Page 99 of Red Flag
What?
I was still.
“Damn, I should have thought this through,” he mumbled. “You’ve got a lot going on and I literally don’t even have anywhere for you to sit—” He looked around frantically. “This was a silly idea to do today. We should have just gone home.”
He was calling my house home, and I was pretty certain that wasn’t a language slip.
“Do you have a bathroom? I need… a minute.”
“Yes! You can sit on the toilet,” he said. “I do have toilet roll.”
Nixon Armas was like a puppy dog.
My chest was crushed.
The bathroom was huge, yet I felt so claustrophobic. Grey veined marble glistened under bright lights, but I couldn’t take in the grandeur of the place when I needed to simply think.
My mind was racing faster than him at the Japanese track. I wasn’t capable of thoughts, they kept on cracking in multiple directions as I stared at the key card in my hand.
Nothing was going to become clearer until I spoke to him.
I splashed my face with water, pulled out my ponytail to relieve some of the pressure in my head and went out to the kitchen.
The room was empty apart from a kettle bubbling away. He had his back to me, in the fridge getting out a bottle of milk. “I already got your tea,” he said and lifted it up proudly.
“What is this?”
He stood straight. “This isn’t a declaration of love, nor me asking you to move in with me.”
But it looked like that.
“So… what is it?”
He opened the bare cupboards. Bare apart from the two mugs he retrieved. “It’s that I don’t like the thought of you thinking you don’t have a home. I want you to keep your things. We can come here together between races, or you can come here alone. You can stay whenever. This will beyourhome.”
“I can’t afford—”
“No, no,” he said and shook his head. “You can furnish this place. That will be your contribution.”
That didn’t seem fair. At all. It went without saying that the apartment was stunning, and in the heart of Chelsea, it had to cost more than I would ever make in my lifetime. It was too much.
“Nix, I always pay my own way.”
“Well, if you feel you must, you can pay per stay.” He poured our drinks, stirring in the milk. “But, really, you staying here would be doing me a favour. You have one lock on your flat,Livie. One. I had to drill it’s screw back in this afternoon because it was pointless. Whereas this place has around-the-clock security. The thought of you staying there…”
I needed to sit down. I was genuinely going to have to sit on the toilet again or the side of the bath.
“I’ll owe you.”
“Nope,” he said firmly. “You won’t. I promise you. I can be here as much or as little as you want.”
“This is a lot, Nix,” I whispered, but picked up the tea he offered me and cradled it in my hands.
“If you want, I can have my lawyer set up a contract stating everything inside is yours. If you ever want to break up with me, you’ll have time to move your stuff out. I just thought… I just thought this would help both of us.”
Break up?
My heart was still racing. It needed a moment to rest.
