Chapter 10
Christina
Iwake slowly, aware of warmth before anything else.
Not the distant, ambient kind that belongs to a heated room, but something closer. Specific. The solid heat of another body pressed against mine, the steady rise and fall of his breathing at my back.
For a moment, I don’t move. I let myself stay suspended in that quiet space between sleep and memory, where sensation exists without explanation.
His arm is wrapped around my waist, heavy and secure. His hand rests flat against my stomach, fingers spread wide like they settled there in the night and never found a reason to leave.
When I shift slightly, his grip tightens. Not asleep. Just slow to surface.
Memory returns in pieces. His mouth on mine in the dark. The careful way he touched me at first, like he didn’t trust himself with the reality of me. The slow disappearance of that restraint, replaced by something surer. Hungrier. The way he said my name like it mattered.
And later.
I had woken with my head on his chest, the room dark and quiet. He’d been tracing lazy circles along my back, fully awake, listening to my breathing as if it were something worth studying.
“Nothing shy about you in bed,” I’d murmured, lifting my head to look at him.
He had laughed, low and unguarded, before rolling me gently onto my back so he could lie beside me. His fingers drifted over my stomach, drawing idle patterns that made goosebumps scatter across my skin.
“What are you thinking?” I’d asked when he just kept looking at me.
He’d hesitated, almost boyish. “My favourite band at the moment is Imagine Dragons. I’ve been listening to their song ‘Next to Me’ for the last few days. It reminds me of us.”
Before I could tease him for it, he’d started humming. Then singing, soft and unselfconscious in the dark. The lyrics about a man who keeps getting it wrong and a woman who stays anyway.
I’d understood.
His voice had filled the room, deep and steady, and for a few fragile minutes it had felt like we existed in a world no bigger than that bed. My chest had ached with it. A tear had slipped down my cheek before I could stop it.
He’d caught it with his mouth. Kissed it away.
And then he’d kissed me properly, like he wasn’t afraid of the weight of what he felt.
Now, in the grey light of morning, rain moves softly against the window. The cottage smells faintly of clean laundry and something warmer underneath. Him.
I tilt my head just enough to see his face. His hair is a mess, falling across his forehead. His features are relaxed in a way they rarely are during the day. He looks younger like this. Softer.
His thumb brushes lightly across my stomach before settling again.
His eyes open.
For a second, he doesn’t speak. He just looks at me, as though confirming I am still here.
“Morning,” he says, voice rough with sleep.
I smile. “Morning.”
Neither of us moves away.
He studies my face, searching. Doubt. Fear. Hope.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
The question is careful, not panicked. He isn’t asking out of regret. He’s asking because he needs to know I’m steady.
“I’m more than okay,” I tell him.
Relief passes through him in a quiet shift of muscle and breath. His shoulders loosen. His hand settles with more certainty.
He leans forward and presses his mouth gently to my shoulder, unhurried and sure.
I close my eyes again and let myself stay there, wrapped in the warmth of him, in the memory of his voice in the dark, singing about staying next to someone even when it’s hard.
The Cricketers smells like damp coats and fried onions, the windows fogged from too many bodies and not enough air. Someone has claimed the corner table with the uneven leg, and Emma is already there, waving me over with the exaggerated urgency of someone who has nothing urgent to say.
I shrug out of my coat and hang it on the back of the chair.
“Wine?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Large. I’ve earned it.”
She snorts and turns back to Alex, who is standing at the bar, to pass on my order.
Phil stands beside him.
He’s half-turned away, one elbow resting against the wood, listening while Alex talks. His head tilts slightly when he listens properly, like the rest of the world fades out and only the person in front of him exists.
Alex says something that makes him smile.
Not the polite version he gives strangers.
The real one.
I don’t realise I’m staring until he looks up.
It happens in the smallest way. His eyes lift. His gaze moves across the room without purpose, and then it stops.
On me.
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then he straightens.
He says something to Alex I don’t catch and hands over his glass.
He doesn’t look away as he crosses the room.
The noise of the pub folds in around him. Someone shifts to let him pass. Someone else claps him on the shoulder. He barely reacts, his attention fixed forward like he’s following a line only he can see.
He stops in front of me.
“Hi.”
His voice is quieter up close.
I look at him properly. His hair is still damp from the rain, curling slightly at the edges. He hasn’t shaved. There’s a faint mark on his neck I don’t remember leaving but recognise immediately.
