Page 90 of The Bright and Hungry Future of Hawks

If he was being entirely honest, Aleksey felt a bit miffed at the self-righteous set of Ben’s shoulders and his aloof anger.Hewas the one who had, after all, discovered he was being cheated on.Hewas the one suffering all this unpleasant and unnecessary thinking and planning because of that betrayal.

Sure, he’d not expected an apology and vows of eternal love, but something more than this would have been nice. Wasn’t that what the fucking man in the cottage had been all about? Was he missing something in that message?You are a cold-hearted bastard, Nikolas Mikkelsen, and I want more. Wasn’t that it? He’d admitted as much.He was. A bastard. Obviously, he’d only admitted this in his own head, but who wanted to put that kind of needy crap out there to be picked over and then used and exploited?

If the live-in fucking lover had been an attempt to elicit something from him, that switch had been turned off pretty damn quick.

Ben was cold, even for him.

They fucked. It’s what they always did, but there was none of the spontaneity which had begun to creep in around the edges of the lockdown.

Ben barely made the attempt to speak at all and seemed preoccupied with some internal conflict. Aleksey wished he could think of a way to ask what this might be.

He had a lot of things which he wished he could ask Ben Rider.

But how did you frame those questions? How did you ask someone why you were not enough for them?

Ten-year-old Aleksey had been unable to ask that of his mother, and he sure as hell couldn’t think of a way to put it to this remote man now.

So he stayed in role, spoke his Nikolas words and took his turn instead, and found in the hard, savage pleasure of Ben’s body the only answers he’d ever let life give him.

Chapter 50

Four Months Before April

They’d been walking for a long time, randomly as far as Ben could tell. He was beyond his knowledge of Dartmoor now, although he suspected Nik had ridden most of it and therefore knew exactly where they were.

They hadn’t spoken much, just an occasional grunt, which could be translated as conversation between two men who knew each other well. Between them? Ben wasn’t so sure now. He’d not seen this coming despite thinking he knew everything there was to know about the man calling himself Nikolas Mikkelsen—Aleksey. That, Nikolas had reiterated repeatedly, correcting Ben each time when he’d spoken the old, more familiar name.

And that lack of foresight niggled at Ben. There was something he wasn’t getting about this situation. Sure, that had rather been a feature of his life with Nikolas all these years. At many times, something other had been happening than what Ben had thought was occurring. The only time Ben had always been sure was when he and Nikolas joined their bodies and became one vast conflagration that heated their whole world. Deceptions, shadows, lies—even from the very first fuck over the billiard table at Barton Combe—they had not been present between their joined bodies. Nikolas had always been truthful in his exhaustive passion for Ben’s body, as much as he had tried to hide this behind his mask of indifference.

But there was something critical about this situation he ought to understand that was entirely eluding him. He knew this intuitively, but didn’t know how to turn that innate suspicion into something concrete he could examine and push through. Instead, because they appeared to be going nowhere very fast, and to prompt some connection between them, although compared to conflagrations it was little more than a damp squib of pain, he asked neutrally, “Do you actually have a plan here?”

Nikolas continued to stare thoughtfully at the ground they were plodding over, but a rueful smile formed on his lips. The expression instantly re-woke Ben’s fury. The leaving of him, he would have thought, would not raise such an expression. But just as he was about to remonstrate and call Nik out on this inappropriate reaction, Nikolas murmured with a soft laugh, “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought of one yet.”

Ben was effectively silenced for a long time after that. For once, he was the one thinking deeply.

He was stunned and worried by that reply, sure. But somewhere, deep in his heart, he was also actually impressed. After everything, after all Nikolas had done in his life, the last forty years of planning and surviving, ducking, diving, pretending, playing, fighting and just going on in bloody defiance at the hand life had dealt him, he was here now with nothing. Stripped down to the essence of a man: skin, bone, blood—no money, no phone, and perhaps more significantly, no plan.

But—Ben felt an almost visceral need to physically reach out and try to snatch this elusive thought out of the cold Dartmoor air—what was really happening here? What was he just not seeing?

After another few minutes, walkingpleasantlyin total silence—Nikolas had once stopped talking to him for an entire week so what was an hour in the overall complex tapestry of their lives?—Ben said conversationally, wondering if the neutral tone hid the anger he was feeling as well as he wanted it to, "I left a note, by the way, for Squeezy. Mainly about Molly, our daughter, but about all the other stuff I could think of. It was kinda along the lines of find the instructions I was writing for the holiday but just keep doing it. Full time now. Permanent. I actually don't think she'll be too upset when she gets used to the change—little Mol-Mol. Squeezy instead of me. Tim instead of you. Except for the piano lessons, I suppose. She won't remember us when she grows up. I don't remember anything hardly of my dad, and I was four when I left. She's only three. I told Squeezy to buy her a new dog as well. She'll—"

"Stop talking."

"Make me. She'll miss Radulf more than either of us, I think. Thank God for Sarah and Martin. I put in the instructions that she could go live with them if he and Tim couldn't cope. Martin will be the perfect father for her. Bring her up in the Church." This was a bit pathetic, he had to admit, but it amused him saying it and, God knows, he needed a bit of cheer that morning. More importantly, it would piss Nikolas off, and he wasn’t the least worried about doing that right at this moment.

"Why are you doing this?"

"It speaks!”

"Stop trying to be funny. Go home. There is no one—nothing—here for you."

“There’s an explanation. Whatever this is, you owe me that.”

Nik stopped and toed the ground, then glanced over at a sheltering rock feature and slid off his pack, making towards it. He squatted down and began to make a brew.

Ben took the hunched back turned to him for all the invitation he was going to get and joined the tense figure, fishing in his pocket for a treat for the dogs. He wished someone had thought to bring one for him.

When they both had a cup of tea, which in itself annoyed Ben as it appeared Nik knew very well how to make this English necessity when it suited him, Ben repeated, “You owe me an explanation. Before you…” He gestured towards the pack and the distant moors around them. “Run away.”

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