16. Mabel

I f living my life in the shadow of Mark Quinton had taught me anything, it was that I was not an impulsive person. I thought things through. Well, I'd made a few mistakes in the past—slept with people I shouldn't have, said words that should never have left my mouth, made decisions that sometimes hurt my head.

I was a person who made emotional decisions over business ones. I kept staff on to give them a final chance instead of kicking them out the door headfirst. I smothered people in kindness when I should have stood up for myself. I was the one person who fought for other people, all the time.

But I was also painfully aware that no one else ever fought for me. That sounded childish, but it was the truth. Growing older had taught me some harsh life lessons, and each one had hurt.

I wasn't a child. I was a fully grown human, and they still hurt. Words hurt. Actions hurt.

I hurt. And I hated that I did.

And here I was again, diving headfirst into helping someone else, knowing I would fail. I always did. That wasn't me being negative and pessimistic; it was just the way things were.

Nobody ever fought for me, not even when I was right there in the room. They certainly didn't fight for me when I wasn't there. Mark Quinton had taught me that, the backstabbing bastard. I wasn't even going to think about Finley.

I was spiralling into madness again, ripping large sheets of plastic off a mattress, having thrown piles of clothes onto the floor, while Jonny stood in the doorway, panic-stricken.

"Beds are for sleeping in. There are perfectly good wardrobes in this room for your clothes." I sounded like my father, and not in a good way.

"I know," he said quietly.

I kept ripping, angrily taking out my frustrations on a packet that allegedly contained one king-sized fitted sheet.

"I don't expect you to do this." His voice wasn't strong. I didn't blame him.

This was madness. I solved issues, problems, and Jonny had a problem that I was…solving?

"You have a nice bed right here. Good sheets. Where are your pillows?"

"Somewhere…" He stepped into the room, opening wardrobe doors in a robotic, stilted way. We'd lost our comfort, our easy interactions. Walls back up with electric fences fully charged.

"Jonny, go have a shower. Brush your teeth. All that."

"You sound like my nanny."

"Not your nanny. Just hopefully getting you on the road to a little bit of rest."

"Are you going to tuck me in as well?"

"Sure. I'll even read you a bedtime story."

I liked when he laughed even if it was a bit forced. I liked when he did as he was told.

He disappeared out the door and left me to do this. Make the bed. What the fuck was I doing?

I found the pillows, two ergonomic memory-foam monstrosities that felt hard as rock. No wonder he didn't sleep. I made myself at home, rolling up my sleeves as I opened more empty wardrobes. Heading across the living room to the guest room, I went through the empty shelves in there, so much wardrobe space I was dizzy with the possibilities. The things I could do with these shelves. My fabric swatches all organised. Projects hanging up. I could suddenly see it all, and it was tempting. Very tempting.

I shook myself out of my juvenile daydreams, stealing the slightly superior pillows off the guest bed—at least that had been made up fully and clearly slept in—and returned to the master bedroom.

"Who uses the guest room?" I asked casually as a freshly showered Jonny appeared wearing a bathrobe. Thank fuck for that, because I didn't think I could have handled a wet male body right now, especially since he followed me back into his bedroom.

I wanted to scream at myself. It wasn't like that. This was the professional me helping a friend. Nothing more. Not getting any hopes up. Hopes? What hopes?

He wasn't Richard Gere, and I was definitely no Julia Roberts.

"Jenny, my PA," he answered finally. "I sometimes watch her kids. She sometimes needs to stay. Saves waking up two grumpy toddlers in the middle of the night."

I could feel my jaw dropping. I pushed it back up.

"You babysit," I stated to the pillows as I clumsily tried to shake a stiff duvet into a duvet cover and spread it over the bed. He leant down and grabbed the corner to help but shook it the wrong way so that the cover now sat crookedly over the mattress with the duvet in a heap inside.

"I do. I'm probably the world's worst babysitter, but Jenny makes it easy for me, and the kids get tired and pass out pretty quickly here because, as you can see, there's nothing for them to do."

"Good tactic." I was trying not to smile. I knew nothing about kids. Didn't want them. Didn't have a parental bone in my body. Yet here was a man in a bathrobe who couldn't even make a bed, telling me he was some kind of trusted child carer?

"Kids." He smirked. Thank God.

"Do you want them?" Safe question then.

"I don't think so. Not to mention that I live in a death trap. Child-safe spaces weren't on the brief when I commissioned this place, but then Jenny wasn't pregnant back then."

"You love this Jenny?"

"All the questions," he mused, giving me a gentle smile. He seemed to like that I was nervously blabbering random things at him.

"Jenny's been with me for a long time. She's an essential part of my life."

"I get that." I knew what that felt like, having someone be an essential part of your life. I could also feel the knives in my back, the wounds that would take a long time to heal, if they ever did. Bloody Mark.

It wasn't a strange place to be, in someone else's bedroom. Expectations were usually clear, though, not like now, with Jonny shimmying out of that bathrobe right in front of my eyes—eyes I discreetly turned towards the wall, not without taking a peek. I mean, he was right there. His back was turned towards me, but still. Strong shoulders. Built. A deliciously pert bottom.

I smiled…and only then realised he could see me in the mirrored wardrobe doors.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

"Sorry. You're pretty good-looking. Couldn't help it."

"Pickle." He sighed, slipping into a pair of briefs.

"Now, if your majesty doesn't mind, get into bed. It's late, and I, for one, need my beauty sleep."

I was aiming for light-hearted, yet there was all this tension in the air.

"You don't need beauty sleep. You're beautiful already."

"Jonny," I whined. "You're not helping yourself here."

"Helping with what? I'm just being honest."

