Nev shut the door in his brother’s face.
Winston had come to threaten him. Fair enough. Consider him duly threatened. In a few weeks, he’d lose his job.
It was difficult just now to recall what made it worth saving. He’d never wanted to work at the bank to begin with, and though he’d put a lot of years and a lot of effort into it, he didn’t take nearly as much satisfaction from it as he did from painting.
The notion that he’d allow his family to bully him into marrying would’ve been absurd at any time, but it was even more so now. He wasn’t interested in finding someone suitable to marry. Not when he’d fallen in love with Cath.
Chapter Eleven
She loved to watch him walk up. It made waiting for him on the step outside his flat such a pleasant exercise in anticipation.
They had routines now, after three weeks of this whatevership of theirs. If she encountered Nev on the train, they walked straight back to his place together. But other nights, she’d go back to her own flat to shower, change, and eat dinner, and then she’d mosey on over at twilight. Often, he’d just be getting home, and he’d smile when he spotted her. It gave her a thrill every time.
Tonight he looked exhausted, poor guy. He worked too much. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he did all day long in that palace-office of his. His head had to be full of obscure financial stuff she didn’t have the first clue about, but he’d never so much as mentioned an interest rate when she was in earshot.
“Hi, honey. How was your day?” she asked when he drew close.
Grinning, he loosened his tie. “Did you just call me ‘honey’?”
“I was channeling Donna Reed. Imagine me with an apron tied around my waist.”
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“What are you wearing under the apron?” he asked, and she smiled, remembering he was hopeless with all things pop culture.
“Never mind. It’s an American thing.”
He unlocked the building door and opened it, waving her up the stairs. Ladies first. Such a gentleman. “My day was bloody awful,” he said. “How was yours?”
“Great, actually.” After forcing her to rewrite the section on the Depression three times, Christopher had finally green-lighted adding her name to the exhibit catalog. She’d been elated all afternoon. She felt more significant, more grown up, more important than ever before. Taller, too. Like, five-foot-three. Maybe even five-four.
At the top of the steps, Nev handed her a ring with two shiny new keys on it. “That’s for you, love. I don’t like you sitting out there on the step in the dark.”
Keys. Oh, shit, keys. All the buzz washed out of her, and panic swept in to replace it. “You made me keys to your flat?”
“Yep. Try them out. You’ll want the one with the red tag on it.”
Her hand trembled as she worked the lock, but she managed it, though her brain was completely preoccupied with thinking Keys, keys, he gave you keys. Keys were a thing. A symbol. There were songs about keys. Poems about them. She wasn’t ready for keys. But here she was, unlocking the door, and what was she supposed to do, refuse to accept? They were only two pieces of metal hanging off a ring. There were limits to her assholery.
Aiming to puncture the moment’s significance, she asked, “How do you know I’m not going to paw through all your stuff when you’re not home? Steal your spare change and poke through your underwear drawer?”
“Are you?”
“Maybe.”
He smiled slightly and reached over her shoulder to push the door open. “What do you think you’ll find?”
Nothing. There wouldn’t be anything to find, because he was a good man and an open book. He’d answer any question. Give her whatever she asked him for. It made it all the more unfair, the way she protected the dragon’s eggs that were her secrets. The way she breathed fire anytime he got close to them.
“Your dead wife’s head in a box?” she suggested.
That made him laugh, which of course had been the idea. Lighten the mood. Skate away from the big, bad truth that she didn’t deserve him, because he’d gone to the trouble to make her keys, and she wouldn’t even tell him where she lived.
The worst thing was, she wanted to. Sometimes, when they were in bed together, she could feel everything she hadn’t said to him as a tight, pinched crowding at the base of her throat, and she wanted to open her mouth and blurt it all out in one rambling string of disconnected facts. Flight itineraries and hospital admissions. Tour dates and police reports. Family vacations and Christmas memories and the whole ugly story of her father’s death and her screwed-up marriage and her lost baby. She would walk him through the tattoos. Get it out and get it over with.
What stopped her was not knowing what they’d be if she did that. Because at the moment, no one could deny that whatever she and Nev had was a warped thing, twisted out of its natural shape by all the rules she’d imposed on it. Never stay the night. Never talk about the past. Never tell him anything important. Never ask him personal questions. Stick with sex, with the here-and-now, and you’ll be safe.
What if she told him all her secrets and he didn’t want to see her anymore?