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Warnings: Age Gap, Domestic Abuse, Arranged Marriage, Sexual Abuse, PTSD, Religious Extremism; Implied Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Child Abduction, Smut
Moments later, the glass doors whispered shut behind you, muting the distant crash of waves into a low, steady thrum that seemed to live inside the walls themselves. The bedroom was a cavern of white linen and weathered wood, the giant bed a pristine altar at its center, and the breeze from the open terrace doors made the sheer curtains dance like ghosts in the golden, late-afternoon light.
The air inside was cooler than the beach, carrying the mingled scents of sun-warmed citrus from the garden below and the faint, clean salt that clung to your skin.
Tom turned to face you, and his eyes, that deep, warm blue, traced the curve of your bare shoulders, the way your dark, salt-crusted curls had spiraled into a wild, untameable mess around your face.
He reached out and brushed a damp ringlet away from your cheek, tucking it behind your ear with a tenderness that made your breath catch.
The pad of his thumb lingered, tracing the shell of your ear, the sensitive spot just behind the lobe, and then his hand slid into the tangled mass of your hair, cupping the back of your head with a gentle, possessive pressure.
“You looked so good out there,” he murmured, his voice a low, rough rumble that you felt in your belly. His lips barely moved against your temple, the words a vibration more than a sound.
“That bikini. Your hair.” His fingers tightened, massaging your scalp, nails scraping along the salty grit.
You laughed, a soft, slightly embarrassed sound, and reached up to touch the frizzy, uncooperative halo of your hair.
“It’s a disaster in these conditions. Everything frizzes, it’s a nest. I look like a drowned poodle.”
Tom’s mouth curved against your skin.
“You do not look like a drowned poodle.”
“You didn’t see the back of it.”
“I saw all of it.”
His hand slid lower, fingers spreading at the nape of your neck, thumb brushing slow circles into the damp skin there.
“Repeatedly.”
You huffed a laugh, but it came out thinner than you meant it to, because he was standing too close now. Because his chest was still warm from the sun, because his shirt was open, because he smelled like salt and sunscreen and Tom.
“You are beautiful like this,” he then said as he ran one of his hands through your hair in a deliberate motion, and his other hand came up to frame your face, both hands now cradling your skull as if it were something precious.
His thumbs stroked your cheekbones, wiping away a faint smear of sunscreen that had melted in the heat. “And I love your wild hair. I love everything about you when you’re like this.”
“Like this?”
Tom’s gaze moved over you again, slow and unguarded.
Not polished. Not red-carpet beautiful. Not dressed and careful and braced for the world.
This.
Barefoot. Sun-warmed. Salt on skin. Hair wild around your face. A little tired from the sea. A little undone from happiness. Looking at him like you were still half-surprised to be wanted.
His thumbs kept moving over your cheekbones.
“Like this,” he said softly. “When you forget to be careful.”
Your breath caught.
“I’m always careful.”
“I know.”
He said it without teasing this time.
That was worse.
His forehead touched yours, and for a moment there was only the soft drag of his breath against your mouth, the quiet hush of the curtains, the low pulse of the sea through the glass.
“But not today,” he murmured. “Not on the beach. Not when you were laughing. Not when Luka called clams snot shells and you tried so hard not to laugh that you nearly cried.”
You made a small sound.
“That was objectively funny.”
“It was.”
His smile brushed yours.
“And you were happy.”
The word sat between you, terrifying in its simplicity.
You looked down, but his hands held you there gently. Not stopping you. Just reminding you that you did not have to vanish.
“Tom.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
His voice was very low now.
“I know you don’t trust it yet.”
Your eyes burned at once, which was unfair, because you were standing in a beautiful room in Italy with a man looking at you as if you were the only thing in it worth seeing.
“Trust what?”
He kissed your temple.
“Being safe.”
Another kiss, lower, at the edge of your cheek.
“Being loved.”
Another, at the corner of your mouth.
“Being allowed to want things.”
You closed your eyes.
His hands slid down from your face, over your shoulders, slow enough that you felt every inch of the movement. His fingers traced the straps of your bikini, not pulling, not rushing, just following the lines as if he had been thinking about doing it since the beach.
“I want you like this,” he said. “Not perfect. Not arranged. Not trying to be anything.”
You opened your eyes.
“A drowned poodle?”
He laughed softly, the sound warm against your mouth.
“A very beautiful, very impossible drowned poodle.”
You shoved lightly at his chest.
“You’re awful.”
He caught your hand and pressed it flat against him, over the steady beat of his heart.
“You love me.”
You looked at your hand on his chest. The warmth of him. The dark hair beneath your palm. The fact that he was real and here and looking at you with such open affection that it made something inside you ache.
“Yes,” you said quietly. “I do.”
Tom went still.
Not because he did not know.
Because sometimes hearing it still caught him somewhere unprotected.
His hand came up over yours.
“Say it again.”
You looked back at him.
“I love you.”
His expression shifted.
Softened. Darkened.
“Again.”
You smiled despite the tightness in your throat.
“Greedy.”
“Desperately.”
You rose onto your toes and kissed him.
“I love you.”
His mouth found yours properly then.
The gentleness did not disappear. It changed shape. Became heat. Became his hand sliding into your hair again, his other arm wrapping around your waist and pulling you against him until there was no polite space left between you.
With in seconds, the kiss became a claiming, a desperate, hungry press of lips and tongue that tasted of salt and the faint, metallic tang of desire.
His tongue swept into your mouth, hot and knowing, and you moaned into him, your hands fisting in the linen of his shirt. The fabric was translucent in patches, revealing the dark smudge of his chest hair beneath.
You tugged at the hem, your knuckles brushing the firm, warm plane of his belly, and he broke the kiss just long enough for you to peel the shirt upward.
Tom raised his arms, the muscles of his shoulders shifting under his still pale skin, and the shirt fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
You didn't let him lower his arms; instead, you fitted your mouth to the hollow of his throat, licking the salt that had gathered there throughout the day, feeling the strong, steady beat of his pulse against your lips.
“Jesus, Y/N,” Tom groaned in response.
His skin was hot and taut, and the coarse, dark hair that spread across his chest tickled your nose as you kissed lower, tracing the line of his sternum with your tongue. You tasted the ocean, the faint remnants of sunscreen, and the primal taste that was purely Tom—a mix of warm skin and exertion.
Meanwhile, his hands were at your dress—a sheer, floaty slip of white cotton that had dried into a stiff, salty shell around your body. He gathered the fabric in his fists, lifting it inch by torturous inch.
His knuckles grazed the sides of your thighs, your hips, the sensitive dip of your waist, leaving goosebumps rising in their wake.
You raised your arms, and he drew the dress over your head with maddening care, as if even that required attention. It slipped from his hands and joined his shirt on the floor.
Now you stood before him in only the nude-coloured bikini, still slightly damp from the swim you had stolen in the pool after the children had gone to bed. The fabric clung softly to your skin, the straps pressed faint marks into your shoulders, the bottoms sitting low on your hips.
Tom took half a step back.
Not far.
Just enough to look at you.
His gaze moved over you slowly, and the heat in it made your stomach tighten. There was no performance in his face now. No teasing. No cleverness. Just want, plain and unguarded, and something gentler beneath it that made it almost harder to bear.
His breathing changed.
“Look at you,” he murmured.
You shifted under the attention, suddenly shy despite everything.
“Don’t.”
His eyes came back to your face at once.
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.”
Tom’s expression softened, but the heat did not leave it.
“I can’t help it.”
You tried to laugh, but it caught somewhere in your throat.
“You’re making me feel…”
“What?”
You shook your head, embarrassed.
He stepped closer again, one hand finding your waist, the other lifting to your cheek.
“Tell me.”
You looked up at him.
“Wanted.”
Something moved across his face then, quick and deep.
“Good.”
His thumb brushed over your cheekbone.
“Because you are.”
Your breath caught.
Tom bent his head, his mouth close enough that you could feel the words before he said them.
“So much.”
Then he kissed you.
Not gently this time.
Not roughly either.
Just with the kind of certainty that made your knees go weak and your hands clutch at his shoulders. He drew you against him, warm skin to warm skin, and the feel of him wanting you was unmistakable now, impossible to ignore.
You made a small sound against his mouth.
Tom broke the kiss only enough to breathe, forehead pressing to yours as he reached behind you, and you felt the quick, expert flick of his fingers on the clasp of your bikini top. The string loosened, and the triangles fell away from your breasts, baring them to the cool, breeze-touched air.
Your nipples crinkled instantly into hard, tight peaks, the areolas dark and pebbled. Tom didn’t touch them. He just looked, his gaze heavy, before he bent his head and took one swollen nipple into his mouth. The wet heat of his tongue was a shock, the gentle scrape of his teeth a delicious counterpoint.
He sucked, pulling the sensitive nub deeper, and his free hand came up to palm your other breast, kneading the soft weight, his thumb circling the nipple until you were arching into him, a keening sound escaping your throat. He switched his mouth to the other breast, giving it the same devoted attention, his tongue laving and flicking, his lips tugging, while his hand slicked down your belly, fingers hooking into the waistband of your bikini bottoms.
He didn’t yank them down. Tom was never hurried when he undressed you. He peeled the thin, clingy fabric away with an agonizing slowness, his thumbs tracing the deep crease where your thigh met your groin, skin still tacky from salt. The elastic left faint red marks on your hips where it had pressed, and he stopped to kneel in front of you before kissing each one, his mouth hot and open against the tender skin.
The bikini bottoms came away damp in his hand, and he dropped them onto the growing pile of clothes. You were now utterly bare before him, and the breeze from the open doors kissed the wetness already gathering between your thighs, making you shiver with a combination of chill and raw need.
He knelt before you, the vivid blue of his eyes never leaving yours, and his hands slid up the backs of your thighs, cupping the curve of your ass, pulling you gently forward until your mound was level with his lips.
The heat of his breath seeping into your folds made your knees tremble.
“You smell so fucking perfect,” he whispered, the words vibrating against the sensitive flesh of your pubic bone. “It’s the best smell in the world.”
“Tom –“
You were going to protest but then his tongue swept through you.
One long, flat, unapologetic stroke from the very bottom of your slit, where the delicate skin of your perineum began, all the way up over your entrance, through the soaked, swollen lips, to circle your clit with a precision that made you cry out.
Your hands flew to his hair, grabbing fistfuls of his dark strands, and you bucked involuntarily against his face. He didn’t stop. He hummed against you, the vibration zinging straight to your core, and his tongue traced every fold, memorizing your topography. He dipped into your entrance, thrusting shallowly, the wet muscle filling you just enough to make you ache for more, then retreated to lap at the sweet, sensitive spot right around your clit.
“Oh, fuck… Tom, your mouth…”
He ate you like a man starved, but there was a deep, devoted art to it. He knew exactly how to make you come apart, and he wielded that knowledge with patience and love. His tongue circled your clit in slow, teasing loops, then flicked rapidly against the underside of the hood, then flattened broad and wet to grind against the entire bud. His lips sealed around it, sucking with a gentle, rhythmic pressure that had your vision spotting white. All the while, his hands were on your ass, kneading the globes, pulling you tighter, his face buried completely in your cunt, his nose nudging the skin at the top of your mound.
Your legs were shaking uncontrollably, little moans and gasps spilling from your lips in a broken stream.
“Oh god, Tom… don’t stop…”
He didn’t. Instead, he wrapped his lips around your clit and sucked harder, and at the same moment, he slid two thick fingers inside you. The sudden, perfect fullness made you scream, the sound echoing in the high-ceilinged room.
His fingers curled upward, finding that rough, spongy patch of your inner front wall, and he stroked it with a persistent, deep pressure that matched the rhythm of his mouth’s suction on your clit.
He fucked you with his fingers, slow and deep, each curl sending lightning bolts up your spine. The wet, obscene sounds of his mouth working your cunt filled the room—the slick glide of his tongue, the soft sucking, the squelch of your own juices dripping down his hand and wrist.
The orgasm built like a wave far out at sea, gathering power, and when it crashed, it was a complete, body-shattering surrender.
You came with his name ripped from your throat, your cunt clamping down on his thrusting fingers in rhythmic, powerful contractions, and he kept his mouth sealed over your clit, sucking and licking through every pulse, swallowing down the flood of your release as if it were the sweetest nectar.
Your legs gave out, and he caught you, guiding you with gentle pressure until you were sitting on the vast mattress, your body a trembling, oversensitive heap. He stayed between your legs for a long moment, licking you gently through the aftershocks, soft little kitten licks that soothed and tormented in equal measure, until you finally twitched away from the overstimulation with a breathless laugh.
“Come up here,” you managed, your voice hoarse. “I want you in my mouth. I want us together.”
