‘No, we should get back to the office,’ the journalist says, and gathers her things. ‘But thank you for welcoming us into your home. It’s been lovely.’
Lovely. What an inadequate word for the riot that’s been raging inside me all morning.
The two women leave in a flurry of thank-yous and polished smiles. The door closes. A hush drops, thick and suffocating.
Theo leans against the wall. ‘That went well.’
‘Aye.’ My voice sounds strange to my own ears.
She pushes off, and brushes past me to start tidying the living room. ‘They seemed to buy it.’
‘They weren’t the only ones.’
She pauses, a cushion in her hands. ‘What?’
I scrub a hand over my face. ‘Nothing. Just knackered. Have to go to training.’
She sizes me up for a moment. There’s a wariness in her eyes, a careful distance that wasn’t there during the interview. The performance is over, the curtain has fallen.
‘You were good,’ she says finally. ‘Very convincing.’
‘So were you. Oscar-worthy, in fact.’
She smiles, all surface. ‘That’s the job, isn’t it? Making people believe.’
A job. Right. That’s all this will ever be. What a wee shame.
Sure, I told myself I wouldn’t drag her into my mess. But I’d be lying if I said part of me didn’t want to throw every rule out the window, pull her in, and see what fucking happens.
Chapter 13
Theo
The time is 3:33 am, and everything feels wrong. The sudden, absolute silence of the flat is what woke me. No hum from the fridge, no electronic glow from the router.
Brilliant. Another power cut.
It’s freezing. A deep, penetrating cold has settled into my bones and makes my teeth ache. And I’m a human icicle because my good winter duvet is currently cocooning the flanker on my pull-out sofa.
For four days after the interview, it’s worked. We’ve existed in the same flat on different schedules. I wake to the lingering scent of his shower gel; he gets home from late training to a note about the recycling.
His days revolve around rugby. Early mornings spent at the gym, followed by perfecting drills, running through contact scenarios on the pitch. If it’s a hard week, he’s at the physio, getting his muscles loosened or dealing with niggling injuries. I, on the other hand, work late into the evenings, dealing with deadlines, clients, and schedules. It’s an unspoken avoidance strategy. A necessary retreat after the photoshoot.
The things he said during that interview replay in my head. ‘How she sees through the act.’ He’d looked right at me, his gaze stripping away the polished layers of the girlfriend persona, straight to the woman underneath who was panicking. A perfectly executed lie that rang uncomfortably true.
I have a serious Finn-shaped problem. A problem that has moved from my sofa into the part of my brain that’s supposed to handle logistics and long-term planning.
I’m just gonna admit it.
I like him.
It’s an inconvenient, unprofessional, and frankly foolish development. But there’s nothing I can do about it.
I really, really like him.
A soft thud from the living room, followed by a half-screamed, fractured groan.
Every muscle tenses, ready for… I don’t know what. I lever myself out of bed until my bare feet hit the floorboards. Then I stand and inch forward, my hand flat against the wall for guidance in the dark.
