Page 49 of Forever Not Yours

“You want to talk to me?” I asked softly.Options, Bastien. Use that mouth.

“No.”

Okay.

“I’m a little worried.”

He just huffed, and I gave up on the answers I needed. No lectures. We were well beyond that. Then he had his phone out and was texting furiously before dropping it back into his jacket pocket and sitting back, eyes closed. Not talking.

“Remember at uni, when we were on our summer break? You were doing that internship up in Glasgow, and I was working at the garden centre back home?”

“Dead-end place. Didn’t it shut down after?”

“Yes. Got bulldozed and turned into an Aldi.”

“Love an Aldi.”

He did. Preferred it to the posh Waitrose down the road.

“Says the man who earns more money than he knows what to do with.”

“Also, says the man who lives out of a sports bag and hasn’t got a mortgage.”

“You have me.” That was my usual response. Perhaps I was as bad as him. “I’m angry,” I admitted, hearing the desperation creep into my voice. “Because you’re not looking after yourself, and the risks? I’m not even going to ask what you were doing in a seedy leather bar.”

Silence. I don’t know what I’d expected in response to that. “I just love you,” I whined far too weakly.

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

I could have said that to myself, but apparently, I didn’t know when to stop. When to zip it and back down. I almost had an argument with him in my head, trying to rein myself in.Don’t say anything. Mind your own bloody business. Don’t be such an interfering, overbearing shit.

Especially right now.

My phone rang. I handed it to Bastien, who promptly rejected the call.

“Juliet.”

“Okay.”

“Anything I need to know? Why isshe ringing me?”

“You said you rang her?”

“Oh, yeah.”

End of conversation. A red light. Two men in a car. The sun shining on a child skipping across the road, hanging on to his mother’s hand. Bastien looked away. I looked at him.

I wanted to say it. Shout it out loud. Grab him and shake him and scream out all the frustration in my veins. I wanted to grab him and put him over my knee and give him ten hard ones, just to show him what he did to me.

Put my mouth on his. Kiss him the way a man like him deserved to be kissed. With feelings and emotions and care.

“Anyway,” I cleared my throat. “Remember my birthday? That dreadful August when it rained all the time? You drove all the way down from Glasgow in the Fiat and turned up on my doorstep the night before. Told me it was time to celebrate.”

“Ha-ha, yeah.” He didn’t sound as enthusiastic as I did, trying to liven this up, set the mood.

“You have no idea how happy you made me. I hadn’t seen you for so long, and my heart was in a state. It took me years to wean myself off you.”

“Idiot.”

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