He rose, and you reached for the swollen front of his swim shorts. The drawstring was already loose, and you pulled the heavy fabric down over his hips. His cock sprang free, and the sight of it never failed to make your mouth water. It was thick, a true handful, the shaft veined and ruddy with need, the broad, plum-shaped head already slick with pre-cum that glistened in the golden light. The dark, curling hair at the base was damp with sweat and seawater, and you leaned forward, before doing anything else, and pressed a kiss right there, at the root of him, nuzzling into that musky scent. He groaned, hips twitching.
“You have such a perfect cock,” you then said before you took the base of his cock in your hand, squeezing just enough to feel him pulse, and gave a slow pump.
The skin slid silky and hot over the rigid core. He was so hard it looked painful.
“Jesus, Y/N,” he groaned as you swirled your tongue around the crown, tasting the salt and the bitter-sweet tang of his pre-cum, and he hissed, his fingers finding your hair and tangling in the wild curls.
“Lie down,” you whispered against his wet, hot skin.
He obeyed instantly, stretching out on the pale sheets, his body a landscape of pale skin and dark hair, the thick cock jutting up from his groin, curving slightly toward his belly. You crawled over him, turning so that your knees were on either side of his head, your still-dripping cunt poised just above his mouth.
Tom groaned in response, eagerly reaching for you already and you felt his hot breath on your exposed, sensitive folds, and you shivered, bracing your hands on his thighs. From this angle, you could see his entire body stretched out before you—the swell of his chest, the ridges of his abs, the thick, proud column of his cock.
Then, you lowered your head and took him into your mouth.
The salt taste of him filled your senses, along with the musky, intoxicating scent of his arousal. You took him deep, relaxing your jaw, letting the head of his cock bump the soft back of your throat before you swallowed around him. Tom’s whole body arched, a guttural moan punched out of him, and then his own mouth latched onto your cunt again, his tongue immediately plunging inside you while his nose rocked against your still-throbbing clit.
The pleasure was dual, shared, a perfect feedback loop of giving and receiving. You bobbed your head, using your tongue to trace the thick vein that ran along the underside of his shaft, hollowing your cheeks to create suction. Your hand worked the base of him in a twisting motion, the other reaching down to cup his balls, rolling the warm, heavy sac in your palm. They were drawn tight to his body, a sign of how close he was. Every time you swallowed him deep, he groaned into your cunt, and the vibrations made you moan around his cock, which made him groan louder.
He ate you relentlessly, his tongue stabbing into your entrance, then flattening to lap from clit to perineum.
He was messy, with raw, hungry devotion, his chin and cheeks slick with your arousal. You returned the favor, letting drool drip down his shaft, using the slickness to pump him faster, your mouth a hot, wet, hungry sheath.
“I’m close,” he grunted against your wetness, the words muffled but desperate. “Fuck, I’m so close… don’t stop…”
You moaned your acknowledgement, the sound vibrating directly against his cockhead, and you took him even deeper, your nose pressing into the coarse hair at the base of him. You could smell him, taste him, feel the pulse of his impending climax against your tongue. He sucked your clit hard at the same moment, two fingers twisting inside you, and your own second orgasm detonated without warning, a white-hot flash that made you cry out around his cock. Your cunt spasmed in rhythmic, prolonged contractions, and the sensation of your climax, the way your whole body clenched and shuddered, triggered his.
His hips bucked, and he let out a long, raw groan, the sound ripped from his chest, as the first hot, thick rope of cum shot into your mouth. You swallowed instantly, the taste clean and salty and overwhelmingly his. He pulsed again, and again, filling your mouth so fast that some escaped the seal of your lips and trickled down your chin, dripping onto his thigh. You kept sucking, milking him, feeling his cock kick and jerk against your tongue, the hot spurts of his release flooding you. He came a lot, always did, and you savored the feeling of him emptying himself completely, his body tensing and shaking beneath you, until he finally fell limp, breathing in great, heaving gasps.
You released him with a soft, wet pop, licking your lips, and rolled off to lie beside him, both of you panting. The room smelled of sex and the sea, the salt breeze doing little to clear the dense, animal scent of your mingled releases. For a long moment, there was only the crash of waves and the rush of your breathing. Tom rolled his head toward you, his eyes glazed with pleasure, and he reached over to wipe the saliva and cum from your chin with his thumb, before licking it clean.
Then his mouth curved.
“You look…”
You lifted an eyebrow, still trying to catch your breath.
“Careful.”
Tom laughed under his breath, low and rough.
“Beautiful.”
You gave him a doubtful look.
“That was not where that sentence was going.”
“No,” he admitted, still smiling. “It wasn’t.”
His thumb traced your lower lip once more, slow and affectionate.
“You look completely undone.”
Heat climbed your throat.
“Tom.”
“What?”
“You sound far too pleased with yourself.”
“I am far too pleased with myself.”
You huffed a laugh and rolled onto your back, covering your face with one hand.
“Unbearable.”
He shifted closer, propping himself on one elbow, his free hand settling over your waist.
“You started it.”
You peeked at him through your fingers.
“I absolutely did not.”
“You opened my shirt during chess.”
“That was strategy.”
“Mm.” His mouth brushed your shoulder. “A devastating one.”
You smiled despite yourself.
Tom kissed the warm skin just beneath your ear, slower now, gentler, all the urgency softened into something drowsy and affectionate.
“Come here,” he murmured.
You did not hesitate.
You shifted closer, looking at him for one suspended second before slowly guiding him back against the pillows. He let you, his eyes never leaving your face, one hand resting loose and warm at your waist.
Your palm found his chest.
Your fingers sank immediately into the coarse, dark hair there, still damp from heat and sweat, and the solid warmth of him beneath your hand made your breath catch all over again.
You traced the dark furrow down his sternum, over the ridges of his abs, to his navel, and then lower, to where his cock lay, still half-hard, glistening, resting in a small pool of his own cum on his belly. Without thought, your hand wrapped around it again. It was impossibly hot, velvety, and as you gave a single, lazy stroke, you felt it twitch and thicken in your grip.
“Hmm,” he breathed, but his eyes were on your face, raw with want, his hips already beginning to roll into your touch. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
You squeezed, feeling him harden further. It didn’t take much. With Tom, it never did.
“I want you inside me,” you whispered, the words as much a command as a plea. “I want to feel you come again, deep inside me. I want to feel you fill me up.”
A sound, somewhere between a groan and a desperate laugh, escaped him. “Yes. Fuck, yes. Come here.”
You pushed yourself up and swung a leg over his hips, straddling him. His cock stood upright against his belly, slick with his own cum and your saliva, the broad head already beading with a new translucent pearl of pre-cum. You grasped it, the heat of him searing your palm, and positioned the thick crown at your entrance. It nestled against your slick, swollen folds, and for a heated, agonizing moment, you just rocked there, not taking him in, letting the glans part your lips, coating him in your combined fluids. He was breathing through his teeth, his hands clamped onto your hips, not forcing, just holding.
“Please,” he rasped. “Y/N, please.”
You sank down.
The stretch was exquisite—a slow, incremental filling that seemed to go on forever. Inch by thick inch, you took him in, the ridge of his corona pressing past your tight, inner muscles, until you were seated against him, your clit nestled in the coarse, dark thatch of his pubic hair. You both moaned, the sound synchronized, and for a beat, you just stayed like that, fully connected, feeling the thick, thrumming pulse of him deep inside your core.
“Fuck that feels good,” he said, his voice wrecked, his eyes fixed on where you were joined.
You began to move.
It started as a slow grind, your hips rolling, circling, letting the base of his cock press and massage that deep, hungry spot inside you. His hands slid from your hips up to your breasts, cupping them, thumbs rasping over your still-hard nipples. You leaned forward, bracing your hands on his chest, your fingers immediately curling into the mat of dark hair, tugging, scratching. The wiry strands wrapped around your fingers, and you pulled, intentionally, feeling his skin bunch under your nails. He hissed, not from pain, but from the sharp edge of pleasure, his hips bucking up into you.
“Don’t stop,” he groaned and, of course, you wouldn’t.
You rode him harder. The rhythm became faster, more urgent, the wet, slapping sound of your bodies colliding filling the room, mingling with the pound of the distant surf. Your nails raked red lines down his chest, through the hair, over his ribs, and he arched into the sharp sensation, his hands clamping onto the globes of your ass to pull you down harder, to meet each thrust. His cock hit that sweetest spot inside you with every downward motion, and the friction of his pubic bone against your clit was constant and perfect.
He was babbling now, a stream of filthy, worshipful praise. “That’s it, baby, take what you need… you feel so fucking good… so tight… so wet… “
You leaned down, capturing his mouth in a messy, desperate kiss, all tongue and teeth and broken breath. “I love you,” you gasped against his lips. “And I want to feel you cum deep inside me.”
His control snapped. He planted his feet on the mattress and began to fuck up into you from below, a powerful, driving rhythm that had you crying out, your back bowing. His hands were a vice on your hips now, slamming you down onto his pistoning cock. The bed creaked and shook.
You felt your third climax building, a massive, cresting wave that was more than just physical—it was emotional, a complete surrender to this man and this moment.
“I’m going to -,” you sobbed, the words tearing from your throat. “Tom, I’m going to—”
You never finished your sentence.
Your orgasm shattered through you, and you screamed his name, your cunt clamping down on his shaft in a series of powerful, milking contractions.
The sensation was so intense that his own release was immediate. With a raw, primal shout, he thrust deep one last time and held there, his cock pulsing and kicking as he emptied himself inside you.
You felt it—the hot, thick spurts of his cum flooding your depths, painting your inner walls, the sheer volume of him filling you so completely that you could feel it flooding the space around his shaft, warm and wet and utterly primal.
He kept coming, pulse after pulse, and you ground down, milking every last drop, your body accepting all of him. Some of his release leaked out around the seal of your bodies, a creamy, white slick that smeared your thighs and his groin, but you didn't care. You loved that feeling—the wet, messy evidence of his passion, the way he filled you impossibly full.
You collapsed onto his chest afterwards, your bodies a tangle of sweaty, sticky, still-joined limbs. His cock was still semi-hard inside you, and you had no intention of moving.
His arms came around you, one hand cradling your head, the other spread low on your back, his fingers tracing lazy circles on your slick, heated skin. His heart was a thunderous drum beneath your ear, gradually slowing. The breeze washed over your cooling bodies, drying the sweat and salt, and you shivered, but the warmth radiating from him was enough.
He pressed a kiss to your hairline, then your temple, then the corner of your eye where the intensity had drawn a stray tear. “I love you,” he murmured against your damp skin, the words so soft and so full of everything he was. “I love you more than I know how to say.”
You nuzzled into the crook of his neck, breathing him in — salt, sun, warmth, Tom.
“I love you too,” you whispered. “So much.”
You did not need to say anything else.
The room had gone quiet around you, softened by the steady hush of the sea beyond the glass. Tom pulled the thin cotton sheet over both of you, tucking it loosely around your shoulders with a care that made your chest ache. You shifted closer, your leg sliding over his, your hand settling in the warm dip of his waist.
His fingers moved lazily through your hair, working at the salt-tangled curls with slow, gentle patience.
“Your hair really is impossible,” he murmured, voice drowsy.
You smiled against his skin.
“I told you.”
“Beautiful,” he corrected.
You were too tired to argue.
His breathing deepened first. Then yours followed. Somewhere outside, the waves kept folding over themselves in the dark, and you fell asleep wrapped around him, warm and bare beneath the sheet, with his hand still resting in your hair.
*********
Morning arrived in pale gold.
You woke slowly, not all at once, but in pieces.
The cool weight of linen over your hip. The sound of the sea. The faint call of birds somewhere beyond the terrace. Tom’s arm heavy around your waist, his chest warm against your back.
For a few seconds, you did not move.
You just lay there and let yourself know where you were.
Italy.
The villa.
The children still asleep.
Tom beside you.
Then his mouth brushed the back of your shoulder.
“Morning,” he murmured.
You smiled before opening your eyes.
“Morning.”
His lips moved to the side of your neck, soft and lazy.
“Did you sleep?”
“I think I died briefly.”
He laughed quietly, the sound rough with sleep.
“Good holiday, then.”
You turned in his arms to face him.
His hair was a mess. His eyes were half-lidded and warm. There was a crease from the pillow on one cheek, which made him look younger and more beautiful in a way you found deeply unfair.
You lifted a hand to his face.
“You look ridiculous.”
“That’s not very romantic.”
“Ridiculously handsome.”
His mouth curved.
“Better.”
You kissed him.
It was meant to be small. A morning kiss. Lazy, affectionate, half-asleep.
But Tom made a sound against your mouth, low and pleased, and his hand slid to your waist beneath the sheet. The kiss deepened almost without either of you deciding it should. Your fingers found his chest, the familiar warmth of him, and you shifted closer until his leg slid between yours.
