‘Aye. You’re the only thing that’s made sense in ages.’
She’s chewing her lip. Why the hell does she look guilty? I’m the one who’s rubbed his raging boner against her. I’m the one who’s kissed her like he’s trying to steal her soul. I’m the one who’s going to mess this up.
The timing is catastrophic. The optics are nuclear. And the last thing she needs is another man complicating her life while she’s still picking shrapnel out of the last one.
‘So we put this…attraction in a box for now,’ I say. The words taste like sawdust. A lie we both need to believe.
‘A box? Okay. We put it in a box. We’re friends. Pals who fight seagulls and change tyres. Friends who don’t…’ She waves at the mirrored wall, the scene of the crime, ‘…do that. Ideally.’
‘Right.’ I shove my hands into my pockets, so I don’t reach for her. ‘Friends.’
We glare at each other. The tension hums between us, a live wire neither of us can touch. The box we’re building is made of sodden cardboard. It will hold until it doesn’t.
She tugs at her bun and tries to reassemble herself into a person who wasn’t just dry-humped against a mirror. ‘Okay. We’re grand. This is grand.’
‘Grand,’ I echo.
‘Scottie,’ she says softly. ‘Thank you. For the studio. For…all of it. You have no idea what this means to me.’
‘Aye, well. It’s only a wee room with a floor. Let’s go home, Marzipan.’
* * *
Saturday night means the chippy run. The kitchen table is covered in paper-wrapped bundles of grease and joy. Ava is sitting between Mum and Erin and grins. She fits. That’s the thing that kills me. She passes the salt to Mum without being asked. She steals a chip from David’s plate and winks when he protests. No, Ava’s not a guest. She’s here not even forty-eight hours and already woven into the fabric of this family. How the hell is that possible?
I sit at the end of the table, nursing my fish supper and watching her. Then it clicks. Hot and sharp right in my chest.
I’m fucking gone for her.
It’s a simple, life-ruining fact.
Ava isn’t a charity case or a stray I picked up. She’s the whole point. The absolute centre of my fucking universe, sitting right here in my kitchen.
I look at her, relaxed and happy in the chaos of my family, and I feel the weight of the future. The years ahead. Watching her be ‘only a friend’. Watching her meet someone else. Watching her move on, get married.
I push a chip around my plate, appetite gone.
I replay the scene in the studio. The feel of her legs around my waist. The desperation in her kiss.
Put it in the box. Lock the lid.
‘You awright there, son?’ Mum’s voice cuts through the noise. ‘You’ve gone a bit green.’
‘I’m knackered.’ I push my chair back. ‘I’m going to get an early night.’
Ava’s gaze cuts to mine, and I see the same ache reflected back. Then she lowers her eyes.
Chapter 18
Ava
Katie’s spare room is too quiet. Every time I close my eyes, my brain replays the studio. The way he crowded me against the studio wall. I’ve been lying here for an hour. My nerves won’t settle. I squeeze my thighs, but the ache between my legs is insistent.
Shush. Back in the box. Go to sleep.
My palm drifts over my stomach. I slip beneath the waistband and imagine his hands instead of mine. Those rough knuckles he busted open defending me. I circle my nub in slow, tight spirals. My hips leave the sheets. My breathing turns to helpless pants. I’m close, so close, teetering on the verge of release?—
I stop.
