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I look up at him through my lashes. His eyes are dark and hooded, his cheeks are sporting an impressive red glow, and his lips are wet and swollen. I feel strangely proud that I’m the one responsible for this.
“Amber.” That’s all he says, just my name through panted breaths. His chest heaves up and down for a few seconds before he takes his hand and runs a gentle finger along the side of my face. “What am I going to do with you?”
Invite me back to your hotel? Fuck me until I can’t walk? Hold me in your arms as we drift off to sleep together? A wonderful combination of all three? Any of those options sound incredibly appealing right now.
He leans in and tries to give me another quick kiss, but I reach out and grab his tie, holding him in place so I can steal just a little more.
The taxi driver honks again and we both groan as we pull apart. All of a sudden, the fatigue I’ve been feeling over the last few days hits me all at once. I attempt to stifle a yawn and fail. A night with Finn is incredibly tempting right now, but it seems like my body has other ideas.
I think Finn is on the same page because he presses a chaste kiss to my forehead and then laces our fingers together. “Come on. Let’s get you home, sweetheart.” He tugs me toward the taxi and I semi-reluctantly follow.
“Let me know when you get home, all right?” he says softly once I’m safely inside the taxi.
“I will.”
“Good.” He leans in through the open window and kisses me one last time. It’s not a quick kiss either, and I’m truly about one second away from pulling him into the taxi with me, when the driver clears his throat and pointedly taps the running meter.
Finn gives the driver an apologetic smile and pulls away. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
I nod. “Tomorrow.”
He steps back onto the pavement and my driver wastes no time pulling off and hurtling down the street. I look out the window until we turn a corner and Finn disappears from view. My phone buzzes the second he does.
Finn
Goodnight, sweetheart. Sleep well.
I lean back against my seat and smile. For the first night in weeks, I think I’m going to.
* * *
My hand shakesas I push the key into the lock. There are a thousand places I’d like to be right now, but standing outside my new home with my mother and Patrick is definitely not one of them.
I’ve taken a rare day off work, which wasn’t easy. Between The August Room and The Pevensey, I had to fight for this little nugget of free time and Cynthia only relented under the promise of me working overtime over the weekend to catch up. It puts a bit of a dampener on the whole thing and it doesn’t help that I, against my better judgement, have taken this day to invite my mother and Patrick to come and see my new house.
I’m not entirely sure why I’ve done it. Maybe it’s because I’m still on a high from that night with Finn a few days ago. Not just from the kiss or the way he held me in his arms like I was something particularly precious to him, but from how he reacted when I told him I’d bought the house. How proud and genuinely excited he’d been for me. I keep replaying that moment in my head, and I guess it lulls me into a false sense of security because I forget that not everyone is as excited for me as Finn is.
My mother and Patrick quickly remind me of that, though. Her face is a mask of disgust as she walks up the small pathway in front of my new home. The front garden needs some work. There are weeds everywhere and the hedges need trimming, but it’s not that bad. Is it? I second-guess myself as I watch her nose wrinkle and her lips curl.
“Really, Amber?” she says bluntly. “Here?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not a very nice neighbourhood, is it?” She jerks her chin toward a wall across the road where there’s some creative graffiti sprayed across it. “Seems very rough.”
“Couldn’t you have chosen somewhere a little nicer?” Patrick asks, the look on his face mirroring the one on my mother’s. He kicks away a stray Coke can that has somehow found its way into my front garden.
“It’s a perfectly safe area,” I tell them. “And it just needs a bit of a tidy up. That’s all.”
I reluctantly push open the front door and step aside for them to enter.
“It’s very small, isn’t it?” my mother comments as she walks inside. “Barely any space to swing around.”
I grit my teeth and follow them in. “Good thing I won’t be doing much swinging around.”
They traipse through the house —mynew home — making disparaging comments as they go.
“Terrible natural light.”