He pulled back just enough to look at you.
“The children?”
You listened.
Nothing.
No footsteps. No arguing. No Luka demanding cereal or accusing furniture of looking at him.
“Quiet,” you whispered.
Tom’s eyebrows lifted.
“Suspicious.”
“Don’t ruin this.”
He smiled.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
You kissed him again, a little more deliberately this time, your hand sliding over his shoulder, down his chest. Tom’s breath changed. His fingers tightened at your waist.
“You,” he murmured against your mouth, “are very affectionate this morning.”
“Am I?”
“Mm.”
You kissed the corner of his mouth.
“Maybe I’m still trying to distract you from chess.”
“That game was abandoned hours ago.”
“Coward.”
He laughed and rolled you carefully beneath him, bracing one hand beside your head.
“You are being very rude.”
You smiled up at him.
“I am –“ you began to say before, suddenly, the rest of the sentence vanished.
Your stomach turned.
Hard.
Sudden and violent enough that you went completely still.
Tom noticed instantly.
“Love?”
You swallowed.
The room tilted.
“I—”
Another wave of nausea hit before you could finish.
You shoved at his shoulder, not because you wanted him away, but because you needed to move now.
Tom was off you in a second.
“Are you okay?”
You barely made it to the bathroom.
Then you were on your knees in front of the toilet, one hand braced on the cool tile, retching so hard your eyes watered.
Tom followed, but stopped at the doorway as if afraid of crowding you.
“Y/N?”
You waved one hand weakly behind you.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Don’t look.”
“I have seen you give birth-level threats over airport security and a toy rabbit. This is not going to frighten me.”
You groaned, then retched again.
Tom came in anyway.
Of course he did.
He gathered your hair back from your face with one hand and crouched beside you, the other rubbing slow circles between your shoulder blades.
“It’s all right.”
“It is not all right.”
“It’s just being sick.”
“Incredibly glamorous.”
“I still love you very much.”
You gave him a murderous look through watery eyes.
He softened immediately.
“Sorry.”
You sat back eventually, shaky and mortified, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand before Tom silently passed you a damp cloth.
You took it without looking at him.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I am. I’m just…”
You took a breath, then immediately regretted it.
“Ugh.”
Tom’s hand stayed at your back.
“Food?”
“Probably.”
“Was it the snot shells?”
Despite everything, a horrible little laugh escaped you.
“Don’t.”
“Sorry.”
“I mean it. If Luka finds out, he’ll never let me live.”
Tom stood and reached for the robe hanging behind the door, shaking it out before wrapping it around your shoulders.
You clutched it closed.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
You stared at the floor.
“How embarrassing.”
Tom looked genuinely baffled.
“Being sick?”
“Yes. Naked. On the bathroom floor. After –“
His mouth twitched.
“After what?”
You looked up sharply.
“Do not make me say it.”
He held up both hands, but he was smiling.
“I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
“Maybe.”
You groaned and leaned your head back against the wall.
Tom crouched in front of you again, his expression sobering.
“Do you feel feverish?”
“No.”
“Dizzy?”
“Not really.”
“Pain?”
“No. Just sick.”
He studied your face.
“We’ll take it easy today.”
“No, Tom. It’s the first proper day.”
“Exactly. First proper day of relaxing.”
“The children will want to do something.”
From somewhere beyond the bathroom door came a faint, distant thud.
Then Luka’s voice, muffled but clear:
“I found the tiny fridge!”
Tom closed his eyes.
You stared at him.
A second voice followed. Ellie, unimpressed.
“That’s a minibar, don’t touch anything.”
Then Mia:
“Luka, put down the tiny bottle.”
Tom opened his eyes.
“I’ll handle that.”
You tried to stand.
“No, I’ll—”
He gently pressed you back down.
“You’ll brush your teeth, drink some water, and I will handle the kids.”
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom,
Meanwhile, across town, you, Jess, and Maddy were having lunch somewhere much more expensive, much better lit, and much less emotionally prepared for disaster.
It was one of those places Maddy liked because the chairs were uncomfortable but the bathrooms were beautiful, which, according to her, meant it had standards.
Jess had arrived in sunglasses despite the weather being grey and miserable.
You had arrived six minutes late, with one earring in, your sunglasses on your head, three missed calls from your agent, a script half-sticking out of your bag, and the very strong feeling that you had forgotten something important.
You checked your bag twice.
Phone.
Lip balm.
Wallet.
Script.
Fred.
Other earring.
No.
Still missing.
You frowned.
Maddy watched you rummage.
“What have you lost?”
“My earring.”
“The one in your ear?”
You touched your left ear.
“No, the other one.”
Jess looked at you over the top of her sunglasses.
“Why are you only wearing one?”
“Because I put the other one somewhere safe.”
Maddy nodded solemnly.
“Gone forever, then.”
“Obviously.”
The restaurant was too bright.
Not objectively.
Just for your brain.
Too many glasses catching light. Too many knives set at perfect angles. Too many conversations happening at once, all of them arriving in pieces. Someone behind you was talking about a yacht. Someone to your left kept saying the word “cleanse.” A waiter was describing fish with far too many adjectives.
You moved your water glass half an inch to the right.
Then back.
Then moved the bread plate because it was visually annoying.
Maddy stared at your hand.
“Are you rearranging the table?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“It felt wrong.”
“The table?”
“The spacing.”
Jess smiled faintly, which meant she was trying to be normal.
For the first twenty minutes, the conversation was normal.
Or as normal as conversation with Maddy ever got.
Maddy talked about a fitting that had nearly ended in violence because a model had called silk “too slippery.” Jess talked about rehearsals. You talked about finishing the West End run, though mostly you complained that your character had one speech in act two that had too many commas and was, in your view, structurally hostile.
“A comma can be hostile?” Jess asked.
“Yes.”
Maddy took a sip of wine.
“I do believe her on this.”
You pointed your fork at her.
“Thank you.”
Then you forgot you were holding the fork and used it to gesture through a story about the stage door, nearly knocking over the salt.
Maddy caught it without looking.
“Hands.”
“Sorry.”
Jess had gone quiet in that way that meant she wanted someone to ask.
It did not help, either, that watching you talk with your hands always reminded her of someone else.
Not exactly.
Not neatly.
Yours was different. Brighter. Less controlled. More chaotic, as if your thoughts arrived too quickly for your body to keep up and your hands were simply trying to catch them in the air.
But there was something in the restlessness.
The shifting glass.
The fork tapping once, twice, then stopping when Maddy looked at you.
The way you interrupted yourself, corrected yourself, then jumped three thoughts ahead before anyone else had finished crossing the first one.
It made Jess think of him.
Tom.
The movement. The nervous energy. The mind too loud under the skin.
Except with Tom it was darker. Sharper. More contained until it wasn’t.
With you, it looked almost charming.
That annoyed her too.
Maddy noticed first.
Of course she did.
“What?”
Jess blinked.
“What?”
“You have a face.”
“Everyone has a face.”
“Not like that. That is a confession face.”
You looked up from attacking an olive with your fork.
You had not eaten the olive.
You had just stabbed it several times because it kept rolling away from you and, for reasons unclear to anyone, you had taken that personally.
“Did you steal something?”
Jess sighed.
“No.”
Maddy narrowed her eyes.
“Did you sleep with someone?”
Jess’s silence answered.
Maddy sat back.
“Oh, excellent. Who?”
Jess looked between you both, then picked up her water glass and set it down again without drinking.
You noticed because you did things like that too. Picked things up. Put them down. Picked them up again. Forgot why. Turned objects into evidence. Especially when you were about to admit to something bad.
“Remember that guy I used to hook up with about ten months ago?”
Maddy’s expression sharpened immediately.
“The 40-year old actor?”
Jess grimaced.
“Yes.”
“The one who ignored your texts like a dick?”
“He didn’t ignore all of them.”
Maddy stared.
Jess looked away.
“Fine. That one.”
You put down your fork too quickly.
It clattered.
Three people at the next table looked over.
You smiled at them like a woman who had absolutely not just murdered an olive.
Then you turned back to Jess.
“Oh, Jess.”
Jess pointed at you.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a tiny wounded bird who flew into a window.”
Maddy lifted her glass.
“No, babe, you flew into the same window twice.”
Jess glared.
“Thank you.”
“What happened?” you asked.
Jess exhaled.
“He was at that event last night.”
Maddy made a face.
“Of course he was.”
“We talked. It was actually fine.”
Maddy’s eyebrows went up.
“Dangerous sentence.”
Jess ignored her.
“He was funny. Annoying. Same as before. We went outside for a cigarette.”
You stared.
“You smoke now?”
“Occasionally.”
Maddy pointed at her.
“That means yes.”
“It means occasionally.”
“It means yes.”
You frowned.
“Occasionally smoking is just smoking with commitment issues.”
Maddy pointed at you.
“Exactly.”
Jess rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, we talked, and I said sorry for that message I sent after New York.”
Maddy’s face softened a little despite herself.
“Okay.”
You reached for your wine, then forgot to drink it because your brain had snagged on New York.
New York.
For one stupid second, your own New York flickered up.
Hotel room.
Balcony.
Blue eyes.
Cigarette.
No name.
You shoved it away.
Wrong New York.
Wrong guy.
Jess’s New York.
Focus.
“And then we went back to mine,” Jess said.
You closed your eyes briefly.
“Jess.”
“I know.”
Maddy leaned forward.
“Did you sleep with him?”
Jess looked down at the table.
“Obviously, yes.”
Maddy groaned.
“Oh, Jess, no.”
Jess’s expression flickered.
Defensive first.
Then embarrassed.
Then, very unwillingly, pleased.
“God, it was good.”
Maddy dropped her head back.
“That is the worst possible update.”
“I know.”
“No, because if it had been bad, at least we’d be free.”
“It wasn’t bad.”
“Clearly, because you look insane.”
Jess’s mouth twitched.
Not enough to hide how much she liked remembering it.
You finally remembered the wine and took a sip too fast.
“Did he stay?”
Jess smiled too quickly.
“No.”
Maddy stared.
“Right.”
“I told him it was casual.”
“Did you mean it?”
Jess said nothing.
Maddy pointed at her again.
“There it is.”
Jess sighed.
“I texted him this morning.”
Both you and Maddy looked at her.
Jess lifted her chin.
“Not desperately.”
Maddy closed her eyes.
“How many times?”
“Three.”
“Jess.”
“They were normal.”
“Three normal texts is not normal.”
You tried to be gentle, but your brain had already started constructing an emotional flow chart and then immediately lost the top left corner.
“Were they three separate thoughts or one thought split into three messages?”
Maddy looked at you.
“That is not the issue.”
“It matters. Tone-wise.”
Jess blinked.
“One was about his lighter.”
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“That’s a hook text.”
Maddy turned to you.
“How do you know that?”
You opened your mouth.
Closed it.
“I read people.”
“You forget people’s names.”
“That is different. Names are floating labels. Behaviour is theatre.”
Jess looked at you like she wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously.
You softened.
“Has he replied?”
Jess looked away.
“Not yet.”
Maddy reached across the table and took Jess’s hand, but her voice stayed blunt.
“Why would you go down that road again?”
Jess swallowed.
“Because I’m apparently thick.”
“You’re not thick.”
“No, I am. Emotionally, at least.”
You softened too fast.
You always did that. Went from frantic to tender without warning, like your feelings had no gear changes.
“You liked him.”
Jess laughed once, miserably.
“I did.”
Then, quieter, “I do.”
That landed differently.
Maddy heard it too.
Jess picked at the edge of her napkin.
“But I also know he’s not good for me. Because, emotionally, he is unavailable.”
You glanced at her then.
“That’s not the same as not wanting him.”
Jess looked at you.
For a second, neither of you said anything.
Then Jess asked to change the topic, and Maddy, who had the attention span of a firework and the emotional timing of a drunk surgeon, pointed at your bag.
“Anyway, speaking of mistakes, I can see a script sticking out of your bag.”
You looked down.
The corner of the script was, in fact, visible.
So was a pen.
And a receipt.
And one packet of mints you had bought because the box was a nice colour.
“Oh. Yeah.”
Maddy’s eyes narrowed.
“What is it?”
“Work.”
“Obviously.”
Jess wiped under one eye quickly and straightened.
Too quickly.
You noticed.
Not fully.
But enough.
“New thing?” Jess asked.
“Yes.”
“Film?”
You hesitated.
Then started winding the corner of your napkin around your finger.
Too tight.
You unwound it.
“Yes.”
Maddy sat forward.
“Why are you being weird?”
“I’m not being weird.”
Jess tilted her head.
“You are being incredibly weird. Weirder than me.”
“That feels unfair given the three texts.”
