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.
“All right. But I have a rule, too.”
I turn back to him. He’s hazier this morning: there’s a brush of stubble on his jaw and a tired glaze to his eyes. His hand dropped from my waist when I shifted, but he places it back there, one thumb sliding up and down my bottom rib.
“No seeing other people,” he says.
This doesn’t entirely surprise me.
“You mean no Louis?”
He says nothing, just watching me. I am struck by the total bizarreness of having him in my bed, and it sends a shiver through me. He feels it and tightens his grip on my waist for a moment, as if to steady me.
“You are so weird about Louis,” I tell him, trying to gather myself.
“Do you like him?”
I hesitate. I know precisely why I’ve held back on telling Lucas that there is nothing between me and Louis. For all my talk about red flags, a little, guilty part of me likes that he’s jealous.
“No,” I say eventually. “I’ve been clear with Louis that there is nothing romantic between us and there never will be. Happy?”
After a long moment, Lucas gives me the ghost of a smile. “Happy,” he says.
I look away, reaching for my phone to check the time. “We should go to work,” I say, and another shiver goes through me, because I’m going to have to stand side by side with Lucas at the desk, and he’s going to be pedantic and rude, and all this—this slow hot dream of a night—will be gone the minute we get out of this bed.
I watch him get ready. How he changes from the man who unravelled me to the man I see every day: shirt perfectly tucked, jaw perfectly shaved, back perfectly straight. As he pulls on his waistcoat, I open Instagram on my phone, looking for distraction, and scroll past a dog video, a book recommendation, and a post from Drew Bancroft.
I pause. Scroll back up again. She’s different. Her hair, once long and bouncy, is now cropped short around her ears, and she’s changed her big, square glasses for a pair of round ones. Can you believe this face can’t find work rn?! the caption reads. If you’ve got a job going, hit me up please, I promise you I’m fabulous and NEVER late （lol no but really I am working on that）。