And…here I went again, tangling myself up with another manipulative bastard, except Jonny was blushing like a teen, and my fragile ego was basking in the compliment.

I was a fool. Such a bloody fool.

Then he walked around the bed and out of the room, while I stood there, frozen in place.

Everything went dark. His silhouette reappeared in the doorway.

"I've never slept in here."

I knew that and would've told him so, but I'd lost the use of my tongue. The darkness. The way he moved around in the soft glow from the city, shadows and light shifting over his skin as he carefully negotiated the duvet, tucked a pillow under his head.

"You took the pillows from the guest bedroom, so I'm assuming you're…" He swallowed the last word. I would have, too.

"Jonny," I said.

"Pickle," he replied.

For the record, I was lost. I think I had been for a while.

"I'm not beautiful. I'm awkward, too tall and full of angles and…"

"You're beautiful. All the right angles if you ask me, and I work in construction."

The things he said.

"I'm just going to go use the bathroom," I said, fleeing.

My fragile ego. Bullshit. I was no good at this, not anymore. In my youth, I would have stripped and had my mouth around that cock of his within minutes. Now…

Or perhaps I was once again reading this all wrong.

I shivered as I locked the bathroom door. The stark light hit my face like a whip, my eyes struggling to adjust. I was pale, my hair all over the place, no make-up today. I hadn't needed it, feeling comfortable in my own skin earlier, which made my sudden, massive discomfort with myself even harder to stomach.

I wasn't beautiful. I was…full of fear. Of weird feelings I had no control over. What the hell was I doing here? Had I subconsciously been contemplating this kind of scenario earlier, turning up with a tote bag full of empty promises and toothbrushes and clean underwear? What had I been thinking?

What had my father been thinking, once again throwing me out in the real world unsupervised?

Perhaps he was right. I had completely lost it.

And perhaps Jonny was just as scared as I was, lying out there in an empty bed with starched fresh sheets, smelling of nothing but fear. Because I could still smell it, that straight-out-of-the-packet scent, a moment when nothing was certain, when those sheets could bring happiness…or be the ones where you cried into the pillowcases, your make-up-stained tears forever there to remind you of your failings.

Good grief, indeed, Mabel.

As I grasped the edge of the bathroom sink, my shoes slipped on the still-wet floor, and something off the sink went flying, making an awful racket.

"You okay, Pickle?" came from the room next door, pulling me out of my navel-gazing depressing thoughts. I was an adult. I could do this. I could.

I stomped back out into the room, finding my bag by touch, switched my clothes for pyjamas, grabbed my toothbrush, and padded back into the wet bathroom in my bare feet so I could brush my teeth and give my face a wash. I looked like shit, but who cared? The flat was dark, and it was just him. Just Jonny. A friend. Even my father had told me that. A nice man who had looked after me. It was only right to look after him back. No cock-sucking required.

I killed the light, leaving my toothbrush on the side, and walked back into the bedroom, where I gently sat on the edge of the bed, tentatively feeling out the space with my hand, hoping for an inclination of what he was expecting here.

"Is this okay?"

"Yes," he said. Good. "You didn't leave yourself any pillows in the guest room, so I assumed you had this in mind."

"Yes," I said with more determination than I felt. "We're adults. We can share a bed. And if you don't sleep, I'm right here to keep you company. Wasn't that the deal you offered?"

It probably hadn't been quite what he'd had in mind, but what was the point of all this anyway? He wanted company, and I hated being alone.

Admitting that to myself was nothing new. I wasn't going to say no to a warm body in a nice clean bed.

Not in that way.

"I don't mean it in a…you know," I stuttered out.

"Mabel, I don't either. We're not there…yet."

"But you'd like to?"

Way to dive-bomb straight into another uncomfortable disaster conversation.

He moved, just a little, making space for me. I lay down and sat up again.

"I'm buying you better pillows," I said, attempting to plump the thing or punch the life out of it, I wasn't sure which. "No wonder you don't sleep with these monstrosities under your head." I lay down again.

"They were the best-selling pillow on the John Lewis website. Memory foam."

"I'm sure they were. If you're a masochist, they're probably perfect." It was already hurting my head. I shuffled around a bit, trying to find a comfortable position. The room was cool, and the light from outside comforting, but the pillows…they had to go.

He turned onto his side with his back to me, his breathing sharp and shallow.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"More than okay." He didn't sound too sure about that. I wasn't either, but he'd called me beautiful, offered me a place to stay—an offer I was a fool to take up, an even bigger fool not to. For fuck's sake.

I wasn't an impulsive person. I was a hard-working, sensible human being. I had standards. Morals. Rules.

I wasn't a hugger.

I wasn't like this. Not at all.

Yet I shifted across the bed and let my arm fall gently around his waist, my fingers slowly coming to rest against the cool sheet.

A hand tangled with mine. It was reassuring, comforting at a time when I doubted everything.

Everything was wrong. Every rule was being broken. My breath hitched, and the muscles in my neck tensed.

I was a master at building walls. It didn't matter if they were invisible. I knew they were there, but I couldn't have kept this one up if my life had depended on it.

Letting go of his hand briefly, I tucked the cool fabric over my shoulder and got my feet under the covers. I could smell him, soft, clean soap. Another human being, too close yet not close enough.

My arm snaked back to where it belonged, meeting his fingers in the process.

"Not a hugger." He was smiling, I could tell.

"Nope." Just two humans casually leaning against each other, sharing warmth. "Try to rest. I'm right here."

His fingers squeezed mine.

It was late. Far too late. Resting my forehead against his neck, I allowed myself to relax, to accept this little bit of comfort, company. A pipe dream.

It would end in disaster. These things always did.