Away With You (Beyond The Grid #1)

CHAPTER 1

KATIE

While You Were Sleeping is an underrated holiday movie.

Seriously, we get to this time of year—early December when the daylight hours are shorter and the weather is foul and the streetlamps are strung with festive lights—and people start raving about Love Actually and The Holiday and watching them on repeat.

All the while, they’re bypassing the one perfect Christmas movie. Well, the one perfect movie full stop.

And I don’t think this because I relate too much to Lucy, the main character.

Sure, we’d both be deemed single cat ladies who are alone in the world with no family to celebrate with on Christmas Day.

And I guess some may say I have the same girl-next-door quality that Sandra Bullock does so well.

But that isn’t why I play it on repeat through the month of December.

No, it’s because in this movie, the heroine defies all the odds—that is, pretending to be engaged to the man in a coma and then falling in love with his brother instead—and gets her happily ever after.

Given it’s officially the silly season and a frosty Friday night, I have this movie in my sights, along with a takeaway biryani and my heated blanket. I just need to get from my Sainsbury’s Local to my flat fifteen minutes down the road, and I can launch into my weekend.

If only I’d held back from buying all those oranges.

Tightening my grip on one of the two bags I’d filled during my stop at the local, which is perfect for a grocery dash on the way home from the tube station, I lament my new podcast obsession.

Usually, I’m a true crime podcast girly through and through, but a friend at the lab where I work suggested a wellness podcast by a professor at our university, and I gave it a go.

Turns out, I love it. I love learning about all the things that can go wrong in my body, all the things that are probably already going wrong without my knowledge.

It feeds into two of my life skills: rampant hypochondriasis and the ability to catastrophise everything.

So, after Dr James spent twenty minutes of yesterday’s pod talking about how scurvy cases are on the rise in modern society, I took one glance at my gums this morning and knew I needed to invest in more Vitamin C.

Did I opt for the small bottle of tablets that would address any deficiency I may have?

Of course not. Instead, I bought a bag of oranges—each fruit the size of my head—not thinking about the walk home.

And how my muscles are primed for pipetting, not carrying.

“Shame Sally isn’t here with me,” I mutter. I’ve stopped for a second time to put my bags on the damp ground and to gather my breath. “She would have helped get these oranges home.”

Sally is what I call the old lady trolley I use when I do my weekly grocery shop.

She helps me lug my groceries from the local Asda over at the Junction all the way back to my place.

And the only price I pay for using her is my dignity.

But honestly, what is a person to do if they live in a borough of London and don’t have a car? A shopping trolley is the only option.

“Almost there,” I puff, lying to myself as I near the turn off from the main road to my street.

I’m lucky that I live on the border of Clapham and Brixton, which means I’m close to two tube stations on two different lines, making travelling all over London that much easier.

It’s just the getting off the tube and the actual walking to my front door that I struggle with.

Especially when carrying three thousand pounds of bloody oranges.

“Ooof.”

I take a blind turn into my street and walk straight into a large man and his similarly large chest.

“Sorry!”

I stumble back two steps, throwing out an arm to search for balance and letting go of my bags at the same time. I never claimed to be co-ordinated.

“Oh, no,” I cry out, watching two rebel oranges roll away, making a run for it.

“Are you alright?”

I tear my gaze from where one lucky orange has just disappeared into a drain and focus on the man mountain who caused all this trouble to begin with. His voice is deep, with the inflection that tells me the owner is ‘posh’.

“Sure, I’m fine,” I say. My gaze travels from the chest at my eyeline, noting it is broad and covered in an army green peacoat jacket (Good choice), all the way up to the blue eyes staring back at me.

I know those eyes.

“Katie?”

And those eyes appear to remember me.

I take a small step back, craning my neck to look up at him properly. Nathan Jackson had been tall back at school, making my five-foot-three-inches stature hobbit-like, but in the years since then, he’s grown even more.

Or maybe it’s his aura that has him looming large and tower-like over me.

“Katherine Winslow?” His light eyebrows draw down in recognition. “It is you.”

