickey’s, and not the first one Benito fished from his pocket.
Coldness settled over Mickey’s heart, hesitant and fragile, but he clung to it with both hands, smothering the flickers of affection he’d felt for Benito since they’d met. After today, they were done. They couldn’t see each other again.
They couldn’t.
In any capacity.
Benito didn’t reach for his other phone. He tucked the Universal Credit forms under his arm and leaned harder against the wall. “How do I make the payments for the plan you’re setting up?”
“Your mum has a payment card. I can arrange for another one to be sent to you if she requests it, or you can do it online.”
“The card is better.”
Of course it was. With the payment card, Benito could take cash into any shop with pay-point facilities, no questions asked.
Mickey’s gut churned, every instinct he had screaming at him to get as far from this case as possible so he wouldn’t need to know where Benito’s money was coming from. But his conscience and . . . something else had him nodding and making a note to order the payment card. “I’m leaving,” he said.
Benito didn’t blink. Or speak.
Mickey zeroed in on his lips, then his set, unshaven jaw and sharp cheekbones—anywhere but his quicksand gaze—but wherever he looked, there were no answers to be found. He had to go. “You need to lose my number.”
Benito nodded. “I know.”
“After this is sorted, I mean.”
“Whatever, man.”
“I’m not the fucking enemy here.”
Benito laughed, no humour, just a brittle sound that scraped Mickey’s soul.
Nothing else.
Mickey had left after that. And now here he was, alone in his kitchen, rehashing every moment, all the while eyeing the microwave where he’d hidden Benito’s cash until he could take it to the bank in the morning. Genius.
Tea in hand, Mickey flicked the TV on. Netflix filled the screen with the synopsis for Top Boy. The irony was fucking biblical, though Mickey couldn’t put his finger on the specifics. How could he when he knew nothing specific about Benito except how to make him come and that his mother hadn’t left her flat for six months?
Stop thinking about him.
Nope. Wasn’t happening.
Mickey lay down on the couch and closed his eyes, digging deep for the tools he’d learned over the years to force his muscles to relax, joint by joint, nerve by nerve. At some point, he’d have to go to the gym and punish his body into submission, but not tonight. Leaving the house right now was a risk too heavy to bear. Just breathe, man. If you can do that, you can do anything.
Wise words Mickey had almost forgotten, but they still meant something.
Eventually, the itch in his veins died down to the low simmer he could happily ignore. He drank his tea, then switched to water as he read through Isha’s replies to his emails. Without Benito scowling over his shoulder, constructing an intelligent response felt impossible, so he took a chance and made a call.
Isha answered on the third ring, breathless.
“Sorry it’s late,” Mickey said. “Am I interrupting you?”
Isha laughed. “Rescuing me, more like. My daughter wants me to watch The Next Step with her.”
“The what?”
“If you don’t know, you lead a blessed life. What do you need, Mickey?”
“I just wanted to talk about the De Luca case, and I figured it would be quicker to do it over the phone than bombard you with emails all weekend.”
“It’s only bombarding me if I chose to look, and that’s my decision.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts. I’m here for you. Tell me what you need.”
Mickey didn’t know what he needed. Just that the only way out of the hole he’d dug with Benito was to secure his mother’s account as quickly as possible. “I need the council to agree to a payment plan of three hundred pounds a month and to hold the arrears until the UC claim goes through.”
“That could take weeks.”
“I know.”
Isha let a pause draw out between them, but it was contemplative, not combative. “We can sponsor any missed rent payments while we wait for UC,” he said eventually. “It also sounds to me as if the mother could be entitled to a PIP allowance if her agoraphobia can be diagnosed.”
Personal Independence Payment. Damn. In his Benito-fuelled daze, Mickey had forgotten that. “I don’t know if she’s seen a GP. Not likely if she won’t leave the house.”
“Can you find out? Maybe a GP can visit her at home?”
Fresh anxiety blanketed Mickey. He nodded, then remembered Isha couldn’t see him. “I can talk to the son again. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Do you have his contact details? I can—”
“I have them. It’s okay. I’ll call him.”
“Sure? Because this case seems to be getting to you a bit. Is there anything else I should know?”
This was it—the window to break down and tell Isha everything. He was good and kind and understanding. He wasn’t the kind of boss who’d throw Mickey under the bus, but the harder Mickey tried to form the words, the more his throat closed up.
He took a breath. “It’s fine . . . it’s just hard to know I’m making the right decisions when I can’t get Mrs De Luca to talk to me.”
“But her daughter trusted you enough to track you down, and her son showed up and bailed her out. If you hadn’t persisted with her, none of that would’ve happened and her account would’ve gone back to the council months ago.”
“I know, but . . .” Mickey sighed. “I just feel like I should’ve known sooner that she had a mental health issue. This whole mess could’ve been avoided if we’d helped her claim UC earlier.”