Chapter 6 Liam
Liam
Andrea slept curled into my chest, one leg slung over mine. Her hair smelled faintly of apples. Sweet. Just like her.
How long had we been here like this? An hour? Longer? I had no idea what time it was.
I dropped my hand onto her waist and let it glide over the swell of her hips.
Christ. Her body was just … sensational. All curves and soft skin. No wonder I couldn’t keep my hands off her.
She was breathing softly. Every so often, she inhaled a bit more deeply, like she might be about to snore.
My phone, on the floor, had been buzzing quietly off and on for the past forty-five minutes. I should probably try to extract an arm to check it, but I couldn’t bring myself to break the contact.
Bonnie would be melting down by now. Had she heard about the lift? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ignored her for this long.
Oh well. She’d have to handle it.
A screeching sounded, harsh and unpleasant, like it was coming through the floorboards.
Andrea snorted.
“Oh no, it’s the thing.” Her words came out in a mumble.
The screeching organized itself into a tune I recognized—“Greensleeves.”
“Sorry,” she said, her words sleepy. “My neighbor.”
Of course. The recorder.
“Shit.” She sat up. “What time is it?”
“No idea,” I said with a smile. I’d completely lost track. Not like me at all.
“It’s still Monday, right?” she said.
“It is. I’d say maybe around six. Perhaps seven.”
She nestled back into me. “Good. ’S okay, then.”
I dropped a hand to her head and stroked her hair down over her ear.
I probably should check the time. And my inbox.
But I’d rather get Andrea some food. Maybe some takeaway. At least make her that legendary cup of tea.
“You hungry?” I asked. She had to be. There were loads of places to eat around here—Battersea Rise was buzzing. My emails could wait.
“Not really.” I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Greensleeves” continued. It wasn’t actually that bad. If the choice was lying here with this beautiful woman and listening to it, or peace and quiet anywhere else, I could tolerate the recorder.
“You slept a while,” I said. “Must have been all the adrenaline from earlier.”
“Maybe not just the adrenaline.” She looked up at me between strands of hair, eyes sparkling.
Fuck. Sex with Andrea. I’d never be able to get that out of my mind as long as I lived.
“It’s possible something else helped,” I said, kissing her on the forehead.
What was it about her that made me feel so … protective? It couldn’t just be the lift thing, could it?
She sighed contentedly. “Oh, the other thing definitely helped.”
Jesus. The sounds she made when she came, how she grabbed hold of me and pulled me into her. I was hard again just thinking about it.
She’d have to be hungry soon, but I didn’t feel like leaving. Maybe I could take her for a quick bite later, we come back here, have sex again, then hang out on the couch in front of the TV—
Wait. Hang out on the couch? When had I last done that with a woman?
And why did it sound so appealing now?
“Were you scared?” she asked after a minute. “Today, I mean. When the lift fell.”
Terrified.
But not in the way she thought.
All I could think of was making sure she was safe—it was the only thing that mattered. Her not getting hurt.
And I’d only just met her.
“No, not really,” I said. “Just worried about you, if I’m honest.”
“Mm.” Another little sigh. “I bet you’re not scared of anything, are you?” She ran a finger down the outside of my arm.
A picture snapped into my mind, but I pushed it out. Not something I wanted to think about.
“Well, I think everyone is sometimes,” I said. If you weren’t scared of anything, you probably hadn’t been alive long enough.
“What are you scared of?” She pushed herself away slightly so she could look at my face.
“Oh. Stuff. Not much. It doesn’t matter.” I wasn’t talking about that now. Not while I was lying here with her. “What counts is doing what you need to do anyway, even if you’re afraid. Especially if you are, actually.”
“Very staunch, Liam.”
I laughed. “That’s what they say.”
She snuggled back into me, fitting perfectly.
“So nothing worth mentioning, then, staunch guy?” She lifted her face to look at me.
“Well.” I paused, glancing off to the side. “Probably, that I might turn into my father.” There. Standard normal person response. Hopefully, we could move on now.
“Bad sweaters and embarrassing dancing?”
“Something like that.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s more to this, Liam?” She dipped her forehead against my shoulder and kissed my arm.
“Ah, well.” I paused. “My father isn’t exactly … the warmest person.”
That’s a fucking understatement.
“Oh. Sorry. That sucks.”
“Yeah. It’s okay,” I said.
It was quiet for a moment, just me stroking her hair, her breathing soft against my chest.
“I didn’t see much of him growing up,” I added. “Never see him at all now. He lives overseas.”
“That must be hard.”