“Deflection.”
“Accurate, though.”
Maddy snapped her fingers softly in front of you.
“Film. Focus.”
You blinked.
“Right. Yes. Film.”
Then you sighed before worrying at the napkin again.
“Okay. Don’t judge me.”
Maddy smiled.
“I’m going to.”
“My dad’s producing it.”
Maddy’s smile vanished.
“Oh, babe.”
“Don’t.”
“No, I’m not judging, I’m just emotionally bracing for the press.”
You spoke too quickly.
“It’s a good script. Like, actually good. Not good because Dad said it was good, because Dad once said a three-hour film about a man in Russia with a horse falling over in the snow was life-changing and I wanted to remove my own spine.”
Maddy stared at you.
“What?”
“I don’t know. There was a horse. Or possibly a donkey. Something sad with hooves.”
Jess blinked.
“That is not narrowing it down.”
Maddy blinked.
“That was a lot.”
“Sorry. Point is, it’s good.”
Jess had gone very still.
You noticed.
Not fully.
But enough.
Your brain caught the shape of it three seconds late and then lit up with alarm.
“Kurt O’Callaghan is directing,” you said quickly. “And I initially said no.”
Maddy’s face changed.
“Sundance winner Kurt O’Callaghan?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s different.”
“Thank you.”
“Still a nightmare, but different.”
You looked at Jess.
She had not said anything.
“What’s wrong?”
Jess blinked.
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
Maddy looked between you both.
“What?”
Jess’s eyes moved to the script sticking out of your bag.
“What’s the film called?”
You told her.
“The Second Room.”
Jess’s mouth parted slightly.
Maddy frowned.
“Why do you look like that?”
You looked at Jess more carefully now, worrying instantly, your thoughts scrambling through six possible explanations and stopping on the worst one.
“Did you try to get cast for it?”
Jess shook her head immediately.
“No. Never.”
“Jess.”
“I didn’t. I knew your dad was producing it when my agent sent it to me about a year ago, so I obviously didn’t try.”
Maddy snorted.
“Because nepotism?”
Jess glanced at you apologetically.
“Because your dad scares me.”
You laughed despite yourself.
“He scares me too.”
Jess smiled faintly, but it did not hold.
You leaned in, then realised you were leaning too far and nearly knocked the water glass with your elbow.
You caught it at the last second.
“Sorry. What is it, then?”
Jess hesitated.
Then said, “Tom is doing that movie.”
You stared at her.
“Tom?”
Maddy, who had already sensed chaos like a shark sensing blood, was pulling her phone out.
“Who is Tom?”
Jess looked at you.
“The guy.”
You frowned.
“What guy?”
Maddy’s fingers were already moving over her screen.
Jess swallowed.
“That guy.”
Your eyes widened.
“The asshole guy you’ve been sleeping with?”
Jess winced.
“Yes.”
You sat back.
“Oh.”
Then your brain caught up.
It did that sometimes. Let the first sentence arrive in your mouth before the second one had finished loading.
“Oh, I’m filming a movie with the guy you have been—”
Before you could finish, Maddy made a strangled sound.
“Oh my God.”
Jess turned on her.
“Maddy.”
Maddy looked from her phone to Jess.
“You’ve been shagging Tom fucking Sturridge?”
Jess went bright red.
“Shhh.”
You froze.
“Who?”
Maddy stared at you.
“Seriously?”
“What?”
“You don’t know who Tom Sturridge is?”
You frowned.
“Should I?”
Maddy looked at Jess.
“She’s hopeless.”
You pointed at her.
“Don’t do that.”
Maddy’s expression shifted into sudden memory.
“Actually, no. Fair. You once stood next to Johnny Depp at an event and asked me who the man with the scarves was.”
Jess blinked.
“You did what?”
“He had a lot of scarves.”
Maddy shook her head.
“That is not the point.”
“It felt point-adjacent.”
“It was Johnny Depp.”
“Yes, but I met him out of context.”
Jess stared.
“Out of context?”
“Some people need their hat or their movie lighting.”
Maddy turned the phone toward you.
“This is Tom Sturridge. He’s a British actor.”
You looked.
For one second, nothing happened.
A man’s face on a screen.
Dark hair. Blue eyes. Familiar bone structure made unfamiliar by red carpet lighting and a black suit and the terrible clarity of public photographs.
Then the room dropped.
Not dramatically.
Not visibly.
Just inside you.
Everything went cold and hot at once.
Your brain, which usually had eighteen tabs open, suddenly closed all of them except one.
Him.
You inhaled too fast.
Wine went the wrong way.
You spat directly into your glass.
Maddy yanked her phone back.
“Oh my God.”
Jess went rigid.
“What?”
You coughed, grabbed your napkin, dropped it, grabbed it again, and stared at the phone like it had personally attacked you.
“No.”
Maddy looked between you and Jess.
“What no?”
You pointed at the screen.
“No way.”
Jess’s face changed.
Slowly.
“Y/N.”
You looked up at her.
“That’s him.”
Maddy looked at you, blank.
“Yes, that’s the guy Jess has been shagging. The asshole who didn’t reply to her messages. We have established that.”
You shook your head.
Too fast.
“No.”
Maddy frowned.
Jess had gone completely still.
You swallowed.
“That’s him.”
Maddy’s face stayed confused for one more second.
Then it changed.
“Oh.”
You nodded, barely.
Then your voice came out thin.
“The guy from New York.”
There was a silence.
A much larger one this time.
Jess stared at you.
Maddy stared at Jess.
Then Maddy stared back at you.
“I’m sorry.”
She pointed at the phone.
“This is your forty-year-old one-night stand from New York?”
You winced.
“Almost forty.”
Maddy stared harder.
“That is not the correction you think it is.”
Jess made a tiny, strangled sound.
“Oh my God.”
You took the phone from Maddy and looked again, as if the face might change if you disliked the situation enough.
It did not.
Same eyes.
Same mouth.
Same man who had smoked with you on a balcony and corrected you with that stupid little almost.
Your thumb hovered over the screen.
For one ridiculous second, you nearly zoomed in on his mouth.
Absolutely not.
You handed the phone back like it was hot.
Jess had tears in her eyes.
That made everything worse.
Not because you were angry with her.
You weren’t.
You were just weirded out.
Deeply, physically weirded out, as if someone had taken one private, reckless thing you had done months ago and dragged it into daylight, given it a name, a career, a daughter, a film contract, and apparently your best friend’s emotional breakdown.
Your brain began running in too many directions.
Jess slept with him.
You slept with him.
You lied about your age.
He was in the movie.
The movie had intimate scenes.
James.
Oh God, James.
No, not now.
Back to Jess.
Jess was crying.
You reached for her hand, missed because your depth perception had apparently resigned, and touched the salt cellar instead.
Maddy saw.
Said nothing.
Rare mercy.
You corrected course and took Jess’s hand.
“Jess.”
She shook her head too quickly.
“No. Don’t.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I really didn’t know. If I had known, I would have told you. Immediately. Probably too immediately. Like, horrifyingly fast.”
Jess laughed once through the tears.
Tiny.
Broken.
“I know.”
Her voice cracked on the second one.
Maddy looked between you both, unusually quiet for about three seconds.
Then she inhaled.
“So let me get this straight.”
You closed your eyes.
“Maddy.”
“No, I need the board.”
“There is no board.”
“There should be a board.”
Jess wiped under one eye.
“Please don’t make this worse.”
Maddy pointed at the phone.
“Your amazing one-night stand from New York—”
“I did not say amazing.”
Maddy gave you a look.
“You did. You went on about it for months because he found your G-spot, babe. That’s amazing.”
Jess looked at you.
You blushed.
Maddy continued, merciless.
“But anyway. Let’s recap. It turns out that your one-night stand from New York is also Jess’s emotionally unavailable asshole older actor—”
Jess winced.
“Maddy.”
“—who ignored her texts, then slept with her again last night, and now you are about to film a movie with him.”
You covered your face with one hand.
“Please stop.”
Maddy sat back, eyes wide.
“That is not awkward. That is cosmic.”
You dropped your hand.
“It is not cosmic.”
“It is cosmic.”
“It is horrifying.”
“Cosmic things often are.”
You stared at her.
Then at Jess.
Then at the phone.
Then at the script sticking out of your bag like it had personally ruined your life.
You could feel your thoughts speeding up again, trying to outrun the feeling.
Cancel the movie.
Call Dad.
Fake illness.
No, too dramatic.
Break ankle?
No.
Could you break your own ankle professionally?
Insane.
Stop.
You said the first thing that came out.
“I’ll tell Dad I can’t do the movie.”
Jess looked up.
Too fast.
“Yes.”
You blinked.
Maddy looked at her.
“What?”
Jess swallowed and tried to arrange her face into something reasonable.
It did not quite work.
“I mean… maybe that’s best.”
You went still.
“Best?”
Jess wiped under one eye, though the tears were already drying now, replaced by something sharper. Something she was trying very hard to hide under hurt.
“For everyone.”
Maddy’s eyebrows lifted.
“Everyone?”
Jess looked at her.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“My face is correct.”
You looked between them, your brain already running too fast again.
Tom.
Jess.
Movie.
Dad.
Script.
Sex scenes.
Jess saying yes too quickly.
The wine glass was suddenly too close to your elbow, so you moved it.
Then moved it back.
Then picked up your napkin and folded one corner over itself until it made a small, useless triangle.
“Wait,” you said. “You think I shouldn’t do it?”
Jess hesitated.
Only for half a second.
But enough.
“I think it will be awful for you, because you and I –“
Maddy sat back and interrupted Jess.
“That is not what she asked.”
Jess’s jaw tightened.
“It’s true.”
“It might be awkward,” Maddy said. “That does not mean she gives up a good film.”
Jess turned on her.
“It is not just awkward.”
The edge in her voice startled you.
Jess seemed to hear it too, because she softened immediately, reaching for your hand.
You let her take it.
Her fingers were cold.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry. I just mean… think about it. You and him. The intimate scenes. Because I’ve heard there are a lot of them in that movie. Me. James. Your dad producing it. It’s a disaster.”
Maddy looked at her hand on yours.
Then at Jess’s face.
“It is messy,” Maddy said carefully. “It is not a reason to run away from career changing work, Jess. The movie could be huge.”
Jess laughed once.
Not nicely.
“Easy for you to say.”
You blinked.
“Jess.”
She looked at you, eyes wet again, but there was something possessive underneath the sadness now. Something ugly and human and very young.
“No, I’m sorry, but I’m trying to be honest. I don’t know if I can sit there and watch you go off to set with him every day.”
The table went quiet.
Maddy’s expression changed.
You felt it too.
A shift.
A small reveal Jess had not meant to give away so cleanly.
You pulled your hand back slowly.
Jess noticed.
Her face flickered.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Maddy said, “I think you did.”
Jess looked at her.
“Fuck off, Maddy.”
Maddy did not flinch.
“No.”
You stared down at the napkin triangle between your fingers.
Your thoughts were skipping.
Jess was hurt.
Jess was jealous.
Jess was your friend.
Jess had texted him three times this morning.
Jess wanted you to quit.
Tom had a name.
Tom had a mouth you remembered.
The script was good.
You wanted it.
You hated wanting it.
You looked up.
“First, I don’t want to put you in a weird position.”
Jess seized on that immediately.
“Exactly.”
Maddy’s eyes cut to her.
You kept going, the words tumbling faster now because if you stopped, you might cry too.
“No. I mean it. You’re my friend. He’s already messed with your head once, and apparently twice now, and I don’t want to be the person who walks onto a set with him and makes it worse.”
Jess nodded too quickly.
“It would make it worse.”
Maddy leaned forward.
“Jess.”
“What? It would.”
“For you.”
Jess’s mouth tightened.
“Yes. For me. I’m allowed to say that.”
That shut everyone up for a second.
Because she was.
She was allowed to say it.
It still did not feel clean.
You dragged your fingers over the stem of your wine glass.
Maddy quietly moved the glass half an inch away from you before you could knock it.
You noticed and whispered, “Thanks.”
Then you looked back at Jess.
“And second, I don’t want to put myself in a weird position either.”
Jess’s eyes flickered to the script.
You nodded.
“The movie does have like five or so intimate scenes.”
Maddy’s eyebrows rose despite herself.
“Five?”
“Yes.”
You exhaled, too fast, then tried again.
“And they’re not random. They matter. They’re part of the whole psychological mess of it.”
Jess looked down.
For a moment, you thought she was upset for you.
Then she said, very quietly, “Exactly.”
Your stomach sank a little.
Maddy heard it too.
You said, voice lower now, “And I’m meant to do that with him? The man I had a one-night stand with? The man who slept with my friend too and then never responded to her messages?”
Jess flinched.
