Page 92 of You, As You Are

Vera scoped out the vast room like a meerkat. “Where has Iain gone?”

It wasn’t like Iain to wander off, so Maisie scanned around to search for him. His gargantuan figure was easy enough to spot, rooted by the water dispenser with?—

Her stomach twisted into a knot as her heart attempted to join it.

Three women around her own age who hadn’t been there before she’d gone to the bathroom stood around him. They were gorgeous in the beauty standard sense; every one of them tall and lithe in workout leggings and cute little fleeces, perfect pin-straight ponytails swishing as their heads moved and showed off their grins.

Maisie’s shoulders became heavy under the straps of her backpack.

She didn’t know what she expected in this situation. She hadn’t really anticipated that they’d ever be in it. No men had come up to her at any of their hiking stop-offs, but of course women would approach Iain – look at him. He had the gruff and mysterious outer shell that women adored to crack. Including her, it seemed.

She was definitely not the only one who’d noticed. The low, pitying mutterings of the crowd behind her made her feel front and centre stage to this flirtatious show. Didn’t he realise how that was going to make their relationship look? Maisie didn’t feel like the second option but worse –fourth.

How could he be talking to them? in front ofeveryonethat they knew.

The more Maisie stared, the more pieces of her crumbled. Then, between petite shoulders, Iain caught her eye. He’d barely said a few words since she’d watched him, but all of the attention he’d held for those women disappeared. He didn’t even mutter an apology as he moved between them and came her way – directly for her.

“The need has arisen,” he hushed, his determined strides never slowing.

“For what?” Maisie had to tilt her head back and look up at him, puzzled as her pulse spiked. Because in truth, she knew whatneedhe was talking about. Knew why her tongue mirrored how his traced his lips.

“For this.” His thick fingers cupped the back of her head and slid into the hair at the nape of her neck, lips descending on hers in a kiss that stunned enough to take her breath away.

Her body stuttered, and her lungs didn’t have the chance to catch up to the shock of warm lips, the scratch of bristles against her chin that were so veryIain –rough and exciting at the same time – with his body like a mountain where her hands flung to feel him, that damn waxy brown coat getting in her way.

The pensioners gasped, though they were the last thing that Maisie paid attention to.

A singlekissshouldn’t turn her on, but the soft, middle parts of her came alive like sparklers lit inside her core and bowed into Iain’s embrace, revelling in the hand he gripped on her waist, thumb grazing her breast. All reminding her of how long it’d been since she’d last been touched. How much she craved to be wanted with all of body and soul like this – to fit perfectly within someone’s arms.

Iain’s kiss wasn’t just a mediocre peck but a damnclaimfor everyone in the room to see, and he dragged his lips away before she was ready for him to, oxygen be damned.

Brows puckered, Maisie whimpered, the sound lost in the inch of space between them. She could only imagine how she looked – so dishevelled like a teenage maiden with cheeks, neck, ears even more aflame than her hair.

When she managed to focus, Iain’s gaze was heavy, his eyes pinched in the corners so slightly that she would miss it if she were further away. But she wasn’t. She was pressed against him,her chest heaving as her mind caught up to the situation, and all that she could think was:

That wasn’t bloody fake.

* Yes (I will)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

IAIN

Iain never should’ve triedto sleep on the bus this morning; his neck was bloody sore. He’d only managed half a night’s sleep because his father had attempted contacting him again. After the conversation he’d had with Maisie, he’d already spared enough thought for that man for one day so he hadn’t answered the phone, which somehow equated to not being able to stop thinking for hours about what could’ve been said. Coupled with Ted scratching on their front door to be let out at seven o’clock and the early start to meet the group, he’d been shattered. Though one glimpse of Maisie waiting near the minibus in the same spot he’d found her last night made him forget about everything that’d happened after she’d left.

“I sat with a pretty woman on the seafront last night, telling her my darkest secrets.”

It didn’t make rational sense. Nothing about how she was the first person he looked fordid.

He’d revealed so much to her. It must’ve been the waxing moonlight or her unshed tears that’d bewitched him to do so, because he never would’ve told anyone else those things about his life, yet somehow with her they fell straight off his tongue. Afew details from his past to let her know she wasn’t alone in how she felt were no sacrifice if it meant she stopped those tears.

Like he’d alluded at the café today, he really did feel lighter for unloading some of his troubles to Maisie, knowing that they were actually heard. Not just listened to butunderstood. Taking them out of his head had somehow taken Iain out of it too.

It was strange after so many months to willingly want to share, so perhaps it was just the effect ofher? Maisie felt like a person who people would open up to. Iain was trying not to overthink how he’d taken her hand. Her soft, gentle, comforting hand. It was just another moment of enchantment fuelled by the sad shimmer in her eyes he couldn’t stand to see. He could no longer ignore, as well, how he couldn’t seem to stop reaching for her whenever her anxieties showed.

She’d sucked him in, and Iain found that he enjoyed being suspended in her orbit.

Finally, after two hours of being cramped within his minibus seat, Iain opened his eyes and saw home. Between slate-roofed houses, Constitution Hill with its funicular railway stood tall, and he knew that just below it was the ocean. The sand and pebbles and shore. The constant rhythm of the back-and-forth tide.

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