by Anna Bloom
He drops my hand, stepping forward and pulling the rounded figure of his mammy into his arms, squeezing her tight. "Sorry about the short notice, Mam, Sophia," he motions to where I’m exposed, all eyes on me, "needed some help."
A throat clearing cough pulls my attention from the dominating force of Blake’s mum. A guy, younger than Blake, perhaps by a couple of years, pushes a paper across the battered kitchen table.
Blake groans and snatches it, crumpling it under his arm, but it’s too late. I see the headline in its bold print. SOPHIA FALLS OFF THE WAGON.
I snatch the paper, wrestling it from Blake’s grasp, causing a snort from around the table. The grainy image shows me being lifted into a car, my state of wellbeing clearly on the inebriated side. How did someone get a picture of me leaving Johnny’s? How did anyone know I was there?
You can’t see Blake’s face, but mine is all too obvious. Blake spins for the guy who I assume due to his muted similarity to Blake, is his younger brother. "Good one, Shayne. Sometimes you are such a dick."
With a cracking slap, Blake’s mum smacks Blake around the back of his head. "No foul language in my kitchen." Holy crap.
Blake pulls a face which in all honesty is probably the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen, all scowling broodiness and wounded soldier, and Shayne smirks.
"I’m Bernie." Blake’s mum introduces herself while Blake rubs the back of his head with his palm, muttering under his breath. "There will be no drink or drugs in my house, is that clear?"
Well that’s blunt. I flush and stutter. "Oh no, I’m clean. I’ve just got my ninety-day sober badge." Her eyes fall with emphasis on the paper clutched in my hand. "Uh, I was drugged. I, I, didn’t do it on purpose." Oh God, I’m lying to the woman, this is disastrous. A burn of shame rips through me: shame for the lie, shame for the fact I fell off the wagon in the first place. Raising desperate eyes to Blake, I find his unfathomable gaze watching my face.
"That’s enough," he snaps and even I’m shocked at the commanding tone he holds in his voice. Hell, I thought I was the only one who he bosses around. Apparently not. "Sophia, I will introduce you to this rabble later when they’ve remembered their manners." His tone softens. "I’ll show you to my room, you must be exhausted."
Bernie folds her arms across her chest. This woman is a force to be reckoned with. Her disapproval rolls off her in visible waves. "I’ve put her in your room. You," she sends Blake a pointed look, "are in the outhouse."
Blake’s mouth falls open before he can school his expression to hide his gall. His siblings, or whoever the gaggle is sitting around the table, twist their head between Blake and his mother as if they are at Wimbledon watching the final on Centre Court. "Sophia, would you mind waiting in the hallway for a moment, then I’ll show you the way?"
"Uh, sure," There’s not much else for me to add. I walk out the kitchen like a naughty child.
I’m only stood there for a moment, my hands thrust into my tracksuit pants, staring at a framed hand drawn crayon masterpiece and listening to muffled hisses from the other side of the door, before he comes storming out, his face as black as night. "Looks like you are in my old room."
I snort a bubble of laughter and squeeze his elbow. "Your old room is fine," I assure him.
"Hm." Is the only response I receive.
"This is where you grew up?" I turn slowly, taking in the white walls and black blind. There's nothing here: no keepsakes, no photo’s, no trophies.
"Yep." His face softens and a fleeting smile chases across his face. "It’s spectacularly boring, isn’t it?"
I give a negative shake of my head. "No, it’s just I always thought my upbringing was nondescript, in and out of hotels, condo’s changing with every film set," I sigh, "but I wasn’t the only one."
His weighted gaze meets my eyes then my mouth, and he shifts uneasily from one foot to the other, rubbing his jaw with his hand. "Thing is, Soph, my upbringing was a long time ago."
I roll my eyes. "Are you still stuck on the age thing?"
He turns me for the bed. "When you were born that bed was a single, and I was sleeping in it as an eight-year-old boy."
I shake my head, twisting in his arms. "Eight years is nothing. You forget I’ve grown up in Hollywood where anything goes."
