Cursing, I stomped to the passenger door and slung my bag on the seat. “What do you want?” I said roughly. “A lift home?”
“No.”
“Sure about that? Because I’m gonna start thinking you’re the one loitering around every fucking corner.”
“I was in the gym first.”
I closed my eyes and sucked in a breath. When I looked at her again, her taunting sneer made me want to punch something. “Look, I don’t know what you want, and I don’t care, okay? You made it clear there was only one thing I’m good for these days, and I gave you that. What more do you want from me? A repeat performance?”
She said nothing, but her expression flickered infinitesimally.
Fuck.
Cue more staring. Was she serious? Ten years of silence, a chip shop reunion that had made it plain she hated my guts, now she wanted me to make her come again? Was I even awake right now?
The urge to bang my head on the van was strong. I settled for leaning against it and folding my arms. “Be clear. I’m not in the mood to play games.”
Another flicker passed over her delicate features. She stepped closer and trailed a finger down my forearm. “I don’t like you,” she whispered. “And I can’t see a time when that will ever change, but I liked how you made me feel the other night. For a little while, it all went away, you know? I want that again.”
I wished so hard I didn’t know exactly what she meant.
But I did know.
I hadn’t come that night—at least, not with her—but I’d drifted home on a cloud I couldn’t describe, a hazy place where nothing existed except her shuddery cries and her hot breath against my skin. My booze buzz had faded like it had never been there at all and I’d gone to sleep with my dick in my hand and a smile on my face I barely recognised.
Of course, by morning the idiocy of what we’d done had kicked the shit out of me, but I couldn’t deny that I wanted that oblivion again. Craved it. And the fact that she wanted it too?
Yeah. Perhaps I was dreaming after all.
“Did you just pass out?” Mia demanded. “Because if you’re just going to ignore me, I’m done with this conversation.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Conversation? Is that what you’re calling this, ’cause it feels more like a hostage-taking from this end.”
“You want me to leave you alone?”
No. Yes. No. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“What do you want me to say? That I’ll be your fucking booty call while you hate on me the rest of the time?”
“Pretty much.” Mia’s brows were drawn together in a frown I remembered to mean that she didn’t understand herself any more than I did.
Sex had often been that way for her. Sometimes I’d worried I’d never be enough to sate her. She’d always wanted it harder. Faster. Longer. Teenage me thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Adult me was kind of scared. Back then, sleeping with Mia had come with love and affection. With friendship and warmth. She’d been my anchor in sea of fucking pain—my best friend, and the love of my life. Now I couldn’t be sure if she wanted to blow me or punch me in the balls, but an ever-growing part of me didn’t care.
Chapter Eight
Mia
I’d lost my mind. There was no other explanation for me accosting Luke outside the gym and coercing him into being my silent fuck toy. Not that he’d taken much coercion...or had he? It was hard to tell—I didn’t know him anymore.
I barely knew myself.
The phone number he’d scrawled on my arm haunted me, even now, three days after I’d scrubbed it from my skin without noting it down anywhere else. What was wrong with me? Had I really hounded him down for nothing? Or was coming to my senses for the best?
Either way, I hadn’t been to the gym since, and blaming my insane behaviour on a year of celibacy and the rush of exercise-fuelled endorphins was the only thing getting me through.
It helped that Luke seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. After a fortnight of seeing him everywhere, Gus had apparently taken to walking home from work every night.
“Don’t start,” he said. “I’m so over you and him, and you’ve only been back two weeks.”
I had nothing sensible to say. I made him the worst stir-fry in the world for dinner and retreated to my room. It was Saturday night—the eve of my sole lie-in of the week as I didn’t take orders or open the shop on Sundays—and I was bored. Restless. A dangerous thing, as for me, restless equalled reckless. In an effort to distract myself from hunting down Luke’s number, I fished my divorce papers out of the drawer I’d stuffed them in.
Signing them was easy, but letting go of five years of hard work was proving more difficult. Freedom was worth a lot, but my mother had died for everything I’d ever made of myself. Giving it up cut me to the bone.
Gus came upstairs as I was flicking despairingly through the pages.
“I’m going out.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course you are.”
“Don’t be like that. I asked you if you wanted to do something.”
It was true, but I’d refused his offer of company in favour of sulking in my room like a stroppy teenager.
“Is that your divorce stuff?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you ever going to tell me about that?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Who he is. How it started. Why it ended. The usual stuff, chère sœur.”
I sighed. Gus had been pretty good about letting me be, but I couldn’t hold out on him forever. “His name was Laurent. I met him at a dodgy wine bar in Porte d’Orléans when I was looking for cheap premises for my first shop. I was young and stupid, and he promised me everything I’d never had—everything I thought I wanted. But he turned out to be a controlling douchebag, and when he realised I’d figured that out, he drained our bank accounts and ran off with a mutual friend.”
“When was this?”
“A year ago. By then we’d invested in a bigger shop, and I tried to keep it going, but he’d taken so much I had to fold. I came back here with all I had left, thankful I’d stashed some capital in UK accounts he didn’t know about.”