You hated yourself immediately.
“Sorry.”
“No,” Jess said, too quickly. “Don’t. It’s true.”
But her eyes had gone bright again.
Not only hurt this time.
Angry.
Humiliated.
Jealous.
“And that is why you shouldn’t do it.”
Maddy set her glass down with deliberate care.
“No.”
Jess looked at her.
“No?”
“No,” Maddy said. “She is not giving up a good movie because of some cosmic coincidence where two friends ended up with the same emotionally unavailable asshole.”
“This is not just a coincidence.”
“It is exactly a coincidence.”
“It’s humiliating.”
“For whom?”
Jess stared at her.
Maddy held her gaze.
You looked between them, heart beating too fast.
“Maddy.”
“No. I’m serious. We are all adults. Adults have sex. Shit happens.”
Jess gave a small, disbelieving laugh.
“Don’t do that.”
Maddy’s expression barely changed.
“Do what?”
Jess’s eyes were bright again.
“Make it sound cheap because it’s convenient for your argument.”
The table went quiet.
You looked at Jess.
Her voice was lower now, but sharper. More exposed.
“You know it meant more to me than just sex.”
Maddy’s face softened, but only slightly.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because it doesn’t sound like it.”
Maddy exhaled carefully.
“Jess, I love you. I do. But this is not just about your feelings.”
Jess flinched as if the words had hit her.
Maddy leaned forward a little.
“It is about Y/N’s career too.”
Jess looked away.
Maddy kept going, quieter now, but firmer.
“And I think, in a few years, when you are not hurt and embarrassed and waiting for this man to text you back, you might look at this differently.”
Jess’s jaw tightened.
“Don’t.”
“You might look back and feel awful that you wanted her to walk away from something important because of him.”
Jess’s eyes snapped back to hers.
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t. But I know you.”
That landed.
Jess swallowed.
Maddy’s voice softened another fraction.
“And I know you are not cruel. Not really.”
For one second, Jess looked like that might break her.
Then pride slid in.
Fast.
Ugly.
Protective.
“I’m not being cruel.”
Maddy said nothing.
Jess looked at you.
“I’m trying to protect myself.”
You nodded, because that was true.
It was true and still not the whole truth.
Jess’s gaze flickered to your bag.
To the script.
Then away.
“And maybe I’m trying to protect you too.”
Maddy’s mouth tightened.
“From what? A job?”
Jess’s eyes flashed.
“From him.”
You went still.
Maddy did too.
Jess looked immediately like she regretted how quickly she had said it.
But it was out now.
Tom.
Not the movie.
Not the press.
Not the awkwardness.
Him.
Maddy sat back slowly.
“Right.”
Jess folded her arms.
“Don’t say right like that.”
“I’ll say it however I like.”
“You think I’m pathetic.”
“No,” Maddy said. “I think you’re too into a man who has not been kind enough to you to deserve this much power.”
Jess looked down.
Her fingers were tight around the stem of her glass.
You watched her knuckles pale.
Your chest hurt for her.
And then, horribly, something else twisted underneath it.
Irritation.
Because she was hurt.
Because she was your friend.
Because you loved her.
Because she was trying, gently or not, to make her heartbreak your decision.
Maddy looked at you then.
Not Jess.
You.
“The script is good?”
You swallowed.
“Yes.”
“You want it?”
You looked down at the bag.
The corner of the script stuck out like an accusation.
“Yes.”
Jess’s face changed.
Only slightly.
But you saw it.
Maddy saw it too.
A flash of disappointment before she could cover it.
Maddy’s voice went very calm.
“Then that matters.”
Jess looked wounded by that.
And because she was wounded, she became sharper.
“Fine. Then do it.”
You blinked.
“Jess.”
“No, do it. If the script is so good, do it.”
The words were supportive.
The tone was not.
Maddy noticed.
You noticed too, but your brain did that awful thing where it tried to explain away the thing it had just noticed because noticing meant having to deal with it.
Jess leaned back and folded her arms.
“It’ll be fine. You can spend weeks doing intimate scenes with him. I’m sure that won’t be weird at all.”
Maddy’s voice cooled.
“That is unfair.”
Jess’s eyes flashed.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“She asked me what I thought.”
“And you answered like someone who wants this asshole to text her back.”
Silence.
Sharp.
Immediate.
Jess’s face went white, then red.
“That was cruel.”
Maddy nodded once.
“Yes. It was. It was also true.”
You stared at Maddy.
Then at Jess.
Jess looked like she might cry again, but underneath it, there was something else. Something almost exposed now. Want. Embarrassment. Possession over a man who had not given her the right to it.
Your chest hurt for her.
And then, horribly, you were annoyed too.
Because you had almost given up the film.
Because for three minutes you had let a man, who had not even walked into the room yet, become larger than the work.
You looked down at the script.
It still felt like a trap.
But it also felt like work.
And you had fought too hard to be taken seriously to walk away because a man had turned out to be an inconveniently named mistake.
You pressed your thumb hard into the folded napkin.
One thing.
The work.
Kurt wanted you.
The script was good.
You wanted it.
That was allowed to matter too.
You exhaled.
“Okay.”
Jess looked up quickly.
“Okay?”
You sat back, heart still beating too fast.
Your knee bounced once under the table.
Then again.
You stopped it with your own hand.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
Jess’s face changed.
Just for a second.
Disappointment.
Then she buried it under a smile.
It was not quite fast enough.
Maddy saw it.
You saw it too.
Jess said, “Good.”
But it landed wrong.
Small.
Tight.
Not real.
Maddy smiled more openly.
“Good.”
You picked up your wine.
Carefully this time.
Then you drank to that and, for a moment, the lunch pretended to recover.
Then Jess’s phone lit up on the table.
All three of you looked down before anyone could pretend not to.
Jess snatched it up too fast.
Too eager.
Too hopeful.
Then her face fell.
Not him.
She turned the phone over.
Maddy looked at you.
You looked at the script.
And somewhere between the too-bright restaurant lights, the folded napkin under your thumb, and Jess’s badly hidden disappointment, you understood something you did not want to understand.
This was already worse than awkward.
**********
Later, at home, James fell asleep before you did.
That was not unusual.
James slept like a man with no unfinished business. Flat on his back, one arm above his head, breathing steady, face softened into something almost boyish in the dark.
You hated when he looked like that.
It made everything more complicated.
You lay beside him with your eyes open, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet hum of the room and the occasional sound of traffic outside.
You had told Maddy and Jess you would do the movie.
You had meant it.
You still meant it.
Probably.
But now the room was dark, and James was asleep, and there was no wine, no Maddy, no Jess’s wet eyes, no ridiculous restaurant lighting to make the whole thing feel like a farce.
There was just you.
And Tom.
Tom Sturridge.
His name still felt wrong.
Too public.
Too attached to articles and credits and red carpets and Jess’s trembling voice.
That man.
The man from New York.
The man you had spent months refusing to think about properly, except when you did. Except when you were alone and angry or bored or restless and your mind slipped back to that hotel room like it had its own key.
His mouth.
His hands.
That stupid almost.
The cigarette on the balcony.
The way he had looked at you like he knew you were lying about being braver than you were and had decided to enjoy it.
You shut your eyes.
Immediately regretted it.
Because the dark made it worse.
How could that be the same man?
How could the man who had made you feel like your skin was too small for your body, the man whose voice you still sometimes thought about when you needed to get yourself off, be the same man who had slept with Jess and then left her staring at her phone?
Jess.
Your friend.
Your friend with tears in her eyes at lunch, trying to be noble because she loved you and the work more than she loved her own humiliation.
Your loyalty should have been simple.
Tom had hurt Jess.
Therefore Tom was an arsehole.
That should have been the whole equation.
Clean.
Useful.
Done.
But New York sat in the back of your mind like evidence for the defence.
You hated that.
You hated him a little for it.
You hated yourself more.
Because you remembered laughing with him.
You remembered him being annoying in a way that had made you want to kiss him and slap him and keep him talking at the same time.
You remembered the shock of realising he knew exactly what he was doing.
You remembered him leaving before dawn, handsome and wrecked.
And now you were meant to act normal near him.
Normal.
As if you had not lied about your age.
As if he had not slept with Jess.
As if you were not engaged to James, who was sleeping beside you now, warm and real and completely unaware that your life had turned inside out at lunch.
You turned your head and looked at him.
James shifted slightly in his sleep, his hand flexing against the sheet.
Your stomach twisted.
You should tell him.
Absolutely not.
You could not tell him.
You could already hear his voice.
“You slept with him?”
Not surprised.
Worse.
Disgusted.
Possessive.
Wounded in the way that somehow always made you feel guilty even when you knew you had not technically done anything wrong. You and James had been on a break then. A real one. One he had agreed to when it suited him, then later treated like a loophole you had exploited.
You looked away from him.
No.
You were not doing that tonight.
You reached for your phone instead.
A mistake.
Obviously.
Within seconds, Tom’s face was on your screen again.
Tom Sturridge.
Actor.
Forty.
No.
Almost forty then.
Forty now.
Daughter.
Ex-wife.
Broken engagement.
Interviews.
Photos.
A whole life you had not known existed when he was just a man in a hotel room with blue eyes and dark hair and a cigarette between his fingers.
You scrolled once.
Then stopped.
This was insane.
You locked your phone and put it face down on the bedside table.
James stirred.
“Mm?”
You froze.
“Nothing.”
His eyes did not open.
“You awake?”
“No.”
A sleepy pause.
“Liar.”
You forced a small smile in the dark.
“Go back to sleep.”
He mumbled something and turned slightly toward you, one hand finding your waist under the sheet. Familiar. Heavy. Claiming even in sleep.
You lay very still.
After a moment, his breathing evened out again.
You stared into the dark.
The intimacy scenes rose in your mind like a threat.
A rehearsal room.
Scripts.
Kurt watching.
An intimacy coordinator explaining boundaries while you stood opposite a man who had already seen too much of you. A man who would know, the second he recognised you, that you had lied.
Twenty-eight.
God.
You pressed both hands over your face.
“Idiot,” you whispered.
James did not wake.
Of course he did not.
You lowered your hands and stared at the ceiling again.
Fine.
You would do the movie. You would walk into that room. You would be professional. You would not let Tom Sturridge see you panic. You would not let him make you feel small. You would not think about New York. You would not think about Jess. You would not think about his mouth. You would not.
You turned onto your side, away from James, eyes open in the dark.
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Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom,
Note to readers: I decided to not make Kurt the reader’s godfather in this rewrite.
The next day, Tom had lunch with Rob and Sam in a pub that was too nice to be properly comforting and too dark to be useful.
It had green leather booths, low brass lights, framed photographs of dead actors on the walls, and the sort of menu that called chips triple-cooked as though that somehow excused charging nine pounds for them.
Rob had chosen it because, according to him, the chips were excellent.
Sam had chosen to arrive twelve minutes late and blame traffic despite living an eight-minute walk away.
Tom arrived first, which meant he had already ordered, already checked his phone too many times, already regretted checking his phone, and already destroyed one beer mat by the time they sat down.
Not even destroyed, really.
Disassembled.
He had peeled the damp cardboard into layers, flattened them, folded them, torn one corner off, then tried to put the corner back as if he had not been the person responsible for the damage.
His pint sat mostly untouched in front of him.
His phone sat face down beside it.
That was worse.
Face down meant he was pretending not to care.
Jess had texted him three times that morning.
Nothing dramatic.
That was almost worse.
One at 8:17.
Had fun last night. Hope you survived your terrible burden of free champagne.
One at 9:03.
Also I found your lighter in my bed, which feels on brand.
One at 10:42.
No pressure, obviously, but if you want it back, you know where I live.
Tom had read all three.
He had replied to none of them.
This did not feel like wisdom.
It felt like cowardice wearing a coat.
By the time Rob and Sam arrived, Tom had convinced himself that not replying was technically a reply. A mature one. A measured one. The sort of thing a man did when he was trying to stop making his own life worse with women he had already made his life worse with once before.
Then Sam slid into the booth opposite him, took one look at his face, and said, “Oh, you’ve done something stupid.”
Tom looked at him.
“No, I haven’t.”
Rob sat down beside Sam and immediately stole one of Tom’s chips.
“You have. You’ve got the post-stupid face.”
“I do not have a post-stupid face.”
“You do,” Sam said. “It’s very specific. Bit haunted. Bit defensive. Bit like you’ve already prepared the speech where somehow none of it was technically your fault.”
Tom stared at him.
Rob took another chip.
“Also you’ve destroyed that beer mat.”
Tom looked down at the beer mat as if surprised to find evidence of his own hands.
“What?”
“You’re going to start paying for those.”
Tom dropped it.
“I’m fine.”
Sam narrowed his eyes.
“Big night?”
Tom paused.
