Page 15 of Forever Not Yours (Square Mile Rogues #1)

I found him exactly where I’d dreaded he’d be, because I knew that bar in Tufton Street. Had been there myself once or twice. Right in the hustle of Westminster, supposedly catering to the posh locals but instead attracting the more hardcore side of the community, it had been mentioned in various scandals in the past, mostly concerning married politicians with habits that had not been socially acceptable back then. It had a well-attended darkroom and hosted heavy leather nights. Been there, done that.

It was a couple of blocks down from Bastien’s office, a good few miles from my Hampsted clinic, and the Tube was not an option. The Uber was pretty efficient, though, despite me fidgeting in the back the entire way.

What the hell now, Bastien?

That app of his had been going off solidly for the past three hours, and we’d been here before. Bastien was responsible…until he got stressed out and wasn’t. I’d even left messages for Juliet, hoping she’d get hold of him, but at least he’d called.

I slammed the door to the Uber shut and stepped into the bar. I didn’t know the place well, but I recognised the smell of it. Sex and beer, leather, disinfectant. It could be a heady combination when the urge came on, but right now, it filled me with terror, and totally rationally so, because here was my man, sat at the bar being coddled by some leather daddy in a pair of biker boots that had seen better days, a bottle of lube on a keyring dangling from his belt.

“Bastien,” I said firmly, because there were rules here. Honor amongst men. I hoped. Oh, fuck it.

“Barry,” leather daddy said, reaching out his hand to me with a warm smile. “Seems your man here is perking up a bit. Was dangling well low earlier, didn’t look too good.”

“Thank you,” I said, staring at the back of Bastien’s head. “Better take him home then. Get some food in for him.”

“Tried to get him to chow down a packet of crisps. Wasn’t too keen on the idea.”

I smiled politely. “He’s funny about snack foods.” He wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to offend leather daddy’s kind gesture, not when I was wearing scrubs in a kink bar like a twat. “Do I owe you guys anything?”

“Happy to help.” The bartender was clearly a decent guy.

“My sister is a diabetic. Not something you mess around with,” Barry droned on. I could almost hear Bastien’s words. I don’t need another lecture . I was guilty as hell of those, and this guy? Had Bastien been firing at 100%, he might have shared some words of wisdom here. Luckily, he kept his mouth shut as I shook this Barry’s hand and once again nodded to the bartender in gratitude before dragging Bastien by the arm, out into the warm London air that was as oppressive as the thoughts in my head.

Reaching into his pocket, he was suddenly wearing shades. Like a plonker.

“Where’s your car?” I asked.

“Multistorey.” Good. Words. He was using them.

“All right if I drive?”

“Still have you on the insurance.”

He did. I remembered. Something he’d always done. Always offered it up like we had shared custody of his goddamn BMW.

We walked. Random rays of sunshine fell on my face. At least he was steady on his feet, a faint blush on his cheeks, not so pale anymore under those shades. Sometimes I would look at him and it would be like I was seeing him for the very first time. The streaks of gold in his pale blonde hair. Those cheekbones, almost a little too high up on his cheeks. Broad shoulders, and those suits he wore for work. Fine tailoring that hugged his narrow hips. Beauty like frail porcelain, yet underneath the shell, he had strength in spades.

He called himself stupid and weak when he was anything but. He’d excelled at uni and landed his first job before he’d even graduated. And even though it may have looked like I was the one who always looked after him and cleaned up his many messes, I wouldn’t have been here if it hadn’t been for him. Failure had not been an option as long as Bastien had been by my side. He’d pushed, made me revise, taken me to the places I needed to go in that little Fiat he’d driven back then. He still did. Drove me places. Put me on his insurance. Kept me sane in a world where I often felt anything but.

Bastien. My beautiful man.

He still looked pretty awful, drained and dishevelled, and that bar? I had questions. So many goddamn questions.

Car found and Bastien strapped in, I took the driver’s seat with no protests from my silent passenger, who stared out the window like a grumpy teen .

“Did you need anything from the office? And your phone is ringing, again.”

He shrugged. Okay. We were like that then.

“You want to talk to me?” I asked softly. Options, Bastien. Use that mouth.

“No.”

Okay.

“I’m a little worried.”

He just huffed, and I gave up on the answers I needed. No lectures. We were well beyond that. Then he had his phone out and was texting furiously before dropping it back into his jacket pocket and sitting back, eyes closed. Not talking.

“Remember at uni, when we were on our summer break? You were doing that internship up in Glasgow, and I was working at the garden centre back home?”

“Dead-end place. Didn’t it shut down after?”

“Yes. Got bulldozed and turned into an Aldi.”

“Love an Aldi.”

He did. Preferred it to the posh Waitrose down the road.

“Says the man who earns more money than he knows what to do with. ”

“Also, says the man who lives out of a sports bag and hasn’t got a mortgage.”

