CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
EIGHTEEN
… and when I look back, hand in hand with you, we’ll see what we did with our lives, and it was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful …
– from ‘Beautiful’, by These Exiles
THERE WAS A PARTICULAR name for the sort of exhilaration someone felt after getting a tattoo, right?
I was almost sure there had to be. The rush of pain, the corresponding delight from knowing you’d conquered another few seconds of agony to get to the beauty of the design.
It still buzzed through me, even though we’d been inked two days ago.
‘I still can’t believe we did that,’ Patrick said with a grin as he took a bite of chicken.
I tried not to laugh too loudly in the already overcrowded chicken shop. ‘Me neither.’
This place was perfect – the best sort of spot to end the night after another of Derek’s events.
Seriously. Is this my life now? Sneaking in as many moments with Patrick as I can?
Apparently. Patrick’s gaze rarely moved far from my own for long, and each time his warm hazel eyes rested on any part of me I could almost feel the heat tingling across my skin.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Nah, not since the first day,’ I said with a shrug as I glanced down at my side.
The seagull tattoo was absolutely tiny, only about an inch, hidden under my arm and my sundress. My bra still couldn’t be put back on – too tight – and I was more than a little aware that when the evening started to get nippy, so would I.
But that was the least of my problems.
The real trouble?
I was falling head over heels for Patrick Tetlow, and I was almost certainly going to have my heart broken.
‘Laura’s mad at me, of course.’
Patrick frowned. ‘Laura? Why?’
‘We always said we’d get matching tattoos – I told her that hasn’t changed,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘But you’d think I’d betrayed her!’
‘You two are very close, aren’t you?’
It was impossible not to grin at that. ‘Aren’t all twins?’
‘I guess so.’ Patrick’s gaze was soft. ‘I like that she’s got your back. That you have someone in your corner, always. You want the last bit?’ He held up the piece of chicken.
I shook my head. ‘Nah, you have it.’
The thirty-piece box had disappeared criminally quickly as we shared it between us.
‘Seriously, glowing yellow curry sauce?’ I’d wrinkled my nose as Patrick had leaned past me to place his order, the scent of him almost enough to distract me from his weird condiment choices.
‘Do not knock it until you’ve tried it.’
I’d tried it. Once I’d downed more lemonade than I thought was even possible and stopped glaring at Patrick, who was clutching his sides with laughter, I dipped my own chips in mayo and swore never to eat anything off his plate again.
Moments later, I had begun to tease him about the way his fingers kept meandering to his ear, just about managing to stop himself from touching his anchor.
God, it suited him. How was it that getting tattoos together was one of the sexiest and most intimate things I had ever done with a guy?
‘Do you think Derek will be impressed that we stayed right until the end of his precious event?’ Patrick said offhandedly, snagging a chip from my portion.
I batted his hands away as discomfort swirled within me.
‘I hope so. We managed to last longer at this one than the one before.’ It was getting harder and harder to remember to care about what Derek wanted from us.
What Patrick’s label wanted from us. Now I thought about it, I hadn’t asked Laura in ages how this whole fake relationship was going for Butterflies.
I hadn’t heard how the app downloads had been going for days now – almost a week?
I unlocked my phone, fully intending to drop Laura a message – but got distracted by an email that popped up. Karun. Oh, hell.
Hi Jessy,
Great work with Owen yesterday – really appreciate you meeting our high value clients. Looking forward to seeing you back in the office when your sabbatical is over. There are a few things we should discuss.
Karun
Ugh. Work. I placed my phone down and tried not to think about how much I was dreading going back.
‘First kiss,’ Patrick said, returning to the game that we’d been playing since we sat down.
This was not a topic I wanted to linger on. ‘Ross,’ I said, putting away my phone and picking up a chip and dangling it in the air as I tried to smile. ‘Well, first grown-up kiss anyway. And, honestly, it was not great.’
‘Sloppy?’
I threw a chip at him. ‘Yep, and not the good kind. You?’
‘Katie … Katie someone. How have I forgotten her surname? She was my school crush.’ Patrick shook his head fondly. ‘OK, next. Earliest memory?’
‘Oooh, toughie. I think most of my memories are of Laura,’ I said with a shrug. ‘I guess that’s normal, with twins?’
‘Nothing about the two of you is normal.’
I threw another chip at him.
‘Your loss,’ he quipped, dunking it in his curry sauce and slurping it up. ‘So just you and Laura, nothing concrete?’
‘I can remember being on swings with her. Our mum was trying to push both of us, and both of us felt hard done by. I was crying, I think.’ I grinned at the memory, at the innocence of it – at how only now I could see how tough my mum had it, having to raise two children all on her own. ‘What about you?’
