It used to be Ste who would fall asleep first after they'd fucked, but not this time, even though he hadn't slept last night because he'd been too anxious about seeing Brendan for the first time. He was exhausted now, from the dread and the rows and the relief and the sex, but his was head buzzing and he had lain, eyes closed, listening to Brendan's breaths slowing into sleep. Ste had opened his eyes then and looked at him. It was early still, and there was just enough left of the thin evening light to let him examine the details of Brendan's face.

He was pale. He always was, but now that he was lying still and expressionless, and he'd lost the colour he'd had when Ste had looked up at him as they'd chased each other to climax, there was a greyness to his skin that it never used to have.

Ste propped himself up on his elbow and stroked a fingertip along the line of Brendan's moustache, imagining where it would end if the beard wasn't there. Brendan shifted a little in his sleep, and Ste moved his hand away.

Brendan looked older, Ste thought, as if more time had passed for him than the two and a half years they'd been apart. He'd be thirty-five in a few weeks' time, but he looked more than that. There were white hairs here and there in the dark brown of his beard, and the lines around his eyes and across his forehead were deeper than before. Ste didn't mind that, though, as long as Brendan was alright; he'd always liked him being older, it had made him feel safe even when he wasn't. It was funny. Even after all the danger he'd been put in by Brendan and by Brendan's enemies, it was only when he'd gone that Ste had felt unprotected. Having a dad now – a nice dad, a real dad – was good, mostly, but Danny didn't come from Ste's world and didn't have a clue what had to be done sometimes to survive in it. If Ste was scared and needed someone to tell him, like a parent to a child, that everything was going to be okay, Danny might know what to say, but Brendan would know what to do.

Brendan might have got older but his body, from what Ste had seen and felt of it, was better than ever. His waist was narrower than it had been and the muscles of his stomach were hard, and his chest and shoulders and arms seemed massive. It was a shock to the system, being with a man like this after those years without him, and Ste's body felt different too. Having Brendan beside him, or on him, or in him, changed it. It wasn't just the physical things, although there were already plenty of those – scratches and bites, a kind of post-workout tiredness in his muscles, soreness, a dull ache inside his pelvis – but also something in the way he thought about it. His body might be scrawny, it might not be all that, but it was wanted again. It was ferociously, scarily wanted, and Ste had forgotten what that felt like.

He realised he was hungry now; he hadn't been able to face eating anything all day waiting for Brendan to arrive. He got quietly out of bed and went to the bathroom and washed himself, and then he stood in the kitchen and ate a bowl of cereal. If Brendan was awake when he went back into the bedroom he would ask him if he wanted anything to eat; but he wasn't, so Ste slipped into bed without disturbing him.

:::::::

Brendan slept long into the night, and when he woke up he was disorientated for a moment. He was only just beginning to adjust to sleeping in his new flat, but now he was somewhere else and there was someone with him, and he remembered, and he reached out to him in the dark.

"Steven." He shook Ste gently by the shoulder. "Steven."

Ste had eventually fallen asleep, deeply, and Brendan's voice seemed to be in his dream at first. The second Steven woke him, and he mumbled, "Mm?" and then, "Bren," as he rolled onto his side to face him.

"Didn't mean to wake you."

"You said my name, though."

"Nah. You must'a been dreaming."

"About you," Ste said, and he smiled and pressed his lips against Brendan's, and felt Brendan's hand come up to cradle his head.

"You taste of Coco Pops."

"I was hungry. D'you want some?"

"I'm good. You been up, then?"

"Only for a minute. You was asleep."

Brendan hugged Ste closer; Ste stroked his back.

It was Ste who moved things on, making space between their bodies for his hand to find Brendan's cock. It felt thick and heavy, and when his fingers circled the root of it he could feel it coming alive. Brendan's hand fumbled its way down to return the favour, and his sleepy kisses became purposeful.

