I suppress my anxiety to the sound of the pulsing beat of the EDM blaring from the speakers in the bar. The bone-shaking volume of the noise helps me to ignore every thought about Kian, but even pressed up against this stranger, there’s only one person I actually want.
I don’t even want to be here. It won’t help. I know it, but I’m too scared to go back and deal with the consequences of my actions. I’m sure my therapist will have something to say about that, but I’m not opening the lid of that box of horror tonight.
Luckily, I don’t have to worry about that now because out of the corner of my eye I spot Johannes pushing through the crowd as he makes a beeline for me, a scowl trained on me that would finish off a lesser mortal.
‘You’re being a fucking idiot,’ Johannes growls as he finally reaches me. He’s quick to drag me away from the random I’m grinding against. Whoever he is, he’s annoyed by the interruption, but one look at Johannes’s grizzly face and he scuttles off to find someone else.
‘He was hot,’ I grumble with a total lack of enthusiasm. I’m not even sure I got a good enough look at him to tell, but he was keen as soon as he realised who I was.
‘No, he isn’t. He’s a two at best and you were humiliating yourself.’ He’s still dragging me by the hand and before I realise it we’re outside the club.
‘How did you know where I was?’ I ask. I’m completely sober, but the panic attack has screwed with my brain.
‘The second you hung up, I saw that you’d posted your gross display of shit dancing on your Insta story. You were stupid enough to catch the name of the bar in the background. Anyone could have seen this. You’re lucky you don’t have a stampede of fans waiting outside.’
‘You’re here to save me. My hero,’ I grit out sarcastically.
‘What the hell is wrong with you? I thought you were on your best behaviour. You’re on a final warning, remember? Don’t you want this? Don’t you want to be in the Championship?’
I shrug, because when did Johannes get so wise or become the boss of me.
He’s guiding me into the back of a taxi and giving the location of his hotel over mine. That’s probably for the best right now, considering how I left things with Kian.
He doesn’t yell again for the rest of the drive home, the taxi not offering a partition between us and the driver to shut him out of our private lives. But the second the door to his hotel room is closed behind us he lets rip.
‘I can’t believe you. Honestly, Harper! If evenI’mover this ridiculous behaviour, then surely that must say something.’
I’ve never been shouted at by Johannes before, but he towers a good four inches over me and his voice booms when he’s pissed off. It’s kind of scary.
‘Says you! Remember Belgium? The hot twins you shagged and the litre of tequila? So don’t bring the holier-than-thou act to my door because it won’t fly with me. You’re forgetting I know you too well, Johannes.’
‘What’s going on, mate? There’s no world in which we should be fighting about this. It’s bullshit, Harper. We don’t do this. You and I don’t do this. We straight talk each other, so tell me, what the hell’s going on?’
What do I tell him? I can’t believe I live in a world I haven’t already told him about Kian, and yet I also enjoyed it being something private that only he and I shared. But now that it’s over, what does it matter?
‘Me and Kian, we, er, we were sleeping together.’
He laughs. Like, fully laughs. ‘Are you drunk? Because if you are, that’s a new low, even for you. We’ve got track time tomorrow.’
I shake my head, and his eyes widen. ‘Well, that’s a surprise. So, what, you had a fight or something?’
‘It’s more complicated than that. It’s not just tonight… It’s … it’s been, like, a couple of months actually.’ He can’t think I’d be this upset after just one night with Kian. I would never let a one-night-stand make me feel this bloody awful.
‘So you’re together?’
I shake my head. Whatever we were, we’re not that anymore.
‘No, it was just sex.’
A snort escapes him and I am glaring, because when did my life become so ludicrous. ‘What?’
‘So, you’ve been like a different person for months, you’ve been sleeping with the same guy for months, and when it’s over you have a panic attack in a bar, and it’sjust sex? I don’t think so.’ He thumps my arm. ‘You’re a fucking dickhead.’
I hate that he’s right. I hate that it’s so obvious when he puts it like that.
‘You should see your face right now,’ he says, and I expect him to laugh, but he looks me over with concerned eyes. ‘You look gutted, man. I can’t believe Kian Walker has you all twisted up in knots.’
‘He’s…’ I let thoughts of Kian fill my head again and there aren’t enough words to describe him or what he’s come to mean to me, even if I’ve been too chickenshit to see it. I can’t describe his beauty in words or do his character justice in even a whole book. I’d need an epic series to capture his heart and explain how big it is.