“Hmm?”
“Big night,” Sam repeated. “You look like a man pretending his phone is not ruining his day.”
Rob sat back, instantly interested.
“Which one?”
Tom frowned.
“Which one what?”
“Anya or Layla?”
Tom took a drink.
Then said, flatly, “Jess.”
There was a tiny silence.
The pub seemed to continue around them in a smug, oblivious way. Someone laughed near the bar. Cutlery clattered. A waiter slid a board of sourdough past their table like it had personal ambition.
Sam blinked.
“What?”
Rob’s face did something between horror and delight.
“Jess Jess?”
Tom gave him a look.
“How many Jesses are there?”
“With you? God knows.”
“Don’t.”
Sam leaned back, grinning now.
“No, sorry. Back up. Jess? As in New York Jess? From nine months ago?”
“Yes.”
Rob stared at him.
“No shit.”
Tom exhaled through his nose.
“Yes, I’m aware.”
“Are you?”
“It may have been a mistake.”
Sam laughed once.
“May?”
Rob pointed at him with a chip.
“No. You don’t get may. You slept with her again after the last time ended with emotional debris and a group debrief outside a bar.”
“Thank you for making it sound even worse.”
“You did that yourself.”
Sam leaned in, elbows on the table.
“How did it even happen?”
Tom looked at his pint.
“I ran into her at that fashion event my publicist sent me to last night.”
Rob winced.
“And you what? Tripped and fell into her bed?”
Tom glared at him.
“We talked.”
Sam nodded gravely.
“Ah. Talking. Famous gateway drug.”
“She apologised.”
Rob’s eyebrows went up.
“For the message?”
“Yes.”
“And then you thought, excellent, closure, better have sex?”
Tom stared at him.
“I hate you.”
“You deserve me.”
Sam was already laughing into his drink.
“Was it at least good?”
Tom gave him a look that answered before he did.
Rob groaned.
“Of course it was good. That’s how these things get worse.”
Tom sat back, restless and irritated and already annoyed at himself for saying anything.
“She said she was fine. She said it was casual.”
Sam and Rob looked at each other.
Tom pointed at both of them.
“Do not.”
Sam lifted both hands.
“I said nothing.”
“Your face is unbearable.”
Rob took another chip.
“Has she texted?”
Tom did not answer quickly enough.
Sam slapped the table softly.
“Oh, she has.”
“Three times,” Tom admitted.
Rob closed his eyes.
“Jesus.”
“Not dramatic texts.”
Sam laughed.
“That is such a man sentence.”
“They weren’t dramatic.”
“Were they normal?”
Tom thought about it.
“No.”
“There we are.”
Tom rubbed a hand over his face.
“I know. Bad move.”
“Catastrophic move,” Rob corrected.
“Thank you.”
“Still funny.”
“It is not funny.”
“It is extremely funny,” Sam said. “Mostly because you did it with the face of a man who believes himself rational.”
Tom picked up what remained of the beer mat, realised he had already ruined it, and set it down again.
“Can we talk about something else?”
Rob looked at him for a moment, still amused, then mercifully changed topic.
“Fine. Your film.”
Tom’s expression changed immediately.
Not softened.
Focused.
The way it always did when the film came up, even now, even with his phone sitting there like a live grenade.
“Saw they had to replace Pugh,” Rob said.
Tom’s jaw shifted.
“Yeah.”
“Shame.”
“More than a shame.”
Because it was.
It was a disaster, really, only no one was saying disaster yet because film people preferred words like unfortunate and unavoidable and scheduling issue right up until the moment everything caught fire.
Florence leaving had knocked the whole thing sideways.
Weeks of prep had been built around her. Chemistry reads. Wardrobe. Notes. Blocking conversations. The entire emotional weather of the film had depended on the particular kind of sharpness she would have brought to it.
And now, four weeks before rehearsals, they had someone else.
“With whom?” Rob asked.
Tom took a drink.
“Producer’s daughter, apparently.”
Sam paused with a chip halfway to his mouth.
“Producer’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
Rob made a face.
“As the lead?”
“Yes.”
“Nepotism.”
“Exactly.”
Sam shrugged.
“She could be good.”
Tom looked at him.
“Could she?”
“Statistically, yes.”
“That is a meaningless sentence.”
“It’s not her fault her father is a producer.”
“No, but it is quite convenient for her.”
Rob leaned forward.
“Did you look her up?”
Tom said, too quickly, “No.”
Sam blinked.
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
Rob laughed.
“That has never stopped you before.”
Tom looked away.
“It felt irritating.”
“What, being informed?”
“No. Having to know things against my will.”
Sam gave him a look.
Rob shook his head, already smiling.
“What’s the producer’s name?”
Tom hesitated.
“Edward Y/LN.”
Sam pulled out his phone.
Tom immediately hated that Sam had pulled out his phone, because now information was coming. Actual information. Not vague irritation. Not the satisfying fog of uninformed judgement.
Facts.
He did not want facts.
He wanted to remain annoyed in peace.
Sam typed.
Tom sat back with the restless look he always got when he wanted information immediately and resented the fact it had to arrive at internet speed. His knee bounced under the table. He peeled at the edge of the second beer mat. Flattened it. Folded it. Flattened it again.
Rob watched him.
“You know, most people just wait.”
“I am waiting.”
“You’re manually deconstructing the pub.”
Tom dropped the beer mat again.
Sam squinted at the screen.
“Right. Well…”
Tom waited.
Sam looked up.
“She’s hot, at least.”
Tom sighed.
“That is beside the point.”
Sam held up the phone.
“It is not beside the point when you apparently have, like, five sex scenes.”
Rob laughed into his drink.
Tom stared at them.
“Why do you both sound delighted?”
“Because we are,” Sam said simply.
He scrolled further.
“Hang on. Youth theatre award for playing a deranged girl in a psych ward. Bit of television. Small indies. Mostly theatre.”
Rob nodded.
“On the nose.”
Tom dropped his head back against the booth for a second.
“Great.”
He did not sound like he meant it.
Sam kept scrolling.
Tom kept folding the beer mat into increasingly useless shapes.
“Oh,” Sam said.
Tom lifted his head.
“What?”
Sam looked at the screen.
“According to this, she’s engaged to James McNeal.”
Tom frowned.
“Who?”
Rob paused.
“James McNeal. Isn’t that the actor you had that brush with at the BAFTAs thing?”
Tom’s face changed.
“Oh. That guy.”
Sam looked up.
“What guy?”
Tom’s mouth tightened.
“Full of himself. Wouldn’t let some actress finish answering a question. Kept interrupting her. I told him to let her speak.”
Rob pointed.
“That guy.”
“Then he got pissy and said something about me fidgeting like a child.”
Sam grinned.
“You do.”
Tom looked at him.
“Which is beside the point.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Rob lifted a hand.
“To be fair, you do fidget though.”
“Thank you, Rob.”
“But he still sounds like a prick.”
Tom nodded sharply, vindicated.
“Exactly.”
Then Tom stilled.
A small, terrible piece of information clicked into place.
Jess.
McNeal.
James McNeal.
Tom looked at his own phone and the messages from Jess earlier.
“Fuck.”
Rob saw his face.
“What?”
Tom blinked once.
“I think he’s Jess’s brother.”
There was a beat.
Then both Sam and Rob started laughing.
Tom glared.
“It’s not funny.”
“It is absolutely funny,” Sam said. “How did that never come up?”
Tom looked away.
“It may have come up and I didn’t listen.”
Rob laughed harder.
“Of course.”
“I am bad with names.”
Sam was delighted.
“Names?”
“And faces sometimes.”
“Perfect,” Sam said. “You shagged his sister in real life and now you’re going to shag his fiancée on screen. If he remembers you, this is perfect.”
Tom pointed at him.
“That is not what is happening.”
“Professionally,” Sam corrected.
“Still no.”
Rob reached for the phone.
“Show me the woman.”
Sam passed it over.
Rob looked down.
Then froze.
“Oh, no way.”
Tom’s irritation sharpened.
“What?”
Rob stared at the screen.
“It’s hamster lady.”
Tom frowned.
“Hamster lady?”
Rob turned the phone slightly.
“I saw her in Persuasion on the West End. She was actually really good.”
Sam leaned over.
“But why hamster lady?”
“Suki and I spoke to her after. She talked about having a hamster called Tom.”
Tom stared at him.
“That’s a stupid name for a rodent with an anxiety disorder.”
Rob grinned.
“You’re just offended because it suits.”
“It does not suit.”
“It absolutely suits.”
Sam was still looking at the screen.
“Hot still.”
Tom snatched the phone more sharply than necessary, finally wanting to take a look himself.
“Give me that.”
He looked.
And the second he saw your face — attached now to a name, to credits, to a neat little public biography, to a life — something in his expression changed all at once.
The noise of the pub seemed to fall away.
Not disappear.
Just recede, as though someone had shut a glass door between him and the rest of the room.
He stared at the photograph.
Same mouth.
Same eyes.
Dimple.
Same faintly insolent expression he remembered from the hotel room.
Only now it sat beneath a proper name.
A father with too much influence.
A visible career.
An engagement to James McNeal.
And his film.
His film.
Tom went pale.
Then actually choked on his beer.
Rob asked, “What?”
Sam was already leaning across the table.
“What?”
Tom coughed once, hard, put the glass down, and looked at the phone again as though it might rearrange itself into someone else if he stared long enough.
It did not.
It stayed you.
It stayed horribly, unmistakably you.
Tom’s hand tightened around the phone.
The hotel came back too quickly.
The function.
The champagne.
Your mouth, sharp and amused.
Your eyes flicking over him like you were pretending not to be interested and failing.
The lift.
The room.
The balcony.
The cigarette between your fingers.
The way you had looked smaller in the robe afterwards but not softer, not exactly. Too young in some ways. Too self-possessed in others. A contradiction he had noticed and then ignored because noticing it properly would have required him to be a better man that night.
His stomach dropped.
Oh shit.
Then, almost immediately after, worse:
Oh fuck.
Not funny oh fuck.
Not inconvenient oh fuck.
Proper oh fuck.
The kind that arrived in the gut first and then climbed into the ribs, cold and immediate.
Tom made a strangled noise halfway between disbelief and horror.
“Oh, fuck me.”
Rob stared.
“What?”
Tom looked up at both of them.
“Remember that girl I hooked up with in New York?”
Sam’s eyes widened.
“The one you met at Gyllenhaal’s opening night?”
Rob grinned.
“How could we ever forget after you went on about her for months.”
Tom held up the phone.
“That’s her.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Rob nearly folded in half laughing.
“You are joking.”
“I’m not joking.”
Sam snatched for the phone.
“Let me see.”
Tom handed it over reluctantly, shoved a hand through his hair, then reached for his drink only to remember too late that it had just betrayed him.
Sam looked from the screen to Tom.
“That’s her?”
“Yes.”
“The one who told you she was twenty-eight?”
Tom pointed at him.
“Yeah.”
Rob slapped the table once.
“There is no way the hamster lady is twenty-eight.”
Tom took the phone back and glared at the screen.
“No. Clearly not. According to her Wiki-fucking-pedia, she’s twenty-four now.”
Sam did the maths immediately.
“Which means twenty-two or twenty-three when you shagged her, mate.”
Rob let out a delighted, appalled laugh.
“Oh, that is outstanding.”
Tom glared at both of them.
“You are both being deeply unhelpful.”
“No,” Rob said, still grinning. “This is just objectively funny.”
“It is not funny.”
“It is extremely funny,” Sam said. “But also possibly career-endingly awkward, which gives it texture.”
Tom stared at him.
“Thank you.”
Sam’s smile faltered slightly as he looked back at the screen, then at Tom’s face.
Because Tom was not only embarrassed.
That was the problem.
If it had just been embarrassment, he could have worn it badly and survived. He could have let Rob mock him, let Sam make one terrible joke too many, then gone home and had a shower hot enough to remove the top layer of his skin.
But this was not only embarrassment.
This was calculation.
Call sheets. Rehearsals. Chemistry reads. Wardrobe fittings. Press. Contracts. Intimacy coordination. His name beside yours in the trades. Your chair beside his at the first table read. Your face across from him in a rehearsal room while everyone pretended not to notice if either of you went strange.
And the script.
Christ.
The script.
“Mate,” Sam said, more carefully, “maybe you should pull out.”
Tom’s head snapped up.
Rob groaned immediately.
“No.”
Sam looked at him.
“What?”
“No one pulls out of a Kurt O’Callaghan movie.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed.
“Jesus.”
Rob ignored him.
“I’m serious. No one pulls out from a Kurt O’Callaghan movie. The man won Sundance twice in five years.”
Sam lifted a shoulder.
“Yes, and Tom accidentally slept with his new co-star before knowing she was his new co-star. These things do complicate schedules.”
