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“I have to ask you a question I’ve been dying to know. Just so I can finally sleep at night again.” Worry slithers up my spine. “Go on.” “Under the stands after the Nottingham game.” I cringe. “Shawn dragged me under there.” “Did I hear the word stockings? It’s research, for…science.” My laugh bounces between the trees around us, relieved as much as it is amused. “I’d run out of washing, okay? It had been a rough few weeks.” “If there are forks wedged in all the laundry machine filters tomorrow, it wasn’t me.”
“Same goes if you find all your shorts have been turned up another inch tomorrow.” He grins like this has made his day. “You like my thighs?” “Nope. You misheard me.” “I’d pay good money to watch you grind on one of them.” I halt in my tracks, all my blood rushing south. I frantically bat away the erotic visions that fly toward me. “What?” “Nope. You misheard me,”
sobering. “You could’ve called me today, when you were scared.” I don’t know what to say back. I long for someone to call, he’s just the last person I ever wanted or expected to fall for. “I struggle with asking for help.” He presses his palms together like he’s praising the universe. “Oh my god. She’s becoming self-aware.”
My door is ajar. Alex’s arm shoots out to stop me from moving farther, like someone in a spy movie. I almost roll my eyes, but a sinister feeling hangs in the air around us. “Did you lock the door?” “Yes.” He pulls me into his room and leaves me standing in the middle of the rug. I watch in horror as he tugs a gun from beneath his desk. A real-life gun. Like, an actual one that shoots bullets.
A GUN?!
I stoop to pick up the Polaroid photograph, feeling the blood drain from my face. The green T-shirt in the photo is the same one buried at the bottom of my wardrobe here, the ginger hair is the same shade as the one I try not to look at in the mirror. Her face has been scratched away, but I know immediately that it’s my mother.
“I don’t want to be with you.” I sound like a broken record, stuck on repeat for so long that neither of us is really listening anymore. “So why haven’t you put me out of my misery and left me alone.” “I’m trying,”
“God, I’m trying. I’ve been trying since September. You’re bad for me, Alex, but I’m drawn to you by some invisible force. Why can’t you help me out?” He shakes his head like I’m expecting too much of him. “I can’t stay away from you, Ophelia. I’ve never pretended I can.” My trembling fingers run over his knuckles. “You make it so hard for me.”
“I hate you.” His laugh makes my blood white-hot. “For the love of God, Ophelia, Make. It. Believable.” “I hate you, Alex. I hate that you’re studying business and not architecture. I hate that you flew home three weeks ago to unveil a new jet with your father. I hate that your boundary between right and wrong is complicated. They’re real people, Alex; the people who end up as collateral. The whistleblowers who go missing. The people who die in accidents. Hell, even the Mafia bosses with blood on their hands, they have families too. They’re not business; they’re mothers and fathers, daughters
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“We just won’t work.” “I know you have trust issues. You don’t tell me about your home life, but I know it’s messy. And I get that this,” he turns back toward me and sweeps his hand in the vague direction of my bedroom, “has probably made it messier. Your mom has let you down, and maybe some other people have too. But I won’t.” “I’ll let you down, Alex. You have enough on your plate without adding me to it too.”
“Why is it so hard for you to admit to yourself that you want this?” I almost hear my patience snap, my final shred of self-control landing on the rug between our feet. “Fine, I want this. I want you. I can’t escape you, Alex. You’re like the sun. I turn away, I look down, but I can still see you reflected in everything at my feet. If I draw the curtains, you slip through the cracks. I can’t fall for the moon instead because it’s you that illuminates it. None of that changes the fact that we just won’t work. You’re not the problem here. It’s me, and things out of my control.”
“It’s you who’s the sun, Ophelia. I am the moon. You keep me in this tortuous cycle, lighting me up for the shortest time before you disappear again and make me invisible. Don’t give me that it’s not you, it’s me crap; I hate it.”
“You can’t go back to your room like this. The lock is broken on your door.” “Bet you say that to all the girls.”
Ophelia, I’m only here to ruin my father.” My laugh of disbelief is hoarse. He’s here for the same reason as me. His features soften at the sight of me. “Anyway, my shrink says I have to do something for me. Something completely selfish. Something that revolves around what I want.” Gently, he tugs my cardigan aside and plants a kiss on my collarbone. “You’re that for me. You’re not charity, you’re not a sympathy project. You’re not in my room right now because I feel sorry for you, or because I think you couldn’t take down your stalker alone. You’re what I want, my ultimate selfish act, my
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“Right after we’ve lived out our secret fantasy involving you on my thigh, we’ll hatch a plan for catching this wet sponge who calls himself Alan. Then we eat dinner here tonight. I’ve got instant ramen in the cupboard and Jelly Babies in the bedside table for dessert. We can do a crossword, or watch a movie. We spend the night in my bed, if that’s what you’d like.” He taps his phone. “It’s almost six o’clock now. Give me until midnight. For my own sanity, let yourself be loved until midnight.”
