Redemption second chance.., p.1
Redemption: Second Chance Gay Romance (Darkest Skies), page 1
Praise for Garrett Leigh
“Emotional and brilliant…”
All About Romance
“Tastefully erotic … more smart than smutty…”
Publishers Weekly
“Powerful and compelling…”
Foreword Reviews
Redemption
A Darkest Skies Novel
Garrett Leigh
Copyright © 2020 by Garrett Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Edits: Posy Roberts @ Boho Edits
Cover Art: Garrett Leigh @ Black Jazz Design
Proofing: Con Riley, Annabelle Jacobs, Alex Korent
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
PATREON
NEWSLETTER
LUCKY — A Short Excerpt
#BLM - Unsung Heroes of Romance
About the Author
Foreword
For my non-Brit readers, some clarification of the dialogue you’ll read in Redemption. Road men/man, waste men/man, mash men/man are all street talk for gang members, particularly in London and the south east. If someone is “on the road,” they’re in a gang, and/or engaged in gang activity. Perhaps the closest American equivalent is “in the game.” And of course, street language is forever fluid. If you’re reading this ten years after publication, the terminology will have likely moved on.
Also, you may notice there’s no accent on the word cafe. This isn’t a mistake. This is because in working class parts of any British city, particularly in the south, a greasy-spoon breakfast establishment, even if it says cafe on the sign outside, is universally pronounced caff. If you don’t believe me, watch Eastenders.
1
Six years. Seventy-two months. 2190 days.
“That’s it, Pope. You’re done.”
Luis blinked. “That’s it?”
The guard with the kind face nodded. “Through that door and to the gate. Someone will let you out.”
Dazed, Luis took the envelope he was offered and followed the guard’s directions. The corridor was nondescript and smelt of bleach. It’s like a horror film. Someone’s gonna bust me at the other end. But there was no one waiting at the gate. In Luis’s dreams, he’d pictured this moment with a bunch of keys and a surly guard begrudgingly setting him free. In reality, the gate was remotely operated and swung open as he approached.
The dodgy corner of London he’d once called home sprawled out before him. Betting shops, green grocers, empty premises where the Jewish butcher had once been. So familiar, yet so alien that he stopped in his tracks, stone cold, feet rooted to the concrete.
He shoved the envelope in his pocket and took a shuddery breath. Car fumes and the stink of the bins from the fried chicken shop reached him. He closed his eyes, and a deeper breath brought him the scent of the pie shop, despite the fact it had closed down before his trial, and the chip shop that served the best saveloys in town. It smelt like the past, and the future.
Whether he wanted it to or not, it smelt like home.
Luis opened his eyes and swept his gaze from the cracked pavement to the sky. Moss Farm loomed over the streets. Tower blocks, grimy from the day they were built, stood tall in the city, covered in a thousand grubby fingerprints. They cast shadows in every direction, metaphorically, at least, and their ominous gloom caught Luis off guard. Somehow he’d remembered them as something they weren’t. Long, dark nights spent recalling the bright and colourful world he’d left behind. A world that didn’t exist and never had.
Idiot. How had he forgotten this shithole? Grey, dull, and, in this neighbourhood, full of dickheads who’d have his wallet from his pocket if he didn’t keep his head down. Two postcodes south, no fucker would meet his eye without respect. But respect came at a price, and Luis had the discharge grant in his pocket to prove it. Forty-six quid. He tried not to think about the piles of cash he’d left in his old flat. Dante would’ve had it away. Luis’s brother looked out for himself. Prick.
The gate behind Luis swung shut. Metal scraped concrete. He rubbed his left ear as the sound reverberated in his tired brain, merging with the last words the prison doctor had said to him a month before his release. “Don’t forget to register with a GP. They can help you find an otolaryngologist.”
Luis wondered if she realised she’d never told him what she meant, and even if he’d owned a phone, he couldn’t spell the longest word in the world to google it. Probably not. Their meeting had lasted six minutes. One for every year he’d spent behind bars. Six minutes for seventy-two months of incarceration. And you deserved every fucking day of it.
“Come on, Pope. Get moving or we’ll have you back in.”
Startled, Luis glanced over his shoulder. A cluster of screws were eyeballing him from the watch point, laughing, sneering, the things the old Luis—the one who’d roamed the streets, all temper and no common sense—would’ve vaulted the gate to destroy. Prison Luis had learned to rein it in, to play the grey man and hope that life moved on without him.
