He was… a cruel traitor, guilty of the ultimate betrayal.Alvwas his friend.
Adam was talking, but I wasn’t listening. I pushed past him, closed my laptop, placed it in my bag and slung it over my shoulder before grabbing my coat and starting to walk out.
“Livie, just talk to me!” Adam called, rushing to catch up. The people in the office all looked over.
Fuck him.
Despite all the fury that I’d had towards Adam going directly towards Nix, I was so grateful to see him at the reception desk talking to Tracy.
I went straight to his side, trying to control my breathing through my nose.
He steadied me, hands on my shoulders. His eyes flickered from me to Adam behind us. “Are you okay?” he asked, but it wasn’t soft and sweet like it had been in the club bathroom. It was filled with warning.
“He’s just being a dick,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Let’s go.”
Before we could, Adam leaned against the desk and pointedly looked the two of us over. “Some things don’t change, do they,Livie?”
I reeled. He wasn’t going to use that against me. Not that. “Adam, you’re a piece of shit, you know that? You’re pathetic. I won’t work freelance for you. I won’t ever do anything for you again. Lose my number.”
He kept his smirk. I wanted to hit him.
Nix followed me out and I didn’t say a word as I made my way to the tube station.
I just needed to breathe.
He didn’t ask what Adam meant by his comment and I prayed he never would.
Even if I had some questions to ask him myself.
“Livie, if you want to just go back to yours, we can.”
Shit, I’d forgotten about his plans.
“Sorry,” I said, stopping in the street and taking one last deep breath. “Where is it we’re going?”
“Back the way we came, mostly,” he said and took my hand.
I pulled it back.
I was too wired up, too angry.
Nix had slept with his best friend’s wife. But I was no better.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I was going to have a panic attack. It was coming, rising in my chest.
It was already here. I balled my hands into fists as I leaned against the wall of the building, trying to remain calm, counting backwards from ten, breathing.
Breathing.
“What’s seven times seven?” Nix asked.
My head hurt with the frown. “What?”
“Quick. Seven times seven.”
“Forty-nine.”
He asked a couple more questions like that and, at first, it made me more flustered, but eventually, concentrating on the maths took away from the blockage in my chest and throat.
