Seeing stars, he shook his head to clear it. Fucking idiot. It’s probably protein powder. Or flour he bought for his mum. Or make-up for Gianna.
A hundred other possibilities crowded Mickey’s brain. Each one, however outlandish, made more sense than a burst brick of coke because Benito wasn’t moving that shit anymore. Mickey knew it because Benito had fucking told him so.
It’s not coke. Wind your neck in, son.
Mickey took a deep breath and shut the passenger door, forcing himself to open the back door instead. He crouched, unseeing, dread still hot and shaky in his chest. It took a moment to focus.
To see the dull red streak on the black leather.
Nausea returned, and he hated himself a little bit more.
No.
Stop.
But the longer Mickey stared at the stain, the stronger it solidified as the only thing guaranteed to accompany any fucker who moved the kind of substance staining the carpet beneath the passenger seat.
Pain.
Heartache.
Blood.
In the end, it led nowhere else.
Mickey reached out to touch the mark.
Retracted his hand at the last moment and stood, moving on autopilot to the boot of the car.
He yanked it open. It appeared empty, but Mickey knew better. He yanked the loose floor of the boot free, revealing the space where older cars stored spare tyres.
A baseball bat lay beside an unused road safety kit.
A weapon, unless Benito had a passion for American sports that Mickey had yet to discover.
The thought made him laugh, but there was no humour in the strangled sound that left his throat. He picked up the bat, balanced it on the end of his finger like a child as his world turned slowly to stone.
“What are you doing?”
Mickey didn’t blink. He let the bat fall and turned around.
Benito was behind him, dressed in track pants and socks, no shirt, expression twisted with a lethal mix of fear and cautious amusement, as if he believed his own bullshit.
Head spinning, Mickey latched onto the fear. He knew that fear. He’d seen it in the mirror a thousand fucking times. “The fuck you think I’m doing?”
“Getting smokes,” Benito snapped. “Not searching my car like a fucking fed.”
Mickey slammed the boot shut and then the back door he’d left open. Numbness threatened the dismantling grief building in his gut, but he pushed it away. He’d spent too long not feeling. However much this hurt, he couldn’t hide from it. Not anymore. He wouldn’t survive.
Fight. He stepped up to Benito and put his fist to Benito’s chest, shoving him back. “I wasn’t searching your car until I found a snowfall of fucking blow under your seat. Guess you missed it when you last cleaned up, and the blood stain in the back. What happened? Nosebleed? Or did you fuck someone up with the bat in your boot?”
“Mate—”
“Fuck off!” Mickey shouted. “I’m not your mate. I never was.”
Benito raised his hands, spreading them peacefully, though his street-fuelled instinct to fight back was clear to see. “You don’t understand.”
Mickey laughed. “That’s what you’re going with? That I don’t understand what a car that moves product looks like? Wow. Go fuck yourself.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I don’t care what you meant. You’re full of shit.”
“I’m not.”
“Yeah. You are.”
Mickey moved to step around Benito.
Benito grabbed him, his strong hand clamping around Mickey’s forearm. “Wait.”
“Get off me.”
“Or what?” Aggression sparked in Benito. His gaze narrowed and he stared Mickey down, blocking his path to the open front door. “You gonna fight me until you slow the fuck down long enough to listen?”
Mickey wrenched Benito’s hand from his arm and pushed him again, harder than before, but this time, Benito didn’t stumble. He stood his ground, fists clenched, fierce.
“I don’t need to listen,” Mickey growled. “I know what I saw. I could fucking taste it in the air. Do you know what that shit does to me?”
Benito’s face fell, contorting with pain. It was brief, but enough to show Mickey that he’d scraped the truth.
The devil inside him spun around and ran to Benito’s front seat. Crawled into the footwell and clawed at the dust until there was enough for a hit. A sweet punch of pleasure that would last long enough for him to find his way to a dealer and score. But the stronger man he’d learned to be knew it wouldn’t play out that way. No pleasure, only hurt, masked by a racing pulse and synthetic energy that made him sick to his stomach.
“Mickey.”
“Stop saying my name.”
Benito reached for Mickey again.
Mickey evaded and stumbled to the house with heavy legs. The rest of Benito’s clothes were still on the counter, his shoes by the door. Mickey snatched them up and threw them out of the house.
They landed at Benito’s feet.
Benito flinched. “You don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand. If you did, you’d never have brought that shit to my house.”
“I didn’t think you’d go in my car—fuck, I thought I got it all—” Benito brought his hands to his head. “Fuck, fuck.” Desperation filled his wild eyes. He tugged so hard on his hair Mickey felt it. “Please. I know I’ve fucked up, but you have to let me explain. It’s not what you think.”
Mickey clung to the front door as if it could anchor him to the world where ten minutes ago they’d been screwing like lovers. Real lovers, because there was no doubt in Mickey’s heart that he loved Benito. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt so much.
You can’t love him. He’s a liar. And he’ll break you.
Mickey couldn’t afford to be broken again. He let himself sink into Benito’s deep brown gaze.
Then he shut the fucking door, and the dull thud felt like the gates of hell slamming shut.
He sank to his knees, tears burning, a sob caught in his chest, pressing his hands over his ears to block out Benito as he gathered his clothes from the ground and trudged to his car.
Lost to white noise and his shattering heart, he didn’t hear him drive away, but as his fucking soul crumbled, he knew the moment Benito was gone.
No. Mickey fell forward, his head hitting the door. A scream of devastation tore through him, drowned out only by the cynicism falling for Benito had eased.
It was loud now. Bitter. Spewing out four words that stomped out the glowing embers of the last few months.
You gullible fucking idiot.
19
Benito’s head swayed with the movement of the train. Forward and back. Up and down. With his eyes open, it made him feel sick. If he closed them and shut the world out, he wanted to die though, so motion sickness it was.
Besides, he had a hundred grand in his bag. Only a moron would take his eyes off it.
No, only a moron would’ve got on the train in the first place when they have a perfectly good car at home.
But if Benito had proven anything over the last few weeks, months, years, it was that he was indeed a fucking imbecile. How else could he explain his life up until this moment?
He leaned his head against the train window, focusing on the cool glass against his skin as grief lanced his chest. The slam of Mickey’s front door echoed in his head. His furious, agonised scream as Benito had unfrozen his feet from the doorstep and walked away. So much pain. And Benito wasn’t naive enough to believe Mickey’s distress had been all about him, even if it had been all his fault. Lies were one thing. Betrayal something else—something bigger—but the worst of Mickey’s anger had been directed at himself, and Benito could never forgive himself for that. For dragging Mickey back to a place where he believed he was anything less than the fucking hero he was to Benito. That he’d done it within ten minutes of being inside him, slow-screwing them both to oblivion, all the while losing himself to the reality that he was in love with this dude?