Page 14 of Next Time I Fall (Excess All Areas 2)

“I’m not being a dick if it’s true. You’re Jimmy’s kid, right?”

“I read somewhere, once, that rudeness is a weak person’s imitation of strength. I think I just found my evidence.”

Jase imitated a dagger going into his heart. “Ouch, Cerys. If I had any feelings that might have hurt.”

She turned away from him and removed the teabag from the cup. “Excuse me,” she said, gesturing to the fridge.

He stepped aside and opened the door, catching the scent of her again as she looked inside. He was rewarded with a glance down the front of the baggy sweater. Lace and silk. Not to mention, the round curves of her arse as she leaned to reach for the milk on the lower shelf of the door.

And now he was getting a boner for Baby Bexter, which was quite possibly the last thing he needed.

Damn.

She stood quickly and focused her eyes on him. On closer inspection, they split the difference between green and blue.

“I feel sorry for you.” The look she gave him said she meant it.

“There’s nothing to feel sorry for me about.”

“No,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “Every morning, if you are really lucky, you get to wake up. You get to make a choice of how you want to spend the next twenty-four hours on the planet. You have the opportunity to make a difference.”

“Bit sentimental for eleven o’clock on a Thursday, isn’t it?”

“No, Jase,” she said softly, that look back in her eyes. The one that said she could see beneath his skin to the secrets he kept buried there. Like he was laid out for her to inspect. “You can be anybody you want to be, starting the very first moment you open your eyes. You don’t even have to explain why you aren’t the person you were when you went to bed yesterday. And yet, you woke up today and decided to be this person.”

She paused to gesture up and down his body, but it was the sneer on her lips that squeezed his chest. “And I think there are only two reasons a person makes that decision,” she continued. “Pain or fear. See you in the studio,” she said, grabbing her tea before breezing out of the room.

Jase put his hands to his sternum and rubbed. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but those words, softly uttered, had hurt more than a punch.

* * *

Cerys exhaled through the last few moments of her meditation app, her thoughts drifting to how to repair the fractious relationship she had with her father’s client. Forty-eight hours since their coffee station run-in, and she was still irked by him. He was a dick, most definitely. And she’d been right in her assessment. Except the studio was being paid a lot of money to get an album out of them, and pissing off the lead singer wouldn’t lead to anything good. Especially one as hotheaded as Jase Palmer.

She grabbed her earrings from the dish on the dresser, and accidentally knocked over the birthday card that her mum had sent. Siân could get a card and gift all the way from their home in Conwy in Wales, but her father had told her she’d have to wait until that evening for his.

Which was a shock in and of itself.

His text had been blunt.

I made the reservation you asked for. Dinner at 8.

Nothing said happy birthday like a message that made her feel like he was forcibly doing her a favour. She’d only suggested them eating together on a whim. Now she felt as though she owed him.

The logistics were equally terse. He’d meet her at the restaurant.

She added the slender gold bracelet her mum had sent to celebrate turning twenty-seven years old. It had a charm of the sun on it.

Fy heulwen.

My sunshine.

Because she refused to be anything other than hopelessly optimistic, despite Jase’s words. But she needed to find a way to protect herself from them.

Intern.

Baby Bexter.

Two things shereallydidn’t want to be known as.

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