In prison, Brendan used to shut his eyes when the lad in the library was giving him a handjob, and try to imagine that the hands were Ste's. It never worked, not entirely: even back in the days when they'd had to make do sometimes with a stolen five minutes in the toilets in Chez Chez, Ste had known how Brendan liked it. Brendan would know his touch anywhere. In prison it was an approximation, it was all there was and it was necessary, but when he had held that lad's head against his chest as they jerked each other off, the stifled sounds he'd made were wrong, and the inexactitude of his touch was wrong, and the scent of his hair was wrong.

He held Ste's bottom lip between his teeth, and sucked it, and he could feel his moustache becoming wet with Ste's saliva.

Brendan didn't know what this was – he didn't know if they were going to lie here kissing and wanking until they brought each other off, or if this was foreplay. Better find out. He bristled his beard across Ste's cheek to say into his ear, "You wanna..?"

Ste's answer was a hot-tongued kiss.

Brendan pushed him onto his back, but Ste stopped him from rolling onto him.

"We better use..."

"Yeah." Brendan got a condom from the drawer and sat on the edge of the bed to put it on.

Ste put his arms around him from behind and kissed his shoulder.

"Only till I've been and got checked, right. I was dead careful, Brendan, but – "

"Yeah, be on the safe side." Brendan didn't want to think of what Ste had done and who he'd done it with. "We'll both go."

"Then we can get back to normal."

Brendan reached for the lube, and when he turned around again, Ste was lying face down. Brendan ran his fingers down his spine.

"Taking you from behind, am I?" He stroked Ste's bum, then squeezed out a blob of lube and fingered it onto him. "Good lad."

"Use lots."

"I hurt you before? You still wanna?"

"I'm not used to..." Ste blushed, and hoped Brendan couldn't see in the dark. "Use lots."

Brendan emptied the tube into his hand, and took his time.

Ste felt full of him, as if his insides were rearranging themselves around him. Brendan's whole body weighed down on his back, and with each slow slide into him that Brendan made, Ste's cock rubbed stiffly against the mattress – enough friction to make his fingers curl and scratch at the pillow. Brendan's mouth was at his shoulder, his neck. Ste felt his teeth sometimes, and sometimes his tongue, and sometimes his hot breaths. Brendan sounded like an animal, panting and grunting, a million miles from the clever man who used long words that Ste didn't understand, and who knew about all kinds of things that Ste didn't know. Ste felt overpowered by him in a way he never had with anyone else, but he felt more powerful than he ever had with anyone else because it was his power that turned Brendan from that man into this one.

Brendan gripped Ste's wrists on the pillow. He felt Ste's muscles tighten reflexively against him as he sped up, until Ste lifted his arse and angled himself to let him in deeper.

The sound Brendan made as he came seemed to vibrate out of his chest so that Ste felt it in his ribcage and then felt it everywhere as he came too. Brendan stayed in him and sucked a bruise into his neck.

"Don't," Ste said when Brendan had withdrawn and had got up to go and get rid of the condom. "Don't go, right, just put it in a tissue."

Brendan sat back down and pulled it off and wrapped it in a tissue and dropped it on the floor. He got back into bed.

"If I tread on that when I get up..."

"I didn't say put it on the floor, did I?" Ste shuffled away from the wet patch on the mattress to share Brendan's side of the bed, and cuddled up against his side.

Brendan held Ste's flaccid cock for a moment. He liked it like that, emptied and soft, as much as he liked it all fired up; and he liked that Ste got embarrassed if he touched it after he'd come, belying his shamelessness a few moments before.

"Cute, ain't it?" He let Ste squirm.

"Shut up." Ste yanked Brendan's hand off him.

Brendan laughed, and Ste hated him for laughing at him, and loved how his laughter rumbled in his chest.

"I'll shut up, then." Brendan pulled the cover up to their shoulders and wrapped his arms around Ste, and they lay in silence.

"You're like an animal," Ste said after a while, and as he said it he remembered calling him an animal once before, and in case Brendan remembered it too and remembered the feeling behind it that day, he stroked his chest and smiled and said, "All furry, in't you," and kissed his beard.

Brendan turned his head to look at him.

"This is us now, Steven, okay? This... This is us."

He held his breath then, until Ste nodded his head and answered him.

