No worries if not? What the fuck, Cecelia?
I head back into the room, hand outstretched to Ada. “Can I borrow your vape?”
“On the table. How did it go?” For two people who looked on the literal edge of fucking three minutes ago, they’re both watching me closely.
“He didn’t answer. I left a message. It was bad.”
“Cece, you could strap him naked to the top of your car and cruise Queen Street while people throweggs at him, and he’d still ask you to sit on his face when it was over. It’s gonna take more than one silly voicemail to drive him away.”
“You didn’t hear it.” I waggle the vape at her. “I’m just gonna go downstairs. Be back in a couple of minutes.”
The air outside the hotel is brisk, and I huddle next to one of the manicured topiary trees that frame the building’s glass doors. A couple of pensioners nod at me as they head inside towards the restaurant, and I smile back. I suck in minty vapor and tilt my head back, watching the first stars emerge in the early evening sky.
They’re so bright here. It feels like I haven’t seen stars in forever, not with the late nights in the bar.
When Tristan and I were young, our parents used to bundle us up early in the morning for the winter solstice, before Matariki became a proper holiday. They’d drive us out to Clark’s Beach, where they’d scattered my grandpa’s ashes. All our other grandparents had wanted to be buried, but he had left very clear instructions about how to handle his remains. We’d sip Milo from a thermos, and mum and dad would tell us stories about family members who’d passed while the sun came up over the ocean. We’d wrap ourselves in a big mohair blanket and listen to tales about relatives fighting the council over cherry trees, or the time the racehorse escaped the track and they found him on the highway. Little snippets of the people who’d come before us and shaped how we saw ourselves and our place in the world.
The stars always remind me of that. The way stories get told after loved ones have moved on. I suck down another lungful of ElfBar. I used to hope my stories would be good ones. Now I know it’s up to me to make sure they are.
A car swerves into the hotel parking lot, its lights sweeping over me before pulling to a stop nearby. The driver’s door flies open, and then Davis is there, in the space where he wasn’t a second ago. My heart expands ten sizes. “Davis? You came?”
“Of course I came.” He strides towards me, long legs eating up the ground between us. “Your message. Did you mean it?”
“Yes.”
“Because you don’t get to take it back.” His eyes glitter dangerously, his jaw tight. He looks on the edge of madness, and it’sdelicious. He comes to a stop in front of me, chest heaving. “Don’t you dare try to tell me this isn’t something in the morning. You say you want me, then you get me. All of me.”
My insides clench at the thought of the morning, at the implication of what might happen tonight. “I won’t tell you this isn’t something tomorrow. I don’t even think I can.”
“Good.”
I gasp as he reaches out and runs one calloused finger along my jaw.
“What changed your mind?” he says, hazel eyes glowing in the headlights of his still-running car.
“I woke up,” I whisper. “Realised I was trying so hard to tick all the boxes I thought I should that I couldn’t see you were right in front of me… And I was afraid everyone would think I was a mess. Some sad, old lady predator taking advantage of her staff.”
Davis shakes his head, a wry smile playing on his lips. “I wanted you to hire me, remember? Ever wondered why that was?”
“Um, not really?”
“Guess.”
“You… liked me?”
He nods, his eyes locked on mine. “I think you’re the strongest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
His words all but knock the wind from me. I want him. That’s what I want. It’sallI want. The realisation makes me dizzy, and I grip Ada’s vape like it’s a lifeline. “Really?”
He nods again. “You still care what everyone thinks about us being together?”
“No. I don’t care what anyone thinks except you.”
“I can handle your mess, Cece. It’s a privilege to handle your mess. And I’ve been dying for you to make a move on me.”
“Seriously? That’s what you want?”
His groan rumbles around us. “Seriously. Prey on me all you like. Fuck me into extinction.”One hand slides down my back, and then I’m pressed up against him, that lovely, rangy body warm and hard.