“No. I’m glad I don’t. He’s never—”
She lifted her gaze to my face again.
“Well. Never mind,” I said. “What about you? What are you scared of?”
“Oh.” A small laugh, like she was embarrassed. “About a million things.”
“Yeah?” I trailed a finger down her neck and over her collarbone. “I’ve got time.”
“Where to start.” She breathed out like she’d thought about this. “Obviously, the usual sort of things. Team meetings where you have to share your ‘fun fact.’”
“Hideous.”
“Absolutely fucked.”
“What else?”
“That I’ll get hooked on lip fillers and no one will tell me I’ve gone too far.”
“Of course, yes. I worry about that too.” I squeezed my bottom lip. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”
Silence.
“Wait—you don’t do that, do you?” Fuck. I’d assumed she was joking. “No judgment if you do, obviously, your lips look really nice already. Full. Or … natural. I mean—I think it’s fine if you—”
Jesus, Liam, shut up!
She laughed. “I don’t. But you never know who you’ll be in ten years, right?”
“True.” The room was quiet again—even “Greensleeves” had taken a break. Ten years seemed a long way away. Ten years ago, I’d been twenty-three. I could barely recognize that person now.
“Anything else?” I pressed my face into the top of her head and left another small kiss. I still wasn’t sure what it was about Andrea that had me snuggling and kissing, yet it just felt … right.
“Honestly?”
“Yeah. Honestly.”
“That I might wake up one morning aged fifty, absorbed in the rat race with no way out,” she said after a moment.
“You’d definitely want to avoid that.”
She laughed. “I know. Although the way things are going, it might not be an issue.”
“How come?”
“Ah, we might be having a restructure at work,” she said. “Although, at least I’d have time to paint again. Maybe even finish something.”
“You paint?” I asked. “Like artwork?”
“Ha. Kind of. I used to, anyway.” There was a quiet sigh in her tone.
“What sort of things?” I thought of her lanyard. Pixel &—What was it? Grape? Made sense she was creative.
“Oh, everything, really. But portraits are my favorite.”
“Portraits? Wow.” I couldn’t even draw a stick man. “How did you get into that?”
“Well … I guess I’ve always loved drawing people, since I was little. I like to think about what makes them tick. What they’re choosing to reveal about themselves, and how to show it in the painting. You don’t always get everything from a first glance, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I do. I’d love to see them. Would you show me sometime?”
She laughed. “Sure. If you’d like. I just … haven’t painted for a while.”
“Oh? Why not? If you love it, I mean.”
She stiffened slightly. “I guess I just … don’t have time. With work and stuff. You know.” Her voice came out a little sad.
“That’s a shame.”
“Yeah. I guess. But what about you? What’s your ‘fun fact’? Any special talents or secret hobbies?”
I hesitated. “Nothing impressive.” Nothing I wanted to talk about now, anyway.
“I didn’t ask to be impressed.” She smiled. “I asked because I’m interested.”
Right. Well. I guess there was no harm.
“When I was a kid, I used to spend whole weekends at those trading fairs. Cards, comics, that kind of thing.”
She tilted her head and looked at me. “Oh, cool. Like Comic Con?”
She’d heard of Comic Con?
“Yeah. Although when I started out it was a lot smaller than that. Grimmer, too. Grown men arguing about which issue was worth an extra ten quid.” I laughed, but thinking about it made me feel strange.
“Huh. Didn’t pick you for a comic book guy.”
They never did. Not since I’d left uni, anyway.
“What got you into that?”
I’d never been asked that before. I thought for a minute.
“It was the stories,” I said, eventually. “The idea that morality could be that black and white. The rules made sense, you know? Cause, consequence, redemption. Simple. Nobody loves superheroes for their money or status … just for who they choose to protect.”
Fuck. I sounded about twelve.
“My father thought it was silly,” I added. Not that I give a shit what he thinks. “I know it sounds—”
“It’s not silly.” She was looking at me, her eyes soft. “It’s actually really … nice.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way in years. How I’d got into it, why it had mattered so much. It had morphed into something completely different since then.
And so had I.
Damn. How had we got onto this subject? I’d much rather be talking about her.
“What’s this restructure all about?” I asked. Pixel & Grape sounded a bit boutique for that sort of thing.
She threw her head back. “God, don’t ask. Apparently, we’ll find out tomorrow.”
“What’s happening tomorrow?”
“New owner showing up, apparently.”
Huh. That’s weird.
“Not good, I assume?”
“No.” She sighed. “He sounds really bad.”
Somewhere outside, a bus hissed to a stop. I heard the faint sound of mewing and scratching from the kitchen.