"This is us."

Brendan

Sex was always the easy part for us. We might dance around it, run out on each other for one reason or another so the danger of giving in to it was postponed, but if we both let ourselves do it, it was always good. Better than good, even when we were sad or scared or angry or sorry: the minute we got our hands on each other nothing else mattered. It was the same when I came back for him this last time. His body, my body, they fit, you know? It was reassuring finding out that we still did it for each other as much as ever, but it didn't necessarily mean everything else was going to be easy; it just meant that the sex still was.

There was a lot of catching up to do. Two and a half years' worth of catching up, and I thought maybe he'd want to sit down and go through it all – a proper talk is his Holy Grail, always was – but I'd done so much talking inside that the idea of it made me antsy. Plus, much as I itched to know everything he'd been up to, I was scared I'd hear something I wouldn't be able to get out of my head, something about the men he'd been with. Some of the talking I'd done was in the course of the anger management counselling they gave me, and I'd discovered – surprise surprise – that one of my triggers was jealousy. Obviously sooner or later the techniques I'd learnt would be put to the test out here in the real world, but there was no point in setting myself up for a fall by finding out things to get jealous about.

So I shied away from the proper talk, and to be honest I don't think Steven wanted it either. That was a surprise to me, but I was realising slowly that there was stuff he'd been through since I'd been gone that he was reluctant to tell me about, and it wasn't just the stuff that would likely make me jealous. Things we needed to find out about each other began to come out bit by bit, though, sometimes when one of us bit the bullet and asked questions, and sometimes when one of us needed to say something.

We were in my car one day, early on. I was taking him to see my flat, and he went quiet for a bit so I knew something was coming, and then he asked me, "Brendan? How come you only got five years for killing Seamus? Why didn't you get life for it?"

"Got a reduced sentence for admitting it, didn't I."

"Right. But I thought that for murder they always – "

"It was manslaughter, not murder. Fuck." I'd missed my turning. "Gotta do a fucking U-turn."

"How come?"

"Missed the fucking turning."

"No, how come it was manslaughter?"

"Mitigating circumstances." I glanced at him; he was frowning, like it still didn't make sense to him. Fuck. "Diminished responsibility, so."

"That's like when someone's... like, not knowing what they're doing."

"Got me a short sentence, so I ain't complaining."

"Right."

I could see what I was doing. I was wanting to let Steven think I'd tricked them, you know, fooled them into believing the balance of my mind was disturbed, as they say, just so they'd go easy on me. I tried to kid myself that I was doing it to protect Steven from the truth, but I wasn't. I was protecting myself: I was scared he'd find out I was officially a headcase, and stop wanting me.

I had to man up.

"It was post-traumatic stress disorder," I told him, and I kept my eyes straight ahead. "That's what they reckoned I had, that's what they reckoned made me kill my dad."

"But you didn't kill your dad, though."

"No. But I still had it, Steven." I pulled in to the side of the road and switched off the engine.

"Are we here?"

"No. I just need to... They were right, Steven. I think. I think they were right, it's what I had, it's what made me... what made me do the things I did, or some of them. Not that it's an excuse, okay? I ain't making excuses, I just... It came from what my dad did to me, and I should'a got help with it years ago, and if I had I would'a never... Maybe I would'a never..."

"So you told them, Brendan? You told someone about it, about what your dad done, and that's how they knew you was – ?"

"A fuck-up, yeah."

"Damaged. That's what I was gonna say." He paused, and all I could think was damaged goods, and how a man like Steven had no need to stick with a man like me. And then he said, "I'm so proud of you for telling someone about it, Brendan. It's dead brave."

Sometimes I underestimate him. Sometimes the size of his heart takes me by surprise.

"Thank you," I said, and I started the car and pulled out, and I almost got my wing mirror sliced off because I forgot to look to see if anything was coming.

I had to get a grip.

"Did you get some help?" Steven asked after he'd had a few minutes to think. "You know, for the post-distress... post-disorder..."

"PTSD. Yeah, they sent me to see someone."

"Like, a counsellor?"

"Yeah."

