Page 99 of Unbind

‘I get it,’ I tell him softly. ‘But you couldn’t be more wrong about him. When he did what he did to you, which was awful—completely horrific—he was so messed up. His little sister had just died, likedaysbefore he attacked you, his mum had been arrested for causing her death… He was barely functioning, and he was in so much pain he didn’t know which way was up.’

Winky rolls his eyes. (I’ll never be the one to tell him it’s less effective when one of them is glass.) But there’s something there—a flash of surprise, maybe? I’d swear some of what I’ve just told him is new information for him.

‘Spare me the sob story,’ he says now. ‘I can’t believe you’d sell out on your family like this. It’s so fucking disloyal, it makes me sick to my stomach.’

I told myself before I came here that this was about Stephen, not me, and that I’d suck it up if he wanted to hurlinsults, then I’d take them if it helped him to process. But I can’t deny it’s devastating to stand here and have him accuse me of selling out on our family, after every fucking thing we’ve been through together.

Jesus, there’s so much I want to say to him.

Mum adores him.

She visited him.

He saved my life.

He got you your job.

He got you your shot at a new eye, for Pete’s sake!

But I don’t. I won’t go there. And while I want Winky’s absolution with an intensity that’s terrifying, I don’t technically need it. This evening is about my doing the right thing and providing my brother with information he’s entitled to have.

It’s not about earning his blessing to date Adam.

I’m not sure what to do, really. This has landed badly, really badly, and I don’t want to turn and flounce out of the house, but I also don’t want to stay here and be a punching bag while Winky works through his anger. I have the upper hand here. I came here knowing the facts, and he’s been blindsided, therefore it’s right that I should hold space for him and not resort to insult-slinging.

‘Listen,’ I say, standing up and hauling my bag over my shoulder. ‘I know you’re angry. If you have questions for me, I’ll stay and answer them. But I get that you’re going to need some time with this, and I’d rather not stand here while you basically accuse me of being a gold-digging whore. You know where I am if you want to chat.’

I sling my coat over my shoulder, plant a soft kiss on Chloe’s silken cheek, and get the hell out of there.

58

ADAM

One of the many fucked-up ironies of my life is that I’ve seen fit to surround myself with items of great beauty, to identify aesthetics as one of the profound, constant pleasures of this human experience, all the while having robbed another man of half his eyesight.

If anything haunts me, it’s that. Stephen Bennett isn’t blind, but he’s halfway there. If anything happened to his other eye, he’d be blind because of me. And yet I have the gall to continue blithely surrounding myself with beautiful things.

Another fucked-up irony?

His sister is the most beautiful being I’ve ever had the pleasure of feasting my eyes on.

I used to tear myself to pieces with guilt.I took away his fucking eye.For years and years, I had an eyepatch that I kept hidden at the bottom of one of my bedroom drawers like an addict might hide his stash. In particularly dark moments, I’d put it on, covering my left eye for hours or days on end.

This is how Stephen Bennett feels every single day, youcallous thug.The discomfort, the inconvenience, the blurred black-grey where half of any view I looked at should be. When I started making serious money, when Anton would drag me on business trips to visit his offices in Hong Kong and New York and San Francisco, I’d squirrel the eye patch away in my luggage and put it on when I had the chance.

This is how half of Victoria Harbour looks, dickhead, I’d taunt myself from my balcony in The Four Seasons Hong Kong.This is how half of Central Park looks. A bit shitty, isn’t it?

The day I stepped foot back in the very same prison where I was once incarcerated, as part of my plan to deliver the same business course through which Anton had once saved my life, was the day I threw that fucking eye patch away. The habit of surreptitiously closing my left eye when I’m overwhelmed still lingers, though.

I do exactly this as I regard my girlfriend in profile. She’s bathed in the dazzling sunlight you only get at thirty-seven thousand feet, and her expression is far more pensive than I’d like to see on a woman who’s being whisked off for what she claims to already know will be the best weekend of her life.

Unfortunately for my masochistic tendencies, we’re close enough that even a one-eyed view of her is perfection.

She’s worried about her brother, and I’m worried about her. I based myself at Alchemy the other night so I could be around her all evening. She insisted on working her full shift despite Gen’s offer to bail, so I planted my arse on the big sofa where Nat scared me shitless with her hypo and caught up on some work. And while she’s given me a detailed run-down of how their conversation went (in a word, disastrous), I know she’s trapped inside her own head.

I fucking hate it.

I lean forward and plant a kiss on her temple, and shegives me a little smile, leaning in towards me. While I’d love us to be travelling alone on my jet, Dr Dyson is sitting down at the other end of the aircraft. Changing time zones is complicated for diabetics, and jet lag is fucking brutal. I’m taking no chances with either the administration of Nat’s insulin as her body clock adjusts to Eastern Standard Time, nor will I tolerate jet lag robbing her of her joy on this trip.

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