Gus folded his arms and leaned on the door frame, concern clouding the hurt swimming in his dark gaze. “Are you scared of him?”
“What?”
“Come on, Mia. You think I didn’t see your face when this envelope turned up? Or the way you jump every time the shop door opens? I know you’re dancing around Luke, but I’ve never seen you on edge like this.”
“I’m not on edge.”
“Mia.”
“I’m not,” I snapped, before it occurred to me that Gus wasn’t as easily persuaded by me shouting as he’d been five years ago. “It’s just—I don’t know. He was a weird guy, okay? I can’t explain it... It’s just—”
I stopped and tried to find words to describe the handsome stranger who’d charmed me so absolutely back then. “Laurent always gets what he wants. And he doesn’t like decisions being taken out of his hands. He’s divorcing me so I don’t get to divorce him, but even though he’s rinsing me for everything we had together, it feels too easy. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Saying it out loud brought a clarity I’d been missing. I’d been so busy—and distracted—that I’d let my failed marriage fade into the background, but my garbled explanation made more sense than I’d anticipated.
Gus ventured farther into the room and sat on the edge of my bed. “What are you actually worried about? That he’ll turn up here and hurt you?”
I started to shake my head, but the lie wouldn’t come. My marriage had ended violently on both sides, but Laurent’s last words to me had echoed in my head ever since. “Don’t ever try to be happy.” I was a long way from happy, but
the fact that he’d known my whereabouts a week after I’d left Paris still weirded me out.
The divorce papers were heavy in my lap. I took the pen I’d been staring at all night and quickly scribbled my name on the final page before stuffing them back into the envelope. “I don’t think he’d come here and hurt me, but I want him out of my life for good.”
Gus nodded. “Want me to post that shit for you?”
I hesitated only a moment before passing him the envelope. “Please.”
We weren’t twins, but the deep sibling connection we’d always shared seemed to tell Gus I needed those papers out of my sight right now, even though they couldn’t go anywhere until Monday morning.
He disappeared. A moment later, the front door slammed. I assumed he was gone for the night unless he’d decided to stash my pathetic attempt at adulthood behind the wheelie bins.
I flopped back onto my bed, stretching out, trying to sleep. My foot nudged something hard. I considered kicking it to the floor, but curiosity got the better of me. I sat up. My gaze fell on Gus’s phone. It must’ve slipped from his pocket.
Don’t. But I picked it up anyway and quickly typed in an educated guess of his passcode. My mother’s date of birth activated the screen and it took two beats of my stampeding heart to locate the phone number I’d scoured from my skin.
Downstairs, the front door opened and Gus’s footsteps pounded on the varnished staircase. I made a ninja like grab for my own phone and snapped a photo of Gus’s screen. Then I shut his phone down, tossed it on the floor, and lay back down.
He burst through the door a split second later. “Must’ve dropped my phone.”
I gave him a bland look as he bent to retrieve it. “Are you off out now?”
“Yeah, but I can stay if you—”
“Go,” I cut him off. “I’m gonna have a bath and go to bed.”
“You sure? I’ll be back later, but I don’t have to—”
I threw a pillow at him. He caught it, took the hint, and tossed it back before he left all over again.
Buzzing with a sudden energy that made my knees tremble, I sat up and retrieved my phone from the bedside table. Luke’s number jumped out at me and indelibly imprinted on my brain. I opened WhatsApp and tapped out a message without stopping to make sense of what I was doing.
Mia: hi
Chapter Nine
Luke
Unknown: hi
It was her. It had to be. The profile picture was a single white rose—the same rose she’d brought to my father’s funeral—but what the actual fuck was I supposed to do with that? Even teenage Mia had rarely texted me just to say hello, and in the three days since I’d last seen her, I’d almost convinced myself our car park encounter had been a sweat-induced hallucination.
The fucked-up alternative was I’d agreed to be an on-tap booty call for my ex, and the decent man in me ignored the message. Turned his phone off for the night and shoved it into a drawer.
But I wasn’t a decent man, not when it came to her. Because I wanted her—craved her—like no one before her or since, and I remained transfixed by the single word gracing my phone screen.
I saved the number and tapped out an eloquent reply.
Luke: hey
Mia: wasn’t sure you’d talk to me
Luke: why?
Mia: does it matter?
Luke: depends what you want
Mia: you know what I want
Did I? I’d replayed our exchange a hundred times, mainly in the shower with my dick in my hand, but each time I’d come away with a healthy dose of doubt. She wanted me to make her come when she could have any bloke she wanted?
But that’s always been true.
Right?
God, I had no fucking idea anymore.
Luke: now?
Mia: yes
My pulse quickened. Heat rippled through me and my thumbs flew over the screen.
Luke: where?
