“Mm,” he says with a small, slow smile. “I know.”
“Can I ask you about something?” I run my nails lightly back and forth across his forearm.
He watches my hand. “Of course. Anything.”
“Your ex. Camila.”
He stays still. I slide my hand back to lace my fingers through his.
“I’m listening now. Will you tell me about what happened with her?”
“It’s nothing big,” he says, and his eyes flick up to my face as I shake my head.
“I think maybe it is.”
“She just . . . It was my fault, really. I found it difficult to open up to her. She read it as lack of feeling.” He shrugs. “Lots of people see me that way.”
Including me, for the last year. I swallow, my throat suddenly dry.
“But actually, you feel big,” I say, lifting my hand to his chest. “But it’s all stuck in there. Right?”
He snorts lightly but doesn’t deny it.
“And she cheated on you?”
“Yes. That’s how it ended. She said, You don’t have a heart, so don’t tell me I broke it.”
I inhale sharply. Not because it’s cruel—though it is—but because I could imagine myself having said it once. Lucas can seem heartless: he’s so logical, and so inscrutable, and so bloody muscly, and for some reason all those things in combination read as a certain kind of guy. The uptight robot-man. The guy you sleep with but nothing more, because that’s all he’s got to give you.
But Lucas is the man who makes Ruby Hedgers laugh until she snorts. He’s the man who heard my Christmas plans and said, I know what it feels like to be away from your family at Christmas, because he understood that my friends are my family now. He’s made my blood boil, and my body burn, but he’s also made me laugh and challenge myself and have real fun. He is a hell of a lot more than he looks.
“Deep down, I think you’re all heart,” I whisper, shifting closer.
He gives me a small smile at that.
“And I get that it’s made you a little prickly about cheating. But I do need you to trust me. Even if I’m chatting with a guy.” I laugh as he winces. “Lucas.”
“Yes, I know. I do trust you. I do. I’m sorry.”
“And I know I’ve jumped to conclusions more times than I can count in the last year—I’ve always assumed the worst of you,” I say, looking down at our twined hands. “I was horrible when you told me about your hotel management course, and then when you tried to open up about Camila . . . I just couldn’t fit it together with the guy I was so sure you were. It freaked me out that you were . . . I don’t know. I needed you to be a dickhead, so that I could stop myself from falling in love with you. But you kept being lovely and interesting.”
He squeezes my hand for a moment and then lets go, letting me explore him, my fingers tracing up to his elbow, his bicep.
“I promise to think the best of you from this moment on. To ask you, if I think you’ve done something hurtful. I promise never to be unkind.” I smile slightly. “Though I kind of like that you’ve seen that side of me. The worst of me. People tend to think I’m super nice, and I do try to be, obviously, but . . . Sometimes everyone’s a bit of a bitch, aren’t they? I get a bit exhausted trying to keep it up nonstop without ever slipping up and swearing at bad drivers or complaining about guests, you know?”
“Ah, yes,” Lucas says, and his bicep flexes under my palm. “Angelic Izzy. I never thought you were that, by the way. Not even when you were nice to me.”
I laugh. “No?”
“No. You have . . .” He reaches for my other hand, the one that isn’t working its way over the muscles of his arm, and pulls me closer, until one of his knees crosses over mine. “You have too much bite to be an angel. Too much sting.”
I take the invitation and lean forward to press my teeth to his neck, then suck—not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to make him chuckle and pull me against him until I climb up into his lap. He wraps his arms around me, and I feel something new. He’s held me like this before—my legs framing his, his face buried in my neck—but this time having his arms around me settles something that I didn’t know needed settling. I feel safe.
“Meu amor,” he whispers, his lips against my ear. “My love.”
I close my eyes and move against him. It still feels frightening to tell him I love him, even with his arms locked around me, holding me tight, urging me forward, back. But I’ve made my mind up. No more easy options—I want this, the bright, explosive joy of it. I want to say those words every day.