Not talking to him every day felt like physical pain.
I read the message again.
Forclarity.
He said it like it was just a correction, like I was his client or something, explaining the facts like we didn’t even know each other.
Did he think that would make me feel better?
Where was the human version of him who knew how to see inside me, squeezed my shoulders when he sensed I was nervous, held my hand in a crowd at a wedding?
The version of him I’d been fallingfor.
The laminate of my desk was cool under my palms, faintly sticky where someone had left a donut.
Why had he bid over the next top bid? There was no need. Sixteen thousand five hundred was… ridiculous.
My piece would have sold anyway.
I took a sip of my tea. It was too strong, the taste bitter and metallic.
The moment should have been mine, but he overwrote it. Made it safe and curated, a tidy little win with a pretty red bow on it.
He’d assumed I couldn’t handle the uncertainty, and then he’d circled back later to prove it didn’t matter anyway.
Here you go, Andrea. See? You did a good job, well done. There was nothing to worryabout.
My cursor blinked in the reply box.
No. It was Liam who couldn’t handle it. He always had to decide what mattered.
“You’re sleeping with someone who never has to look at the people his decisionsaffect.”
When Toby had said it, I knew there was a kernel of truth to it. That was partly why it had pissed me off so much. How had Liam not thought about how this would affectme? Taking away my agency, my ownership of my own success?
But the real problem was worse than that. I’d thought he knew me, but he didn’t, if he couldn’t understand how sickened I felt when I looked at my friends, knowing I’d been protected while he’d broken their worlds apart.
What Liam had done wasn’t noble. It was callous and detached.
His higher purpose—if that’s what he thought this was—didn’t give him the right to trample over the people who were right in front of him. Every comic book villain thought the end justified the means, but it never did.
Liam, of anyone, should know that.
I just wished I didn’t miss him somuch.
The way he used to look at me sometimes, like he was just happy to be near me.
How he always seemed so awkward at first when I teased him, but then he laughed with me anyway.
How he’d kiss the top of my head absentmindedly, like I was something precious.
The clean cotton smell of his T-shirts, the steady heat of him beside me, the low, gentle way he said my name.
How spending whole days with him made the world feel bigger and shinier, whether we were picking out bananas at Sainsbury’s or entertaining a cabinet minister in a castle.
The quiet thank-yous just for being next to him.
It had felt so safe… so normal.