“Midnight.” “Midnight, a hundred years from now.” I laugh and shove him off me. “That wasn’t in the deal!” “You should always read the fine print, Ophelia,”
“I’ve not told you the whole truth about me,” I whisper. “Have you lied about the way you cry at movies that aren’t even sad?” He can hear that? I hope he didn’t hear me sobbing at Ratatouille last week. Linguini really shouldn’t have put that little rat in the jar. I feel myself blush. “No.” “Have you lied about your passion for swimming?” I shake my head. “Have you lied about the way you keep going, despite everything that’s happened to you here?” I shake my head, biting down a smile. “Did you lie about the way your reaction to any kind of hardship in life is to pull out a crossword book?”
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“I knew you’d feel like this,”
“If you end up being the death of me, Winters, I couldn’t ask for a better end.”
“Bloody hell,” I whisper, prodding his firm stomach. “I have got to stop having two dinners.” He laughs, dragging me down to kiss him. “Don’t you dare. Watching you polish off two bowls of spaghetti over a crossword in the dining hall is the highlight of my week, every week.”
“I wish I could pause time here.”
“Your room has been cleared and the lock has been changed. The photos of your mom are in the box.” The lock has been changed. It’s the smallest thing that feels like such a relief. A ball of emotion chokes my throat. He cares. He really cares. “Thank you. Who was that?” “One of Vincenzo’s men. He’s got a fingerprint from one of the door handles. He’ll run it and get back to me.” “You were wrong when you said I could take this guy down alone. I don’t know what I’m doing. Thank you for…” Being patient with me. Meeting each of my insecurities with equal kindness. Kissing me. Letting me believe I
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“Ophelia, if a genie appeared in front of me now, kissing you while you dry hump my thigh for an hour would be all three of my wishes. Don’t worry about me, I’ve got shower material for the next thirty years.”
“It’s bigger!” I shriek, looking at his half. “As if.” He peers at the number on the caliper. “Yours is bigger by half a millimeter.” “Then let me have yours if it’s bigger.” He clutches his chest with laughter. “No way.” “Because you know yours is bigger,” I snap. He picks it up, gathering powdered sugar on the tip of his tongue. “I licked it so it’s mine.” “Are you four years old?”
“Stop looking at me like that, Alex.” His hips grind into mine. “Like what?” “Like I’m the only woman on the planet.” His eyebrows shoot up in very convincing surprise. “There are other women on this planet?”
“Oh man. Corrupting you is going to be great.”
Five mornings in a row I’ve woken up in this bed. Five nights of movies and ramen and soul-wrenching kisses. Five nights of watching all that Alex does for his sisters, from nightly phone calls to emails to their teachers and physicians.
His son, however, is all my favorite feelings tangled up in a six-foot-one masterpiece. At some point in the last two months, he’s become the closest sensation I have to a home. He calls me beautiful as if it were my name, touches me as if it keeps him alive, kisses me like he wants to brand himself on me forever.
We were up late last night. Delicious flashbacks of Alex’s head between my thighs flit back to me, and then ones of him teaching me to return the favor. Of him looking down at me like I hung the moon in the sky, my name a breathless curse from his lips. Now I know he whimpers—fucking whimpers—I’m truly screwed.
“You’re beautiful this morning.” I trace a finger over each of his brows. “You said that yesterday morning, too.” His voice is low, roughened by sleep. “You just keep on getting better.”
“Have you got time?” He leans his head back against the wall and casts his eyes to the ceiling like he’s thanking a god he doesn’t believe in for my existence.
“We deserve each other.” “Until midnight.” I can hear his grin. “Until midnight, a hundred years from now.”
“Hey. Merry Christmas, sugar.” I smile, burying my blushing cheeks into my blanket. He’s blushing too, expression warm. “Merry Christmas.” “You look beautiful.” “That’s factually incorrect. My lips are crusty.” “I haven’t mentioned my crusty lip kink?” Despite the heaviness in my heart, he drags a laugh out of me. “It hasn’t come up yet, no.”
“That was my mom. She wants to say hi. She’s really good today.” “To me?” I squeak, hand blindly fumbling around for my hairbrush in my side table. “You told her about me?” “Yeah, like, six weeks ago.” “What? Was I that much of a done deal?” His grin is boyish and so unlike him. “I have a way of getting what I want, and I really, really, really want you.” Christ, I think I love him.
