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“Jenny?”
This was it.He was going to tell her that she was too old for him.That he didn’t need babying for a little cut.That he had a girlfriend.
“Yes?”she asked without turning back.
“You might wanna give me the keys.”
Crap.She turned back to him with what she hoped was a casual smile.“That, erm, was a test, and you passed.”
“Uh huh.”
He held out his uninjured hand, and she dropped the keys into it.Their fingers brushed for the scantest moment, but Jenny felt the touch all the way up her arm.She took a step back.“Thanks again.”
Levi nodded, his gaze bright on hers.His eyes were a captivating nut brown, the left one sporting a ring of green around the outside of the iris, an unusual and gorgeous heterochromia.“No problem.”
She walked home thinking about the deep register of his voice, at odds with his doe-eyed gaze and that tempting mouth.
* * *
Maddie
On Saturday morning, I woke up thinking about Seb.
How we used to have coffee in bed on some weekend mornings—usually in his spacious Chelsea home, seeing as mine was the size of a cupboard— while the brittle light filtered in through the silky curtains.How he used to read out bits of the papers he found amusing to me, in different voices.
I missed the Seb I’d known before he tried to control my life.
I still didn’t really know why the heck he’d done it.
I didn’t want to be controlled by someone, ever.
Maybe I should have paid more attention.Made an effort to weigh into decisions he made about where we’d go on the weekends if I was free.Instead, I’d let myself be led, because I was flattered by his attention and too distracted by my business to voice my own preferences.Was I to blame, too?
Perhaps I was.
I lay in bed, playing with the ends of my hair, thinking about the letter.
Maybe I wouldn’t open it.Maybe I’d burn it.
Did I owe it to him to read it?
Or did I owe it to myself?
He’d tried to call me another couple of times yesterday.I’d ignored both calls.I might continue to do so for as long as humanly possible.
Maybe I should have blocked his number, but I didn’t quite have that in me, not yet.Every time my finger hovered over the BLOCK button, I felt a pang of sadness.
Birdsong reached me from the window, left ajar last night as I’d turned in.So different from the concrete jungle I called my home.
A change is as good as a rest.
Was it?What would be waiting for me when I got home?
I’d sent my dad— who had to be talked into refraining from cutting Seb down to size with his extensive collection of wood-working equipment—to collect the small amount of stuff I kept at Seb’s fancy flat.
Dad hadn’t said much about the encounter, but it was always hard to tell if he was just shielding me from bad news.I was an only child and my father had always babied me a bit.I didn’t mind; I was a daddy’s girl.
I eventually dragged myself out of bed by bribing my addicted body with coffee.I could afford a lie-in, seeing as Aunt Laurie and a couple of college girls were in charge ofCake Awaytoday.
