Chapter 25 Andrea
Andrea
Eliza: So, what was the Oxford Union like? Did you see Harry Potter?
Me: Intense. Elitist. Low on Dementors. Liam’s speech was hot, though.
Eliza: What? I thought he was talking about NHS reform.
Me: He was.
Eliza: And that did it for you?
Me: Fiscal responsibility is my kink now.
Eliza: You need serious help.
I slipped my phone into my bag as Liam appeared beside me with a cold glass of white wine.
“How’s Eliza?” he asked.
“She loves her updates.”
Liam gave my upper arm a brief squeeze and looked across the room for Hugo.
It was a relief to be a fake couple again just so I could be close to him without feeling like it had to mean something.
He’d taken off his jacket and slung it over the back of a chair, and the warmth of his skin pressed through the thin shirt onto my bare flesh.
I felt myself flush slightly, not just because it was warm.
The senior common room was long and comfortable in an Oxford sort of way, with tall windows facing the lawn—the quad.
Bookcases and art lined the walls—they really loved their wood paneling here.
Same sort of style as the Union, old wealth, like things had been here so long their value was impossible to measure.
Small tables had been set out with wine glasses and bowls of nuts, and people stood in groups talking quietly.
Normally, I’d have studied the artwork on the walls, but I was too nervous to leave Liam’s side.
Hugo appeared next to us.
“That went well,” he said. “Andrea, as a spectator, what did you think of it all?”
“It seemed like everyone was very interested in what you had to say,” I said.
To be honest, I hadn’t really processed most of it. I was too hypnotized by seeing Liam speak, this other side of him that commanded respect. Admiration, even.
And not from just anyone—cabinet ministers, journalists, senior people with senior jobs who did important things for the country.
I’d never thought of him that way before.
I’d never even considered what it was like to be the sort of person who had that much influence, whose words and choices mattered so much.
It made something flutter below my breastbone, like he was even more out of reach than I’d realized, just as I felt I wanted to be closer.
“And tell me,” Hugo continued, “when reform hurts the people it’s meant to help, do you still call it progress?”
His tone was light, but the question wasn’t. Hugo was a cabinet minister. Why did he care what I thought? I was just a sales rep from Datchet.
Liam’s arm slipped behind my back, his hand settling on my shoulder, like I belonged to him—like we were a team. Or was he worried about how I was going to answer? The gesture felt more protective than controlling.
“No,” I said. “I think you call it failure. Even if the numbers look better afterward.”
The words sounded too honest the moment they left my mouth.
Liam’s arm tightened slightly, pulling me into him. I felt a loosening in me, like the small hug meant approval, that I hadn’t let him down.
Had I?
“And you, Liam?” said Hugo. “What do you think? Your perspective is rather different, I’m sure.”
Liam paused. I felt his fingers press into my arm, his thumb graze the skin. “I agree with Andrea,” he said. “Better numbers don’t mean much if people stop trusting the system. Without trust, reform doesn’t last.”
I agree with Andrea.
The words settled somewhere deep in my chest, warm and frightening at the same time.
I wasn’t supposed to matter in rooms like this.
And Liam had just made it sound like I did.
“Well, seems I’ve been outvoted.” Hugo huffed and turned toward the quad. “Good to see someone in the room is brave enough to disagree with me.”
Hugo moved away, drawn into another conversation on the other side of the room. I felt the tension in my shoulders soften.
Liam’s hand was still at my back. He hadn’t noticed that no one was watching us anymore.
Or maybe he had … and just wasn’t letting go.
“Ready?” he murmured. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”
I nodded and tried not to think about how easy it would be to follow him anywhere.
*
Back at the hotel, we were standing outside my room.
“Thank you, Andrea,” he said. “I hope it wasn’t … too much.”
“Not at all.” Oxford was a bit much. I couldn’t imagine being there every day, a student, like Liam.
How small it would make you feel, a single person, slotting in against all those centuries of history and meaning that had literally shaped the country.
But Liam didn’t seem to shrink—he’d grown, expanded, like it brought something out of him that had always been there, that I just hadn’t seen.