His hands slide along my skin until they rest on my shoulders. "I grew up in Wales, where things like age are never forgotten."
I kiss him. Just like that. I lift onto my toes and press my lips against his. A gentle press of my mouth, chaste and sweet. He groans, tying me into his arms, pressing me into his chest, his mouth opening and fitting with mine in a heated response.
We are all tongues, teeth and murmured sighs. Blake kisses like nothing I’ve ever known. It’s a sonnet. Equal parts hard and softness. Half exploration, half reciprocation. It’s a dance of the sweetest, slowest kind. When he sucks my lower lip between his teeth, I groan a feral growl, and a ferocious burn explodes in my chest. Flourishing into a wild fire, it spreads to my toes when his teeth graze the sensitive skin of my inner lip. I clench my thighs together hoping it will dissipate the heat pooling there but it only makes it worse.
"Blake," I whisper his name, lowering my mouth to his neck. He tastes faintly of soap, hot skin and travel. It does crazy things to the fire in the pit of my belly, stoking and fuelling it until I’m burning like a firework on Guy Fawkes night.
His gaze lifts to mine, but it’s blurred and distorted with desire.
Understanding ripples through me in waves. He wants me, just as much as I want him. I press myself closer until I can feel the firm outline of his arousal digging into my hip.
A sharp thump hits the ceiling and we jump.
"Fucking hell." He sighs, a ragged edge underlining his exclamation as he drags himself away from my grasp. "Do you want to tidy up or anything?" He waves at my tracksuit. "Then I think we should do the proper introductions, Amanda won’t forgive me otherwise."
"Your sister?"
Reaching forward, his thumb sweeps over my lip. I think it’s a highly erotic move until I realise he’s wiping away a smear of post kissing drool. "It’s been a battle to stop her visiting LA. Well, not this time, but you know, before."
"She could have come." It would have been nice to have a girl my own age around.
Blake chuckles. "Not a chance. She would have let slip all my secrets, would have ruined my bodyguard street cred."
I smack him lightly on the chest, my hand meeting a solid surface. "You know all my secrets."
It’s supposed to be a joke. I mean until he left five years ago he knew me better than anyone, yet his face falls. "I don’t know everything, Sophia, but I want to."
He could undress me with his bare hands and it would be less erotic than that statement.
Shaking off whatever thoughts are swirling through that brain of his, he smooths his hands down my shoulders. "Listen, Sophia, I need to tell you something. Explain something."
"Yes?" This looks like the merchant of doom arriving to rain on my snogging parade.
Is he blushing? I peer closer. Yes, he is. I wait as patiently as I can, bouncing softly on the balls of my feet.
"It’s just…"
"Come on, Blake. I’m dying here, spit it out." Okay. Patience isn’t a virtue I hold.
"It’s just it’s been a long time since I had a girlfriend." His eyes flicker to mine."
Girlfriend.
Holy crap. My head!
Girlfriend.
His eyes widen. "No, I’m not assuming anything." He runs a hand through his hair, scattering dark waves until they flick at random angles. "It’s just for me there is a clear line between sex and something more. And it’s not often I do the something more."
Never have I been so speechless. The intensity of his burning dark gaze heats my insides until I’m a swirling pool of lava. I want to run my hands over every firm inch of him, learning the shape of him with my fingertips.
A few long moments pass. We watch and wa
it. Neither of us moving.
Finally, I nod, unsticking my tongue from the dry roof of my mouth. "That makes two of us."
He offers me a smile that borders on the edge of shy and holds his hand out for mine. "Come on, I’ll introduce you to the Hendersons."
I laugh loudly, the intense atmosphere disperses into a fine mist and disappears. "Isn’t that a TV Show, back from the day? Meet the Hendersons?"
"Shut up, Soph."
"Just saying. Actually did you know I got offered the remake once?"
"Sophia?"
"Yes?"
"Shut up."
His mouth crushes onto mine and I groan against his tongue. Try as I might I can’t stop from asking myself what it would be like to have a real boyfriend.
