Page 114 of Kiss Me Like You Mean It

I allow myself a laugh at that. ‘Think about it: can you imagine how this town would react to Jack Turner-Jones showing up? There’s literally a chapter of the Blood/Lust fan club based here. Rita is the president. Sometimes she wears a T-shirt with a picture of his face on just to mess with me.’

Lee laughs and I feel her relax in my arms.

‘And that would be nothing compared to Cynthie showing up. I genuinely think they’d throw a parade with floats and everything.’ Sure, my best friend is a celebrity, but his wife-to-be is an Oscar-winning, mega A-lister, and I am utterly certain that this whole town would lose their collective minds.

‘They’d make her the mayor,’ Lee grins. ‘They’d force her to join the Roseport Players. They’d have a Cynthie Taylor look-a-like competition and get her to be the judge.’

‘Now it just sounds like you’re pitching ideas.’

‘They’d create a shared calendar so unhinged that Cynthie wouldn’t have time to brush her teeth.’

‘Exactly.’ We reach the edge of the dance floor, and I use the opportunity of turning to draw her a little closer. The smell of honey invades my senses. ‘But also… I don’t think I was ready to have them here. Not yet.’

‘Why not?’

I take a moment to think about it. ‘Because I felt like I was still working it all out, I suppose. How to… be. Here.’

‘And you didn’t actually invite me, either,’ she frowns. ‘I just turned up.’

‘Maybe,’ I shrug, ‘but I’m so fucking glad you’re here.’

‘You are?’

She looks so hopeful that I throw any remaining shred of common sense I possess to the wind. ‘I am. I love having you here, I love sharing this place with you.’

‘You’re lucky, you know? It’s so… bright and alive here.’ She glances around the bar with a touch of wistfulness in her expression.

‘It is.’ I can’t take my eyes off her. ‘And you’re helping me to appreciate that. I think I was afraid if Jack came here, he’d know something was off. That seeing him here would be like pulling out my camera, that it would hurt, make me want my old life back… and I feel like a shit dad for even thinking that.’

Lee gives a low murmur of protest, but I shake my head.

‘This was never part of my plan.’ A rough laugh escapes me. ‘Not that I really had one. But this,’ I remove my hand briefly from her back to gesture around us, ‘this isn’t even close to where I thought I’d end up. I suppose I was worried that I’d feel trapped, that bringing any part of my old life here would only make me want what I couldn’t have.’

My hand goes back to her waist and I look down at her.

‘I haven’t stayed in one place, had a home, a real home in a long time. I didn’t think I needed that… or wanted it, but I was wrong. I’ve been running around for years just trying to find somewhere I could breathe. It wasn’t until you arrived that I finally realised I don’t feel trapped at all, that everything I didn’t even know I wanted… it’s right here.’

Her cheek is on my chest as I hold her tight against me, and as ‘I Will Always Love You’ plays on the juke box, my words hang in the air.

Because maybe everything I want is right here in Roseport, now, in this moment. But it won’t be. Not for much longer.

Lee and I don’t speak. We let the song wash over us, we keep on dancing.

If one week is all I have then I’m making every second count.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Lee

It’s a pretty perfect date night, and to cap it all off, we’re home by eleven. I could say that’s because we’re being responsible: we’ve got our meeting with Charles tomorrow, and we need to relieve Claudia from her babysitting duties. I’d love to pretend that’s why we rush home from the bar, why we sit next to each other in the back of Bud’s cab, our hands resting on the seat between us, close but not quite touching while the air between us trembles.

But we’re not being responsible. We’re being horny little monsters.

‘Darlings! I do hope you had fun,’ Claudia twinkles from the sofa where she’s flicking through a fashion magazine. ‘Although I thought you’d be hours yet.’

‘Did it all go okay?’ Nico asks, studiously ignoring this.

Claudia waves her hand. ‘Of course! We had a wonderful time.’