The Wake-Up Call(77)

No. But can it be my business to check you’re OK?



“No,” I say out loud.

“Why not?”

I narrow my eyes at him, but I’m tingling. I’ve spent all day avoiding that tingle.

“You don’t get to be jealous,” I tell him. “You don’t even like me, Lucas. In fact, I’d say this isn’t about me at all. It’s about another man. It’s a stupid macho possessive thing and it’s a total red flag for me, if you didn’t have enough of those already.”

“I can assure you,” he says, “I am not thinking about Louis right now. I am thinking about you.” His tone is clipped, and his eyes are all darkness. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Why would I let you in?”

He doesn’t answer that. Not as if he doesn’t know, more as if he thinks it’s obvious.

“You’re being completely obnoxious,” I tell him. “We had rules. You’re breaking them.”

“Tell me to leave, then.”

We face off on either side of the threshold. Slowly, slowly, his gaze shifts. Taking me in. My jumper dress, leggings, the woolly socks I slipped on when I got in the door. Back to the neckline of my dress, the only place where I’m showing skin. As he lifts his eyes to meet mine again, I feel like he’s stripped me bare. The tingle is a buzz now, insistent, like the giddy rush of a tequila shot hitting your stomach.

“We said one night,” I say, but even I can hear the lack of conviction in my voice.

“Then I’ll leave,” Lucas says, not moving an inch.

I say nothing. He waits.

“Is that what you want, Izzy?”

It absolutely isn’t. We made those rules for a reason, though. One night felt safe—I could do that without getting hurt. But to give him more than that, this man who drives me mad all day, who goes out of his way to make my life difficult, who laughed when I told him I had feelings for him?

That would be dangerous.

“Tell me to go,” he says, his voice low and rasping as he stands there in my hallway, one step away from coming in.

But I don’t. Despite all the reasons I should, that low hot buzz has set in, and no part of me wants to send Lucas away. I know what it feels like between us now. He’s not just some abstract fantasy. He’s real, and that’s even harder to resist.

I cross the threshold between us and kiss him hard, pulling him inside, letting the door close behind us with a short, sharp slam.



* * *



? ? ? ? ?

He doesn’t stay over, he just . . . doesn’t leave.

We doze for stretches at a time, but the whole night, we’re in bed together. From the moment he crosses into my flat and hitches me up against him, he barely says a word in English. He whispers Portuguese against my stomach, my thighs, the back of my neck, but we don’t talk.

I wake again at seven, lying flat on top of him, my ear pressed to his chest, my legs falling on either side of his. I can’t believe I slept like this—I can’t believe he did. His body is warm beneath mine, but I’m cold—the duvet is on the floor somewhere. I lift my head, resting my chin on his ribcage, looking up at him. He shifts beneath me, and the feeling of his nakedness sends a ripple through me, tired and distant but there.

He opens his eyes and lifts his head to look at me. We say nothing. I wonder if I should feel embarrassed, or shy, but I don’t—I can’t muster the energy.

He rubs my arms. “You’re cold,” he says. His voice is throaty and warm.

I twist to the side, rolling off him, reaching over the edge of the bed for my duvet. He pulls it up for me and makes sure my feet are tucked in. I settle on my side, and he does the same, his hand finding its way back to my hip. That casual touch doesn’t feel strange, which is strange in itself.

“Sorry,” I say, my voice a little hoarse. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

He regards me steadily, brightly lit under the bedroom light we never turned off last night.

“It doesn’t have to be just one night,” he says. “Or just two.”

I can already feel how much I’ll crave him when he’s gone. The idea that I could dial down the desire with a night in bed feels so stupid now that I know his body like this. I know the sounds he makes, the way his hands shift over my skin, the casual confidence with which he drives me crazy.

I should shut this down. It’s a bad idea on so many levels I’ve lost count.

Instead, I say, “We’ll piss each other off so much.”

“Maybe.” His eyebrows twitch. “But we have your rules to help with that.”

“Right, the rules.” I bite my bottom lip. “Yeah. But . . . I think we’d need one more.”

“More rules,” Lucas says. “Oh, good.”

“No talking about the past when we’re together. If we’re fighting, it’ll only get toxic.”

His eyes rove over my face, as though he’s looking for the answer to a question. I turn over, staring up at the ceiling, my body suddenly too warm under the duvet. I mustn’t forget that Lucas has already shown me who he really is. I have to hold on to that.

For an aching moment, I wish I could just phone my mum, tell her that I’ve slept with someone I shouldn’t have, and then let her tell me what to do. Let her protect me from a broken heart. Just give myself one morning off from always fighting to look after myself.