I frowned. “Sleeping at the house can’t be comfortable.” I’d been there. “And why didn’t you come into the office to work?”
She squirmed a little. “I didn’t want to burden you with my personal problems.”
I called that for what it was.
“Bullshit. You’ve been avoiding me ever since Sunday lunch at your dad’s. It’s not cool to fuck me in a loo, then bugger off to Scotland without a word.”
Eliza winced, her mask slipping for a moment. “I’m sorry. It’s not just about us. It’s also about my dad. About living and working together, trying to navigate our relationship. We might just have run out of road.” She paused, and I watched her fidget with her Voss watch: a nervous habit I’d never seen from someone usually so controlled. “But yes, it’s also a bit about us. What we’re doing.”
I frowned, studying the way her shoulders had hunched, how she couldn’t quite meet my eye. “We’re not doing much if every time anything happens, you run away. You know it’s a pattern that’s played out in my life. I don’t need you to emulate it just when I was starting to put a little trust in you.”
She sucked in her cheeks, that sharp bone structure becoming even more pronounced, and nodded. Her usually immaculate blonde hair fell across her face as she looked down, and she pushed it back with an unsteady hand. Her breath was laboured, and for some reason, it made my breath stutter, too.
“I haven’t dealt with it very well, and I apologise. It’s just everything at once. Job. Love life. Home. Nothing is concrete, and it’s unsettling me.”
The vulnerability in her voice caught me off guard. Part of me wanted to stay angry — it was safer that way — but seeing herlike this made something protective stir in my chest. She looked so sad, I almost felt sorry for her. But she had to hear this.
“I get that, but we’ve been working on the Roka deal for the past three months. When the contracts got signed, I was thrilled. I expected more than a thumbs-up emoji.”
Eliza winced, then splayed her hands.
“I agree. But I figured if I reacted too much to Roka, it would be acknowledging what happened at the festival, which is all tied up with Roka.”
She tapped her head with two fingers and gave an apologetic shrug. “It made sense in my head at the time. I was more focused on helping out, getting the watch production in place, and securing the SwissTok details. Plus, you told me we couldn’t happen again. I wanted to make it easier for both of us. To tread carefully. To manage the situation.”
“Did it work?” I knew the answer, but somehow, I wanted to hear her say it.
“It made it worse.” She reached for my hand, and I let her take it.
At her touch, the air in my lungs froze. For a moment, everything stopped. Her eyes snapped to mine, searching for something.
“You should go up to Scotland too, by the way.” Her voice was quiet now. “It’s a breath of fresh air, literally and metaphorically. Plus, there’s Harvey’s steak.”
“I offered, but you told me no.” I wanted to stay mad at her, but I couldn’t.
She nodded. “I needed a little space this time. But next time, maybe we could go together.”
“Maybe.”
She shimmied an inch closer so our shoulders touched.
The contact sent flames shooting through me, and suddenly I was right back in that glamping tent, remembering the way herskin had felt under my hands: soft, warm and addictive. How she’d made me feel like I was coming apart at the seams, like every nerve ending in my body had been rewired specifically for her touch. The way she’d looked at me afterwards, pupils dilated, lips swollen from kissing, like I was something precious she’d discovered.
Even now, just the brush of her shoulder against mine was enough to make my breath catch. Her sapphire gaze was doing that thing again, that slow, deliberate sweep across my face that made me feel like she was memorising every detail of me. When her eyes lingered on my mouth, heat pooled low in my stomach, the same insistent want that had consumed me all week.
“Poppy.” She said my name like she was savouring it. It sounded like a promise of all the things we could do to each other if I just stopped thinking and let myself fall.
But my mother’s warning was still there, a persistent whisper at the back of my mind, even as every cell in my body was screaming at me to close the distance between us and damn the consequences.
Eliza took the decision out of my hands, and I didn’t push her away.
In seconds, we were kissing like teenagers. Her hands were in my hair, mine were gripping the front of her shirt, and for a moment, the nagging sense I was walking into something I didn’t understand got swallowed up in the pool of our mutual want.
When we finally broke apart, we stared into each other’s eyes, both breathing hard. My heart beat out of my chest, and I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. All my rationale went out the window when Eliza kissed me. That had never happened with anybody else before, and it terrified me.
Eliza fixed me with her gaze, opened her mouth like she was about to say something, hesitated, then lowered her eyes.
I missed the burn of her lips already.
