Chapter Nine
Luke
Unknown:hi
It was her. It had to be. The profile picture was a single white rose—the same rose she’d brought to my father’s funeral—but what the actual fuck was I supposed to do with that? Even teenage Mia had rarely texted me just to say hello, and in the three days since I’d last seen her, I’d almost convinced myself our car park encounter had been a sweat-inducedhallucination.
The fucked-up alternative was I’d agreed to be an on-tap booty call for my ex, and the decent man in me ignored the message. Turned his phone off for the night and shoved it into a drawer.
But I wasn’t a decent man, not when it came to her. Because I wanted her—cravedher—like no one before her or since, and I remained transfixed by the single word gracing my phone screen.
I saved the number and tapped out an eloquent reply.
Luke:hey
Mia:wasn’t sure you’d talk to me
Luke:why?
Mia:does it matter?
Luke:depends what you want
Mia:you know what I want
Did I? I’d replayed our exchange a hundred times, mainly in the shower with my dick in my hand, but each time I’d come away with a healthy dose of doubt. She wantedmeto make her comewhen she could have any bloke she wanted?
But that’s always been true.
Right?
God, I had no fucking idea anymore.
Luke:now?
Mia:yes
My pulse quickened. Heat rippled through me and my thumbs flew over the screen.
Luke:where?
Mia:your place
My place. A statement, not a question, and fuck if it didn’t make my blood run hotter. I glanced around the downstairsof my house. It was cool and dark, the way I liked it. The quiet bachelor pad I’d dreamed of when my privacy had been limited to a threadbare curtain pulled around my bunk. Even letting my mum over the threshold sometimes seemed like Armageddon to my self-induced solitude. Could I handle Mia here?
There was only one way to find out.
Luke:21 manor road
Luke:don’t walk
Mia:I’vegot a car, fool
I laughed, the sound unnaturally loud in my empty house and bordering on hysterical.
What the hell am I doing?
I was no closer to figuring it out when a light tap sounded on my back door twenty minutes later.
