“Maybe I forgot. We talked about lots of stuff yesterday.”
“It was Friday, but whatever.” Benito found the sweatshirt and pulled it over his head before facing Mickey again.
While he’d had his face buried in cloth, Mickey had got up too. He was closer than Benito anticipated, and the urge to touch him flared again, hotly enough that Benito almost did it.
Mickey seemed to twitch too. Then he shook his head. “All right. I’ll shut up.”
“Don’t.”
Mickey’s brows cinched. “Don’t what?”
“Shut up. Stop talking to me. Whatever. I’m just shit at answering questions like that cos no one ever asks me them—fuck.” Fuck. Where had that come from? Benito couldn’t recall a time he’d spoken those words aloud before or cared that they were true. Man, I need to eat.
Mickey touched Benito’s arm, a light brush of his fingers. “What are you thinking?”
“That I’m hungry,” Benito said absently. “I can’t function without breakfast, even if I eat it and go straight to bed.”
“What do you like eating?”
“Hmm?”
“For breakfast.” Mickey reclaimed his hand. “There’s a twenty-four-hour place by the motorway junction. You want to go there?”
“With you?”
Mickey shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, I’m hungry too.”
Benito considered his options for less than a second, then scooped his water bottle, car keys, and phone from the floor. “Works for me.”
Mickey nodded and led the way downstairs and out of the gym. His Focus was parked beside Benito’s SUV. How did I not see that? Mickey clicked the lock and jerked his head to the main road. “You know the way?”
“If I didn’t, I could figure it out,” Benito said dryly. “I’m a taxi driver, mate.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Mickey got in his car and started the engine.
Benito did the same and followed him out of the car park. He lost sight of the Focus at a busy roundabout, but he knew the road well enough to find his way to the motorway junction.
Somehow, he beat Mickey there. He parked outside the all-night greasy spoon and finished his water. His stomach rumbled hard enough to hurt, but he ignored it, waiting for Mickey.
The Focus appeared a few minutes later, and Benito wondered when his brain had started thinking of Mickey and his car as entwined elements. You’re losing it.
Benito got out of his car. Mickey was already close enough that two strides brought them together. For a moment, they stared, caught in something unknown. Then Benito’s stomach growled again, and Mickey laughed.
“Come on.” He jerked his head at the caff. “Let’s eat.”
Benito hadn’t been joking about needing breakfast to function. Mickey watched him inhale scrambled eggs and four rounds of toast like a starving man and witnessed every spark of life as it returned to him. His tense shoulders relaxed; his eyes brightened. Even his rare half-smile seemed more frequent.
Or maybe Mickey was imagining it. After a weekend spent pacing his tiny house, nothing would’ve shocked him. His body ached with beautiful fatigue from the punishing workout they’d shared at the gym, but his mind was still scratchily awake.
He picked at his own food, happy to lose himself in Benito. Under the table, their knees brushed, as if this was a date, not a bizarre sequence of events that made Mickey’s brain itch and his conscience flicker with dark, ominous warnings he tried to ignore. He’s your tenant’s son. He has two phones and piles of cash from who the fuck knows where. He’s probably got fifty grams of coke stashed in his car—
Mickey pushed his plate away and curled his hands into fists before hiding them under the table.
Benito drank orange juice from a plastic bottle, his gaze curious but easy. As if he spent time with twitching addicts all the time.
Maybe he did.
Maybe—
“How often do you work out?”
Benito’s voice startled Mickey. He blinked. “Hmm?”
“How much do you work out?” Benito leaned forward. “I’m a lone wolf in the gym, but I liked working out with you. It was fun.”
“Fun?”
“Yeah. I’m not much of a talker, but I guess I like company more than I realise sometimes.”
“I’m shit company,” Mickey said flatly.
“Not always.”
“Just today?”
“Your words, mate. Don’t make them fact.”
Mickey sat back in his seat, then regretted it as the shift took him further away from Benito. “What do you think of me?”
“Right now? Or in general?”
“Both.”
Benito narrowed his eyes, just a touch, and retrieved Mickey’s plate from the other side of the table. “Unless there’s a medical reason you’re not eating, I’ll talk if you eat your breakfast.”
“What do you care if I eat my breakfast or not?”
“We went hard with the weights, and I don’t see a protein shake in your hand, so you need to replenish if you’re not going to fucking hurt yourself.”
It still begged the question why Mickey’s wellbeing was Benito’s concern, but his rough glare was hard to ignore. And Mickey was curious. Benito didn’t give much away, which left too much scope for Mickey’s wild imagination. Hard facts were too precious to give up.
He picked up his fork and pointed it across the table. “Speak.”
“Eat.”
Mickey ate.
Benito watched him a moment, then leaned back in his seat, putting a respectable distance between them again. “I think you’re nice.”
Mickey snorted.
Benito spoke again before he could. “I wasn’t finished.”
“Go on.”
“Okay . . . I think you’re a nice guy, but you’re nowhere near as respectable as my sister seems to think you are. And not because you like to get rough when the lights go out. It’s more than that, and . . . I think it’s something we have in common that you’re trying to forget about.”
“As in?”
“As in, you’re from the same kind of ends as me. Different city, but the same fucking streets.”
Mickey swallowed and slowly wiped his mouth. “What the fuck makes you think that?”
Benito shrugged. “You walk and talk like me, and when you stare like you are right now, I know you see straight through me. Why is that, Mickey? Are you a fed? Or are you a fucking road man?”
Dead air whistled in Mickey’s ears. He scrambled to catch the threads of Benito’s words. Two things stood out. One, that Benito was all but admitting he did more for his money than drive an Uber. Second, that he’d seen a glimpse of Mickey’s present and somehow found his past. “I’m not a fed. You know what I am. I’m a housing officer. You’ve seen me at work.”
“So?” Benito drained his juice bottle and dropped it on the table, a tic in his jaw muscles the only outward sign of stress. “That could be a front for moving product around the estates. I’ve seen coppers do worse.”
“I’m not a fucking fed.”
“You know the fact that it offends you so much gives you away, right?”