A small kernel of pride wiggles its way through me at the idea that this man—this famous athlete with twenty million followers on Instagram—recognises me. After it’s been almost a decade since we’ve crossed paths, no less.

“Hi, Nathan,” I say, my voice squeakier than I’ve ever heard it before.

His eyes crinkle as he stares down at me, and I do a mental stocktake of my outfit.

When I’d dressed in a hurry this morning, I hadn’t been expecting a run-in with the gorgeous Formula 1 star whom I shared twelve months with many years ago, and so I’d chosen today to wear my warmest (read ugliest) winter coat and my hand-crafted beanie.

Now, most of the time, I’m proud to wear this misshapen headwear.

It’s warm and unique and a product of one of the hobbies I’d fostered during the pandemic.

Knitting came on the heels of sour dough making and puzzles and was followed by binge watching Grey’s Anatomy (all seventeen seasons).

And yes, I do count that as a hobby. But right now, I’m wishing I’d shoved my head under any of the thousands of woollen hats I have stashed in my drawer and not this brown, gold and red eyesore that I’d sewn together in a fit of loneliness and despair.

“How are you?” he asks, like it’s been days and not years since we’d last seen each other.

Another orange makes an escape and I scramble to retrieve it.

I may appear slightly mad trying to track down my errant fruit, but I paid for them and they’re my ticket out of scurvy-ville.

And also, I need to not be looking at Nathan right now.

Because for my corneas, it’s the equivalent of looking directly at the sun.

“Here, let me help you.” He bends his oversized body in half and plucks up two oranges, reaching to grab another two from the roadside with a flick of the wrist. I’m aware that F1 drivers need quick reflexes, but this is next level.

“Someone likes their oranges,” he comments, handing two back to me. I put them back in a bag while he tucks the other two into his jacket pocket.

Is he stealing my oranges? Does he fear scurvy, too?

I lean down to pick up the leftover groceries puddled at my feet. Tampons, high fibre digestives and a tub of ice cream. Could my shopping be any more embarrassing? It may as well be screaming ‘single lady living on her own.’ Who’s also on her period.

Excellent.

“Um,” I stammer. I hope the dim evening light will hide both my flaming cheeks and my sad Friday night trip to Sainsbury’s.

The bag in my left hand takes this moment to tear at the bottom, dropping my box of tampons back down at his feet, and I groan out loud.

“Seriously?” I say to the universe.

Nathan chuckles, retrieving my tampons and placing them in the overstuffed laptop bag hanging off my neck and across my body.

“So, do you live around here?” he asks, his blue, blue eyes glued to me.

Feeling self-conscious under the weight of his stare, I whip my beanie off my head, freeing the mop of hair that had been secured under there. It cascades over my shoulders and down my back, like a warm blanket.

“Better,” I mutter. I’ve been both blessed and cursed with a lot of hair.

Like, copious amounts, the sort of hair that has the hairdresser taking in a gulp and rescheduling their next appointment when they see me in their chair.

It’s what they describe as lots of strands of coarse hair, which is supposed to be a good thing.

I never have to invest in volume-boost hair products.

But it also means it’s often unruly, rarely stays in place, and I get headaches if it’s up in a ponytail for too long. “Much better.”

I massage the roots of my hair near my forehead and groan, my noise almost drowning his swift intake of breath.

“Are you okay?”

I stop massaging and peer up at him.

He leans in closer to me, a smile tickling his lips. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten all of this.” He motions around my head, and I smooth my hair back from my face, pulling it back behind my head and securing it with the last elastic I have on my wrist. I go through like five of these every day.

“I’m surprised you remember anything of this,” I say, waving up and down my body.

His head tilts, his gaze sweeps over me before landing on my face.

On my cheek. “Ah, how could I ever forget this?” He reaches out a finger and stops just shy of touching my face.

And yet my skin still tingles like his hands are all over me.

“I’d never seen a heart-shaped freckle like this before. Or since.”

I release a huff of air, shifting my face away from his almost touch. My olive complexion—thanks, Italian genes—is smooth and freckle-free, except for just the one. Right under my left eye; and yes, it’s weirdly shaped like a love heart.

“Right.”