‘I see,’ Hannah said, taken aback.
Before she could press him for more information, Charlie reappeared from the main house, to which she’d previously retreated with Joe-style determination to leave Hannah and Jude alone. ‘Ready for the mains?’ she asked.
She served up the salmon, pommes fondants and greens, plus two plates full of roast guinea fowl, creamed potato and savoy cabbage, then disappeared again before Hannah could waylay her.
‘Oh my god,’ Jude moaned after a mouthful of the fish. That phrase, uttered in thattone, made Hannah’s stomach flip over. ‘This is the best salmon I’ve ever eaten,’ he declared, entirely oblivious to the effect he was having on her.
‘This is amazing, too,’ Hannah said, swiping a forkful of guinea fowl and potato through the red wine gravy it was dressed in. ‘How on earth are we going to choose?’
‘I say we sleep on it. Decide in the morning,’ Jude suggested. The air around the kitchen island they were sitting at seemed to crackle with the implications of what he’d just said. ‘Oh shit, I didn’t mean that the way it—’
‘It’s fine,’ Hannah said with a short laugh, suddenly certain that if hehadmeant it that way, she’d have been all in; ecstatic at the prospect of going to bed with him this evening.
The feeling was palpable, blooming inside her in a way she couldn’t control. He was so beautiful; kind and clever and clueless all at the same time. He was still the boy she’d known at thirteen, and the man she’d fallen in love with – regardless of how things had ended between them four years ago.
She felt her powers of self-denial fragmenting under the weight of several incontrovertible facts.
He was her person. He was irreplaceable. She wanted to keep him.
After reappearing again a short while later to produce two dessert options – a sinful-looking dark chocolate tart and a fresh raspberry mousse with white chocolate shortbread – Charlie announced she’d matched with someone on Bumble and was heading to the pub. ‘Donottidy up,’ she instructed Hannah, ‘just let yourselves out when you’re done with the food. And give me a shout tomorrow or Monday, when you’ve decided what to go for.’
Amid goodbye hugging and kissing from her friend, Hannah solemnly promised not to stack the dishwasher or scrub any plates. Shortly afterwards, she heard Charlie’s front door slam. It dawned on her then that she and Jude weretrulyalone, with no imminent prospect of interruption, for the first time since he’d been back.
‘Did you drive here?’ he asked her, as he scraped the last of the raspberry mousse from its ramekin with a stub of buttery, rapidly crumbling biscuit. He sounded almost nervous, like he’d had the same realisation – had noticed the shift in atmosphere. It wasveryJude to anxiously puncture a loaded silence with a prosaic question, and Hannah felt a surge of affection for him.
‘I did, but there’s no way I can drive home now,’ she said. ‘I’ve had way too much wine. You?’
‘Uber-ed. Shall I see if I can get us another one back to Beckford?’
‘I was going to walk, actually,’ Hannah said. ‘It’s not far – fifteen minutes. And it’s a nice night. Plus, getting a cab will be hell at this time on a Saturday.’
‘OK. Can I see you home?’
She didn’t tell him her flat wasn’t on the way to his mum’s, or insist that she’d be perfectly safe if she wandered back alone.
She simply said: ‘Yes.’
Somehow they ended up holding hands. They both knew it was against the rules, and in a weird way it felt more intimate – more taboo – than the kisses they’d shared.
Hannah wasn’t sure how it had started. It was like their palms had drawn together automatically, fingers twining in defiance of the notion that this wasn’t entirely natural. That it wasn’t how things should be.
Either of them could have dropped their grip on the other during the walk back to Hannah’s, yet neither did. Jude had never been to her flat before, but she got the sense they both knew where they were going. She also knew she could stop it, reroute him; that a single word from her would be enough to send him home to his mother’s without argument. But even if she couldn’t have him forever, she wanted him with her for now. She wasn’t strong enough anymore to pretend that she wouldn’t take him in whatever way was possible, for as long as possible.
Hannah kept hold of his hand when they got to the front door of her small apartment building. Wordlessly, she led him inside; heard him inhale sharply as he followed. By the time they reached her flat door, Jude’s breathing was slightly laboured. After his impressive assault course performance, and having seen his bare chest twice in the past two months, she knew he was in more than reasonable shape. It wasn’t the effort of climbing two short flights of stairs that had raised his heart rate.
Their mouths met the second they were inside the flat, hunger immediately dissolving any hesitation that remained. Hannah found herself clinging to him, craving closeness, friction. The mismatch between their heights was too much, made everything too difficult,impossible .?.?.and then she was being lifted off her feet. She wrapped her legs around him in a way she’d have found embarrassing if she wasn’t so out of her senses.
There were no lights on, but the orange glow from the streetlamp outside made it bright enough for Jude to find his way from the door into the living area. He sank clumsily onto the sofa, bringing Hannah with him, all the while peppering her face and mouth and neck with kisses.
‘This is too good .?.?.youfeel too good,’ he whispered in the darkness. She was in his lap and his hands were on her legs, hot beneath the black cotton of the midi dressshe’d worn to today’s wedding. She moaned into his mouth as his palms slid further up, caressing the pale, delicate skin of her thighs until she thought she might sob with need. She moved on top of him and he shifted, trying to meet her, compelled by a force bigger than both of them to chase down the feeling they were lost to.
‘If this .?.?.’ he started to say, before she took his lips with hers again, pressing her chest against his desperately. ‘Hannah,’ he tried again, a hand at the nape of her neck, moving her head back a little so he could look her in the eye. ‘If this isn’t what you really want, I have to go. I have to gonow. I can’t .?.?.’ He looked briefly agonised as he struggled for words, and Hannah cupped his jaw with her right hand, steadying him. ‘I can’t do this if you’re going to wish we hadn’t tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I want you so fucking much, but it willkillme to hear you say this was a mistake. I won’t be able to live with you regretting me.’
‘I’ve never regretted you,’ she said with feeling, pulling him closer and kissing him fiercely. She realised it was the truth. Despite the years of wounded silence that lay between them – for all the pain he’d caused her – she’d never wished she hadn’t known him. Even at her lowest, her angriest, her most bitter, she wouldn’t have traded the best times they’d had to avoid the worst.
‘Are you sure?’ he murmured into her ear, the feel of his breath on her neck eliciting a full-body shiver Hannah almost couldn’t bear. The raw vulnerability in his tone made her heart ache, and she knew the question went deep; that it applied beyond what was happening between them tonight. She finally recognised that her own reticence had left him uncertain. Insecure. Maybe for far longer than she could have imagined.
She’d spent so long thinking of Jude as brilliant, as above her; so long focused on the inevitability of his leaving, that she’d forgotten he was a person like any other. He was a genius, yes, but not a robot. He was a smart, successful, almostsinfullyhot man – but still the boy who’d brushed off his need for help on the first day of school; who’d made it clear he would rather be lost and liked by her than guided and pitied.
