The scratches on my back that she’d left had stung a little in the salt water, and they were still stinging now. I hoped I never stopped feeling them. I hoped they left scars.
She’d marked me. And whether she realised it yet or not, I’d marked her too.
And this time, I wasn’t letting her go.
CHAPTER 47
Two days. That was how long I’d been home. Forty-eight hours of pretending everything was normal when nothing felt normal at all. My apartment still smelt the same, it looked the same, sounded the same; everything was the same. Except for one thing. I walked up to Sid’s bowl and looked into it. Sid and Sisko were swimming around happily. I’d decided to bring Sisko home with me – that was what I’d called him; when it had come to letting him go again, I just hadn’t been able to. I watched them for a while as they swam around, forgetting everything after ten seconds. I’d like to forget a few things too – what happened between Cam and me for starters.
Because right now, it was all I was thinking about. I had also developed a weird and deeply inappropriate emotional attachment to the coconut-scented hotel body lotion I’d brought home with me, because whenever I smelt it, it reminded me of him.
Cam. He was still in my head. Just like he’d said he would be.
Fucker, still winning despite the fact he wasn’t even here.
I’d tried distracting myself with everything from crime documentaries to alphabetising my spice rack. That was a lie; I didn’t have spices. I had chillies, salt and pepper, that was all, but still, I’d spent a good ten minutes moving them up and down my kitchen counter. After that, I’d almost decided to unpack my suitcase . . . almost. I usually only unpacked suitcases when I ran out of underwear, so even thinking about it showed what a messed-up place my brain was.
Currently, it only had two settings: asleep and dreaming about Cam; or awake and actively tryingnotto think about him, butthinking about him anyway. Every time I looked at the couch, I imagined him sprawled on it. Every time I opened the fridge, I imagined strawberry jam, and every time I climbed into bed, I imagined him next to me.
I was not okay. I was unsettled and rattled. Cam had unsettled and rattled me, and I hated the feeling. Which was why when the knock on the door came that night, I half hoped it was a genie with a lamp granting me three wishes . . .
Wish one: go back in time and never have slept with him in the first place.
Wish two: somehow rewrite the universe so I’d never met him at all.
And wish three: if the above could not be done, erase every single memory I had of him.
But it wasn’t a genie, it was Byron. Holding pizza. God, I’d actually forgotten Byron even existed.
‘Hey,’ he said sheepishly. ‘I figured you might be hungry.’
I looked him up and down. He was good-looking. Athletic. Broad shoulders, sufficiently well endowed, sufficiently proficient in bed, had good taste inTVshows, movies and pizza and generally liked the same things I liked. Now this,thiswas the kind of guy I should be thinking about, not Cam.
Byron made sense. He was solid. Reliable. He didn’t carry a gun or know how to render someone unconscious in a few seconds. He was the kind of man who didn’t pick fights with you and rile you up just to see who would win. The kind of man who would fuck you well enough, but not so well that you forgot your name and why you even existed in the first place. He was the kind of man who probably used coasters.
Maybe I’d been too quick to dismiss him. Maybe I’d been holding people like Byron at arm’s length because they weren’t wrapped in drama and sexual tension and unresolved emotional trauma.
‘Hey.’ I pulled the door open. ‘You’re welcome to come in, unless it’s pineapple or banana.’
‘It’s pepperoni and olive. I remembered that you hate warm fruit.’
‘You have to be a savage to like warm fruit.’ I gestured for him to come inside. He walked past me into my apartment, and it felt familiar.
‘Beer?’ I asked, crossing to the fridge, only to open it and realise there was no beer in sight. ‘Juice?’ I rummaged through the cupboards. There was no juice either. ‘Wine?’ I crouched and looked under the sink; I was sure I had a bottle of wine here somewhere, but nothing. I stood up. ‘Tap water?’ I finally tried when I realised that was all I could offer.
He smiled at me and reached into the bag he was carrying. ‘I brought beer. I suspected you would be low on beverages. Alcohol-free for you. I know you’re not a big drinker.’
I smiled back at him. This man knew me, he actually knew me, and it was very strange, but also there was a weird sense of comfort in it.
We cracked open the beers and Byron spread the pizza out in front of us on the coffee table, like he always did. And he always made sure he had napkins; he wasn’t the kind of guy who wiped cheesy fingers down the side of his pants, like I did.
‘So.’ He sat back on the couch. ‘I’ve been thinking about how things ended between us. I get that you like to take things slow, and that it takes you a long time to trust people and open up.’
See! Cam wasn’t the only one who knew me like this.
‘And I’ve been thinking,’ he went on. ‘I’m okay with that. I’m okay if we don’t define this and call it a relationship. I mean, that’s only a word, right? It’s just, I really, really like you, Lizzy, so I’m cool with taking this slowly.’
My stomach twisted. It was sweet. He was sweet. Honest. Normal . . .