Chapter Twenty
Blake
"Sophia. This is Bernie, my mother," he holds his hand to his mouth and stage whispers, "she’s not the ogre she makes out."
Bernie goes to smack him again, but he jumps out of her reach with a chuckle. Her eyes shine at her son and it does strange things to my tummy. The way things are going my insides will resemble a fruit smoothie very soon.
Bernie reaches for me, her fingers gripping my shoulder, digging in with questionable strength. "I’m sorry about my comment. It’s just this is a clean house, it has to be." Her eyes flicker to Shayne skulking in the background. Where Blake is tall and powerful, but agile in his build, lean and strong; Shayne is a powerhouse. And I know why. He fights his demons at the gym.
Everything becomes crystal clear.
My gaze flickers to Blake, but Bernie continues, "If you’re clean then you are welcome here."
Shayne steps forward, "Annoying younger brother, and family black sheep at your service." He gives a broad wink and Blake hisses an exclamation at my side.
"Hey, former Hollywood golden child and drug addict." I offer my hand and give Shayne’s a shake, his lips curving into a smile come smirk.
He leans over the table, sucking the light out of the room as he moves, throwing the low-ceilinged kitchen into shadows. "What’s your poison, Sophia? Heroin? Crack?"
I flinch at his assessing gaze as it sweeps from the bottom of my feet to the hairline of my braids. Blake shifts until he’s created a wall of muscle between myself and the investigative glance of another addict.
"Ignore him." Blake's teeth lock with a snap and I file away asking what happened between the two of them for another time.
The girl with raven dark hair I saw earlier, springs from her pine kitchen chair and I jump. "Hey," she flings her hands around my neck and squeezes damn tight. This is, interesting. I hold my breath in case she forgets to let go and I never get to breathe again. "Oh my god, you smell delicious, like proper posh."
No one has ever said that to me before—and I’ve had things said over the years, normally by fans who can’t engage their brain when I finally make my way along a line to meet them. I giggle nervously and Blake tuts.
"I knew you would embarrass yourself." He knocks her a gentle punch on the arm which she returns with force. Blake’s gaze slides around the rest of the room, his face guarded. "Where’s Darren?"
I counted heads. There’d been four earlier but now there’s just the three. I hadn’t noticed because Shayne and Blake are so damn big they obscure half the view.
"So, there are four siblings?" This is amazing. I’d have been happy with at least one sibling playmate. Someone there just for me.
Bernie nods, sliding a big brown teapot across the table. I’ve never seen anything quite so ugly—I love it. "Darren’s got his sermon this evening."
I blink at her. "I’m sorry, what?"
"Darren, he’s a rector." She looks at me like I should know this, her gaze flicking towards Blake who keeps his face blank neither looking at her or I.
Some more things become clear. I know nothing about Blake. Nothing. What’s his favourite colour? His favourite meal? What his brothers do for a living… nothing.
Bernie turns. "Ah, I’ve just remembered. We need butter, I’ve run out. Sophia, do you want to go get some from the store?"
I perform another award worthy blank look. If you could win an Oscar for it, I’d be way ahead of the field. "Shop?" It’s quite pathetic really how much my voice wavers over that one nondescript word.
Shop.
I’ve never been to a shop by myself, and not to buy butter of all things.
Shopping is a private viewing at a store, and groceries are delivered.
Bernie’s eyebrow raises in my direction. "You know what a shop is?"
"Mam," Blake interjects, but she holds out her hand.
"And you know what butter is?" she queries, a dart of amusement lighting her face.
I nod. I mean there is butter in the fridge at home. Before my downfall, it was put there by staff or Marty, or back in the old days, Blake himself when he’d make me grilled cheese sandwiches. "Sure, of course I do."
"There’s a fiver on the dresser, nip down the road and grab some, would you love?"
This is a test. I’ve been through enough tests, auditions, interviews in my life to know this one.
I’ve been in the house a whole ten minutes and Blake’s mammy is scoping me out.
