Chapter 23
Philip
The water is hotter than it needs to be.
Almost punishing.
It hits the back of my neck and shoulders in hard, steady sheets, and for a moment I just stand there with both hands braced against the tile and let it.
Let the flight sweat wash off. Let the stale airport air wash off. Let the last month wash off if that is at all possible.
Mark steps in under the spray, already stripped, water catching immediately on tattooed skin, running in dark lines over his chest and stomach.
For a second neither of us moves.
His eyes drag over me with a look that lands somewhere between hunger and disbelief.
As if he still cannot quite believe I am standing in front of him either.
He reaches for me.
One hand sliding to the back of my neck.
The other settling at my stomach.
And then his mouth is on mine.
The kiss is hard.
Not rough exactly.
Just starved.
Four months of held-back words and edited messages and careful distance collapsing in one violent rush.
I make a sound into his mouth that I do not recognise as my own.
My hands find him blindly, shoulders first, then chest, then around to his back because I need more contact than seems physically available.
He is hot and wet and solid under my palms.
Real.
So painfully real.
Mark kisses like he has been restraining himself for far too long.
His tongue slides against mine, his breath mixing with the steam until I cannot tell where the heat is coming from.
My back hits tile.
I barely feel it.
Mark presses in close, one thigh between mine, one hand still cradling the back of my neck as if even now some part of him is making sure I stay.
As if I might disappear if he lets go.
I clutch at his shoulders.
“Fuck,” I breathe against his mouth.
He laughs once.
A broken, low sound.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, kissing the corner of my jaw, the damp skin beneath my ear. “That about covers it.”
His mouth moves lower.
Neck.
Throat.
Back to my mouth again.
Every kiss feels half relief, half disbelief.
I slide my hands down his sides, feel the flex of muscle, the slick heat of water over skin, and when our hips meet the jolt of want that goes through me is almost embarrassing in its force.
Mark feels it too.
His forehead drops briefly to mine.
We are both breathing too hard already.
“I missed this,” I says voice rough.
Not sex.
Not kissing.
This.
The whole unbearable, impossible thing of him being close enough to touch.
He kisses me again before I can say anything else, and this one is slower, deeper, somehow more dangerous than the frantic first collision.
His hand slides between us.
I gasp.
My head tipping back against the tile.
The water beats over both of us, steam thick around our bodies, everything reduced to heat and skin and Mark’s mouth at my throat while his hand strokes my cock with devastating certainty.
There is nothing elegant about the sound I make.
Nothing composed left in me at all.
Months of distance have stripped me down to nerve endings.
“Mark,” I say, and it comes out half plea.
He answers by catching my mouth again.
By swallowing every broken breath.
By holding me like he intends to make up for every mile in one morning.
Pleasure builds too fast.
Too sharp.
My fingers dig into his shoulders.
I can feel him shaking too, feel the tension running through him, the same desperate edge.
“I’m close,” I manage.
“Good.”
The word is a rasp against my lips.
His hand tightens.
His mouth drags along my jaw.
And when release hits it tears through me with humiliating force, my whole body jerking, forehead pressed hard to his shoulder to muffle the sound that leaves me.
Mark follows a heartbeat later with a low groan against my neck, his body tensing, then shuddering into mine.
For several seconds neither of us moves.
Just water.
Steam.
Both of us breathing heavily.
I open my eyes.
He is close enough that I can see droplets caught in his eyelashes.
Close enough that I can see the same stunned relief I can feel in my own chest.
Neither of us says anything.
There is nothing left to say that would improve on this.
For the first time in months, the distance is gone.
By the time we make it to the bed, we are both dressed again and quieter.
Not awkward.
Just quieter in the way people get when they have finally stopped running and are not yet sure what comes after.
Mark has pulled on joggers and a grey T-shirt.
I am wearing shorts and one of his shirts because mine is damp from the shower.
We lie on top of the duvet with the window cracked open, sea air moving softly through the room.
Mark is on his side facing me, head propped on one hand.
Just looking.
I stare at the ceiling for a while, trying to line my thoughts up into something coherent.
Eventually I say, “I’ve decided to move back.”
Mark doesn’t react immediately.
His eyes stay on mine.
“Back to England?”
“Yes.”
A beat passes.
Then, carefully, “Because of me?”
There is no ego in it.
If anything, concern.
I turn my head towards him.
“No,” I say softly. “Not only because of you.”
He nods once, waiting.
“I wanted Toronto to work,” I admit. “I kept telling myself I’d settle if I gave it enough time.”
Mark says nothing.
Just listens.
“But after a while everything started feeling borrowed. The flat. The office. The routine.” I swallow. “I missed home.”
My voice drops.
“I missed Sophie. Luke. My house. Familiar things.”
And then:
“I missed you enough that it started infecting everything else.”
Something shifts in Mark’s face.
He reaches across and takes my hand.
His fingers thread through mine.
Warm. Steady.
“We could have tried distance,” he says quietly.
“I know.”
“I would have.”
I blink.
“What?”
He shrugs, but there is nothing casual in it.
“If staying there had been right for you, I’d have made it work. Flights. Time off. Whatever it took.”
My chest tightens.
“You say that very calmly for a man discussing transatlantic commuting.”
“I’m aware it sounds ridiculous.”
“It does.”
A small smile touches his mouth.
“Still true.”
I take him in for a long second.
Because there it is again.
The thing we keep finding in each other.
The willingness.
The maddening, lovely willingness.
