I realised where she was going. ‘Us.’
She nodded. ‘Julia asked her ex-husband for advice on a strategy – he’s some media bigwig – and he suggested that a married couple being torn apart by unjust bureaucracy is a great narrative hook.’
‘Star-crossed lovers,’ I murmured.
‘Exactly.’ She kissed me again. ‘I don’t know how you feel about that – going from kind-of-fake-married to sort-of-real-married to extremely-publicly-married, but—’
‘Sadie, there’s nosort of.’
I stroked some of her hair behind her ear. ‘If you’ll have me, my darling,’ I said, ‘I’m in this forever.’
For a long moment, she just looked at me.
‘Really?’ she said at last.
‘Come the fuck on, Shaw. You’ve been paying attention the last month, haven’t you? Do you really think any part of me was planning to pack up and disappear once three years were up?’
‘My head knows that, I think,’ she replied. ‘But my heart…’
I ran my knuckles over her chest, then bent to press a kiss to it, lips brushing against the top of her left breast. ‘I’ll tell your heart this as many times as it needs to hear it,’ I said. ‘If you want to get rid of me, you’re the one that’s going to have to leave, because I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Oh, Jonah…’
Sadie softened against me. I kissed the top of her other breast, then the hollow at the base of her throat. She twined her fingers in my hair and pulled me up to kiss her lips. ‘I’m not going anywhere either,’ she whispered into my mouth. ‘And I’m going to make sure you don’t lose your job, darling. I promise.’
It wasn’t quite a bucket of ice-cold water over my head – the world could never seem too bleak when I had Sadie Shaw sitting on my lap, promising me forever – but it was at least somewhat chilly.
I rested my chin on her shoulder and tightened my arms around her. ‘So, the first half of the plan is for us to become the main characters of the union media campaign,’ I said. ‘What’s the other half?’
‘We sue.’ She let out a long breath. ‘I don’t know if Phase Three is illegal, exactly, but it’s certainly not ethical. And if there is a legal case to be made here, then I know who could make it.’
I blinked. ‘Sadie…’
‘I called Chess,’ she said. ‘And she’s going to help.’
48 It was ridiculous, how adamant she was that she was one of the world’s most selfish people. ‘I have to at least be in the top ten,’ she’d insist, while simultaneously doing something to me that made me feel like I was levitating. I loved her to distraction, but sometimes she leftterribleholes in her arguments.
49 A day and a half, specifically. It was a small apartment.
50 It probably wasn’t surprising that two passionately argumentative people with PhDs in words tended to be coitally, ahem, chatty.
51 Science.
52 Julia had taught Sadie the ‘our people’ and ‘our wellbeing’ drinking game and we played it every time the dean spoke. I felt slightly guilty endorsing a game created by the woman who had very obviously broken my brother’s heart, but there was no denying that it was piercingly accurate.
Chapter Twenty-TwoSadie
I couldn’t sleep that night.
Jonah, bless him, let me pretend I was asleep, although given he spent the night spooning me, he had to know I hadn’t done more than uneasily doze. This was something I needed to work through on my own.
I’d finally showed him Chess’s letter yesterday, sitting on his lap out on the balcony. I’d thought he might be angry, or maybe even protective –I couldneverimagine a life without you, Sadie,I’d imagined him saying, when he read the part where Chess said she needed to redesign her life without me in it – but instead, his brows had just furrowed behind his glasses.
‘What did she say when you called her?’ was all he’d asked.
‘I didn’t speak to her,’ I said, tugging his glasses down his nose a little so I could press my lips to those two lines between his eyebrows. ‘A man picked up. Some friend of hers. He sounded familiar – I must have met him at one of the Sydney Law Society functions she dragged me to. He said he’d tell her that I needed her and that she’d be here tomorrow morning.’
Then, Jonah didn’t ask,do you think she’ll actually come?and in that moment, I loved him more than I ever had. The last thingI needed was for someone to put that thought into the universe when it was already taking up so much space in my head.
