Page 40 of Midnight Wishes

‘Want to go find out?’

Two hours later,after opening her front door near silently and letting it gently snick shut, Sarah found she needn’t have bothered trying to be sneaky. She was tiptoeing past the bathroom when the door opened and Abby appeared.

‘You’re home late,’ Abby said, sleep softening her words.

‘Yeah, I, uh, went out for a drink.’ Not a lie. Just not the whole truth.

Abby hummed in response, stepped closer as she left the bathroom, then paused. ‘You smell like…’

Sarah’s spine went rigid. He’d been all over her. His neck and chest, where the scent of his cologne was strongest, pressing against her back as he thrust into her from behind, one arm tight around her waist. He’d made good on the hypersexuality claims, making her come once, twice, three times until she was quivering, bent over the back of his couch, then twice more with her grasping the top of his headboard. So good was his work that when she tried and failed to get up from his bed—she blamed how damn comfortable the memory foam was—and he asked if she just wanted to stay, she’d seriously considered it for a second.

She hadn’t noticed herself smelling any different, but she’d been around him so much in the past few weeks, maybe he’d been unconsciously marking her, encounter by encounter.

If Abby mentioned him, she could spin a story about them planning some surprise for the wedding, or—

‘Sex,’ Abby settled, walking the few remaining steps to her own bedroom. ‘Sweet dreams.’

Chapter 21

SARAH

Casual | Chappell Roan

Chinese had beena bad choice for lunch.

Not because it threatened to clash with the—surely heavenly, if the smell was to be believed—Thai green curry being reheated on the stove. But because the chicken chow mein she’d eaten hours before was now a glutinous, oily lump in her stomach. Because said curry had arrived at their flat courtesy of Alex. Alex, who had brought his dog with him, leading to raised eyebrows from Erik when she shuffled over to Sarah and plopped down next to her easel. Alex, who, while Sarah used a commission deadline to get out of helping, was currently sitting on her lumpy old sofa, methodically folding the pages of a book to make one of the twenty centrepieces her best friend required for her wedding. Said best friend sat on the floor, barely separating them in a room that was too small for Sarah to pretend she wasn’t aware of Alex’s body, his presence, hisscent—whichhadbeen clinging to her dress that morning, she’d discovered.

They hadn’t all been in a room together since the morning she’d gone for breakfast. When Alex had still been an annoyance she’d fucked once rather than…

Whatever he was now.

He’d hugged her when he arrived, turning to her almost absently after greeting Abby, as if it was something they just did. And Sarah had tried not to mould her body to his the way she had been doing for over a month.

Now she was sneaking glances at him while he bickered with Abby, Erik affectionately interjecting from his station near the stove, trying to see the little boy who’d felt left out beneath the man who seemed to fit in everywhere. It took a while, but by the time Sarah set her paintbrush down to join them for dinner, some of the cracks had become visible to her. He’d started the afternoon open, warm, his smiles and laughter genuine. The changes were subtle as the day wore on—Alex was nothing if not a convincing performer—but it picked at her heart each time she noticed him laughing a little too loudly at an inside joke that didn’t light up his eyes, as if he didn’t quite get it. Or when he let a thought trail off, words giving way to a tight smile, because Erik brought a fresh glass of wine to Abby, and for a moment they were distracted enough to forget he’d been speaking.

But a handful of times, she caught him ignoring them too. Looked up from the lizard that was ruining her life and found piercing blue eyes instead of the hard lines of his profile. Maybe he was checking Celine wasn’t bothering her, although she’d been to his place so many times by now that Sarah was pretty accustomed to the sweet pup being under her feet on arrival or blocking her path to leave. Alex said she could be boisterous,but she’d always been calm around Sarah. Enough that Sarah—a cat person through and through, if you’d asked her only a few weeks before—had investigated their building’s pet clause, in case adopting her own dog was a possibility after Abby and Erik moved out.

That, or he was trying to figure out how she went from this (paint-splattered skin, a ratty t-shirt, day-old curls matting in a nest on her head) to the woman he’d had panting in his arms the night before.

Or maybe the deranged artist thing was actually working for him, because when Erik went to do the washing up, dragging his fiancée with him for company, Alex abandoned his craft project and put those wonderfully dexterous fingers to use sliding under the hem of her shirt and tucking them into the waistband of her leggings.

‘You look cute like this,’ he murmured, a moment before she wrenched herself away from him.

‘They’ll see,’ Sarah hissed.

‘They won’t,’ Alex chided. ‘Unless they’ve suddenly developed X-ray vision.’

Which, considering their kitchen sink was sequestered around a corner, was a valid critique of her paranoia.

Alex pressed back in close, but kept his hands to himself, making her regret saying anything at all. ‘Still working on this one, huh?’

She squinted her eyes, glaring at the offending scales in front of her. ‘Yesterday, I thought I was done with this stupid portrait, but when mypatrons’—the word ground like glass between her teeth—‘showed it toMaurice’—a careless swipe ofher hand brought her brush perilously close to the canvas, the muddy brown scales saved from the pink paint she had loaded there only by Alex’s fingers closing around her wrist and jerking it away—‘he didn’t care for it. I was sent a list of tweaks this morning, at which point I Deliverood a monster slice of chocolate cake and marathoned the new season of Love Island.’ And filled another two pages in her sketchbook. Which he didnotneed to know about. And she certainly didn’t need to mull over how much calmer she’d felt after.

‘Maybe they should send Maurice to get his eyes tested.’ Alex’s voice scraped drier than the tiny area of moulting scales she had tactfully corrected in the portrait. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘I thought you didn’t care much for my subjects.’

His fingers tightened where they still rested on her arm, strong and comforting. ‘You captured enough emotion in his face to make me care about a fucking bearded dragon.’ She loved when his voice dropped, deep and honeyed and warm. ‘You’re so talented it’s obscene.’

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