“Hi,” I say.
For a moment, he just stands there.
Then his hand settles at my back.
His palm is warm through the thin fabric of my jumper. The contact is steady, familiar in a way that makes something low in my stomach tighten.
Emma says something I don’t register.
Alex laughs.
Phil’s hand leaves my back.
He steps away, turning toward them, his fingers curling loosely at his side like they don’t quite know where to go now.
He answers Alex.
He doesn’t touch me again.
Emma slides into her chair and pulls Alex down beside her, her hand already grabbing the front of his shirt like she needs him anchored there. He laughs, bending toward her, his mouth close to her ear.
Phil stays standing.
“Webb.”
Tommy’s voice cuts across the table.
Phil turns.
Tommy grins at him, then at me, his expression shifting into something unmistakably pleased.
“Well,” he says. “About time.”
Heat rushes straight to Phil’s face.
He looks at the table. At his glass. At anything that isn’t Tommy.
Alex smirks. It’s clear who’d spread the gossip about me and Phil.
Phil sits down quickly.
Across from me.
Tommy drops into the chair beside him, clapping a hand against his shoulder.
“Knew it,” he says. “Told you lot.”
Phil lets out a breath that isn’t quite a laugh.
“It’s not—”
He stops.
He glances at me.
His ears are red.
His fingers tighten around his glass.
Tommy keeps talking. Alex joins in. Something about bets. Something about timing.
Phil smiles, but it’s thinner now. Careful.
His foot bumps mine under the table.
He stills.
For a second, he doesn’t move it away.
Then Tommy leans closer, saying something too low for me to hear.
Phil pulls his foot back.
He picks up his glass.
Drinks.
Sets it down again with more care than necessary.
His eyes flick to mine.
There’s apology there.
And something else.
Something like panic.
He leans forward slightly.
“Do you want some air?” he asks quietly.
Not loud enough for the others.
Just for me.
I am confused why he is reacting like this, so I nod and get up to follow him out of the pub.
The air outside is cold enough to clear the noise from my head.
The pub door closes behind us with a dull thud, sealing the warmth and voices inside. For a moment, neither of us speaks. The sounds from inside blur into something indistinct, laughter and movement softened by wood and glass.
Phil exhales beside me.
Not loudly.
Just… releases something.
He steps away from the wall and into the narrow stretch of pavement, his hands pushed deep into his pockets. His shoulders loosen, the tightness I hadn’t fully noticed inside unwinding piece by piece.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I turn toward him.
“For what?”
He shrugs, but the movement is restless.
“They don’t mean anything by it.”
“I know.”
And I do. Tommy’s grin hadn’t been cruel. Emma’s delight hadn’t been judgement. None of it had been meant to hurt.
That doesn’t mean it hadn’t shifted something.
Phil glances at me, then away again, his breath visible in the cold air.
“I don’t…” He stops. Starts again. “I’m not very good at that.”
“At what?”
He looks at me then, properly.
“Being watched.”
The honesty in it catches me off guard.
He isn’t asking for reassurance. He isn’t apologising for me. He’s just stating a fact about himself, like the weather or gravity.
Something in me softens.
I step closer.
Not enough to trap him. Just enough that he would have to move deliberately to create distance.
He doesn’t.
His eyes drop briefly to my mouth, then lift again.
“You don’t have to be good at it,” I say quietly.
He lets out a breath that might almost be a laugh.
His hand emerges from his pocket, hesitates in the space between us, then settles at my waist.
Carefully.
Like he’s reacquainting himself with something he’d lost.
His thumb moves once against my side. Small. Unconscious.
“I liked this morning,” he says.
“So did I.”
The corner of his mouth lifts.
He steps closer, close enough now that the cold air can’t reach the space between us.
His other hand rises, fingers brushing a loose strand of hair away from my face before resting briefly at the back of my neck.
He kisses me.
Not like he’s proving something.
Not like he’s asking permission.
Like he’s come home to it.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests lightly against mine. It’s become his signature move, this quiet press of skin against skin, like he needs the contact to steady himself.
Behind us, the pub door opens.
Voices spill out.
Phil’s hand stills.
He doesn’t pull away immediately.
But I feel it.
The moment his awareness shifts outward.
His hand slides from my waist.
Not abruptly.
Not cold.
Just… gone.
He steps back half a pace.
The distance slips back in, quiet but unmistakable. Something uneasy settles low in my chest.