“Well …” He was looking at me, less than two feet between us, his eyes dark. “I appreciated you being there. You looked beautiful tonight, Andrea. Thank you.”
It sounded like he was thanking me for being beautiful, for being the right sort of woman on his arm, the woman he wanted.
But the look on his face said something else—like he actually wanted …
me. His eyes dropped to my lips, then back to meet my gaze.
I felt my stomach lurch. Every cell in me leaned forward.
Touch him. A hand on his chest … pull him inside … kiss him …
“I—it was my pleasure.”
Neither of us moved. Without meaning to, I licked my lips and saw something pass across his face, a flicker of something.
He kept his eyes on mine, so dark now, with the hallway light behind him.
I felt that feeling again, like when he’d looked at me before, naked in my bedroom, when his gaze had dragged over my breasts and down between my legs.
A sharp pulse of wanting that I didn’t know what to do with.
I swallowed.
“I suppose we’d better …” He glanced back at his door.
“Right.”
“Yes.”
Did he want to leave? Sometimes, when his arm had been around me tonight, I’d felt like he’d enjoyed it too, the contact. His touch had lingered a fraction longer than necessary …
But this was silly. My mind was soft from the wine and the excitement of being there with him, on his arm, like I’d actually mattered—that was all.
“Well, night, then,” I said. I put my hand on the doorknob and turned. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was still there, watching me walk inside.
I threw myself down on the bed and closed my eyes. But the room didn’t quiet. All I could feel was how close he’d been … and how much space there was now.
I opened my eyes again and stared at the ceiling, trying to slow the restless energy still moving through me.
Somewhere beyond the connecting door, a latch clicked softly.
His room.
I held my breath. I heard a creak and a soft footstep, then a low murmur, too faint to make out the words.
Was he on the phone? I reached blindly across the bed for my own phone to text Eliza, but I found myself straining to hear what was happening on the other side of the wall.
Crap. Listening in wasn’t cool.
A shower—that was what I’d do. Remove temptation, get myself under hot running water, and think about literally anything else. I pushed myself upright, phone still in my hand, ready to walk across the room.
And then I heard my name.
Shit. Who was he talking to? Bonnie?
I slid off the bed and crossed the carpet, stopping beside the closed door between our suites. I wasn’t trying to listen, but I heard it again—Andrea, followed by a light laugh.
What the hell—
I lowered myself slowly to the carpet, careful of the floorboards this time, then leaned closer to the narrow seam of the connecting door.
For one deranged second, I considered the classic glass-against-the-wall move, but that felt like a new low, even for me.
I pressed closer instead, trying to catch what he was saying as my grip tightened around the phone in my palm.
And then it slipped—
A sharp tap as it knocked against the wood before dropping to the floor.
Fuck.
I went completely still, heat rushing into my face as the sound seemed to echo far louder than it should have in the quiet.
For a long second, there was nothing.
Then a shadow shifted beneath the thin line of light at the bottom of the door.
He’d heard.
I stayed there on the carpet, my fingers pressed into the fibers, focused on the faint movement on the other side. He was close enough that I could map where he stood without seeing him. His shape leaned in toward the door, listening for me.
Then his voice came through the wood, low but easy to hear, as if there were only a foot or two between us.
“Andrea?”
I didn’t answer. What could I say without admitting I’d been crouched on the floor listening, like a teenager locked outside a bathroom at a house party?
He didn’t knock.
He could unlock the door right now, walk into my room, ask me what I was doing there on the carpet.
All he had to do was open it. He could do that.
Or I could.
“You should try to sleep,” he said after a moment. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
Then his shadow shifted, and I heard footsteps retreating into the room.
I stayed where I was on the floor, my heart still racing, staring at the bottom of the door.
What would I have done if I’d seen the handle turn, seen him standing there on the other side, nothing between us but expectation?
Something I had no business even considering. Because whatever I told myself tomorrow—about Novexia, how wrong we were for each other, how I didn’t fit—I knew it didn’t matter.
If he’d opened that door, I wouldn’t have asked him to leave.