‘Oh, nothing good. Cassie making me butter pasta,’ Patrick said with a shrug, leaning back in his seat.
He always did that when he didn’t want to talk about something. Shrug, and lean back – as though he could put physical distance between him and the topic he didn’t want to touch.
Still, I was curious. ‘Butter pasta?’
‘Exactly what it sounds like. Pasta cooked to the point of disintegration, with butter.’ Patrick shrugged again, that little movement telling me everything I needed to know.
He must have noticed my look, because he smiled awkwardly. ‘You don’t have to feel sorry for me.’
Heat flared in my cheeks. ‘I wasn’t –’
‘I don’t tell you these things for sympathy,’ he continued, a quiet calm in his voice that was far too soothing. ‘I can talk to you about anything, Jessy.’
My name sounded so good on his lips.
‘Last orders!’
I jumped, glancing over at the counter and the clock above it.
Midnight. Fuck.
‘Come on,’ Patrick added, rising to his feet and grabbing a handful of chips from my portion. ‘Let’s get you home.’
It was the comfortable way he said it that made my heart warm. Everything was so … so easy with Patrick.
I mean, obviously it wasn’t. He was a millionaire pop star and I was a broke nobody.
But still, everything between us felt easy.
The night air was freezing after the cosy warmth of the chicken shop, but I’d grab a decaf coffee on the way back to the hotel, and thankfully it was only two streets over from –
‘Ah,’ said Patrick.
‘Yeah,’ I said quietly, reaching up and touching the grill that had been pulled across the gates to the station. ‘I guess it closed early. Must be issues with the trains.’
Whatever it was, it meant a very long walk or a criminally expensive taxi back to my hotel.
Well, that was what you got, I suppose, for staying out all night with a guy you literally couldn’t leave alone.
Precisely what we were going to do after the Songwriter Awards next week …
Easier not to think about it.
‘Well, I guess I better start walking,’ I said cheerfully, pulling my light summer jacket closer around me.
‘You’re not going to walk all the way from here, are you?’ Even in the darkness, I could see Patrick’s concern.
It was stupid how happy it made me, seeing him worried. ‘Yeah, it’s OK. I’ll probably just speedwalk.’
‘You still like staying in the hotel?’ Patrick asked.
‘I mean, it’s nice … but weird. I thought living in a fancy hotel would be dreamy, but I just get so –’ Perhaps a shrug was easier. I didn’t want to admit how alone I felt in that huge room sometimes.
‘Lonely,’ Patrick finished for me with a rueful smile. ‘I get it – it’s one of the reasons I hate going on tour. I mean, it’s amazing, playing for fans all over the world … but hotels are so empty.’
Empty. Yeah, he was right. Even though it was full of guests, I’d never been somewhere that felt more hollow.
‘I’ve had Anna and Laura crashing with me most nights, to be honest,’ I admitted, trying not to sound like a toddler who needed babysitting. ‘But Anna went out on a date tonight and Laura has a big investor meeting in the morning.’
A twinge of guilt; an investor meeting I hadn’t had time to help her prepare for. Before Patrick – and this whole relationship – I would help Laura prep for all her meetings. Big or small.
‘Must be nice to have them with you,’ Patrick said with a shrug. ‘I can’t wait for the guys to get back from their penance tours.’
‘Yeah, it’s nice. It isn’t home, though,’ I said with a wry smile. ‘But then home is a houseshare with a bunch of guys who don’t know how to put milk back in the fridge, so …’
I trailed off, trying not to sound ungrateful. This last month had been a whirlwind beyond anything I could ever have imagined.
Patrick looked at me in quiet contemplation before he opened his mouth again. ‘You could crash at my place. For the night, I mean.’
For a second, I was speechless.
Not once, in all our weeks of dating, had Patrick invited me back to his place.
I understood his need for privacy. Respected it even.
So why had he invited me over now?
I was suddenly grateful for the cover the darkness of night provided. My cheeks were surely scarlet from the heat emanating from them.
Did that mean crash at my place … in my spare bedroom? Or was he looking for a continuation of our photo-booth activities?
I swallowed. I want a part two of that night, so badly.
Try as I might, I couldn’t tell what Patrick was thinking just by looking at him. As I stared into his eyes, a calm sea reflected back at me. Not expecting, not pushing. Simply offering.
‘If … if you wouldn’t mind,’ I said quietly, testing the water by dipping a toe in.
It didn’t seem to make any ripples. Patrick just smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t fine with it.’
Fine. What did fine mean?