Chapter 35 Liam
Liam
Hugo was waiting just beyond the lights, away from the music. His gray hair was slightly out of place, like he’d been having more fun than he was used to.
“Where’s Andrea?” he asked. “Dancing the night away already?”
“Something like that.” She still hadn’t come back from the bathrooms. Maybe she was off dancing?
She’d made friends with everyone she’d spoken to tonight.
Nick and Juliette. The others at our table.
My brother and Dex already had schoolboy crushes on her.
Even Bonnie seemed to be warming up. Unheard of.
I glanced across the grounds. No sign of her, but the wedding was huge. Pop-up bars and marquees were dotted around the gardens between the trees, and it would be easy to disappear.
Perhaps she was talking art with Sebastian Wetherall again.
Still couldn’t get over that. Good for her.
“Miranda thinks she’s great,” Hugo said. “I do too. Keeps you on your toes, Liam.”
I laughed. It was true, but not in the way Hugo meant it.
“You want to be careful with Sveta,” he added lightly, like an afterthought. I knew that tone. “I’d have assumed Andrea wouldn’t be too keen to have seen that … incident back there.”
My neck stiffened. “Hugo—”
“Are you serious about this woman, Liam?”
Given the chance, more serious than he could imagine. There wasn’t a single thing about her I didn’t like. But what did she think of me?
“Because if you are, something like that must never happen again.”
“I … understand.”
Fuck, had it looked that bad? But of course it had. Sveta had been draped all over me as usual. And if Hugo had seen it, who else had?
“Well?” Hugo looked at me calmly. “Are you?”
How could I explain that my feelings were deeper than I could ever have imagined possible when we’d written the script about it?
“If she’d let me, I’d build my whole life around her,” I said quietly.
Hugo stilled, never taking his eyes off mine. After a few seconds, he said, “Yes, Liam, I believe you would.”
He pulled his chair closer and adjusted his cuffs. “I spoke to Roger last week, and someone at MHRA who still answers my calls.”
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency was the key, but at this moment, all I could think about was Andrea.
“And?”
“It’s not impossible,” Hugo said. “That’s the good news.”
“And the bad?”
“You’re going to have to be very boring about how you do it.”
“I can manage boring.”
“Off-label use in civilian trauma settings will need a humanitarian carve-out,” he said. “Strict protocols and tight supply chains.”
“That was always the plan.”
He studied me. “You’ve thought this through.”
“I have.”
“Good,” he said. “Still, you’ll take heat from the press. From inside your own company.”
“I know.”
“And the cuts?” he said. “You’re certain you can make them?”
“Already started. If Traumex stops being priced like a luxury product, something else has to give. The business won’t survive otherwise.”
Overpriced trauma meds. It was borderline criminal. I’d tell Andrea my plan when I found her. Maybe then she’d understand.
“You won’t be popular. Nobody likes redundancies.”
“I didn’t buy Novexia to be liked.”
He gave a dry laugh. “No. You bought it because you don’t like unfinished business.”
That landed closer to the bone than he probably intended. I felt my jaw tighten a fraction.
“The accident,” he said carefully.
I kept my eyes on the water, my leg tapping under the table. I could hear the screams, feel the blood on my fingers again. “Among other things.”
He was close enough to know without me spelling it out.
“All right,” he said. “I can’t promise you speed, but I can promise traction. Quiet meetings. A window.”
“That’s all I need.”
Hugo stood and hooked his jacket with his fingers. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re right. If the drug works the way you say it does—”
“It does.”
It saved lives. It should have saved him.
“I know,” he said. “Miranda made me read the research papers. Twice.”
I nodded.
“One more thing,” he added, lowering his voice. “When this goes through, people will ask why you care so much.”
“They already do.”
“Just be careful who answers for you.”
He clapped my shoulder and headed back toward the lights, already being intercepted by someone with a glass and a story.
It was happening. Slowly. Messily. But it was happening.
For the first time in months, the weight in my chest eased. We were closer to getting the meds where they had to be. Helping the people who needed them.
I turned and scanned the crowd. Where was she?
I stood, suddenly desperate to find her, to tell her … to have her understand why any of this mattered. To let her see this part of me, the one that didn’t fit into polite conversation.
Because I hadn’t been lying to Hugo.
If she’d let me, I’d build my whole life around her.
I scanned the terrace again. She was nowhere to be seen.