Page 74 of Worth the Wait
“Upstairs. Now! And you’re with me from now on. I’ll take you to and from school, and you’ll work in the garage after. You don’t leave this house unless I say so. You get me?”
“Whatever.”
Alfie stumbled past him, brushing his shoulder, but Nathan caught his arm. Not roughly. But firm enough to stop him dead. He squeezed, needing him tofeelit, needing him tounderstand.
“Count your lucky stars you get to sleep in a bed tonight.” He glared at him poignantly. “You were two minutes away from a cell.”
Alfie yanked his arm free, not before tilting his head, giving Nathan a knowing look. “Funny how you knew that, innit?”
Nathan let go. Watched him storm off, the house shuddering under the angry pound of footsteps and the slam of his bedroom door. Then he slapped his palms flat on the kitchen counter, hunched over it, fighting to steady the furious thundering of his heart.
The soft tread of boots made him stiffen.
“You did the right thing.” Ron tapped him on the back as if he was still twelve. “Gotta be stern with these kids, or they’ll take you for a mug.”
Nathan swallowed the bile rising in his throat.
He wanted to scream at him. Tell him he’d spent his entire childhood scared of that sternness. Of the fists slammed onto tables, the sudden eruptions he hadn’t understood were symptoms of a father still living in the trenches in his head. That fear hadn’t taught him respect. It taught him how to hide. How to lie. How to smuggle pieces of himself under the radar because he’d never been brave enough to tell the truth.
The way he’d hiddenFreddie.
Under a pier. Wrapped in his sheets. In hisheart.
Buried him so deep Nathan sometimes wondered if he was still whole under all that shame. Maybe that was why he’d stayed away so long. Because he didn’t know how to be different.
And now?
Looking up the stairs where Alfie had disappeared, feeling the silence curdle around him, Nathan wasn’t sure he ever would.
* * **
The raid wrapped just after midnight.
Freddie, along with Becca, were pulled back to the station with the rest of the team for the debrief. A freezing, fluorescent-lit conference room smelling of instant coffee and tired coppers. CID were buzzing around, bagging the evidence. DI Carrick prowled between the units, hands behind his back, waiting for someone to slip up.
Freddie kept his head down. Logged his observation notes. Wrote as close to the party line as he could manage without outright perjury.
Time blurred in a sea of statements. Reports. A short bollocking about operational discipline over the radio where Carrick’s gaze lingered on him a second too long. Did he know he’d lied? He couldn’t. He would eventually, but right then, he’d be working on his instincts.
Freddie pushed through it.
One minute at a time.
By the time he clocked off, the sun bled grey over the rooftops outside. Night shift officially ended at seven in the morning and Freddie slung his stab vest into his locker with more force than necessary, aching for his bed. And a world where none of this had happened.
He was halfway down the corridor when a call stopped him in his tracks.
“Webb.”
He stopped. Turned.
Thank fuck it was Becca. Leaning against the corridor wall, arms folded, hair a mess under her beanie, eyes bloodshot from tiredness. But still sharp.Verysharp.
“You gonna tell me what the fuck happened?”
Freddie tried to play it off. Shrugged. “Tense night. Shit happened.”
Becca pushed off the wall, stepping closer until they were almost chest to chest. “We saw Alfie Carter go into that house. Yet he didn’t come out of it in cuffs. And you left your station.” She didn’t blink. “You lied on comms. Lied in your log. Lied to me!”
