My heart went down like a punctured balloon, flying around the room.
‘I know.’ And I did know that. He had told me. He couldn’t fall in love in the real world. The unknown demons of the past were haunting him still. I knew he had been married before, but he didn’t reveal himself easily and I hadn’t pressed him on it. But whoever she was, she had clearly done a number on him.
He started moving then, in and out of me in long strokes. My head told me there was no way I could get back into this enough to be where I was a few moments ago, but he knew me. He knew what I liked. He knew exactly when to speed up and where to touch me. I came apart under him with such force and he poured into me, breathing my name like silk and chocolate.
He rolled off me and then pulled me into him. Our breathing settled face to face, we let our bodies recover from each other. When I heard his stomach rumble, I hopped up, throwing on his heavenly smelling tee, and then padded out to his kitchen, making him a cup of tea and toast.
I brought it back to bed and insisted he eat something. I made him drink his tea. He was grabbing his head, a tension headache caused by the stress, and I found painkillers in his bathroom and some Band-Aids to dress his cuts, before lying down and holding him, brushing his hair with my fingers until he slept in my arms.
He was possessive of me in his sleep, never letting me move where his body could not go with me. I acclimatised to the extra heat and eventually I slept too, tucked into him, wishing I could sleep here with him forever.
When I woke in the morning, the bed was empty and cold. The harsh daylight was streaming through the window. I was naked under the covers, his T-shirt dumped on the floor beside me.
My eyes adjusted to the light, and I looked around the room properly for the first time. It was a spacious room, the bed a king-size with a whisky-coloured padded headboard. There was a wall of books and a black desk in the corner with his laptop on it. Photographs were behind it, a picture of a baby, and a family picture of his mum and dad and the three kids.
He was recognisable as a little person, freckles spattering over his nose, his cheeks rounded, his jaw not yet defined. The photo had caught him mid-laugh, his brother and sister both tiny. There looked to be about five years between the kids, and I realised they must be twins, Ollie and Evelyn. From what Oliver had said, Nick had raised him when their parents died. What I didn’t know was that he had raised two of them whilst running a company.
I only had one kid, and it was fucking hard. How did he do that?
My phone buzzed with a message. It was from Ella saying that Peter was going to drop her home at midday. It was Saturday morning, and I had to restock the groceries before my child came home, so there was no more time to hang out in this harbourfront penthouse, belonging to the emotional abyss of a man I had fallen in love with, who was currently missing in action.
I walked silently down the hall to Evelyn’s room, grabbing a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt I’d seen last night, and quickly got dressed. I took deep breaths, trying to quiet my head from the emotionally compromising sex last night, as well as the apparent fact that Nick was nowhere to be found possibly because he was regretting said sex.
I took a second to look at myself in Evelyn’s mirror. I pinched my cheeks: there was no point in feeling emotional about it. Nick was in the middle of a crisis. We were at worst friends … or colleagues … or acquaintances … who’d had sex on a holiday. Either way, I had made myself available to him. He had asked and I had chosen, and now I had to be an adult about it. It wasn’t the time to assess my growing feelings for him.
I silently crept into the lounge room.
‘Hey. I was just about to bring you tea.’
‘Oh, hey. I, uh, thought you weren’t here.’
‘Kate called me to give me an update on Ollie. I didn’t want to wake you. She said his leg surgery went well and the bleed has started to reduce on his brain, so the plan is still to wake him up tomorrow.’
‘That’s wonderful, Nick.’ I paused, looking at my feet. I felt incredibly exposed today, concerned that if I looked him in the eye I’d confess my undying love and beg to be by his side forever more.
‘Are you headed to the hospital?’ I asked. Keeping my composure would have been a lot easier if he hadn’t been here, looking relaxed, making me tea in his kitchen.
‘Yes. I’ll head off after a shower. You coming?’
‘I have to get home to Ella. I need to get some groceries, you know, boring run-of-the-mill shit. We’re having aPirates of the Caribbeannight tonight. She wants tacos.’ I shrugged and paused because I could hear a forced note in my voice. I took a deep breath, trying to remember to just be myself. ‘I’m worried you don’t have anyone to lean on. So I wanted to say that, um, you should come to mine if you need to. Oh, but … I, uh, haven’t had a guy stay in my room since Peter left and unless that person is going to be around, you know, a lot, I’d rather not introduce that situation to Ella.’
I watched his reaction to that; it was his turn to drop his head to his feet.
‘But I do have a fold-out lounge, which you are welcome to. I don’t really want you to be alone.’
He looked up and studied me for a second. Then he moved around the counter and grabbed me into a hug. It was warm and comforting and almost made me cry into his chest.
I nuzzled a little and held him close. ‘I hope Ollie’s okay,’ I said, muffled.
‘Me too.’ He lifted my face, pressing a gentle kiss on my lips before grabbing his phone and ordering me an Uber.
In the car, I felt the tears escape as I watched the city out the window, annoyed at being a sook. To distract myself, I went back through the messages on my phone. There were quite a few I just hadn’t seen in the chaos of yesterday.
The first was a passive-aggressive text from my ex-husband, about picking up his daughter from school for me on a day he wasn’t scheduled to.
You should thank me cause I’m doing you a huge favour.
Dick.
