Chapter 171. Sabatine’s Fear

The confession hung in the air of the Shoreditch penthouse like a permanent, beautiful change in pressure. They had held each other until the city’s lights began to bleach into the grey-pink of dawn, until their tears had dried into salt-tracks on each other’s skin. They had eventually, wordlessly, moved to the large, low bed in the other room, falling into it not in passion, but in exhausted, tangled solace. Sleep had come, deep and dreamless, a healing void.

Sabatine woke first. The room was bathed in the flat, directionless light of a London morning filtered through haze. Anton was asleep beside him, one arm thrown across Sabatine’s chest, his face relaxed, peaceful in a way Sabatine had rarely seen. The sharp lines of anxiety were smoothed away. He looked young. He looked trusting.

And Sabatine looked at him, and felt a terror so absolute it froze the air in his lungs.

It wasn’t fear of Anton. It wasn’t fear of the enemies still lurking. It was fear of the thing growing inside his own chest, a wild, tender, voracious vine that had taken root in the cracked stone of his heart. Love.

Love had never been part of the plan. The plan had been survival. Atonement. A slow, solitary penance for a ghost of a man. He knew how to be a soldier, an investigator, a shadow. He knew how to want, in the sharp, physical way he’d wanted Anton from the start. But this… this was a different country. This was a surrender of his entire, carefully constructed, self-sufficient universe. Anton’s love wasn’t a lifeline; it was a gravitational pull, threatening to drag Sabatine into an orbit where he was no longer a solitary satellite, but part of a binary system.

His whole life had been built on the principle of being disposable. In the military, he was a tool. As an investigator, he was hired as a lens. Even his guilt was a solitary burden. To be loved so completely, so essentially, as Anton had declared… It made him indispensable. It made him a foundation. And foundations, in Sabatine’s experience, were what got blown up first.

He carefully, slowly, extracted himself from Anton’s embrace. Anton murmured in his sleep, his hand searching for a moment before stilling. Sabatine stood beside the bed, looking down at him. The love was there, a physical ache in his ribs. But alongside it now pulsed a primal, panicked need for distance. Not from Anton, but from the terrifying vulnerability of needing him back.

He dressed silently in the clothes from the day before, feeling the ghost of the bunker, of the chase, on the fabric. He needed air that wasn’t shared. He needed the anonymity of the city, the noise to drown out the roaring in his own head.

He scribbled a note on a scrap of paper from the kitchenette, his handwriting jagged. ‘Need to think. Back soon. -S’ It was cowardly. It was necessary.

He bypassed the building’s main entrance, finding a service stair that led to a loading dock in an alley. The cool, damp air hit him like a slap. He turned up the collar of his jacket and started walking, with no destination, just motion.

London on a weekday morning was a tide of purpose. Commuters flowed around him like water around a stone. He was invisible again, just another man in a dark jacket with a haunted look. It was a familiar, almost comforting state. This was his natural habitat: the crowd, the grey, the moving-forward with no one expecting anything of him.

But peace wouldn’t come. Every reflective shop window showed him not a ghost, but a man loved by Anton Rogers. Every passing face seemed to ask, What are you running from?

He wasn’t running from Anton. He was running from the reflection in Anton’s eyes. The reflection of a man who was worthy, who was a keystone. It was a lie. A beautiful, seductive lie. He was damaged goods. A man who got people killed. A man who built perfect lies for a living. Sooner or later, Anton would see the cracks, would see the rot underneath the reinforced steel. And when he did, the love would curdle into pity, or worse, regret. The fall from that height would shatter what was left of him.

He found himself on the Millennium Bridge, the Thames a sluggish grey ribbon below. The wind was sharper here, cutting through his jacket. He stopped in the middle, gripping the cold railing, watching the water. This is what he understood: currents, depths, hidden dangers. Not this… this domestic, terrifying peace of a shared bed.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He knew who it was without looking. He let it go to voicemail. A minute later, it buzzed again. A text.

Anton: I’m not worried. Take the time you need. But now that I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. However long it takes.

The words were a balm and a brand. However long it takes. Anton understood. He saw the flight for what it was—not rejection, but panic. And his response wasn’t pursuit, but a patient, unwavering declaration of presence.

It made Sabatine want to weep. It made him want to run faster.

Because that was the most terrifying part. Anton would wait. He would endure Sabatine’s fear, his ghosts, his inevitable failures. He would love him through it. And that kind of steadfast love was a debt Sabatine wasn’t sure he could ever repay. He’d spent his life balancing ledgers of guilt and atonement. This was a ledger with only one side—a bottomless column of grace being deposited in his name. It was overwhelming.

A memory surfaced, unbidden. From the cottage in Cornwall. Anton’s voice, rough with exhaustion: “You are a tested thing. A proven thing. Every scar… is a stress-test you survived.”

He had said Sabatine didn’t need to be a pristine pillar. He could be reinforced steel.

Was this the next test? Not surviving gunfire or lies, but surviving love? Letting it reinforce him instead of fearing it would be the flaw that made him buckle?

He thought of Anton asleep in the penthouse, trusting him to come back. He thought of Anton in the boardroom, betting his empire on him. He thought of Anton in the elevator, kissing him like it was the end and the beginning of the world.

Love wasn’t in the plan. But neither was Anton. Neither was any of this. The plan had been a slow suicide by solitude. Anton had offered him a life. A messy, dangerous, spectacularly vulnerable life.

His phone buzzed again. Not Anton this time. Leon.

Leon: Cho family settled in New Zealand. Safe. Cross’s jet landed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Lost visual. He’s in the wind, but he’s wounded. The fight’s not over, but we have the high ground. Come home when you’re ready. He needs you. And, for what it’s worth… you need this too.

Come home.

The word struck him with the force of a physical blow. Home. It wasn’t a place. It was a person. It was the man in the bed in Shoreditch, who loved him enough to let him run, and loved him enough to wait.

Sabatine pushed off the railing. The wind whipped at him, but he straightened his shoulders. He was a soldier. He assessed threats. The greatest threat to his survival now wasn’t out there in Bishkek or in a boardroom. It was here, in his own chest—the fear of accepting the very thing that could make him stronger than he’d ever been.

He turned his back on the river and started walking, not away, but with a new, deliberate purpose. He wasn’t running from the depth of what he felt. He was walking into it. Because survival was no longer enough. Anton had shown him that. Survival was for ghosts. He wanted a life. And that meant facing the terrifying, glorious prospect of being loved, and of loving in return.

He didn’t know how to do it. He would probably fail at it, spectacularly, often. But for the first time, the thought of failing with Anton, of being caught when he fell, didn’t seem like a weakness. It seemed like the only strength worth having.

He picked up his pace, the city’s flow now parting for him as he moved with intent. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. But it was no longer the master. It was just a passenger. And he was going home.

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