Chapter 1 #2
‘Love you, too,’ I mutter into his curly hair, before pushing him away. ‘Now let me eat my steak.’
We settle into conversations about the rest of the season and where we’re flying to next and then fall into shared food comas once Elijah moves all the trays to the cart in the hallway.
It’s a good evening, once I embrace it. I look at the time and see it’s just before 2 a.m. – and whilst I have a flight tomorrow and should probably be asleep, I don’t want them to leave.
I contemplate suggesting we all bunk down here, in my room, like we aren’t grown men who have their own beds in this hotel tonight, when there’s a knock at the door.
‘Did you order yourself a rent boy for the night?’ Harper teases as the knocking doesn’t stop.
‘Or maybe it’s the hotel staff coming to tell you to shut the fuck up,’ I say. Harper is fond of singing along to whatever background music is playing.
‘Unlikely. I have the voice of an angel.’
‘Sure you do,’ Elijah says sarcastically.
‘The hotel’s been taken over by racing drivers and team staff – it’s probably someone who’s wasted and got the wrong room.’
‘Well why don’t you answer it and tell them to bugger off,’ Elijah suggests irritably.
I shrug Harper off and pad to the door and the second I open it, I regret not looking through the peephole first, because there he is.
The only person I really wanted to see tonight.
His wavy brown hair is scraped back into a bun on the top of his head and his chocolate-brown eyes are hugged with dark shadows.
His glasses rest on his nose in place of his usual contacts, so I know he must be tired, and I find myself softening towards him.
But it takes him precisely three seconds to go from exhausted to panicked as he realises I’m not alone.
I can’t speak. If I do, I’m going to give the game away because the only thing I want to ask is where the fuck he’s been and why he’s been ignoring my messages.
I want to tell him how pissed off I am that he forgot my birthday.
That with him, I never ever come first. Yet I can’t say any of that in front of Harper and Elijah.
I’m sure even a quick glance over my shoulder right now will make them both immediately suspicious.
So, I just stand there like an idiot and don’t say anything at all.
The panic slides away as he schools his face into a blank expression.
He forces out a laugh and pretends to catch sight of the others.
‘Shit, sorry, I must have the wrong room! I was looking for—’ he’s playing calm-and-collected very successfully.
But then he struggles to find a name. Eventually he comes up with: ‘Anna.’
‘Wrong floor, man,’ Harper offers from the bed. ‘She’s on four, I think, not eight.’
‘Of course, sorry, only just finished for the night. Clearly my brain isn’t working.’ It’s a believable lie, because why else would he be wandering the hotel at 2 a.m.? ‘Sorry to interrupt your night.’
‘You didn’t, don’t worry,’ Elijah replies, holding out a hand to Harper to pull him up off the bed. ‘We were about to call it a night anyway.’
I’m almost hopeful that that means Jackson might stick around, but I’m clearly delusional. ‘No worries. I’ll walk back with you. Maybe I’ll actually end up on the right floor this time.’
All three of them laugh, but I can’t move, let alone speak. Harper and Elijah have to contort their bodies to get around me to join Jackson in the hallway. I’m not sure I’ve even spoken since he arrived. Or breathed.
He refuses to meet my eye, instead smiling at his drivers as they tell him he needs to take a break more often or he’ll end up like his dad.
Joke’s on him, because little do they know that’s exactly how this will end.
‘We’ll see you in the morning, okay?’ Harper’s looking at me curiously, perhaps confused by my awkward silence and complete lack of social skills right now.
‘In the morning?’ It’s a stupid question, he’s just trying to say goodnight, but my brain is completely lagging in this moment, trying to catch up on what the hell is happening.
‘We’re crashing your breakfast with Nils. We all want to hear about his new woman. Maybe she’s the one.’
Three years ago, I couldn’t imagine Harper James understanding what ‘the one’ even meant, never mind making it his life’s mission to help his friends find their own. Falling for Kian Walker really did a number on him.
It doesn’t help that every time we go for dinner or a drink, he points out every guy he thinks could be a possible match for me.
Like I don’t have a long-term boyfriend.
If only he knew. It’s so fucking stupid.
I can’t believe I’m still keeping this ridiculous secret from him.
It’s past the point of making me feel like I’m fourteen again and sneaking around with my first boyfriend behind my parents’ back.
Now the secret is eating me up inside, making me feel ashamed of who and what I am.
Making me hate myself. And I hate Jackson for that. Almost more than I miss him.
ARGH! This is some seriously toxic shit.
‘Oh, okay, yeah, see you in the morning.’ And then, just when I thought this couldn’t get any more fucked up, I wave at him.
Harper’s not an idiot. The media used to make him out to be a fool, but I’ve known him a long time and he’s anything but.
‘Night, Jo,’ Elijah calls over his shoulder as he trails behind Harper towards the lifts.
It hurts to watch them all walk away, leaving me completely alone. But then I catch Jackson looking back. That’s what completely guts me. I hope, desperately, to see remorse, regret, or an apology in those eyes that once upon a time made me feel warm and safe.
But they hold nothing but relief.
Relief that, yet again, we’ve got away with this. He’s made it through another close shave without this stinking, festering, toxic secret getting out.
It’s only when I shut the door that I realise he all but pretended I wasn’t even there. He talked directly to Elijah and Harper and didn’t even acknowledge my presence.
What the fuck?
I don’t even know whether he remembered my birthday.
As I reflect bitterly on how this night turned out, I begin to think that perhaps he came knocking on my door to get his own needs met and not because he wanted to meet mine. And yet all I feel is pitifully grateful that he remembered my existence at all.
That’s fucking tragic.
Happy fucking birthday to me.
As I get back into bed, it’s hard to see how twenty-nine is going to be any better than twenty-eight.