“Not caring is the worst thing in the world. If you didn’t already know that, you’d still be on the road.”
Luis hung up without saying goodbye. Benito stared at the blank screen he left behind, then slowly pocketed his phone.
He looked up to find Mickey and Gianna in front of him. Gianna was engrossed in her milkshake.
Mickey’s expression was blank—too blank for Benito’s soul to cope with.
He stood, inserting himself into Mickey’s bubble without giving a single shit who saw them. “Luis Pope just called me. His brother is getting out.”
Mickey frowned, clearly tracking back to every conversation they’d ever had to put names to Benito’s tales from the road. “The one you stitched up?”
Benito’s gaze flickered to Gianna, but she’d wandered off to take pictures of a duck. “That’s the one. I’m thinking he probably wants me dead.”
“Is that what his brother said?”
“He said he didn’t know.”
“How would you find out?”
“By asking, I guess.”
Mickey’s frown deepened. “Won’t that put you on his radar? He might have moved on.”
“Dude, he got shot because of me, on top of bare time in prison. Unless he became a fucking monk inside, there’s no way he’s moved on from that shit.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And you don’t know Dante Pope.”
“Neither do you.”
Benito exhaled a long breath through his nose. “I can’t do this with him. He doesn’t think like the rest of us, and he’s relentless. If he wants to hurt me, he won’t stop until he has.”
Mickey gripped Benito’s shoulders, forcing him to meet his gaze. “You used to be like that too. We both did. But people change.”
“No, they don’t.”
“They do. Or we wouldn’t be here, either of us.”
Benito took Mickey’s hands and squeezed them. “You’re nothing like Dante Pope.”
“How do you know? I’ve been alive twenty-five years and you’ve only known me for eighteen months. You have no idea what I’d be capable of if I was living his life.”
Benito shook his head. He got Mickey’s point, but Dante Pope was a unique creature. Clever. Unpredictable. He had his weak points, though—his ego and chronic inability to be alone. Maybe—
No. Benito shook his head again, more violently this time. “I can’t fight him. Or even think about it. I can’t be that person anymore.”
Mickey nodded. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to ask him to give me what I gave his brother. I’m going to ask him to set me free.”
Benito wrote Dante Pope a letter. Mickey never read it, but he was there the day the reply landed on the doormat from Manchester Prison, because it was Mickey’s doormat, in Mickey’s house, where Benito had lived since he’d given up his city-centre flat.
Mickey held up the note from Dante Pope and read it aloud.
Martell,
Life moves on. I hope yours is as good as I want mine to be.
Be well,
D
“Is he being sincere or bluffing like a motherfucker?”
“Honestly?” Benito came up behind Mickey and kissed his neck. “With him, it’s hard to tell, but I’ve never heard him say shit like that before, so maybe it’s real.”
“You believe that, don’t you?”
Benito shrugged. “I want to, and I can’t live my life looking over my shoulder. Sometimes you have to see the best in people until they show you otherwise.”
“He never showed you the worst of him?”
“As much as he saw the worst of me, but maybe seeing his brother go straight changed him as much as it did the rest of us.”
Mickey matched Benito’s words to what he knew of the crew he’d run with on the road. Young men fighting for a crown no one seemed to want. It was a fucking mess, and even thinking about it made him twitch. Or, at least, think about twitching. Cravings were easier to manage when Benito was around. Some days, addiction never crossed Mickey’s mind.
The days it did, he went to a meeting in a village hall six miles away. Benito came with him and ate all the biscuits while they listened to other people talk. Every Thursday, he did the same at the anxiety support group he took Rosetta to, and he still had no idea he was Mickey’s fucking hero.
Mickey let the note fall to the kitchen counter and spun around, quickly caging Benito in his arms. “You want to go out tonight?”
“Out where?”
“To the club, maybe? I’ll drive so you can drink.”
A flush heated Benito’s neck. “I’m going to need a fucking drink if you still want to do that thing we talked about.”
Mickey laughed. “Fucking in the club instead of getting a room? I was taking the piss, mate, but hey, I’m game if you are.”
Benito rolled his eyes and ducked out of Mickey’s embrace. He wandered off to take a shower. Mickey considered the conversation closed. They’d been to the club together a few times—it was a safe space they were both familiar with. They drank rum and got handsy, then alternated between stumbling upstairs to revisit where it had all begun or going home to love each other all night long in the bed they’d shared since Mickey had brought Benito home for good.
The idea of fucking in the club was a new one, for Benito, at least. Mickey had been thinking about it from day one.
Was still thinking about it when Benito came back downstairs dressed in dark jeans and a white shirt that made him look like expensive sin. “Stop looking at me like that,” he said. “Or we’ll be fucking on the couch instead.”
Mickey laughed and retreated to take his own shower.
Half an hour later, they were speeding away from reality in Benito’s car—a different SUV now; he’d sent the old one back and leased a new one to drive his Uber clients around in. He’d never said he’d done it to save Mickey from wondering if there was still coke under the passenger seat, but Mickey knew he had. Fuck, I love him.
And perhaps more importantly, he knew Benito loved him too.
The club was dark and sultry. Mickey and Benito propped up the bar, Benito drinking lime-spiked rum while Mickey nursed a bottle of water. They stood close together, legs touching, Benito’s arm around Mickey’s shoulder while they talked about anything and nothing.
When the time for talk was over, they kissed, bodies moving with the throbbing pulse of the music, blood heating with every slow sweep of their lips.
Mickey was on fire for Benito. They hadn’t fucked in a couple of days, and he wondered if it had been subconsciously deliberate, so they’d find that magical place right here, where nothing and no one could keep them apart.
He pulled back from Benito’s kiss and found his dark gaze. “We can go home if you want?”
Benito shook his head. “I want you now.”
“Sure?”
“You don’t believe me?” Benito ground his hips against Mickey’s. His dick was rock solid in his jeans, and Mickey’s eyes rolled.