There I was again, protecting myself from what Steven might think of me. Counsellor sounded safe; psychiatrist said psycho.

That was the rest of the talking I did in prison, see: it wasn't just anger management – that wasn't until nearly the end of my stretch. At the beginning, and for months and months, it was a fully fledged psychiatrist I had to see. I was lucky, apparently. Most of the time if someone pleads diminished responsibility but they're not cracked enough to end up in a secure hospital, they might get a few sessions with a prison shrink but then they'll most likely get put on heavy meds and left to get on with it like everyone else. I'd already had the diagnosis of PTSD from the psychiatrist who did the report for the sentencing judge, so I thought I wouldn't have to do any more talking, and when I was sent to the psychiatrist when I started my term I thought it was going to be a formality.

He had a file in front of him, and first thing he said was he had a special interest in post traumatic stress disorder in adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. He was writing a paper on it or something. Like I said, I was lucky: I just didn't feel it.

All I said in that first session was yes and no and fuck off, so he talked instead, explained what the point of me seeing him might be, and then we were getting towards the end of it and he said something about abuse. About how the abuser can be dead and gone but he's still abusing you because you're still seeing yourself in the way he wanted you to – and then I started crying, howling like a baby. After that, I talked, about everything I'd told the pre-sentence shrink and more.

I guess it helped. It made the nightmares worse at first, but then it made them less. It might have helped more if I hadn't had to censor everything I said before I said it so I didn't let slip about any of the people I'd disposed of, or about the fact it was my sister that killed my dad. But I think getting my dad's secrets out into the light took a little bit of their power away. So yes, it helped.

"What about Cheryl?" Steven had been silent again, but his mind must have been turning over just like mine was.

"What about her?"

"Would she only of got five years? I mean, she'd just found out what your dad did, she'd just seen that video. That was traumatic, weren't it? What if she'd told the truth, Brendan? That would be the whatsit, diminished responsibility, wouldn't it? It's true, right, cos she wouldn'a done it if she was in her right mind. What if she'd admitted it, Brendan? If she'd gone to prison for what she did, she'd be out now anyway, wouldn't she, and you and me would'a been together all this time, and everything that's happened while you weren't here – "

"I couldn't let her do that, Steven. I couldn't take that chance. D'you think I could'a lived my life knowing she was locked away?"

"She lived her life, didn't she, knowing you was locked away."

"Steven – "

"And anyway, what if the police had killed you when they shot you? Cos I know that's what you wanted. I've thought about it, and I know. That's why you pointed that gun at them, cos you wanted to make them kill you. I've thought about it, right. You would'a died, and I'd never ever see you again."

"I thought I wouldn't ever see you again either way, though, didn't I? Okay, you're right, I wanted to die, because I couldn't – " Because I couldn't live my life without you.

"Because you couldn't stand the thought of prison."

"I'm sorry, Steven."

We didn't speak again until we got out of the car, and then Steven said, "Can you remember how to make that cocktail?"

"What? What cocktail?"

"Sorry, Steven."

"I'll make you a bucketful," I told him, and he shook his head and kissed me.

:::::::

Steven was working as a chef, at a restaurant in the village. He wasn't going to work when we first got back together because the place was closed for refurbishment, but that was his job now, a few shifts a week cooking for wages. I wanted to know what happened to the deli but he wouldn't tell me much, only that he'd walked out not long after I went away and then somehow he never got his hands on it again. I was pissed off when I heard that, and we had a row about it, obviously. He thought I was mad about it because of my eighty grand, but it wasn't that. I was mad because all the time I was inside I was thinking at least I'd left him with that security for him and Leah and Lucas, and it turned out he had nothing.

I could have helped him if I'd known. I've got money. Some of it wasn't the kind of money I could get at when I was in prison, but most of it was legitimate: it came from the sale of the club and of the flats, and I'd tied some of it up in trust for my boys but there was still plenty that Steven could have had. He could have had every last penny, if I'd known he wasn't okay. My fault, I guess, for not making Chez tell me what she knew of how he was, and for not making her find out what she didn't know. Sorry, Steven.