“Why does he sound bad?”
“If I told you, you’d think I was making it up.”
“Try me.”
“This guy”—she shook her head—“he’s basically the living caricature of a capitalist pig.”
I scoffed. I knew the type, unfortunately. “Classic corporate douchebag, then?”
“I reckon. It’s a regular douche convention in there, to be honest. And he’s the Douche King himself.”
She didn’t mince words.
“Sounds terrible,” I said.
“It is. Total sociopath. Some old German bloke who made millions during the GFC while the rest of us were surviving on baked beans.”
Did she say German?
My muscles tightened slightly.
“So he’s—what, did you say?”
“Oh, just awful, by the sounds of it. Made his money in real estate, now he buys companies and guts them—like he’s mining them, or something.”
My skin was cold beneath the quilt. That reminded me of someone. Someone I preferred not to think about.
“Mining them?”
“Yeah. All about the profit,” she said. “You know what these douchebags are like.”
My heart started to thump.
“And you know this … ah … how?”
“Oh, we’ve been hearing his name for months, but we didn’t really believe he’d buy us.”
“No?”
My palms were sweating too, now. Perhaps this was just a coincidence.
“Maybe a big pharma giant, but not this property billionaire.” She said the last two words like they tasted bad. “Although in hindsight, it makes total sense—real estate and trauma meds, so much crossover.”
Did she just say—
“Pixel & Grape are involved in trauma meds?” I tried to keep my voice light, but it came out as a croak.
“Pixel & Grape?” Her tone changed, then she laughed. “Oh. It’s Pixel and Grace, but I don’t work there. I was just using the lanyard to park.”
Oh. Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuckity FUCK.
“No, I work next door,” she said. “At Novexia, the pharmaceutical company. I’m in sales. Although it’s pretty much just slinging muffins and flirting with doctors.”
“You … you work at … Novexia?”
“Yup. Me and my new boss, Wilhelm von Roth.” She said it slowly. “That’s his actual name. I mean, come on. It sounds like it was designed in a lab for maximum evil.”
I tried to speak, but the words stuck in my throat.
Wilhelm von Roth.
A name I knew only too well.
My father’s.
And also … mine.
“Anyway.” She yawned. “It’s not gonna be good. Another pale, stale male swinging his dick around the boardroom while we underlings fawn at his feet. The real one probably hasn’t twitched since the Berlin Wall came down. Can’t wait to meet him. All hail the Douche King.”
A cold sweat had broken out on my back and crept up my neck.
Say something, Liam. For fuck’s sake.
But what? Should I … tell her?
No. This could get … complicated. Fast. “Well, whatever. No point worrying about it now.” She smiled and pressed her head into the hollow between my chest and my shoulder. “Don’t you think?”
Dammit. I’d never trained for something like this. I needed time to think. Make a plan.
“Andrea, I’ve got to go.”
“Oh.” She sat up, leaning back on her elbows. “Everything okay?”
“It’s fine. I just—have to go.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
I pushed the covers back and stood.
Where were my pants … my socks? I grabbed my phone, then my wallet.
There was a shoe—good.
Where the fuck was the other one?
Bollocks to it. I was leaving.
“I’ll call you,” I said, then added a stiff smile as an afterthought.
“But—”
It was hard to see her face, but her voice told me everything I needed to know. I had fucked this up beyond all recognition.
“Thanks, Andrea. I’ll be in touch.”
I strode out of the flat like hesitation would get me hit.
Out on the street, cold air hit my face. I sucked it in while I fished my phone out to book a cab.
Come on. Come on.
What the fuck had I been thinking? Taking a semi-traumatized woman home to her flat and sleeping with her, then cozying up over pillow talk as if we were lovers? Not my typical MO at all.
That was where this had all gone wrong.
I knew better than that.
Strictly arm’s length. Simple. For everyone.
Why the fuck hadn’t I stuck to my own rules?
Pickup location confirmed.
I glanced back up at her window before I could stop myself. Dammit. Hooking up with Andrea had been … phenomenal. But now …
This was the kind of cock-up that followed you.
And I couldn’t call her. I hadn’t got her number. Fuck. Could I pull it from HR? No. Christ. Absolutely not.
Headlights flared as a car pulled in and stopped.
“Evening,” the driver said.
I opened the door and got in.
He glanced at my feet, then back to the road.
One shoe.
“Happens,” he said, shrugging.
I rested my head against the window and closed my eyes as we pulled away. “Another pale, stale male swinging his dick around the boardroom while we underlings fawn at his feet.”
Yeah. This was going to take some untangling.