Chapter 34

Nix wasn’t in bed.

The mattress was cold next to me.

I pulled my phone out from under my pillow and — half blinded by the screen — called his number.

“ Bonjour, mon amour, ” he greeted. Hello, my love.

“Where are you?” I asked, that irritable, half-frustrated groan from deep in my throat, signalling to him I hadn’t been up long. I cleared my throat.

“I’m seeing my Mum quickly,” he said. “I left you a note. Have you only just got up?”

“Only just woken up,” I parroted, noticing the paper on his pillow and picking it up before lying back down on the bed with a thump. I love you. Will be back ASAP . “I haven’t slept so much in… well, maybe years.”

Last night, getting into the festive spirit, Ben and Griff had come over and I’d had at least a bottle of wine while we played a very intense game of Monopoly. After they left, Nix and I made our Lego cherry blossom.

“I’ll have to tire you out more,” he said and I could hear the smile in his voice.

I laughed. A proper laugh. “You can tire me out when you’re back. ”

“Are you—are you sure?”

My thighs pressed together at the concern in his voice. I loved when he was rough, my ma?tre . But I adored the protective man who prioritised me above all else.

There was no one I trusted more.

We’d discussed my panic that day of the trial. I’d spoken to my therapist.

It was likely to happen again, I wasn’t delusional.

Nix knew that too.

But I wanted him so fucking badly.

With the lights on.

“So sure that I’m not going to move from this spot until you’ve fucked me within an inch of my life, Ass-mas,” I said, voice lower and slower than usual, deep and throaty but no longer from sleep.

His voice deepened. “Are you touching yourself, Livid?”

Damn, I hoped he wasn’t close to his mother. This man was always hard on the odd occasion it was me doing the dirty talking.

“Through my panties,” I breathed, running my fingers lightly over the lace.

How far away was he? His mum lived an hour away, I’d thought. He’d mentioned seeing her as she was going away over Christmas.

“Give me forty minutes. Forty minutes and I will rip them off,” he begged. “Just forty.”

Hmm, so he was willing to break a few speed limits for me.

“I suppose you are asking somewhat nicely,” I taunted. “But you are missing a keyword there.”

The phone muffled. His voice was raw. “Please. Please, Livid.”

“Mmm,” I moaned as I heard a car door close in the distance from his end. “Forty minutes, ma?tre .”

“Fuck,” he grunted.

Damn, I could come just from him swearing in my ear. Like that time on the phone so long ago.

“Make yourself come,” he demanded, the engine starting. He cut out for a second as his phone connected to the car speakers. “I want the sheets soaking, I want your panties a differentgoddamncolour. I need you to be drenched, ready for me to lap up weeks’ worth of you.”

He coaxed me through an orgasm in the car, listening to my moans and praising me, telling me how he had missed those sweet sounds and hearing me fall apart.

How I’d fall apart around his cock in minutes.

“Twelve minutes, baby,” he said. “I’ll be home in twelve minutes. Don’t move. Keep going.”

But there was a loud noise out in the hallway and then a call came through to our bedroom speaker.

“Ignore it, Livid,” he demanded. “Focus on my voice and that greedy pussy. Nothing else.”

But the beep was so damn distracting. I pulled myself up from the bed to see on the screen that it was Stanley from the lobby.

“Nix, I’ve got to go,” I said.

“What? No—”

“MsArmasis here,” Stanley said. “She’s forgotten herkeycard. Am I okay to send her up?”

“Uh, of course,” I said, frowning as I tried to remember what Nix had said. He’d just been with his mum, so how was she here?

But my focus should be the fact I was naked and my thighs were wet. I had soaked the bed just as he’d begged.

I threw the duvet over the wet patch — a feat I’d only ever managed to achieve with Nix — and grabbed some pyjamas before running into our en suite.

Half-drunk last night, I’d managed to wipe off my festive makeup — red lipstick and all.

“Marie,” I greeted from the kitchen when I heard her high heels clicking against the marble floor from the lift.

She was the colour green today. Navy wide-leg trousers and an emerald shirt. I needed this woman to have her own Instagram. She’d be far more popular than me.

“Just pop them there,” she said to Stanley, who placed two large shopping bags in the entryway. “Thank you, Stan.”

She turned on her heel towards me in the kitchen and kissed me on the cheek.

“Morning,Livie,” she said with a smile. “How are things?”

“They’re okay,” I said and lifted the coffee to her. She nodded with a thanks but raised her brow for me to continue.

“I’m feeling so much better, though I probably don’t look good right now,” I added with a little laugh, making her coffee with the boiling tap.

She sat on the bar stool, sliding her handbag down her leg to the floor.

Much like her son, she would press for things with silence.

“My therapist is helpful,” I continued, getting out a teaspoon and knocking the drawer closed with my hip. “That’s been going well. My role in the trial is over. I… Is Nix not with you?”

She frowned, her hands together on the kitchen island. “Why would he be? I’m here to give you both your Christmas presents before I go to France. Is he not with you ? ”

I could only bring myself to shake my head as a muffled ringing filled my ears. Then she was getting out her phone.