“You have me.” That was my usual response. Perhaps I was as bad as him. “I’m angry,” I admitted, hearing the desperation creep into my voice. “Because you’re not looking after yourself, and the risks? I’m not even going to ask what you were doing in a seedy leather bar.”

Silence. I don’t know what I’d expected in response to that. “I just love you,” I whined far too weakly.

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

I could have said that to myself, but apparently, I didn’t know when to stop. When to zip it and back down. I almost had an argument with him in my head, trying to rein myself in. Don’t say anything. Mind your own bloody business. Don’t be such an interfering, overbearing shit.

Especially right now.

My phone rang. I handed it to Bastien, who promptly rejected the call.

“Juliet.”

“Okay.”

“Anything I need to know? Why is she ringing me?”

“You said you rang her?”

“Oh, yeah.”

End of conversation. A red light. Two men in a car. The sun shining on a child skipping across the road, hanging on to his mother’s hand. Bastien looked away. I looked at him.

I wanted to say it. Shout it out loud. Grab him and shake him and scream out all the frustration in my veins. I wanted to grab him and put him over my knee and give him ten hard ones, just to show him what he did to me.

Put my mouth on his. Kiss him the way a man like him deserved to be kissed. With feelings and emotions and care.

“Anyway,” I cleared my throat. “Remember my birthday? That dreadful August when it rained all the time? You drove all the way down from Glasgow in the Fiat and turned up on my doorstep the night before. Told me it was time to celebrate.”

“Ha-ha, yeah.” He didn’t sound as enthusiastic as I did, trying to liven this up, set the mood .

“You have no idea how happy you made me. I hadn’t seen you for so long, and my heart was in a state. It took me years to wean myself off you.”

“Idiot.”

“We lived together for almost five years, Bastien. It felt like a proper break-up when it ended.”

“You got a flat and moved out.”

Oh. We were having a conversation then.

“You moved in with Marie.”

“Didn’t last long.”

“Then you met Anisha.”

“You liked her.”

“Still text her sometimes.”

A smile. Good.

“I still think about those years,” he said. “I mean, we thought we were stressed and busy, and exams were overwhelming, but looking back now? Easy. So bloody easy.”

“Agree.” I nodded as I said it. Truth, right there.

“I think,” he said. Then he went quiet.

“You can tell me. Anything. Absolutely anything.”

I was hoping for answers, words to still my beating heart. Anything to cool the dark anxieties in my head. We sat in silence, an uncomfortable one where everything seemed to hang in the air. Then suddenly he spoke. Quietly, but at least it was something.

“Last year, I didn’t have a single hypo,” he said. “I was really stable, and I came off one of my meds and the new pump made a difference and, you know. It was good. Then this year, I have no idea how it got this bad, but I just can’t keep my bloods in check, and things stress me out, all the time.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Couldn’t find a house we both liked. Every bloody weekend, we were house hunting, and then we were planning this wedding, and it wore me out, and I took on this huge new account, with Kieron constantly on my back and then Juliet agreed for us to try for a baby.”

“That’s a lot.”

“It’s fucking normal, Jake. That is what normal people do, every day. Yet I couldn’t deal. I just got more and more confused and stressed out by everything and then…” His arms were flailing in the air again, the way they did when he lost all the words, his mouth shaping them with nothing but si lence coming out.

“Some people call it walking into a wall.” I tried to say it in kindness, not to put words in his mouth. “When things just get a little too much and however hard you try, every little task becomes a candle. You light one at a time and blow it out when you’re done. If you light too many, you start a fire. And however many you blow out, the fire still rages in the background, and you just burn. Everything burns. And then—”

“You burn out.”

I nodded.

Quiet. This was when I needed to stay quiet. Let him breathe.

“How are you feeling, right now?” I never learned, did I? He was back to quietly huffing out air. “Almost there.” I reached out and gently squeezed his arm. A few more blocks. A turn to the left. Him back to looking out the window. My hand back on the steering wheel.

“You don’t get it, though. All this.” He was suddenly looking at me as I tried to take a roundabout without crashing his goddamn car. “This? This is not you and me. It’s not what you want it to be. It will never happen, you know that, don’t you? Because I piss people off. I’m bloody hard work, and just because we fucked once or twice doesn’t mean this is some kind of happily ever after. It’s fucking too much, Jake. Everything. Too bloody much.”

“I get that—” I started, but he cut me off.

“You don’t get shit. So just stop pretending this is anything else than what it is. You throwing a pity party for the messed-up dude who once again royally fucked up. So stop with the bullshit, Jake, because it’s not happening. None of this is happening.”

Almost there? Not even close, as he was out of the car before I’d even managed to engage the parking brake, slamming the door behind him. Taking long strides towards the block of flats. Stopping by the entrance and just standing there, like he was trying to figure out what he was doing.

I grabbed my phone out of my pocket. The number of missed calls made me shudder. I understood him, so much. I had to sharpen up, and fast, because this had gone on far too long now.

Enough, Bastien. Enough.