‘I’ll see you there.’
* * *
Finn checked the time on his phone again as he glanced towards the stairs. He was sure that once Madeleine was down here and they were talking again this anxious feeling would go. But right now, waiting for her to come down from her bedroom, he could feel his whole body on the verge of a twitch.
She was moving out. Of course she was. She had never really moved in because this was only ever a temporary arrangement. But seeing her browsing that site looking for flatmates—that had struck him in a surprisingly painful way. And he didn’t want to have to think about why it hurt. He just wanted to convince Madeleine that she didn’t have to rush into anything and leave in a hurry. He hadn’t even definitely decided if he was offering Josie a job. He couldn’t, not until Caro had spoken to her too. Madeleine was totally jumping the gun. She could stay as long as she needed.
Which meant this probably wasn’t about him hiring Josie at all. This was about the other thing that she’d said. The words that had made his stomach twist in anticipation. ‘We both know that I like you.’ He’d goaded her into saying it—he wasn’t stupid, he could see that. But he’d expected her to bring up what they’d said before. About chemistry. He hadn’t expected her to come right out and just tell him that she liked him. He hated that just hearing those words had fired his blood and it was now making it difficult to sit still. It was all so schoolboy.
But the words had hit him hard and he wanted to know more. He would die before asking if she liked him liked him. But he was desperate to know if she was thinking of him as often as he was thinking of her. If daydreams and fantasies made it as impossible for her to concentrate as it did for him.
He looked up at a sound in the doorway and was arrested by the sight of her in his home. How ha
d this happened? How had he found himself so undone by someone he had known for twenty years? Someone who until a few days ago had been a distant presence in his life. Someone he might kiss on the cheek at family parties but who otherwise didn’t have a place in his life at all. Until she’d moved into his apartment and his brain and hadn’t allowed him a minute’s respite ever since.
‘You like me?’ he said, and as the words left his mouth he knew how dangerous a move that was. He knew that one of them, or both of them, were going to end up getting hurt because he had no way of following this conversation through. Of taking this friendship to another level—taking it to where he really wanted it to go. He couldn’t risk a relationship. Couldn’t risk his life falling apart when he had so narrowly averted that disaster. He had lost his home once. He wasn’t taking his chances by making the same mistakes all over again.
Why was he even thinking about his divorce? He pulled himself up. No one had mentioned marriage. A relationship even. All Madeleine had done was tell him that she liked him and he was the one who had jumped all the way to the altar. It didn’t have to be that way. There was a middle ground between a kiss on the cheek and marriage—and it would never be enough for him, he realised. Watching her watching him, he was convinced that nothing would ever be enough where Madeleine was concerned.
He had never wanted like this. Even in those early days with Caro when he had been so sure that he was in love, what he had really felt was relief and gratitude and comfort, he realised now—that he had someone who had been born into the world of CEOs and OBEs that he had suddenly found himself trying to navigate. Someone who knew how to move in that world and stop him feeling like the poor kid eating at someone else’s table.
He could never escape that kid when he was with Madeleine. She saw him every time that she looked at him. And he didn’t mind, he realised with a jolt. That kid was a part of his story. He was a part of Madeleine’s story too. They both accepted that he had a place at their table. No point in either of them pretending that he didn’t exist.
Madeleine had held his gaze this whole time, watching him while he grappled with how big a mistake he had made when he’d asked her that question. He loved watching her think. Loved watching her grapple with herself, deciding exactly how much of herself she wanted to reveal, how brave she wanted to be. She always took the brave option. He knew that she would.
‘I like you,’ she said.
She shrugged, as if the words were nothing more than a bland observation. They both knew they were so much more than that.
‘Don’t move out.’
Her eyebrows pinched together at his impulsive words, and he couldn’t blame her. Asking her to stay didn’t make any sense. They both knew that the safest thing for them both to do right now was to keep their distance from one another. And yet here they both were. Alone in his house, eyes locked and guards tumbling.
‘Why?’
She was calling his bluff, just as he’d called hers. And she’d already set the bar with her bravery and her honesty. He wasn’t going to let her down by doing anything less.
‘Because I like having you here.’
‘You don’t have me.’
Again, that pinch in her brow. He half smiled at the innuendo, wondering which of them was going to rein this flirting in. Not him. Not this time. Not yet.
‘Maybe I would, if you stayed.’
She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe, her eyes never leaving his.
‘That would be a terrible idea,’ she said. And the words would have felt like a shot of ice water if it hadn’t been for the expression in her eyes. The one that told him she cared about it being a bad idea about as much as he did right now.
That was fire. Not ice. He didn’t want to be smart. He wanted to be stupid, if stupid meant wrapping his arms around Madeleine or rubbing that crease from her forehead with his thumb and making her forget her demons for a while. If stupid meant that his hands got to circle that little bone on her ankle again but explore further this time. Up long calves and soft thighs. If his arms could circle her waist as he pulled her under him.
‘I agree,’ he said at last. ‘It’s a terrible idea. But I can’t stop thinking that I want to do it anyway. And I think you feel the same way.’
‘Just because we’re both thinking the same stupid thing doesn’t mean we should act on it,’ Madeleine observed with a lift of her eyebrow.
He left his stool and walked over to stand in front of her, his hands in his pockets as she looked him up and down. God, he would die happy if she just looked at him like that one more time.
‘Agreed,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘Want to do it anyway?’