I let out the breath I’d been holding. “How are you?”
She nodded. “Better. Not as bad as I thought I’d be. Nothing happened to me while I was in that building. For fuck’s sake, they’d brought a new mattress and blanket.”
She laughed and I joined in. “No nightmares?”
“No. It’s kind of blurring over. I was only awake for about five minutes before you got there, or whatever – it wasn’t very long.” She stopped and tucked her legs under herself. “I knew you wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.”
“Good. It was a mess, Jameson. A big fucking mess, just like my cousin’s been causing for years.”
“I know. You mentioned Leila. Do you think you’ll ever move on from what happened to her?”
I looked at her, her bright green eyes so different than Leila’s, her blonde hair piled on top of her head. She looked older, but maybe what she’d been through had aged her.
It had fucking aged me.
“I think I’d already moved on, I just didn’t know it.”
She smiled. “I don’t blame you. For what happened. Livi said…”
I shook my head. “There’s a ton of shit I shouldn’t have done.”
“I hope sleeping with me isn’t on that list.”
She was smiling, a sweet, knowing smile like the ones she’d give me when we woke up together in the mornings, legs still entwined, my cock ready to get inside her again.
“No. Never. I don’t regret it. I don’t regret anything about you. Except maybe when my family were involved.”
We talked. She told me about Lala, who was flying back to Ibiza tomorrow. She talked more about New York and the course she was starting there, the architecture firm she’d heard from where she’d be able to intern. I told her about my mum, my family over in England and my uncle, stories I’d never told anyone else, not even Leila. The sun grew hot in the sky, another clear blue day.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked when we were both stretched on sun loungers, a parasol shading our faces. “Now you can do what you want.”
“I don’t know. There are so many things.”
“Travel? You can tour the world.”
“Maybe. I’d rather set up a business though. I like working; I like the routine.”
“You could establishCòctelsall over the world.” She giggled, a sound I hadn’t heard for too long. “There is a cocktail culture at the moment. I don’t think it would fail.”
I imagined having the weatheredCòctelssign above a bar in East London or round the corner from The Cavern in Liverpool. “Maybe. I have time to think.”
“You have time to do anything you want.” Her arm stretched out and her little finger caught mine.
That surge of electricity that had always been there pinged through my skin, and my heart felt that burn. It hadn’t always been there; not at first. But it had grown and bloomed.
I grasped her hand, feeling need for her that was more powerful now that it had ever been.
She came over to my lounger, sitting on the side next to me. “Do you trust me?”
“As much as I trust anyone.”
I laughed. “I’m not sure if that’s good or not.”
“I trust you for now, and that’s all we have, isn’t it? This still expires and we both go our own ways. Neither of us are staying here forever.”
I sat up, running my hand up her arm and tilting her chin, taking her mouth in a kiss that was the sweetest I’d ever given.
The second kiss wasn’t sweet. It was full of need, anger, desire – a combination that was too potent to stay down here in full view of her security people.
