‘It’s tough to get over something like this but at least you have the island to focus on.’
Even in his brain-fogged state of shock, Mats could hear the unsaid words and the thought of something like thishaving happened to Lotta shifted his attention from self-pity to curiosity.
‘This happened to you?’
She tipped her head from side-to-side before she answered. ‘Something similar. In my first job. I chose to be loyal to someone, and it didn’t work both ways.’
He nodded. ‘Yes. It feels like that.’
‘And it’s tough when you lose out because of it. Even if you have something to fall back on.’
‘Did you have something to fall back on?’ He sensed the answer was no.
‘It’s been for the best in the end. I’d never have gone freelance if it wasn’t for what happened and it’s been the best thing I ever did. And it brought me here,’ she smiled.
He wanted to ask her what happened. It would be a distraction if nothing else, but he didn’t have the energy. When he asked her about it again, he wanted to give her the attention she deserved since it was clearly a huge part of her life.
Lotta refilled their glasses. Thank god this happened today when she was here to come home to. He couldn’t imagine having to cope with feeling like this alone.
‘And it’s sad because you wanted to leave there the way you deserve to. With your head held high, because you haven’t done anything wrong. Being made to leave today gives you no time to process anything.’
He buried his head in her shoulder and felt all the emotion he’d held in his chest since the meeting with Oskar release. And she held him. He didn’t know how long for, but for as long as it took for him to feel okay.
‘Why don’t you take a shower,’ she said. ‘And I’ll order a pizza.’
He nodded. He couldn’t wait to get out of his suit and into something comfortable.
‘Mats,’ she called as he walked into the bedroom. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
He needed to hear that, and he knew on some level it was true. This was a blip that was going to make everything else harder. He would have to put the apartment on the market straight away and hopefully the redundancy money would be enough to see him through until it sold. It was such bad timing. Just as everything was ramping up on the island, he might have to slow everything down again. And that meant he could lose Lars to his next job, and he wasn’t sure where that would leave the project.
He stood in the shower with his eyes closed, the steaming water raining down on him, soothing him.
‘Is this okay?’
He opened his eyes and saw Lotta. Naked, and ready to take his mind off all of this by the looks of things. Wordlessly, he pulled her into the shower and into his arms, the warmth of her body grounding him and momentarily making him wonder what he’d been feeling so bad about.
She kneaded his scalp with her fingertips, making him moan. It felt so good. Then she took some of his shampoo and massaged it into his hair, taking care of him and showing him she understood how bad today had been for him.
They stepped out together, and she handed him a towel that was warm from the rail, wrapped a towel around her hair and another around herself.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I needed that.’
She smiled and gave a small shrug. ‘Everyone needs a bit of that sometimes,’ she said.
But no one had ever done something like that for him before. Something as insignificant as washing his hair but was so much more than that. She’d come to him when he could easily have retreated into his own thoughts, and she reminded him thatHalvorsen & Bryne weren’t the most important thing in his life anymore. She was.
They ate the pizza in comfortable silence, but all the while his mind was whirring with plans. He wasn’t seeing the food in front of him, he was seeing pro and con lists, spider diagrams and they were coming together to tell him one thing: he couldn’t carry on without knowing what the future was going to look like for him and Lotta.
‘Would you consider moving to Norway?’
She looked at him, her pizza slice hovering in front of her mouth, temporarily halted by his question. ‘Perhaps,’ she said carefully.
It was no surprise that against the backdrop of his day, he’d been hoping for more, but then perhaps that was why she was careful not to promise anything. When they’d talked about it before, it had been hypothetical. He didn’t want that anymore; he needed to know, and she realised that.
He raised his eyebrows, letting her know he was ready for her explanation.
‘But it’s not the night for radical decision making.’
