An Unnatural Vice (Sins of the Cities, #2)

by K.J. Charles

Lazarus gave a kind and patient smile that belonged on his face much as a spider belonged on an iced cake.

“There are other kinds of desperation. You clearly have no idea of what it is like to experience loss or grief or you could not do this.” “Amazing,” Lazarus said. “Absolutely amazing.” “What is?” “Your conviction that nobody else has ever felt such pain, that nobody else has ever lost anything, that people around us aren’t dying every day.”

He wasn’t sorry for the man. Nathaniel Roy didn’t need his sympathy and wasn’t going to get it. It was only that Justin had meant to punch him in the gut but, as in a nightmare, he’d found blades in his hands when he did it.

“Oh for pity’s sake. Give me your hand.” Nathaniel raised a brow. Justin raised both of his. “This is a demonstration. Don’t flatter yourself.” “Ask nicely.” “Go fuck yourself. Do me the favour of extending your palm.”

“That’s when it’s unbearable, you see. When the storm recedes and you can think clearly again, and you realise that now you have to live out the rest of your life without them, that everything’s changed and it can never be mended. That’s when it’s hard.”

Maybe I’m just tired of you pretending half of me doesn’t exist so you can fuck the rest.”

I know you. I despise you and admire you and want you. Is that the honesty you need?”

“He wrote ‘A Night in a Workhouse,’ about the conditions in workhouses. Have you not read it?” “I don’t need to read about conditions in workhouses,” Justin said. “I was born in one.” That stopped Nathaniel. He read, agitated, voted, and wrote about the suffering of the poor; he cared about it; but it was not his world. It was a world he observed and felt pleased to know something about. It gave him satisfaction to make others understand a little more, or to offer support, financial or otherwise. He’d never lived it.

“Look at yourself, man. You are on your knees; does it make it any better that you put yourself there?” “Yes,” Justin said. “And you wouldn’t ask that if you’d tried the other.”

“You asked me for shelter. Will you believe that you can have it at any time, for the asking? No; you don’t have to ask. Just come to my door.”

“Jolly good,” Justin said, carefully not throwing a plate at him.

“Oh, princeling, I wish I had another name to give you. I wish I could say I was someone else underneath, but I’m not.” “I wish you understood I don’t want someone else.”

I see the man you could be because it’s part of the man you are. I don’t ask you to change anything for my sake, but I wish you would do it for your own, because I think you will tear yourself apart if you don’t.

I know who you are. I’ve seen you at your worst and at your weakest, and all I can think is that your best will be something to behold.

Nathaniel stepped forward, pulling him in, holding Justin hard. His arms had never felt stronger. Justin had never felt weaker.

He had not imagined that standing amid the shattered ruins of a life would feel like this, like safety.

He hadn’t planned anything of what had just happened; he couldn’t have done it if he’d stopped to think. He hadn’t stopped, because the sight of Justin stroking Sukey’s hair so gently, whispering reassurance, and the way the girls had clung to him with such unquestioning faith, had done something deep and painful to his heart that he thought would leave a mark forever.

Justin was a damaged man, with a tangled mess of pride, ruthlessness, obstinacy, and resentment grown like brambles around his heart and soul. This would never be easy. But it would never be flat and tedious and deathly either, as life had been for so long. And it would be worth every scratch and gouge for those precious moments when the brambles parted, letting him through.

Needing him, and knowing he needed him, and very nearly unafraid to admit it.