Rob pointed at him with a chip.
“Not enough. I read the script. It’s sick.”
Tom gave a humourless laugh.
“I’m glad my personal disaster has such strong material.”
“It does,” Rob said. “It’s one of those really good noir indies where everyone smokes too much, the angles are weird, and the actors are actually required to act.”
Sam glanced down at the article again.
“Sounds relaxing.”
“It’s not relaxing,” Tom said sharply.
“No,” Rob agreed. “It’s brilliant. And it’s seventy percent you on screen, mate. Seventy percent. They can’t just recast this easily.”
Tom’s jaw worked.
“I know.”
Rob softened a fraction.
“And you’d be mad to leave it.”
Tom looked down at the table. His hand had found the ruined beer mat again. He had torn it into three pieces without noticing.
“You think I don’t know that?”
The question came out quieter than he intended.
Sam stopped smiling.
Tom dragged a hand over his mouth, then pushed it back through his hair. Once. Twice. Too hard.
“I took months to get into this character,” he said. “Months. I’ve got notebooks full of this man. Voice work. Research. The walk. The way he sits. The way he doesn’t look people in the eye until he wants something from them. I know him better than I know half the actual people in my life right now.”
Rob and Sam were quiet.
Tom laughed once, brittle and annoyed with himself for sounding sincere.
“I’ve been living with this miserable bastard in my head since Christmas. I can’t just walk away because I had one stupid night in New York.”
Sam tilted his head.
“One stupid night with the producer’s daughter.”
Tom shot him a look.
“Yes, Sam. Thank you. That was the missing piece of horror.”
Rob leaned back.
“Still. You can’t pull out.”
“Please stop saying pull out.”
“I’m using the industry term.”
“You absolutely are not.”
Sam leaned forward.
“Fine. You can’t leave the film. But you may need to tell someone.”
Tom stared at him as though he had suggested arson.
“And say what?”
Sam grimaced.
“The truth?”
Tom gave a short, incredulous laugh.
“The truth. Brilliant. Yes. Hello, Edward. Wonderful to meet properly. Small note before rehearsals begin, I had sex with your twenty-two-year-old daughter in a hotel after she lied about her age, and now she and I have to simulate emotional collapse and mutual obsession for three months. Also, congratulations on the script.”
Rob pressed his lips together.
Sam looked down at his drink.
Tom pointed at both of them.
“Do not laugh.”
Rob’s shoulders started shaking.
“I’m not.”
“You are visibly laughing.”
“Internally.”
“You’re doing it externally.”
Sam made the mistake of looking at Rob and then both of them lost it.
Tom sat back, appalled.
“Unbelievable.”
Sam wiped under one eye.
“I’m sorry. I am. It’s just the phrase ‘congratulations on the script’ really finished me.”
Tom looked away, furious and mortified and still, underneath all of it, feeling that cold drop in his stomach.
Because it was not just the sex.
It was not even just the lie.
It was that you had taken the part.
And in his mind, unfair or not, the thought had already formed, sharp and ugly.
You must have known.
You must have known he was attached.
Everyone knew he was attached. His casting had been announced months ago. There had been articles. Interviews. Trade pieces. Photos of him leaving Kurt’s office in the same coat three different publications, which had made him want to crawl out of his own skin.
You had known.
You had to have known.
And you had still said yes.
Tom’s mouth tightened.
“She shouldn’t have taken it.”
Sam blinked.
“What?”
“The role,” Tom said, sharper now. “She shouldn’t have taken it.”
Rob looked at him.
“Tom.”
“No. Don’t Tom me.”
“I am going to Tom you, because that’s mental.”
“She knew I was doing this film.”
“Everyone knew you were doing this film.”
“Exactly.”
Rob stared at him.
“And?”
“And she should have thought maybe, given the circumstances, it might be a problem.”
Sam lifted both hands.
“You don’t know that she knew who you were in New York. I mean, you said she didn’t. Not really.”
“No, but she knew by the time she accepted the part.”
“Probably,” Sam admitted.
“Definitely,” Tom snapped. “My name is on every announcement. I’ve been attached for months.”
Rob sat forward.
“Yes. And it’s O’Callaghan.”
Tom glared at him.
“So?”
“So of course she would take it.”
Tom said nothing.
Rob did not look away.
“Come on. Be pissed off if you want. Be embarrassed. Be dramatic. Destroy every beer mat in London. But don’t act like any actress with a pulse turns down Kurt O’Callaghan because she once had an awkward shag with the lead actor before she knew she was going to work with him.”
Tom’s jaw flexed.
Rob softened his voice, but only slightly.
“You wouldn’t have turned it down.”
Tom looked at him.
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Because it’s you?”
Tom stared at him.
Rob lifted both hands.
“I love you, but yes. That’s what you sound like.”
Sam nodded towards the phone.
“She might be freaking out too.”
Tom laughed under his breath.
“She didn’t seem easily frightened.”
“You met her for one night,” Sam said.
“Yes, and apparently that one night has now become my entire professional problem.”
Rob reached across and took the destroyed beer mat away from him before he could reduce it to dust.
“Look. The film is too good. The director is too big. The part is too rare. You’re not leaving. She’s not leaving. So either you both behave like adults, or this becomes the most uncomfortable set in Britain.”
Tom stared at the table.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Sam glanced back down at his phone.
“There’s more.”
Tom closed his eyes.
“Of course there is.”
Sam’s thumb moved over the screen. His expression changed from concerned back into delighted in a way Tom immediately distrusted.
Rob noticed first.
“What are you looking at now?”
Sam did not answer immediately.
Tom opened one eye.
“Sam.”
“There’s an article.”
Tom’s eyes narrowed.
“On?”
“Hamster lady meeting James McNeal.”
Tom stared at him.
“I don’t fucking care how she met him.”
Sam’s smile widened.
“Oh, but you should.”
“Why?”
Sam cleared his throat with theatrical importance.
Rob leaned in at once.
Tom wished they would both fall into the table.
“Says here,” Sam read, “Y/N Y/LN revealed in an interview a few years ago that she first met James McNeal through his younger sister, Jess McNeal, who had been one of her closest friends since school.”
There was a silence.
A very small one.
Then Rob made a sound like he was trying not to choke.
Tom inhaled sharply.
For one horrible second, he genuinely wanted to evaporate.
Not leave.
Not excuse himself.
Evaporate.
Cease to be a physical object in a pub with two friends who were enjoying this far too much.
He stared at the table.
Then said, flatly, “Fucking fantastic.”
Rob pressed his lips together.
Sam looked like Christmas had come early and brought champagne.
Tom pointed at both of them without looking up.
“Do not.”
Rob lasted half a second.
“Well, maybe next time you could lay them both—”
Tom’s head snapped up.
“Fuck off.”
Sam made a wounded noise.
“Rob.”
“What?”
“Too soon.”
Tom stared at him.
“Too soon? That is your objection?”
Rob lifted both hands, grinning despite himself.
“Sorry. Sorry. It was there.”
“So is traffic. I don’t walk into it.”
Sam lost it then, laughing into his hand.
Tom sat back hard against the booth, jaw tight, beer mat crushed in his fist.
“I hate this lunch.”
Rob nodded solemnly.
“Understandable.”
Sam wiped at his eye.
“Best lunch I’ve had in months.”
“Of course it is.”
Rob’s laughter eased first.
Then Sam’s.
And for a few seconds, beneath the ridiculousness, the shape of the problem sat between them properly.
Jess, who had texted him that morning.
James, who hated him already. Although he really didn’t care about that.
You, who had lied.
You, who had seemingly cheated on your fiancé with him, which was even worse.
Nepotism.
The film, which he could not leave.
Kurt O’Callaghan, who would notice everything and forgive very little if it affected the work.
Five intimacy scenes.
A producer father.
A press cycle waiting, if any of this ever leaked.
Tom looked down at his phone again.
Your face was still there.
You looked younger in the photograph than he remembered, which annoyed him because it made him feel worse. In his memory you were all confidence and mouth and reckless eyes. In the photograph you looked polished, yes, but there was something restless in the line of you. Something too bright. Something that made it easier, unhelpfully, to remember the way you had laughed on the balcony in the early hours of the morning, cigarette between two fingers, hair messy, robe slipping slightly off one shoulder.
He hated that he remembered that.
He hated more that part of him had liked remembering it before knowing who you were.
Sam said, too gently for Tom’s liking, “You might need to talk to her before rehearsals.”
Tom closed his eyes.
There it was again.
Oh shit.
Oh fuck.
Your face across a table.
Your mouth saying his name.
His actual name this time.
Not hotel-room flirtation. Not anonymous, stupid, reckless wanting. Not blue-lit New York and cigarettes and the false safety of never seeing someone again.
Work.
Months of work.
Kurt O’Callaghan watching everything.
An intimacy coordinator trying very hard not to know what everyone would absolutely know if either of you slipped.
James McNeal somewhere in the orbit, smug and sharp and possibly aware Tom had slept with his sister.
Jess.
Christ.
Jess.
Tom opened his eyes and reached for his pint.
This time, he actually drank.
Then he set it down and said, with absolute sincerity, “I am going to need a cigarette.”
Rob looked at the pint.
“You quit.”
“I paused.”
“You paused badly.”
Sam slid Tom’s phone back across the table.
“Maybe don’t smoke. Maybe reply to Jess instead.”
Tom gave him a look of pure horror.
“Are you insane?”
“Just saying. You’ve got a lot of women in one social circle currently unattended.”
Rob nodded.
“That is true. The overlap is becoming architectural.”
Tom stood.
“I’m going outside.”
Sam lifted his pint.
“To think?”
“To stop myself from committing a crime.”
Rob called after him, “Against us or yourself?”
Tom did not answer.
He walked through the pub too fast, nearly collided with a waiter carrying three plates of fish and chips, muttered an apology, and pushed out into the cold street.
London hit him grey and damp.
He stood under the awning, dragged a cigarette from the packet in his coat, then realised he did not have his lighter.
Because Jess had it.
Of course Jess had it.
Tom stared at the unlit cigarette in his hand.
Then he laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Because if he did not laugh, he was going to put his head through the nearest wall.
Behind the glass, Rob and Sam were both watching him.
Rob lifted his lighter from inside the pub and gave him a sympathetic little wave.
Warnings: Age Gap, Domestic Abuse, Arranged Marriage, Sexual Abuse, PTSD, Religious Extremism; Implied Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Child Abduction,
A few more weeks passed in a blur of ordinary things that did not feel ordinary at all.
School bags. Library shifts. Therapy appointments. Mia’s homework. Luka suddenly deciding he would only eat toast if it was cut into “dinosaur rectangles,” which apparently were different from regular rectangles in ways no adult could understand.
And then there was Tom’s script.
You found it on the kitchen table one evening, printed and bound, with a scatter of yellow sticky notes poking out from the edges. At first, you assumed he had left it there by mistake, but then you noticed one note on the front in his handwriting, marking the sections he still needed to reread.
He had said you could read it.
So, naturally, you did.
Tom came downstairs twenty minutes later to find you sitting cross-legged on the sofa in your pyjamas, glasses low on your nose, holding the script in both hands like it was evidence in court.
He stopped.
“Oh no.”
You looked up slowly.
“Two.”
Tom blinked.
“Two what?”
You lifted the script.
“Two sex scenes.”
His mouth twitched.
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“I wondered when you’d get there.”
You flipped a page aggressively.
“One of them says, and I quote, ‘he pushes her against the door with barely restrained hunger.’”
Tom leaned against the doorway, looking far too amused.
“That’s not my line.”
“It is your body.”
He laughed.
“My body has to pay the mortgage.”
You stared at him.
“Your body can pay the mortgage with dialogue.”
“I’ll mention that to the director.”
You looked back down at the page, frowning.
“This woman has too many buttons.”
That did it. He laughed properly then, coming over and taking the script from your hands before you could start making notes in the margin.
“You are not allowed to annotate my sex scenes.”
“Someone has to.”
“No one has to.”
“Page forty-eight lacks realism.”
He bent over the back of the sofa and kissed the side of your head.
“Page forty-eight is going to have an intimacy coordinator.”
“Good. Tell her I have concerns.”
“I am absolutely not telling the intimacy coordinator that my girlfriend has concerns about button distribution.”
You tipped your head back to look at him.
“Coward.”
He kissed you upside down.
“Jealous little thing.”
You immediately gasped.
“I am not jealous.”
From the next room, where Luka had been building a tower out of blocks and pretending not to listen, he said very seriously:
“Mum is jealous of buttons.”
Tom shut his eyes.
You pointed at him.
“This is your fault.”
“I did nothing.”
“You left the script where I could reach it.”
“A terrible error.”