“You’re giving me a look,” he says, chugging a glass of water. “It’s lust,” I reply simply. “I wish you were here.” He chokes on the water. “This is how I’ve felt since you got into my car in September. It’s like being a teenager again. The things I would do to you if I had you here.”
“Are you outside?” “I’m in my bedroom.” “I can see your breath, Ophelia.” Shit. “Uh…the window is open. Fresh air and all that.” His expression remains serious, a V forming between his brows. “I thought you got the heating working?” “Please just don’t.” My voice wobbles. I hover my finger over the End Call button, because it’s easier than letting him see me cry. “Don’t hang up, Ophelia. Stop running from everything. Turn your camera off if you want to, but don’t hang up.”
“How is your dad? Does he know yet?” He’s dead, I want to scream.
“He’s not here.” “Is your mom there?” “No,” I whisper, resting my head against my knees. “Alex, I…I have to tell you about them, I just don’t want to do it over the phone.” I’m terrified he’ll leave me when I tell him, terrified that if I do it over the phone, I won’t see him again. “Hold up. You’re alone?” An ugly sob makes my chest ache. “I’m alone.”
“Jesus Christ, Ophelia. Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have come and got you days ago. Were you alone when I called last night?” “Yeah.” And the twenty nights before that.
“Ophelia, I can have a jet at Inverness in less than two hours. You’d be here by lunch.” “No.”
have. I don’t want a generic one, one that anyone could find on the internet. His head lolls lazily against the pillow, half-lidded gaze looking just above the camera, right at me. I took it right after he showed me how to give him head for the first time. He looks sleepy and sated, no darkness in his eyes at all.
I type Alex’s name into a search engine. There’s a fresh set of photographs from an aviation conference this week. I open one up, drinking in his sharp tuxedo and undone top button. His pocket square looks familiar. “Wow,” whispers Janet, leaning closer. “Oh my god,” I whisper, zooming in on the small piece of red fabric that peeks out of his breast pocket. “That’s my underwear.”
“Oh God. There’s a giant parcel on my doorstep. It must be from Alan. Oh no. He has my address.” “Fuck, baby, I’m sorry. The parcel is from me. I should’ve texted. It’s a new boiler for your heating. Someone is coming on the twenty-seventh to fit it.”
“Alex, I…I’ve been saving for this. I can pay for half now and half later.” “Please don’t.” “But I…” I run a hand through my hair. God knows how much he paid to have someone deliver that today. “Alex.” His tone is so warm, so soft and sure and full of affection. “Ophelia, my love.” “I’ll take it inside, but I’ll transfer you money for it.” “Okay. Pay me by midnight,” he says, and I’m grinning at the unspoken sentence at the end. A hundred years from now. “By midnight,”
“Nice pocket square, by the way.” “It’s very versatile. Wore it as a bracelet in bed last night. Wrapped it around something else this morning.” And he didn’t send me a picture? Rude. “I miss you,” I whisper. It comes out dirtier than I intended. “Fuck, I miss you too.
I’ve had girlfriends before, but I’m clueless with Ophelia. I don’t want to ruin what we have.
“Lovesick Fool’s Hotline.” “Ha ha,” I say, dryly. “Landed safe. All okay at home?” “Yeah. Charlotte has made a key ring for Ophelia.” A wolfish grin spreads across my face as I turn left. “You know, I could still mess this up with her.” “Get her a Birkin. Can she drive? Get her an Audi.” “She can’t drive, and she won’t know what a Birkin is.”
I relax just fine when my head is being crushed between Ophelia’s muscular thighs, but that’s not a sister conversation. Maybe it’s a therapy conversation. Hey, Dr. Harwood, I have Daddy issues and I want legs as earmuffs, help.
“Hey. Eighty-eight Summerlea Terrace, right?” I hear her breath hitch. “Ophelia?” Her voice has an unnerving edge to it. Fuck. Maybe this was a mistake. “Why are you asking?” “I’m outside.”
“Ophelia, I just want to see you. I’ll sit in the car and book us a hotel somewhere while you pack a bag, if that’s what will make you happy.” “I should’ve told you about them,”
Realization sinks into me like a knife. “Ophelia—” She fits so much emotion in four tiny letters. “Don’t.” “How long ago?” I can’t see her face through her hair. “Four years.” Four years. She was sixteen or seventeen. A giant lump of emotion clogs my throat. “Fuck, Ophelia.” She turns away, filling a plastic kettle and putting it on to boil. “Please just don’t.” “Have you been alone here for twenty-four days?” “I’ve been alone here for four years,” she whispers, putting two tea bags in two mugs. “Sorrowsong was the first time I’d left this town since…since it happened.”
