Page 25 of Witch You Weren't Here

No damage? Good question. How much had daydreaming damaged that barricade she’d raised against him?

He bent his knees beneath the covers and hooked his arms around them, squinting at her. God, his sleepy face was adorable. There was a crease in his cheek from the pillow, his mouth even more pouty and soft, bronze hair flopped forward over his brow with wisps and kinks. He looked more like his teenage self.

But he wasn’t. It had been a silly indulgence and she hadn’t even been able to steal a minute of the fantasy before it had been torn away and she’d ended up bruised. Literally, according to the way her right knee was throbbing. She was adding to the collection.

‘Kay?’

‘No permanent damage. Just a strange bed.’

‘In more ways than one, hey?’ He chuckled, giving her a lopsided smile. ‘Amazing. I managed to spend a night here by myself unharmed and in less than twenty-four hours we’ve had two bed-related accidents. What time is it?’

‘Time to get up.’ She picked up her phone, eager for a reason to look anywhere other than at Harry, and saw a message had come through from her brother in the night. ‘We’ve got forty-five minutes until the Uber gets here. I’m going to jump in the shower.’

‘I’ll make some coffee.’

Kay grunted and grabbed her suitcase, virtually able to bounce it into the bathroom now it was so light. The sooner they got to the airport and went their separate ways, the better. Neither of them had volunteered their plans for when they landed in Paris, so she was working on an unspoken, mutual agreement that once they boarded their flight, this unwelcome interlude would be over.

The airport was still busy when they got there and queued up to check in their luggage. They’d barely spoken since the morning, swapping between bathroom and kitchen to get ready. He’d made her some toast, which she’d politely thanked him for because she was ravenous, having never gotten around to eating the night before for all the various irritating reasons (like salesmen interrupting her and cutting her own nose off to spite her face), and then they’d grabbed their bags and headed out to ride to the airport in the Uber.

The rain was coming down so heavily you could hardly see out through the windows, and it left a foreboding feeling in the pit of Kay’s stomach. Harry was frowning at the lack of a view too and rubbing his thumb over the callus on his left middle finger repeatedly.

As they neared the check-in desk, she chewed her lip and turned to him. ‘Look, can I give you some money for the apartment and the sofa and everything?’

He lifted his eyebrow at her. ‘You don’t need to do that.’

‘I kind of do. I don’t feel right letting you pay for it all.’

‘Look, whether you were with me or not, it will either be expensed or paid off by my insurance, if I’m lucky.’

She would have retorted that influencers always seemed to be “lucky”. Except, of course, he hadn’t been particularly lucky in the last twenty-four hours at least. ‘I’m not sure expenses or your travel insurance will cover the sofa bed.’

‘Well, that wasn’t your fault.’

Kay chewed her lip as they moved forward a step in the queue. She was pretty sure it was and even though there was no way she was going to admit that to him, she felt guilty. Especially because he was being so generous about it. She supposed it was easy to be generous about financial things when you were loaded.

She hated the idea that they’d come away from this with him thinking he’d done some kind of good deed for her, the charity case. She hadn’t needed him last night. She could have made herself figure it out – instead of putting herself in a position where she now knew what it felt like to have him sleeping next to her. That kind of knowledge was detrimental to her sanity – she could feel it even now, her skin along her back and neck and hip all tight and hot like she had sunburn.

‘I can afford it, you know,’ she said shortly.

He blinked at her. ‘I never said you couldn’t.’

‘So why won’t you let me pay for it?’

‘I don’t even know that I’ll have to pay for it yet.’ He said it so dismissively, squinting up at the announcement boards, as though he had bigger things on his mind than contemplating his security deposit.

And then it clicked. Why would he be worried about it? ‘Oh. I see. Stupid me. Of course.’

He frowned and looked back at her; his mouth pinched at the corners. ‘What?’

‘You’re going to persuade them not to, aren’t you?’

His eyes widened. ‘No. That wouldn’t be fair. And besides – my skills at persuasion don’t work that way. You know how it …’ he lowered his voice, ‘manifests. What did you think I was planning to do? Draw them a diagram of what happened to make them feel guilty or something, so they didn’t charge me? You don’t think that would come across as a bit odd?’

She shrugged. ‘Actually, I figured you’d just ask Daddy to speak to them and, poof, they’d let it go.’

Harry looked like he’d stopped breathing for a moment, his eyes burning into hers again, like he was trying to recognise her. ‘You’ve got no idea,’ he finally said in such a low voice, it was almost to himself.

The denial, to her face, was too much to take. He was still acting like he’d done nothing wrong. Like he hadn’t used her brother, with his gift to disseminate information easily, to help Harry pass his A levels and then dropped him as soon as he no longer needed him. Like he hadn’t led her on throughout that whole year of studying, of coming over to her house, and then influenced her when she became a nuisance and it was time for him to move on.

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