Problem is, for the last year, situations like this would send me diving straight for the bottle and already there’s a niggle in my stomach telling me this would all be so much easier if I had something settling my nerves. I thrust the thought away when I meet Blake’s eyes and see the flicker of hesitation there.
He doesn’t want me to go alone to the shop.
Bloody hell. I don’t want to go to the shop alone. Bernie may as well ask me to climb a mountain as a test.
"Sure, it’s fine. Where’s the shop?"
Amanda snorts, clutching her hand over her mouth and Blake knocks her shoulder with gentle fingers. "Don’t take the piss out of the city girl, Amanda." He turns his eyes onto me and offers me a strained tight-lipped smile. "You have two choices leaving the front door. Right will take you to the dairy farm, left will take you to the shop."
I purse my lips. "So, I’m not going to get lost?"
"No," they all chorus. Shayne chortles, his dark eyes transfixed on where I stand, his gaze sweeping my arms. Is he looking for track marks? Before they can laugh at me anymore I grab the fiver off the pine dresser and speed through the front door.
Is Blake going to let me wander about by myself? But then this is only Wales, and no one knows I’m here—we left the psycho with the burning weed and twisted letters behind on the other side of the Atlantic. I caught sight of him as I ducked away, his hands were fisted at his sides, his lips set into that impenetrable line, but he let me go, his eyes focused on the GPS bracelet that connects us once again.
Blake wasn’t lying, there is only left and right outside the front door. The old truck we arrived in is parked with two wheels on the curb and I squish myself through the space on the pavement. The air swims sweetly around tantalising me like it did on the journey. The chill from the airport has lifted and while it isn’t palm tree balmy, it’s pleasant to breathe the clean freshness into my lungs as I turn left and wander down the road.
I don’t have to go far. Houses line the road, terrace dwellings running one into the other, vibrant splashes of colour for front doors. Ten doors down a red sign hangs from a wrought iron bracket announcing it’s the village shop.
I gulp as the sign swings, inviting me in.
It’s ridiculous to be nervous. I’m only buying butter, but then honestly, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been anywhere by myself.
"Af’noon." I jump at the greeting, my cheeks flushing before I’m even fully through the door.
"Hey." I shrink into my travel crinkled tracksuit. I should have got changed before embarking on this butter purchasing adventure.
Behind the counter is the tightest perm I’ve ever seen nestled on the head of a worn faced woman. I didn’t know perming was still a thing, but this lady is rocking i
t. "Err, I’m looking for butter?" I say.
My eyes flit around the store. You’d have trouble swinging a kitten let alone an adult cat.
She jabs her finger at the fridge at the back and I pick my way over cardboard boxes brimming with dusty stock. My phone vibrates in my pocket and I stop mid crammed aisle, sliding it out.
My heart stutters an uneasy beat when I spot the caller and I thumb the red button allowing a shiver of disgust to roll away. I don’t need a conversation with Johnny Fairweather any time soon.
Picking my way to the back of the shop I stop and stare truly stumped when I find a choice of more than one type of butter.
Salted or unsalted.
Shit. Bernie didn’t specify and I’m going to fail the butter buying am I good enough for your son test before I’ve even been in the country a couple of hours.
Salted or unsalted?
I stand staring at the packs of churned milk for longer than they truly deserve.
"You okay, back there?" Perm-haired lady calls.
"Uh, yeah I think."
Checking the prices and totalling it in my head—my home maths tutor would have been so proud—I grab a packet of both and turn back for the queen of the perm who's reading the paper behind her wire-rimmed glasses.
That’s when I see it. Row after row of booze. Beer, cider, whiskey, vodka. All of them. Everything. My eyes zero in on the nondescript red label of the polish vodka.
Maybe it’s the buzz of the drugs lingering in my veins from my crash and burn at Johnny’s, maybe it’s the trauma of meeting Blake’s family but my mouth waters at the thought of the acrid sting of cheap vodka hitting the back of my throat. That buzz. That one mild hit.
Surely, Blake’s family would be easier to manage if I had a little tingle in my veins?