I smiled softly. ‘Seriously, sis, you don’t need to worry about me. I’m not quitting. I thought – well, that I’d just see what my options were when I called Anna last night. Not that she really gave me much advice … since she had afriendover.’ I waggled my eyebrows suggestively. I’d been disappointed when Anna had confirmed there was no way of getting out of the contract, but I’d been quickly distracted by the sound of a man’s voice in her bedroom.
‘I did not!’
‘I heard him!’ I snorted, delighted to see a dark flush on Anna’s cheeks.
‘That was just the TV –’
Laura groaned, her eyes closing momentarily behind her glasses. ‘You are not sleeping with your housemate again, are you?’
Anna plastered a look of fake shock on her face … but the twinkle in her eye gave it away. ‘Moi, slip into bed with Casimir again? I would never!’
Both my sister and I groaned, but as we chattered on, my phone pinged. I sighed heavily and pulled it from my pocket. My lock screen blinked at me.
You have five missed calls Eleven unopened messages Four voicemails
This was getting ridiculous. The first thing I did when I stormed out of our last fake date was delete Patrick’s number. I’d been deliberately ignoring all his messages since, determined to keep our contact to a minimum outside of our contracted duties.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ I whispered to myself. Why now, after being such a prick, was he blowing up my phone?
My phone pinged again.
‘Ooh, is that lover boy?’ Anna leaned forward as I went to open the messages and saw they were from – Ross.
My stomach dropped.
Ross.
It hadn’t been Patrick who had been hassling me.
It was Ross.
Just seeing his name on my screen was enough to send my mind spinning. It had been … what. Six months? Seven?
‘You won’t hear from me.’ His parting words echoed in my mind, making my lungs tight, every breath a struggle. ‘And I don’t want to hear from you. Don’t contact me.’
Five messages from Ross Bradley
Eleven missed calls from Ross Bradley
Four voicemails from Ross Bradley
‘Jessy?’
My thumb hovered over the icon, half-desperate to know what he could possibly have said – needed to say – based on the number of calls? And the messages. What could he –
‘Jessy!’
My phone disappeared. ‘What the f–’
‘I thought so.’ Anna frowned, her gaze fixed on my unlocked phone. ‘I knew it, I knew he’d come crawling back.’
‘What, Patrick?’ Laura said, confused, but one look at my phone from over Anna’s shoulder and she too was cursing out my ex.
‘That little –’
I tried to push aside the unsettling disappointment that it had been Ross, and not Patrick, who had desperately wanted to contact me. A feeling I wasn’t going to examine too closely – especially after our disastrous last encounter.
‘I’m going to block him,’ said Anna firmly.
