‘Worried that you’ll distract me before I tell you what I need. Can you make sure Cece stays down in the living room tonight? By herself?’
‘Sure. You’re going to let her talk to boy-Dylan?’
‘Against my better judgement, yes.’
‘I’m telling you—’ she nuzzled her face into my neck, kissing my pulse point and making her way up, ‘it’s the right move. Even if they end up boning, they can get each other out of their systems.’
I bit down gently on her bottom lip. ‘That day in the laundry didn’t get you out of my system.’
Lily stilled. ‘Really?’
‘Of course it didn’t.’
‘But you put me away, right?’ She traced her fingers along my jawline. ‘There were other women after me. Naomi. That redhead with the weird laugh.’
‘Her name was Dee, and of course there were other women. You made it clear that you weren’t an option. What was I going to do, become a monk?’
‘If the last few days have taught me anything—’ she licked the shell of my ear, ‘it’s that your talents would be profoundly wasted in a monastery.’
It was hard not to feel smug at that.
‘But boy-Dylan is in the same position,’ Lily said. ‘Cece’s not an option for him, not right now, and he knows that. Giving them tonight, no matter what happens – it might be the push he needs to put her away for a while.’
She was right.
I didn’t need forever from the Dylans. I only needed enough time after the show aired that it looked like they’d fallen in love, and then hadn’t quite been able to make it work in the real world. And if Romeo-Dylan and Cece circled back around to each other afterwards… that was their business.
‘Trust me,’ Lily whispered, nose sliding against mine.
I stroked her hair out of her eyes. ‘I trust you.’
She smiled and kissed me. ‘How long do you think this little fight of ours should last?’
‘Well,’ I said, trying to think straight even though she was unbuckling my belt, ‘producer Murray is an arsehole, and—’
‘—Lily Fireball is a bitch, so it’s probably going to take a minute for either of them to give ground.’
She unzipped my fly. ‘The real question is,’ she said, going to her knees in front of me, ‘how quiet can you be?’
It was lucky I didn’t need to go back into the Convent. I’d sunk my teeth so deeply into my hand in an effort to keep silent that I’d drawn blood.
‘Well,’ I heard Lily say cheerfully to the other women, closing the French doors behind her, ‘that’s put him in his place.’
I was addicted to her. I was addicted to this. I was addicted tous, to having her back again, and finally being able to hold her as close as I wanted.
So whenever the pain and the guilt and the worry came creeping back, I shoved them down, locking them away in the darkness.
I tried, at least.
‘What are these?’ Lily asked a few days later, rubbing her thumbs along the dark smears under my eyes. We had a couple of hours’ gap in our shooting schedule between two of the Friends and Family date shoots we always did in Episode Ten, so I’d smuggled her out of the Convent and up to my trailer. We were sitting on my bed, her knees on either side of my lap.
‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed,’ I said, pressing a kiss to the hollow at the base of her throat, ‘but I have a fairly demanding job.’
‘You shouldn’t still be pulling all-nighters at this stage of the season. Not with only four contestants left.’
‘I know, I know.’
There was no way I was going to tell her why I wasn’t sleeping. That it wasn’t workload – overwhelming as it still was – as much as worry that she might have made me into just another one of her weapons of self-destruction. That no matter how often she whisperedTrust me, all of this might be a mirage. That she might realise she couldn’t fuck the pain away after all and break my heart again.