“He—he said he was with you,” I told her, looking at the cup of tea I had started to make. “I woke up and he was gone.”

Nix had never given me a reason not to trust or believe him.

Until right fucking now.

I was in our bedroom, pulling my suitcase out from the cupboard in seconds and throwing all of my shit inside.

I wouldn’t be lied to.

Not right now. Not fucking ever.

“Livid?” I heard his cautious shout from the other side of the apartment.

“Nixon,” his mother called his name with a tightness.

I shoved the suitcase closed and stomped out to see what he had to say for himself.

The second I was out of the bedroom and into the living room, his mother was waving a finger at him and walking him back into the wall. “ You love this woman, yet you lie to her? Don’t you dare include me in your falsehoods! I won’t stand for it. I raised you better, NixonArmas, and you will tell me where you were right now .”

“ She speaks French, Mum, ” he sighed, shaking his head.

When I popped my head around the kitchen wall, his eyes met my wet ones and his mouth dropped open in horror. “Livie—”

“Don’t you think she has enough going on right now?” his mum snapped in English, on his heels as he walked towards me.

I batted his hand away over the kitchen island before mirroring his steps on the opposite side, not letting him get any closer. “Don’t,” I sniffed. He stopped. “ Where were you?”

“I was…” He looked around for an excuse. He wanted to double down on his lies. Prick. “I was atVinny’shouse.”

I blinked, the ferocity of it making a tear slip from one of my brown eyes.

“You were where? ”

He lifted a laptop I hadn’t noticed in his hands.Vinny’slaptop.

“You broke in?” I breathed, hands up, fingers spread as if to grab something. To do anything to take control.

“It’s fine,” he said, placing the laptop on the island and reaching for me. I let him approach, but he was smart enough to remain a few steps away. “It’s covered. No one will know.”

“ She will,” I cried, shaking my head.

Samantha Garvs.

She’d know I had called for her house to be broken into and for his laptop to be stolen. If I wasn’t already in shit, I would be now.

Or Nix would be, at least.

“Well, she’ll have no proof,” he said softly. “It wasn’t you. It wasn’t even me.”

I swallowed and then inhaled a frustrated breath. “Your brother Jules.”

Marie whipped around. “Jules?” she snapped, nostrils flaring. “Don’t tell me—”

Before he could answer, I interrupted. “You have to start telling me these things! You can’t have people following me, then pull crap like this without telling me!”

“You wouldn’t let me—”

“For good reason!” I shouted as his mum cried, “You shouldn’t even have considered going—”

“ Mum, can you give us a second, please? ” he snapped.

His mum glared, her dark blue eyes narrowed and her lip was slightly curled as she looked him up and down. “This won’t come cheap. You had a way out.”

She turned on her heel and made her way to the guest bedroom.

“Don’t take this out on your mum,” I mumbled as I opened up the laptop. “I’m fucking fuming with you.”

“I did it for you,” he told me, coming to my side. “I did it so no one else will have a copy of it.”

“You did it for me,” I repeated with a mocking laugh. I shook my head, turning to him. “You don’t think, do you? You don’t get it. I gave up my story so that chapter of your life was over. So that they couldn’t publish it. I’m going through all of this so you wouldn’t ever get caught for that!”

By the end of my words, I was feebly clutching his shirt.

He caught my hands but I wasn’t done. “What are they going to make you do? What have you given up? I won’t let you—”

“Nothing. They want nothing,” he promised, eyes wide and desperate.

“Bullshit!” I cried, pushing him away. “You didn’t have to do this. This was reckless and—”

“I did this so it wouldn’t be worse for you! So that video won’t end up anywhere else than with us! So you can do what you want with it.”

I looked up with a frown. “What I want with it?”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other before looking uncomfortably at the laptop. “Well, if you want… we could send it to the police. To the papers that have been posting shit about you. You’ve always said you only need to send something to one newspaper and the rest all follow. One paper. They couldn’t publish this. In fact, every time the original picture is sent, it’s a crime photo. If you—”

“It would prove my case,” I whispered, hands gripping his as I looked over my shoulder at the laptop. “I don’t want to see it, Nix.”

“You won’t have to,” he promised. “I’ll find it. Jules’ guys already took off the passwords, so I’m all good to get in. I have every bit of technology from that house in my car. I will find it. Then we can discuss.”

I looked back up at him. The fury had taken my tears for a moment, but they were back, brimming. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”

He rubbed the backs of my hands with his thumbs. “We don’t have to do anything. It’s completely up to you. We do whatever you want. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you — I know what you gave up for me, but I had to do something. I couldn’t simply know it was out there and that it could hurt you.”

I rested my head on his chest and sniffed. “I know,” I sighed. “I know.”

He held me for a while, arms wrapped tightly around me until I pulled back with a weak smile. “I’m going to shower. I can’t believe I’ve let your mum see me like this.”

He kissed the tip of my nose. “You always look beautiful.”

I snorted and, with one last glance at the laptop, I left.

We had both done reckless things to protect each other.