Page 96 of Sleep

That made him laugh—huskily.

“I’ll go clean up. But first, tell me. Where do you want to go? Dinner? Drinks?”

“Jonny, I have no money. Zero.”

“I have money. And I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I want to spoil you. I want to take you out and show you off. For me. For us. I want to try it. Jump off another of our cliffs. Go out. Be proud—be me, with you on my arm.”

“So now I am arm candy?”

“You’re beautiful. I would be a fool not to take advantage of having you on my arm.”

“Dick.” I smiled. “I want to go for dinner, of course I do. No idea where, though. Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve been with work, but it’s actually really hard to relax when I go out because all I do is look for things. Is the cutlery clean? How are the staff handling it? Are the plates too hot? Not warm enough? Is the menu wiped between each customer? How long has that salt sat in that pot?”

“Shush. You’re not at work now.”

“No. I’m currently unemployed.”

“Not for long, my darling,” he half slurred.

He shifted, snuggled up to me again, then…promptly fell asleep. A weird thing for the Jonny I knew, but I had put him through something that took a lot out of you. Sex, when good, did just that. When bad, it could be even worse, and I had had a lot of bad sex. Mostly in my youth when I hadn’t been strong enough to voice my preferences. I’d let people take advantage, do whatever they wanted to me, thinking that was what I deserved.

I shivered, lying there stark naked with this man across my chest. My man.

Just thinking the words made me smile.

At the same time, I shouldn’t be smiling. The realisation hit me like a bucket of ice, every time. The shame. I should be with my parents. I should be a better child. I should be there to hold my mother’s hand.

Why the hell was I here, anyway? My life had gone from one extreme to another in mere months, and for a brief second, my eyes were wet, and I had to bite my lip.

I was better than this. Stronger. We’d made plans. We’d talked about this, all three of us. What my mother wanted. What my father wanted. What I wanted?

I had no idea.

I got up, paced the living room, not daring to check my phone. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to read another message about resting peacefully or vitals or anything.

I wanted things to stop. For my life to just pause for a while so I could get my head around it all.

Control. I craved it, and not in a bad way. I just wanted a routine. To know where I was at. Who my friends were and who were not. Where my heart lay. Where my future was heading.

I was Mabel Donovan, a messy, weird kid from Newbury with no friends and no future who’d then suddenly had a future and fucked it all up.

I couldn’t even make sense of that massive generalisation myself. That future was a place where I’d buried my head in the sand and not bothered to change anything. Even when karma had pulled at me, I’d held back. I’d had opportunities that I’d swiftly turned down because I thought I was better where I was. Where Mark had my back and I knew what I was doing and I had some kind of control.

In the end, I’d had none. Zero. I’d thrown it all away, caught up in a childish tantrum over what? All those things that had weighed me down suddenly seemed so trivial. Did it matter?

More importantly, why was I even contemplating that frightening word, forgiveness?

I was who I was. I knew better than this, and once again I refused to put myself through my own therapy plan, instead wanting to throw that part of myself straight out the window.

Carefully letting the glass door slide open, I halted from a moment as a terrifying gust of ice-cold wind hit my skin. What had Jonny said earlier—that he felt like he’d finally woken up? That was how I felt, stepping out on the wet wooden slats, the world below me glittering under dark clouds, a sliver of moon visible in the far distance.

I was Mabel Donovan. I had skills. Degrees. Failures.

I didn’t mind the failures. They were good for remembering that no one is invincible. I certainly wasn’t. I’d failed, at so many things.

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