I had money, but I couldn't be sitting on my arse while Steven went out to work. Starting over was going to be hard though. For one thing, I didn't know what I was going to start over as. I couldn't risk getting back into the world I used to inhabit, because being out on licence I could find myself back serving the rest of my sentence if I got so much as a parking ticket, and besides, I had to prove myself not just to Steven but to Amy. She had his kids. They seemed to be sharing them, her and Steven, but as soon as she got a sniff of me being back it would be like before, only this time I wasn't guilty only of what she knew I'd done to Steven and of whatever misdeeds she always imagined I'd committed. Now, I was a convicted killer, and no mother would think I was stepdad material. I didn't know what we were going to do to persuade her that Leah and Lucas would be safe with us, but I knew I couldn't do anything that would give her extra ammunition.

I thought about buying something, another club or a pub, and getting started that way, but I had in my head an idea – a dream, you might say – that in two and a half years' time when I'd be free to leave the UK, we would up sticks and move to Dublin and start building a life there. I wanted to hold on to my money for that, and not risk it in a business that might or might not succeed.

So it looked like I was going to have to look for a job.

Yep.

Steven said he would ask around in the village, but I said no. I was avoiding the place, driving out in the other direction whenever I left his flat. There was nothing for me there except ghosts. The club's name had changed and its owners had changed two or three times, Steven said, but even so I couldn't think about the place without seeing my dad coming for me, the gunshot, and him lying bleeding out on the floor. Besides, it wasn't like I knew anyone any more. There'd be the odd one or two, but no one who was likely to be glad to see me, and I had no desire to go back.

One true friend I'd had, in the two years I'd lived there, but she was six thousand miles away now. Anne. And she was a true friend: apart from Cheryl and Nate – and Eileen on one occasion – she was the only visitor I had. Anne was over from the States once and she asked for a visiting order, and in she came in jeans and trainers, a ponytail and a baseball cap, looking all of fifteen years old. All heartbroken brown eyes when she saw me, and I could tell she was scared – I guess she was reminded of her own time in prison – but she had guts, that wee girl, and she didn't judge me even though she thought I'd killed Seamus. I wanted to tell her the truth but you can't burden people with a thing like that, so instead I told her to tell me about how life was treating her, and she filled my head with the warmth of the Californian sun.

When she was going, she said she'd come again before she flew back home, and she said, I'll come as Mitzeee next time if you like. Give them something to talk about. And she gave me a smile and a wink, and when she came back two weeks later her heels were sky high and so was her hemline, and there wasn't a pair of eyes that wasn't on her. She gave me a kiss right on the mouth, and she did that thing girls do where they wipe their lipstick off your lips with their thumb, and Jesus, everyone – inmates, wardens, even the fucking governor – looked at me a whole new way after that.

Like I said, I had no reason to want to return to the village, and plenty to keep me away. I'd have to look elsewhere for some kind of work, and it wasn't as if someone with my record was likely to walk into employment, so I racked my brain for anyone I knew who might be able to help. The only one I could come up with who wasn't knee deep in the underworld was someone I knew from way back.

Deborah had worked for me – or I should say with me, as we both worked for Danny Houston – in the club I ran in Liverpool back in the day. Her job was to be the legitimate face of the business, and god love her, the worst she ever did was turn a blind eye to what really went on. The club had been sold off after Houston was found floating, and I'd heard that Deborah had bought it and relaunched it. I'd kept my ears open at the time, and the word was that the place was off the circuit: the kind of people I used to do business with no longer did business there. It was clean.

I drove up one afternoon when Steven was out doing a shift in the restaurant. I didn't even know if Deborah still ran the place, but as soon as I walked into it I could tell. She'd got it all set up to be some kind of café during the day, just like she'd always wanted. It was busy, but I heard her laugh and then I saw her there standing talking to a bunch of people at one of the tables. I waited for her to see me.

Fair play to her, she wiped the shock off her face pretty fast.

"Brendan... Come and sit down, love."

She found us a table in a booth, and she got us a coffee.

