Chapter 26: The past comes knocking

Chapter 26: Chapter 26: The past comes knocking

Garrett spent the next hour turning bags of stuff into an actual apartment.

The duvet went on first, easiest job of the lot. He pulled it over the mattress, smoothed it out, and stood back to look at it like that alone had solved something. It had, a little. The bed didn’t look like a bed he was embarrassed to have someone see.

The curtains gave him more trouble than they had any right to. He stood on a kitchen chair, fighting with the rod for a solid ten minutes before he got the hang of it, cursing at nothing in particular the whole time. When he finally stepped back and let them fall closed, the room actually darkened the way curtains were supposed to darken a room. Sensational.

"Should’ve done this months ago," he muttered, and got down before the chair decided to test his balance.

The lamps came next. He plugged in the floor lamp first, flicked it on, and the whole flat shifted a shade warmer. He moved it twice before settling on the corner by the window, then set the two smaller ones on either side of a bed that finally had somewhere to put them. The overhead light had been doing all the work for two years. It showed.

The coffee table went in front of the sofa, dead center, no wobble when he pressed down on it. He set his phone on it just to see how it looked sitting there. Fine. Normal. The kind of thing a person who had his life together might own.

He put the rug down under the table, stepped back, adjusted it a few inches to the left for no real reason, then left it alone. The plants went on the windowsill, still in their plastic pots because he hadn’t thought that far ahead, but green was green.

By the time he was done, he stood in the middle of the room and just looked at it.

Same flat, Same size and the same crack near the ceiling he’d never bothered reporting. But it didn’t feel like the place he’d been sleeping in for two years out of necessity. It felt like somewhere he actually lived.

He dropped onto the sofa, arm slung over the back of it, and let the quiet satisfaction sit for a second.

Then, without really meaning to, he pictured Emiliana standing in the doorway, taking it in the way she took in everything — quick, assessing, filing it away somewhere behind those eyes of hers.

He didn’t know if that would ever actually happen. But he liked that it wouldn’t be embarrassing if it did.

____

The place Raymond had chosen wasn’t the kind of place he usually spent time in — a car park behind a row of shuttered shops, three streets off campus, the sort of spot nobody photographed because nobody had a reason to be there.

He got out of his car and didn’t bother locking it properly, which told you something about how confident he currently felt in this particular postcode.

Two men were already waiting by the wall. Not big in an obvious, cartoonish way — just built like people who’d been in situations that required it, jackets too heavy for the weather, the kind of stillness that came from not needing to fidget.

"You’re late," Dezny said, not looking particularly bothered by it.

"I’m exactly on time." Raymond checked nothing, said it flatly, the way he said most things. "Let’s not waste each other’s evening."

Dezny shrugged, unbothered either way. "Go on, then."

"There’s a guy," Raymond said. "Garrett. Second year, Business Management. I’ll send you a photo and his usual routes across campus. Nothing complicated."

"You want him hurt, or you want him educated."

"Educated. For now."

Dezny’s mouth did something that wasn’t quite a smile. "For now."

"Don’t touch him near the university. Don’t do it where it can be traced back easily, I don’t need this coming anywhere near me."

"You’re not doing it yourself," Dezny said. Not a question.

"No."

"Didn’t think so." He said it without much judgement in it either way "well it costs more if we’ve got to be careful about where."

"I’m aware how this works."

"Good. Saves us both a conversation."

Raymond took an envelope from inside his jacket and held it out. Dezny didn’t count it in front of him, which either meant he trusted the number or didn’t care enough to check. Raymond couldn’t tell which, and didn’t ask.

"Soon," Raymond said. "I want him dealt with. I don’t care how you handle it. Just make sure he understands he’s not untouchable."

"We’ll handle it."

That was it. No handshake, no further conversation, no lingering. Dezny and the other one peeled off toward a car parked further along the wall, and Raymond stood there a moment longer before getting back into his own.

He didn’t feel good about it, exactly. He felt something closer to relief — the specific relief of having finally done something with an anger that had been sitting in him for weeks with nowhere useful to go.

---

Across town, in a flat with a slightly wobbly coffee table and a new bulb that actually lit the room properly now, Garrett was holding up a picture frame against a blank stretch of wall, trying to decide if it hung too high, entirely unaware that his evening had just become someone else’s business.

____

Emiliana sat on the edge of her bed that evening, surrounded by the quiet familiarity of her room in the Vane estate, and let herself thought wander wherever.

It wasn’t a crush anymore. She could call it that a week ago and mean it as something small, manageable, a passing thing. It didn’t feel small anymore.

She thought about Brian, and how easy that call had been to make once she’d actually decided — no guilt behind it, no second guessing, just a door closing on something that had never really been hers to want.

If she could turn Brian down, she could do this too.

I should ask him. Properly. A real date, not a bench in a park.

Sunday. She’d message him later that day, keep it simple, and see if he’d agree.

She picked up her phone, already halfway to opening his name.

---

Garrett’s phone buzzed on the table, mid-thought about whether the frame was actually straight or just looked straight from this angle.

He checked it, expecting Daniel. He stared at the name for a moment, almost expecting the letters to rearrange themselves into someone else.

JACEY

He hadn’t heard from her. Hadn’t expected to.

Garrett sat up slowly, his grip tightening slightly around the phone as he opened the message.