He turned back to the outside world and stepped forwards with no real idea of where he was going. A housing charity had secured him a bedsit away from his old haunts, but he’d forgotten how to get there. If he’d ever known. It had been a long time since he’d last caught a bus. Counting back the years occupied him as he drifted away from the prison and into town. Some said he’d been lucky to be locked up so close to home, but as he approached the high street, he didn’t feel lucky. Cursed, more like. Walking out to a place he’d never been would’ve meant a fresh start. A clean slate. And a reputation no fucker cared about. Here, every step felt like the life sentence he’d managed to avoid, and his legs felt like lead. The pavement turned to quicksand, dragging him down. Anxiety turned to panic, and the crisp winter air stung his throat.
Winter. Fuck. The last time he’d paid attention it had been high summer. The solitary tree in the exercise yard had been bright green and lush, the only slash of nature among men who’d forgotten how to live, and men who forgot that the seasons changed and in six long years hadn’t bothered to ask the prison for a coat.
Shivering, Luis shifted his bag on his back and wrapped his arms around himself. Maybe the bus would be warm, but first, a trip to the job centre beckoned, followed by a check-in with a probation officer paid too little to give a shit, as long as he kept his nose clean. The few friends he’d made on the inside had told him to give it a couple of days. To get settled, get wasted, and get laid. But what was the point? He hadn’t felt settled since the army men had come to the house on his fifth birthday, and the last person he’d fucked had been a road man, just like him.
He reached absently to the dog tags hanging around his neck, the sole personal possession the prison had handed back that morning. The warm metal against his cold hands grounded him, and he found the will to keep moving.
The job centre was on the high street. Inside, a security guard directed him to the waiting area. He said words, but Luis missed them. He took a seat, wishing he had a phone like everyone around him to pretend he had something to do. Time on his hands meant himself on his mind. Fuck that shit.
A man dropped into the seat beside him.
He smelt of weed and attitude. Luis studied the floor, but the sensation of being watched was hard to ignore. Don’t look. Perhaps if he had, he’d have found the dude minding his own business and not giving a single fuck about Luis’s paranoia. But he didn’t look. He counted breaths, heartbeats, and stains on the carpet until his blood roared in his ears.
Luis sprang to his feet.
He booked it out of the building and crossed the road. New bars and pubs had opened since he’d last been here. He took a step towards one. Stopped. Changed his mind. Bars were crowded with idiots who wanted to fight. Luis didn’t have the spoons for thug life anymore or the ears to cope with the noise.
Despair was like the flu. It crept up with mild symptoms, then impacted like a freight train. Luis’s bag contained nothing but a pair of old jeans, sweatpants, and two T-shirts. It had seemed featherlight when he’d slung it on his back. Suddenly, it weighed a ton, and the bustle of the street boomed in his good ear, rattling his brain.
They’d warned him about this, on the inside. How the world had grown since he’d left it, and it would take time to acclimatise, but as a bus roared past and the market traders shouted above it, Luis couldn’t see how he’d ever get used to this. Noise, colour, life. Inside, he’d craved it, but now he had it in abundance, it scared the shit out of him.
Calm your tits. He had two quid in his pocket, spare change he’d had when he’d bee
His stomach growled. He couldn’t afford the sandwich, but god damn, he needed the tea.
The streets passed in a blur. Luis half expected to find the cafe had been turned into a hipster coffee bar, but it was there, in all its steamed-up window glory. He clutched the door handle like a drowning man. There was a sign on the glass panel, faded and blurred by condensation.
Help Wanted. Apply Within.
If it wasn’t fate, it was the cruellest trick.
The door banged open. Paolo ignored it. If customers wanted his attention, they soon let him know. He kept his gaze on the two dozen rashers of bacon on the grill, flipped them, and cracked eight eggs into the frying pan to his left. Toast was the bane of his life. With a million other things to do, it was often the task that slipped by.
Or went horribly wrong.
The scent of burnt bread reached him. He lunged for the toaster in time to rescue six carbonated squares of Hovis white sliced. “Fuck’s sake.”
Irritation spread through him, adding to the stress of what had already been a shitty day. And it was barely eleven. The lunchtime rush was still to come, and if it went anything like breakfast, it was going to be murder.
He spun around to hurl the bread in the bin. Fresh loaves were stacked on the counter. Consumed by the twelve orders on the pass, Paolo blurred there and back without glancing up, but a lifetime spent serving fry-ups to the good—and bad—people of the neighbourhood had left him attuned to the presence of someone waiting at the counter. “Be with you in a minute, mate.”
No reply was forthcoming. Paolo shook his head. Idiot was probably lost in their phone, oblivious to the world around them like every other knobhead out there. Who’s got time for that shit?
Paolo didn’t. He loaded up a dozen plates, delivered them, and prepared himself to face whoever he’d kept waiting for ten minutes. Have a pop. I dare you.
He expected a tradesman or a hipster from the bank wanting “chai tea” when all Paolo stocked was Tetley, but as he reached the counter and finally looked up at the man flipping through the local rag, the six foot streak of brooding gorgeousness caught him off guard. Wow. This never happened.
