Page 57 of Never Too Late

Cillian slid off the arm to sit next to me on the sofa. “No, maybe not. I should have asked you about all the stuff before I bought it,” he conceded. “I admit I may have gotten a bit carried away. It didn’t seem that much when I had it in the basket.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s sweet.”

“How was work?”

“Weird,” I admitted. “Everyone was really somber because of Laurent, and it was really odd to be there without him. It made me realize how big a part of my life he’s been since I moved to Paris.”

Cillian’s nod was understanding. “I figured we’d have dinner and then head to the hospital for evening visiting hours.”

“That sounds good.”

He smiled and leaned forward to drop a kiss on my lips. When he tried to draw back, I wrapped a hand around the back of hisneck and turned it into a proper kiss. One kiss led to two, and then before I knew it, I was lying on the sofa with Cillian on top of me, and we’d been there for some time. “Dinner will burn,” he said. The words might have expressed concern, but him rutting against my thigh said the opposite.

I stole one last kiss before pushing him off, my cock no less hard than his was. “Dinner,” I demanded. “One of us has worked hard today.” Despite my jibe, I was still a little nonplussed. I might have looked forward to coming home and finding Cillian here all day, but I’d honestly expected to find him glued to his laptop, and to have to peel him away from it. If this was a new version of Cillian, though, I’d take it.

Dinner turned out to be chicken stew served with a bean salad and crusty bread, my pleasure in eating it completely genuine. “I rang the hospital earlier,” I informed Cillian when I was halfway through eating. “Laurent is awake. I asked them to pass a message on that I was coming to visit him.”

“That’s a relief,” he said, his words sounding genuine.

“I know you two don’t get on,” I said carefully, “but—”

“I’ve met him once,” Cillian pointed out. “The entire experience lasted two minutes… thirty seconds of which were spent with his tongue down your throat, which, yes, I took exception to. And the other minute and a half was him looking at me like he was fantasizing sticking a knife in my gut and twisting it.”

“He wasn’t that bad,” I argued. At Cillian’s slight eyebrow lift, I gave in. “Okay. Fine… Yes, he was. You weren’t exactly friendly either.”

“He was kissing my boyfriend! What was I supposed to do? Thank him? Give him some tips on what you like?”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I corrected as gently as I could. “We were definitely exes at that point.”

“Yeah…” Cillian admitted, looking about as unhappy as it was possible for a man to look. “Don’t remind me.”

“And now look where we are,” I said. “Back as boyfriends, and everything is…”

My pause went on for too long, Cillian’s brow furrowing. “Everything is what?”

“Nothing.” I returned to eating my stew in earnest, aware of Cillian’s gaze burning into me, but refusing to meet it.

“Both phones are off,” Cillian said. “Just in case you’re waiting for one of them to ring and save you from having to answer.”

“Both?” I questioned.

“Both. So spit it out.”

“I was just wondering when you were going back to London?” Even saying the words had icy dread settling in my stomach. “I’m guessing Monday.”

“I’m not going back.”

I jerked my gaze to his, expecting to see evidence Cillian was making a joke. But if he was, there were no external signs of amusement, and he wasn’t usually that good at keeping a straight face. I waited an extra few seconds just to make sure. Nothing but earnestness stared back at me. “What do you mean?”

“I’m staying here.”

“That… what… How…? When…? Why…?”

Cillian did smile then, my stumbling over words seeming to amuse him greatly. “The why is easy. You’re here, and you said it yourself. I can’t expect you to just move back to London. That’s not how things work. When? Well… now. I’ll need to bring some more stuff over, obviously, but that’s easily done. How? I don’treally understand that question, so I’m struggling to know how to answer it.”

I stared at him, aware my mouth was hanging open in what was probably an unattractive fashion, but unable to get my jaw to cooperate to do something about it. “What about work?”

“Ah, well…” Cillian held a finger up in a way that said the point he was about to make was an important one. “It came to me on one of those nights on video where we were… Well, you know what we were doing. You were there.”

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