"You ain't changed, Deborah."

"Yeah, right. You always did have the chat, Brendan. Got my fiftieth coming up, haven't I."

"Well, you're looking good on it. How's the family?"

"They're really good, last one's left home now. Your boys doing okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, think so. I ain't seen them, but..."

"I heard about your trouble, Brendan."

Good. Smalltalk was over.

I picked her brains about her kind of circles. I told her I didn't want to get into conversations with the people in my old circles, because I needed to stay legit now. I told her I'd cleaned up my act even before I got arrested, but my past had come back to haunt me.

"I know I can do it, Deborah, you know? I got a second chance now, and I'm not gonna blow it."

"You seem different, Brendan. Not just the beard. It's been ages, maybe that's all it is."

We hadn't seen each other since the day I'd called in to see her when I first moved over from Belfast to stay with Cheryl.

"Five years," I said. "Lot's happened since then. I've gone straight, for one."

"Straight? That's not what I heard." She was smiling.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. You know how you hear things."

"Really." I gulped at my coffee.

"Course it's obvious now, when I think back. I mean, I never heard you'd tried it on with any of the barmaids, and I just thought it was because you were a gentleman, only I did used to wonder about one of the boys, you know, little – "

"Anyhow, so if..."

"Sorry. Yeah, if I hear of anyone wanting a manager – I'll put a word in for you and I'll give you a call."

"Thanks, sweetheart, I appreciate it."

We exchanged numbers and she walked with me to my car.

"So Brendan, have you got somebody... you know, someone at home waiting for you?"

"I have, yeah."

"You didn't waste much time did you? Or is it someone from before you went away?"

"It's... He is someone from before."

"Sounds like a keeper, if he's stuck around knowing all's you've done."

"Yeah. Yeah, he is."

:::::::

We were in bed.

"Steven, you know what I said about... about when I talked to someone in prison about my dad and all?"

"A counsellor, yeah."

"It wasn't just a counsellor, it was a psychiatrist."

I waited but he didn't say anything. I switched on the bedside lamp and looked at him.

"As long as it helped," he said. "Did it help?"

"Yeah, it helped. I had counselling too though, Steven, okay? Anger management, like you had. I asked for it, I had to keep on asking till they gave it to me."

"Good." Steven kissed me on the cheek.

"I just wanted you to know."

"Okay." He paused, and then he said, "Will you turn the light off please?"

I did as he asked. I thought he'd had enough talking and wanted to get to sleep.

"Night, then."

"Brendan?" It was that intonation again, like he had something to ask or something to say.

"What is it?"

"You know my mum died?"

"Yeah. Yeah, Chez told me. Cancer, she said – she said you had her home here at the end. That was..." I remembered the nasty little woman who took my money to stay away from her son. "That was good of you."

"It weren't." His voice was small and tight, and I realised he'd asked me to turn off the light because he didn't want me to see him while he was saying whatever he was going to say. "It weren't good of me, and it weren't... it weren't cancer that killed her."

"What are you talking about, Steven?" I turned to him and tried to make out his features but it was too dark. I kissed his bare shoulder.

"I mean, she had cancer, yeah, but I done it. I killed her, Brendan. She asked me to, and I done it."

"What you saying? You saying you... you helped her, yeah?"

"Yeah. Yeah. She weren't strong enough, see, and she couldn't stand being alive any more, and she begged me, right, and I didn't know what to do."

Jesus. He'd had all this to face on his own. All this was in his head now, and always would be, and I hadn't been there to save him from it.

"Steven – "

"If you'd been here, Brendan..." He was raging, and then he was crying. "If you'd been here, you would'a known what to do, you could'a told me what to do, but you weren't here, and I done it. I killed my mum."

"I'm sorry." I got hold of him and I pulled him into my arms, even though he fought me. "I wish I'd been here, Steven. I wish I'd been here when you needed me. I never would'a let you do it."

"You think I was wrong?" There was panic in his voice, and his breaths were coming out in sobs. "You think I shouldn'a done it, you think I'm a – "

"No. No, baby. I would'a done it for you."