Paolo had worked in the family cafe as long as he’d been able to walk and could count on one hand the fit blokes who’d walked in the door and turned his head. It was a sum total of two. Dante Pope and his younger brother Luis, but it had been a long time since either Pope brother had graced the high street. Rumour had it, Dante was running a county lines empire from his tower block apartment on Moss Farm while Luis Pope had been in prison for years. So long, Paolo had assumed he was never getting out and had forgotten all about him.
It’s not him. It can’t be.
But the more Paolo stared at the man at the counter, the harder it was to deny. Luis Pope had aged in the years he’d been gone, but fuck, if it hadn’t made him hotter. Like fine wine, time had chiselled his boyish good looks. His shoulders had broadened, and his hair had grown out. Dark stubble covered his strong jaw, and beneath his thin T-shirt, his torso was a long, rippled line of sinewy strength. He was . . . beautiful. Shame Paolo couldn’t stand him. Fucking waste man. What’s he even doing in here?
There was no way to find out without asking. Paolo wiped his hands on his apron. “What can I get you?”
Luis Pope kept his eyes on the newspaper, full bottom lip caught between his teeth, brows furrowed. Paolo wanted to punch him and rescue his pillowy lip in equal measure.
He settled for rapping his knuckled on the newspaper. “Hello?”
Luis flinched. It was infinitesimal, and his jaw set a split second later, but Paolo saw it and filed it away in the what the fuck section of his brain. Luis Pope didn’t flinch. In his day, a mere mention of his name had sent shivers down the spines of those who’d had cause to fear him. Too busy keeping the family business afloat, Paolo had never been one of them, but the Pope brothers were infamous. Gangsters, road men, whatever. Luis Pope was a name, not a man who startled so easily.
Paolo tried again. “What do you want?”
Luis gaze flicked to the chalkboards above Paolo’s head. “Tea, please.”
“Anything else?”
“A job if you still have it.”
He’d have surprised Paolo less if he’d stripped naked and asked for a hand job. Paolo blinked. “What?”
“The job in the window,” Luis said. “If it’s still available, I’d like to apply.”
“You want to wash dishes and bus tables?”
It was Luis’s turn to blink. Shock coloured his hazel eyes, and a faint flush stained his cheeks. “Yeah, actually. I do, but if the position’s been filled, I’ll just take the tea.”
The position had been vacant for the best part of a month, ever since Paolo’s last staff member had deserted him to go to university. There’d been other applicants, but trial shifts hadn’t gone well. Apparently, Paolo lacked the patience to train anyone to the standard needed to be of any use to him. And, according to the one who’d fled the cafe just yesterday, he was an arsehole.
A desperate arsehole who couldn’t face another day running the cafe alone.
Still, there was a difference between desperate and stupid. However pretty Luis Pope was, he was trouble, always had been. And him asking for a job had to be some kind of sick joke.
Paolo took the two-pound coin Luis had dropped on the counter. “Take a seat. I’ll bring the tea over.”
He backed up without waiting for an answer and turned to the urn to fill an oversized mug with the strong tea the cafe was known for. He loaded the mug and a jug of milk onto a tray and took it to the table Luis had retreated to.
Luis didn’t look up. Paolo dumped his wares on the table and walked away, but Luis’s presence behind him smouldered like embers that could ignite at any moment, and only the stubbornness Paolo had inherited from his Nonna stopped him going back and demanding to know if Luis Pope was taking the royal piss.
The cafe was busy too—too busy for Paolo to waste his time throwing glances at the man hunched over his tea mug. He did it anyway, though, until a crowd of builders came in and fucked up his day. Six rounds of bangers and chips later, he searched out Luis again, but the table by the door was empty.
Luis Pope was gone.
2
“Don’t be so harsh, boy. It doesn’t become you.”
Paolo scowled, but it was hard to maintain it under the stern gaze of his grandfather. The old dude’s mobility was long gone, but Toni remained razor-sharp and was able to school Paolo with a simple frown. “I’m not being harsh. It’s true, he’s a road man. Always has been. I don’t know why he was sniffing round our place, but it can’t be anything good.”
“I can’t remember what a road man is, but if you say it, I believe it. I just think a man deserves a second chance. You said yourself, he’s been gone a long time. Who’s to say he’s the same as he used to be?”
“What’s to say he isn’t?”
“Nothing. But if no one gives him a chance, that will never change. Your father was like that, in trouble for so long it seemed the only way. Perhaps if someone had given him a job when he was willing to ask for one, things might’ve been different.”
The conversation went round in circles and back again to the point where Paolo wished he’d never mentioned Luis Pope, but Toni had always possessed a sixth sense, a nose for when something had got under Paolo’s skin. He’d have dug it out of him eventually.
