‘You are also very kind,’ I said, kissing the tip of his nose back, ‘but I really do need an image consultant. The whole reason I came on this show was to make money, and I have no idea how to do that. I barely know how Instagram works.’
‘You know,’ Dylan said contemplatively, trailing his fingers down the length of my arm, ‘I—’
‘No,’ I said, pulling away. ‘No no no no no. You stop that thought right there, Dylan Jayasinghe Mellor.’
‘What thought?’
‘You were going to say, “I have money, Cece, you don’t need to worry about that.”’ I sat up, curling my knees up to my chin. ‘I might be broke, but that definitely doesn’t mean I’m interested in being your kept woman.’
Dylan sat up beside me. ‘That’s not what I was going to say.’
I shot him a look.
He sighed. ‘Okay, fine, I was going to say something in that vague ballpark,’ he said. ‘But you wouldn’t be my kept woman.’
‘Really? You’d be secretly paying my bills while swanning around with your hero nurse girlfriend for the cameras, and I wouldn’t be your kept woman?’
‘It sounds terrible when you put it like that.’
‘Because it is terrible!’ I said. ‘Just say I agreed. You did your time with Dylan G, and then you broke up, and we got together for real, in public. Can you imagine introducing me to your family? “Oh hi, family, this is Cece. She was low-key my mistress. No big deal.”’
‘I know, I know, I know!’ he said. ‘But, Cece, if you’re in trouble and I can help you, I can’tnothelp you. That’s not in me.’
‘You don’t need to help me,’ I said. ‘I can help myself. By getting Lily to be my image consultant.’
He sighed again and put his arm around me. I leaned my head against his shoulder.
‘We need to talk about what happens next, don’t we?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘We do.’
There was a long silence.
‘If there was any way I could get out of this—’
‘We don’t need to rehash this again,’ I interrupted, a little too quickly. ‘I get it, Dylan. Trust me, I get it.’
‘I don’t want to not be with you, though,’ he said, turning his head and pressing his lips to my hair. ‘I don’t think Icannot be with you, if we’re being perfectly honest.’
My treacherous heart leaped.
So fuck this, the Dylan in my mind whispered.Fuck the contract. Fuck everything. I love you. You’re the only thing that matters. Being with you is a non-negotiable.
But the real Dylan stayed silent. I understood all the reasons why, but my heart still settled back into place, a little lower than it had been before.
I should have pulled away. I should have got dressed, and I should have left, like I’d done after the kiss in the hedges.
‘You’re going to have to learn, Dylan,’ I said instead, playing with his fingers. ‘You’re going to have a girlfriend. One that isn’t me.’
‘Can we not think about this for a while?’ he asked. ‘I know we have to talk about this. I know this whole situation is unfair and completely fucked. But can we—’
‘Yes,’ I said, and pulled his mouth to mine before he could realise that the kindest thing he could do was ask me to go.
Night after night, Lily screamed in my face that I wasn’t allowed in the bedroom. Night after night, I trudged back downstairs and threw some blankets around to make it seem like I slept in the laundry. Night after night, I sneaked out the laundry window and onto Dylan’s boat, and night after night we talked and had sex and snuggled and talked some more, and night after night, we ended up having the same conversation.
‘I never should have agreed to do this show,’ he murmured against my lips. ‘What was I thinking?’
‘If you hadn’t’ – I straddled him, so I could kiss him more effectively – ‘we never would have met. You’re a fancy sportsman. I’m a broke student. It’s not like our paths would have ever crossed.’
