Page 108 of Paper Roses

He sets his jaw and narrows his eyes—it’s his plotting expression. But when he speaks his tone is oddly matter of fact. “But I have one request from you. Something I need.”

“Jed, how could I refuse you anything after all you’ve done for me?” I say simply.

“I want an hour.”

“An hour of what?”

“An hour with you every week. That’s all I want.”

“But I’ll be in Germany.” I scrutinise his face. Has he gone mad? But all I see is that stubborn edge I know so well.

“So? That makes no difference to me. One hour, Artie, where we meet and spend time together without any distractions. Well?”

I stare at him, baffled.

He gives me a coaxing smile. “Please.”

I sigh, still utterly confused by why he’d ask for this. Still, the thought of being able to see him is too irresistible. Maybe I can build up immunity to him and then move on.

“Okay,” I say. “It’s a deal.”

“Thank you,” he says with dignity.

I stare at the complicated man I love and will probably never understand.

“You’re welcome.”

fifteen

. . .

Six Weeks Later

jed

The alarm on my phone sounds, and I roll over, nestling into the warmth of the sheets. For a moment, everything is okay, and then I remember. I sink back against the pillows, groaning. “Shit.”

I’m at my flat in my bedroom. Everything is neat and tidy, the furnishings pristine and expensive. And it feels completely wrong. It’s empty without the scent of him in my bed and the sound of him singing to himself in the kitchen with his sweet, off-key voice.

I scrub my hands over my eyes. Everything has been wrong since he left. I miss him. I keep telling myself it’s for the best, that he will be happy in Germany and find someone else to lo?—

I break that thought off. It still has the power to send me into a panic. Artie will find someone who will love everything about him—his gentleness, his sharp intelligence, and his shysweetness. And I’ll be his older friend, someone he’ll share details with over an occasional meal and then carelessly leave and return to his real life. And I’ll return to emptiness.

Maybe I should get a dog. I reach for my phone and then pull back. I can’t get a dog. Artie is allergic.

“What are you thinking? Are youactuallya sad twat, Jed Walker?” I say out loud. It echoes in the stillness of the flat, and I already know the answer.

I’m spending a fortune flying to see him every week. I’ll be able to buy a small country with my air miles soon, and the British Airways staff know me by my first name. They think it’s terribly romantic that I visit my husband weekly. If they knew the truth, they’d be a lot less starry-eyed.

So why am I doing it? The answer lies somewhere in the way he looks in the winter light—soft and warm and glowing, and the way, for an hour, my whole life lights up like he’s switched on a lamp inside me. But I don’t examine my reasons further than that. Instead, I plod along, stuck on the notion that if I can’t have him at home and in my life, I will have a little bit of him once a week.

“We’re friends,” I say and grimace. Even I know that’s not the truth. Well, not the sole truth anyway.

The phone ringing distracts me from my hamster-on-a-wheel thoughts.

Picking it up, I groan when I see the caller. “Hi, Ma.”

“Oh, you are alive, then.”

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