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Vargas wanted a clean corridor through the Glass network into the UK; Eddie and Susie wanted his product kept at a polite distance from the weed; they had spent the evening in the smaller drawing room at Halstead going over it line by line. Maps. Figures. Jack had gone out for air. The last of the men had gone. The house had that late, expensive quiet that only came when it was just the two of them.
Eddie stood at the window with his weight off the leg that still remembered the beating. He had not mentioned it in months. He had never mentioned it to Susie.
Susie closed the folder and set it down. For a moment she just looked at the back of his head, at the way he held himself like the room might still turn on him.
“You didn’t come, Susan,” he said, not turning.
She knew at once what he meant. He meant the weeks after Bobby’s men had put him in a ditch with both legs broken and left him to crawl. The weeks she had been with Joe Green while Eddie learned how to stand without an audience.
“I thought about it every day.”
“You were busy.” He turned then. The fire threw half his face into shadow. “With Joe.”
The name sat between them like something they had both previously agreed not to pick up.
“That’s not why.”
Eddie made a small sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “No?”
Susie stayed on her side of the table. Arms folded. The posture she used when the truth was about to cost her.
“I didn’t think you’d want me to see you like that.” Her voice was even.“Laid up. Broken. Because of my father. You would have hated it, Eddie. You would have looked at me and seen pity, or charity, or worse - obligation. And you would have despised both of us for it.”
He looked away, back toward the dark glass.
“I know you,” she said, quieter. “Your pride isn’t decoration. It’s load-bearing. I wasn’t going to walk in there and take it off you while you couldn’t stand up.”
The fire popped. Somewhere in the house a clock marked the hour.
He turned again, met her gaze and she found herself saying the part she had not planned to say.
“And if I had come…” She swallowed. Looked at him properly. “If I had seen you like that - because of him, I would have chosen a side. Right then. I would have chosen you. And I’m not ready to lose my father yet. I’m not. I know that makes me a coward. I know how it all sounds. But it’s the truth.”
The words landed in the room; a confession they both recognised and neither of them named.
Eddie let out a long breath he had been holding. Something in his shoulders dropped. He came around the table slowly and stopped in front of her. He just looked at her careful, grateful.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For saying it.”
She nodded once, tight, as if she had given away more than she could afford.
He did not tell her the rest. That Bella had come. That he had reached for the first person who showed they cared because the one whose opinion actually mattered had stayed away. That if Susie had walked through that door, the last year might have been a different map entirely. He kept that for himself.
Instead he said, “I thought you didn’t care enough to come.”
“I cared too much,” she answered. “That’s the problem.”
On the table the Vargas folder sat closed. Outside the estate was dark. Inside they stayed in the room they always ended up in, partners again, almost something else, still not quite saying the thing that would change the terms forever.
They stayed there a little longer than the deal required, which, for them, was as close as it got.