“I know you would have tried,” I say.
Mark’s thumb moves slowly over my knuckles.
“But?”
I breathe out.
“But at some point, I started thinking what the actual version of that looked like.”
I shift a little closer.
“I could have asked you to move.”
His hand stills.
“And maybe you would have.”
Mark doesn’t deny it.
That says enough.
“But your life is here,” I continue. “Your family is here. Callum is here. Your work is here. Everything that makes your days yours is here.”
His eyes stay on mine.
“And if you had come there, we’d have been two people in a city full of strangers trying to make each other enough.”
Mark exhales slowly.
I keep going because this matters.
“That sounds romantic until one of us is lonely, or homesick, or has a bad day, and suddenly the other person has to carry all of it because there is no one else.”
He nods once.
Very slightly.
“We’d have drowned in each other,” he says.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Exactly.”
The room falls quiet.
The sea outside.
The faint creak of the house.
His hand around mine.
I hold his gaze.
“I’m coming back because I want my life back,” I say quietly. “The version that feels like mine.”
His fingers tighten.
“And I want you in it.”
Mark closes his eyes for a second.
When he opens them, the relief there is enough to make my throat tighten.
He shifts closer until our foreheads rest together.
After a while he murmurs, “So what now?”
I let out a slow breath.
“I resigned.”
Mark leans back enough to look at me properly.
“You already resigned?”
I nod.
“A month ago.”
Something like surprise flickers across his face.
“You did all that before coming here?”
“Yes.”
“I thought this was an impulsive breakdown.”
“It was an organised breakdown.”
That earns me the faintest curve of his mouth.
I continue.
“I’ve got enough savings that I’m not about to starve, before you start looking alarmed. And Luke insisted on staying with me, which gives me one bestselling author and a reliable source of stress from day one.”
Mark lets out a quiet laugh.
“That sounds about right.”
“I’ll freelance,” I say. “Editing, author management, whatever shape it settles into. Smaller list. Authors I actually want to spend my time on.”
Mark studies me.
“You’ve really thought this through.”
“I had a month,” I say softly.
A month of knowing. A month of planning. A month of not telling you.
His fingers tighten around mine again.
“And where exactly are you planning to do all this?”
I hesitate.
Because this is the point in the conversation I was hoping might somehow evaporate.
Mark notices immediately.
His eyes narrow.
“Philip.”
I look at the ceiling.
“Temporarily unresolved.”
“Philip.”
I sigh.
“My house is rented out and laws forbid me to kick the tenants out. So, I’m staying in an Airbnb.”
Mark’s nose wrinkles immediately.
I turn my head.
“It’s in Bermondsey,” I say defensively. “So not a tragic one.”
His mouth twitches.
“That is not the point.”
“I know, but it sounded less pathetic with location context.”
Mark gives me a look that says he is allowing exactly one sentence of nonsense before returning to the issue.
I exhale.
“Sophie offered, obviously. Repeatedly. But I cannot live in a house where Noah is awake at six and Jamie asks forensic questions before coffee. I love them very much in carefully managed doses.”
That gets the faintest laugh out of him.
“So yes. Airbnb. While I flat hunt.”
Mark studies me for a second.
Then says, very simply, “Stay with me.”
I blink.
“At your house.”
“With us,” he says.
I frown.
“With…?”
Mark glances towards the floorboards.
“Heath would be furious if I excluded him.”
I can’t help but smile.
It fades almost immediately under the weight of what he is offering.
I look back at him.
“I don’t know how long flat hunting takes.”
“Then take your time.”
His answer is immediate.
So immediate that I nearly forget to breathe.
Mark squeezes my hand once.
“I’ve got plenty of space,” he says. “And if at any point it all gets too much, you can banish me to Whitstable for a few days.”
I let out a breath that might almost be a laugh.
“That seems unfair. Exiling the homeowner.”
“I’m adaptable.”
I study him.
The ease with which he says this.
As if the idea of me being there is not an imposition but something he has already settled into.
A thought occurs.
Half practical. Half not.
“Or,” I say slowly, “I could rent the Whitstable cottage from you for a while.”
Mark’s expression changes at once.
A small crease appearing between his brows.
“No.”
I blink.
“No?”
“No rent,” he says. “And no moving you into a different house to keep this at arm’s length.”
I stare at him.
Mark shifts closer.
“I’m not asking because you need somewhere to sleep, Philip.”
His voice has gone quieter.
Steadier.
“I’m asking because I want you there. Because… I’m in love with you.”
My throat tightens.
He keeps looking at me.
“That weekend,” he says, “the first one… it felt about as close to perfect as I think life gets.”
The words settle over me.
Warm and devastating all at once.
I swallow.
“A holiday version of people is not the same as real life.”
“I know.”
I search his face.
He does not look uncertain.
He looks maddeningly calm.
“Mark.”
He lifts our joined hands and presses his mouth briefly against my knuckles.
Then looks back at me.
“One weekend,” he says quietly. “A week. A month. A year.”
I forget to breathe for a second.
He shrugs one shoulder, almost imperceptibly.
“Let’s take it as it comes.”
His thumb brushes mine.
“But I know this.”
I wait.
Mark’s eyes stay on mine.
“It’ll still feel perfect because it’s you.”
For a second I cannot speak.
All the fear. All the waiting. All the sensible arguments.
None of them seem to survive that sentence.
I move before I can think better of it.
Close the small space between us.
“I love you, Mark.”
The future can do what it likes.