That sounded casual. Well done, Diana. I’m not panicking. I can handle this.
“Yeah. It makes sense that you’d leave when I do. Otherwise, it would be weird, wouldn’t it? If you were here with Dad and I wasn’t?” My stomach flips as Lizzie, oblivious to my internal turmoil, bites down on her thumbnail. “Will you be all right by then? It doesn’t give you long to get things sorted. A couple of months.”
I open the laptop and bring up the relevant files, hoping she won’t notice the trembling in my hands. “I’ve been trying to work out my financial projections.” I click into the spreadsheet I was analysing in bed. Beside me, Lizzie peers over my shoulder. “If I start charging for making promotional book content and marketing videos, I should be earning five hundred quid a month by then. Of course, I’ll have to rebuild my audience, and I don’t know how long th—”
“Wait. Did you say five hundred? That’s not going to… you won’t… Let me see.” She moves to sit beside me on the floor and scans through my spreadsheet. “You can’t live off that. Not in London. What can you rent for five hundred quid? Geez, that’s like one shoe. Maybe a pair.” She turns horrified eyes on me. “And then you have to pay bills and, I dunno…” She wiggles her fingers in the air. “Other stuff. Food. Whatever.” She scrolls frantically back up to the top of the spreadsheet again. “What is this? How have you even determined this?”
I sit back on my heels, rubbing a hand over my eyes. “My projections.”
“They look like shit.”
I huff. “Thanks for the support.”
Lizzie’s brow crinkles. “Seriously. Fix it.”
“I don’t know how. I frittered away so much money on trying to make this influencer thing work.”
“But it sounded like you were already doing well. You had all those followers,” Lizzie encourages. “Your huge mailing list.”
My shoulders slump. “I was manifesting, you know?”
Lizzie rests a hand on my shoulder, and asks, very softly, “You mean you were lying?”
“No. Not lying. I really did have a big mailing list, and you know I had a ton of followers. But that was it, really. Numbers alone don’t mean much if you don’t know what to do with them.” I sigh. Admitting my own failures makes me feel terrible. “I was talking a big game. I was gonna be someone, make it big… I was going to succeed. But all I did was spend, spend, spend, and nothing came in.” I cover my face with my hands, mumbling, “My dad’s right. I’m good for nothing. I can’t make a life on my own. I can’t be independent. I’m so stupid.”
Lizzie grips both my shoulders and shakes me. “No. No, you’re not. You’re ambitious and driven, you can make this work. You know what you need?”
“What?”
“A mentor. Someone to show you what’s possible. Someone who believes in you.”
I let out a wry chuckle. “Like who?”
Lizzie flashes me one of her big grins. “My dad.”
I stiffen.Oh, no. No, no, no.I can’t be in close physical proximity with her dad. I need to pretend he doesn’t exist. I need him to thinkIdon’t exist.
It’s the only way I can get through this situation.
“It’s exactly his thing,” Lizzie continues, bobbing up and down a little, clearly excited by this idea of hers. “He loves this shit. Turning businesses around. Taking them apart and putting them back together. Helping fledgling businesses take flight. If your ideas have potential, he’ll see it. It’s what he does best.”
“Oh, no. I’m sure he’s far too busy. I’m sure he’s—”
Down the corridor, the lift announces its arrival with a churning sound, and the metallic sweep of the opening doors follows. We both turn to the noise.
“Speak of the devil,” Lizzie says, pressing a hand on my shoulder and standing.
Rafe enters the room, halting when he sees us. He’s dressed in gym clothes: a white t-shirt soaked with sweat and plastered to his chest. His dark hair is pushed off his face, and he’s wearing grey shorts. It’s a good look, and I try not to stare.
But oh, my God, this man ishot.
“Wow, you’re sweaty,” Lizzie says to him, screwing her face up in evident disgust.
“Tends to happen in the gym,” he replies, gripping the hem of his shirt and lifting it to wipe his face.
My stomach somersaults as I catch sight of the firm, tanned muscle beneath, the V on his hips and the happy little trail of dark hair that disappears into the waistband of his shorts. A raging heat ignites between my legs, and I fist my hands in my lap, dropping my gaze to my knees, hoping Lizzie didn’t catch me staring.
“I’m headed for a shower,” he explains, turning in the direction of his bedroom.