Mia: your place
My place. A statement, not a question, and fuck if it didn’t make my blood run hotter. I glanced around the downstairs of my house. It was cool and dark, the way I liked it. The quiet bachelor pad I’d dreamed of when my privacy had been limited to a threadbare curtain pulled around my bunk. Even letting my mum over the threshold sometimes seemed like Armageddon to my self-induced solitude. Could I handle Mia here?
There was only one way to find out.
Luke: 21 manor road
Luke: don’t walk
Mia: I’ve got a car, fool
I laughed, the sound unnaturally loud in my empty house and bordering on hysterical.
What the hell am I doing?
* * *
I was no closer to figuring it out when a light tap sounded on my back door twenty minutes later.
She was waiting in the shadows, damp hair combed back from her face.
I stepped aside to let her pass. “Sneaking in?”
“No, I just remembered your lot had a thing about front doors.”
My lot. As if that explained my batshit family. “That was my dad. My mum uses her front door now.”
“Does she? That’s nice.” Mia spun a slow circle in my kitchen. “This place is spotless. Do you even live here?”
“Define living.”
She smirked. “I might not like the answer.”
“Do you want a drink?”
“No.”
I beckoned her out of the kitchen and into the living room. The muted TV was the only light and seemed to soften her sharp edges. Her gaze fell on the couch and the book I’d abandoned to thirst after her.
“Still a nerd? That’s a Daley thing too.”
“If you say so.”
“And you still like sitting around in the dark?”
“I like the quiet. It means a lot when you haven’t had it for a long time.”
“Sailor life not all you dreamed of?”
I bit my tongue. If she’d come here for a fight, she’d leave disappointed. I’d never escape the guilt that I’d hurt her, but it was too late to fix it. Too late to explain that leaving her behind had almost killed me.
“Come on, son. Back up from the edge. Whatever it is, it ain’t worth drowning yourself over.”
Mia stepped closer to me, her blond hair glittering in the faint glow from the TV. “Sorry. I didn’t come here to talk.”
“I know. You wanna go upstairs?”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
I spun around, trusting she’d follow, and jogged upstairs. One of the pros of being a neat freak was that I didn’t have to worry that my bedroom would be a hovel. It was exactly as I’d left it that morning—bed made, clean clothes folded in a basket. Light from a nearby lamppost streamed through the open curtains. The urge to shut them and cloak us in shadows again was strong, but I beat it back and moved the laundry basket to the floor.
Mia appeared behind me and ducked under my arm. She padded silently around the bed—she’d left her shoes downstairs. “Did my brother paint your walls?”
“What makes you ask that?”
She pointed to the window frame. “He missed the same bit on the window he replaced in the shop.”
“Well, you know Gus. Always in a hurry, except when he’s not.”
Mia shot me a look I couldn’t quite decipher in the dark. Was she gonna push me on this? Because I wasn’t in the mood to admit that the thought of her precious fucking shop being an easy target for even the worst burglars in town had kept me up at night until I’d done something about it. She’d come here to get off, and the longer I watched her prowl around my bedroom, the more eager I was to oblige.
I stepped forward in the same instant she came to a stop. She was so close I could smell her, feel the warmth of her body seeping into mine.
“Don’t kiss m
e,” she whispered.
I licked my lips. “I won’t.”
A heartbeat passed between us, then she reached for the hem of the worn T-shirt I favoured for slobbing around the house, and lifted it over my head.
Bare to her for the first time in a decade, I stared, swallowed thickly, then reached for her, dragging my hands over her sinewy shoulders and to her chest, my fingers swiftly popping the buttons of the oversized man’s shirt she wore.
Irrational jealousy licked through me, even as I told myself it probably belonged to Gus, but it faded as the shirt slipped away and my gaze fell on Mia’s breasts, barely contained in a tiny white bra.
I’d always had a thing for white lace and her fair complexion. An obsession. Did she remember? Or had she been wearing underwear like this the entire ten years we’d been apart?
More jealousy ramped through me. I squeezed her shoulders a little too hard and tugged her closer. She stumbled, steadying herself with her fist on my chest, glaring, but the fire in her eyes wasn’t anger. She wanted this. She wanted me.
Or at least what I could give her.
My hands slid down her arms as I edged her towards the bed. I couldn’t seem to break eye contact, like I was afraid the permission to touch her would expire the moment I looked away, and I craved the sensation of her mouth on mine.
But I didn’t kiss her—not on the lips. Instead I trailed soft kisses down her neck, along her clavicle, and lower until I reached the lacy edge of her bra.
I shoved the delicate fabric aside. My thumbs seemed rough on her silky skin, but I couldn’t contain the increasing urgency in my touch. Mia gasped and her soft fingers dug into my shoulders. I took her nipple into my mouth and a shuddery moan escaped her, taking me instantly back to Gus’s kitchen when she’d come on my fingers. God, I loved making her come. I’d missed making her come. There’d been others over the years, but no one like her.
My heart had forgotten how it felt to be near her, and it raced now, thumping against my ribcage as I worshipped her beautiful chest. Arousal rocketed through me, and it was all I could do not to throw her down and fucking ravage her.
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