It became the kind of month where everything kept moving before you could properly process it.
The school had a fundraiser, which you somehow ended up helping with after making the fatal mistake of saying, “I can probably manage the book stall for an hour.”
An hour became three.
Three became you standing behind a trestle table in the school hall, trying to sell second-hand paperbacks while Ruth marched past with a clipboard, Maddy turned up with takeaway coffees she was not technically meant to bring inside, and Tom was cornered by two Year Six girls who had realised he was famous but could not work out why.
One of them narrowed her eyes at him.
“You were in that sleep show Mum watched.”
Tom looked gravely haunted.
“Possibly.”
Her eyes narrowed further, as if trying to match the man in front of her to some half-remembered adult conversation.
“She said you were pretty.”
Tom went very still.
From behind the book stall, you made a strangled sound into your coffee.
Which is when Ruth stopped beside you and looked at the stall.
“You’ve sold nearly everything.”
You looked down, surprised.
“Have I?”
“Yes.” Ruth glanced at Tom, who was now being asked whether actors got to keep swords. “And he seems to be useful.”
“He is very cheap labour.”
“Is he?”
You followed her gaze.
Tom had one child on either side of him now and was explaining, with total seriousness, that no, he did not personally own a dragon.
You sighed.
“Emotionally expensive.”
Ruth smiled into her coffee cup.
“Aren’t they all?”
Then Mia turned eleven.
She decided she did not want a big party. No house full of people. No noise. No relatives asking questions. No balloons, because Luka had screamed at one once when it popped and everyone still remembered.
She wanted the theatre.
“Just a few friends,” she said. “Nothing embarrassing.”
Tom, who had walked into the kitchen halfway through this sentence, made the terrible mistake of saying:
“I can take them.”
You and Mia both looked at him.
Mia’s eyes narrowed.
“You?”
Tom put a hand to his chest.
“That sounded hurtful.”
“No offence,” Mia said, already offending him. “But you don’t know what eleven-year-old girls are like.”
“I have an eleven-year-old daughter.”
“Ellie is different.”
“How?”
Mia thought about it.
“She is…well…Ellie.”
Tom considered that.
“Fair.”
So, two Saturdays later, Tom found himself in charge of five eleven-year-old girls at a matinee, while you stayed home with Luka because Luka had announced that theatre seats “folded people up” and he did not trust them.
Tom texted you twenty-three minutes after arriving.
Tom: One of them has lost a lip gloss.
You: Already?
Tom: Apparently it is emotionally significant.
You: Find it.
Tom: I am trying. There are five of them and they move like birds.
You: Happy birthday to Mia.
Tom: I regret everything.
A second text came five minutes later.
Tom: Found lip gloss.
Tom: Different child now crying because the theatre is “too loud.”
You: Is Mia okay?
Tom: Mia is fine. Mia is the general. I am infantry. Ellie is conducting admin.
When he finally returned them all home that afternoon, he looked as if he had crossed a continent on foot.
Mia, glowing, clutching a programme and a bag of sweets, kissed your cheek.
“It was perfect.”
Tom stood behind her, pale and hollow-eyed.
“They discussed a boy called Archie for forty-six uninterrupted minutes.”
Mia turned.
“You were listening?”
“I was trapped in a row.”
********
Then, the day after, the divorce lawyer called.
You knew before she finished the first sentence. Something in her voice had already prepared you.
Your husband would not sign.
Of course he would not sign.
He wanted delays. Obstruction. Control from a locked room. Another way to put his hand on your life and leave a mark.
You stood very still in the kitchen, phone pressed to your ear, nodding though no one could see you.
“Right,” you said. “Yes. I understand.”
Tom was at the sink rinsing Luka’s lunchbox. He turned when your voice changed.
You kept nodding.
“No, I know. Thank you. Yes. Please proceed with whatever the next step is.”
When you hung up, the room seemed too bright.
Tom dried his hands slowly.
“He won’t sign?”
You shook your head.
For one humiliating second, your mouth trembled.
“No.”
Tom came closer, but carefully. Always carefully when you looked like that.
“Love.”
“It’s stupid,” you said quickly. “I knew he wouldn’t. I knew he would do this. I don’t know why I—”
“Because you wanted one thing to be simple.”
That hurt more than it should have.
You covered your face.
“I just want it finished.”
Tom’s arms came around you.
“I know.”
“I want my name back. I want my life back. I want him to stop being attached to everything.”
“He doesn’t get to keep you because he refuses to sign a form.”
You pressed your forehead against his chest.
“It feels like he does.”
Tom kissed the top of your head.
“I know it feels like that.”
You pulled back enough to look at him.
His face was calm, but not dismissive. Not pretending this did not matter.
“But we knew this was probably going to happen,” he said quietly. “Your lawyer knew it too. It changes the route. It doesn’t change the destination.”
You breathed out shakily.
“That sounds like something from a very expensive therapist.”
“It was from Sarah, actually.”
You gave a watery laugh despite yourself.
“Of course it was.”
He brushed his thumb beneath your eye.
“We keep going.”
“I’m tired of keeping going.”
“Then I’ll keep going for a bit.”
You looked at him.
“You can’t divorce him for me.”
“No,” Tom said. “But I can stand next to you while you do it.”
And because you were tired, and because you loved him, and because that was somehow enough for the next minute if not the whole day, you let him hold you until Luka came in and asked why everyone was hugging without him.
After that, the book became real in a way that frightened you more than you expected.
At first, it had been a manuscript. Then a proof. Then a cover mock-up Sarah showed you on her phone while you pretended not to feel sick. Then advance copies, quietly circulating to reviewers and booksellers and festival organisers.
That all happened weeks ago.
And now the invitations started arriving.
Not small ones.
Not polite local things where someone asked whether you might be able to sit in a library with a cup of tea and talk about resilience.
Proper invitations.
A writers’ festival in Edinburgh.
A conversation event in Manchester.
A panel chaired by a journalist whose name you recognised from television.
An all-expenses-paid weekend at a serious literary festival where the moderator’s email said she had read the pre-release copy and had been “deeply moved.”
You stared at that one for a long time.
“Why are they paying for my hotel?”
Tom, sitting at the other end of the sofa with Luka asleep half on his lap and half upside down, looked over.
“Because they want you there.”
“But why?”
“Because you wrote a book.”
You gave him a look.
“Thank you, that clears everything up.”
“A good book,” he added.
You looked back at the email.
“It feels like a mistake.”
“It isn’t.”
“What if they expect me to be clever in person?”
Tom smiled.
“You are clever in person.”
The biggest invitation came on a Wednesday afternoon, forwarded by your publisher with too many exclamation marks.
A private publisher event in London. Editors, agents, booksellers, press, donors, festival programmers. Speeches. Drinks. A conversation on stage.
You read the email three times.
Then you put your phone down on the table and walked away from it.
Tom picked it up.
“Is this the thing Sarah mentioned?”
“I don’t know.”
He scanned it.
His eyebrows rose.
“Oh.”
“What does oh mean?”
“It means I’m going.”
You turned back.
“You are?”
“Yes. It says plus one.”
You looked at him.
He tried to arrange his face into something respectable.
It lasted half a second.
“And I’m going to be your arm candy,” he said.
You stared.
“My what?”
“Arm candy.”
“You are forty.”
“Still edible.”
You made a strangled sound.
“Please never say that again.”
He leaned back, delighted with himself.
“You’re taking me, aren’t you?”
“I mean, yes. Of course. If you want to come.”
“I do. I’ll stand there looking decorative and proud.”
**********
Then, as if your life had not already become strange enough, Sarah organised an Instagram page.
You discovered this because Maddy sent you a screenshot with thirteen question marks.
The profile picture was the book cover. The bio was tasteful. Minimal. Your author name. Publisher. Contact through agency. No children. No personal address. No private details.
You stared at it like it might bite.
“I have Instagram.”
Tom looked up from his tea.
“Do you?”
“Apparently.”
He took your phone and looked.
“Oh, very clean.”
“The agency is managing it.”
“Good.”
“They take ten per cent.”
“Less good.”
“Sarah says it’s normal.”
“Sarah says many expensive things are normal.”
You sat beside him.
“She said I need some kind of public presence for the book.”
Tom made a face.
“Unfortunately, she’s probably right.”
You looked at him.
“You hate this stuff.”
“Yes.”
“You refuse all of it.”
“I’m an actor,” Tom said. “I’m not selling anything.”
You looked at him.
“That is almost exactly what Sarah said.”
Tom gave a small shrug.
“Sarah is rarely original, but she is often correct.”
You scrolled down.
There were already posts scheduled. Quotes from reviews. A photo of the proof copy. A blurred shot of the publisher’s office. Nothing of Mia. Nothing of Luka. Nothing of your house.
You relaxed by one degree.
“I said no children.”
“Good.”
“Sarah said no children, but occasional Tom.”
Tom slowly turned his head.
You looked at him.
He looked at the account.
Then at you.
His face lit with unbearable smugness.
“See?”
“No.”
“Arm candy.”
“You are not calling yourself that again.”
“I’m basically promotional material now.”
“You are unbearable.”
“Occasional Tom,” he said, delighted. “I should put that in my Wikipedia page.”
You snatched the phone back and Tom couldn’t help but laugh.
But not everything was funny.
The first ugly email came through the agency, forwarded to Sarah and your publisher but not directly to you until Sarah called and asked whether you wanted to know.
You did not.
Then you did.
Then you wished you had not.
It was from someone you did not know. A long, furious message accusing you of making your country of birth look barbaric. Of selling shame. Of feeding Western prejudice. Of betraying women by making private suffering public.
You read only half of it before your hand started shaking.
Tom found you in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed with your phone dark in your lap.
He stopped in the doorway.
“What happened?”
You looked up.
“Someone wrote to the agency.”
His face changed.
“About the book?”
You nodded.
He came in and sat beside you, not touching you yet.
“Bad?”
You swallowed.
“They said I’m putting Iran in a bad light.”
A silence.
Then Tom said, with a control that meant he was furious:
“Right.”
“Maybe I am.”
“No.”
“Tom—”
“No.”
You stared down at your hands.
“I knew people would say things. I just thought…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. That maybe if I was careful enough, no one would think I was attacking everyone.”
Tom leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“You wrote about what happened to you.”
“I know.”
“That is not the same as condemning an entire country.”
Your eyes burned.
“It feels complicated.”
“It is complicated,” he said. “But that email is not complexity. It’s cruelty dressed up as principle.”
You let out a small, unsteady breath.
He took your hand then.
“You can love where you came from and still tell the truth about what hurt you there.”
That undid you a little.
Not loudly.
Just enough that you leaned into him and let your head rest against his shoulder.
“I’m scared,” you admitted.
Tom kissed your hair.
“I know.”
“What if there’s more?”
“There probably will be.”
You pulled back.
“That was not comforting.”
“Lying would be less useful.”
You laughed once, weakly.
He squeezed your hand.
“But there will be more good, too. More people who read it and feel less alone. More people who understand something they didn’t before. More women who see themselves in it. More men who should be deeply uncomfortable.”
You looked at him.
“You make it sound braver than it feels.”
“Most brave things feel awful while you’re doing them.”
You were still thinking about that three days later when the suitcases came down from the attic.
The holiday had existed in theory for weeks.
Ten days.
Italy.
A family-friendly resort by the beach.
Tom had booked it with Sarah’s help and refused to show you anything beyond flight times, which was irritating and suspicious.
You packed like a woman preparing for siege.
Mia packed neatly.
Luka packed three dinosaurs, one rabbit, two mismatched socks, a single wooden train track and, for reasons no one could explain, a whisk.
Tom held it up.
“Why is this in your backpack?”
Luka looked offended.
“In case.”
“In case of what?”
“Whisking.”
Tom looked at you.
“I have no argument.”
Your bedroom became a disaster zone.
Clothes on the bed. Swimwear folded and refolded. Passports checked four hundred times. Sunscreen. Medication. Chargers. Books. More books. Mia’s theatre programme, because apparently it had to come. Luka’s stuffed rabbit, who now required his own seat in the car.
Tom walked in carrying another suitcase and stopped dead.
“How many people are we taking?”
“Five.”
“This looks like eight.”
“Children need things.”
He picked up a tiny pair of sandals.
“These weigh nothing.”
“Exactly, so stop complaining.”
Mia appeared in the doorway, holding two dresses.
“Which one looks more Italy?”
Tom turned solemnly.
“That one.”
“You didn’t even look.”
“I felt the answer.”
Mia rolled her eyes and looked at you.
“Mum?”
You pointed to the blue one.
“That one.”
Tom looked betrayed.
“That’s what I said.”
“You guessed.”
“Intuitively.”
Luka came in wearing his backpack, swim goggles, and no trousers.
“I’m ready.”
Tom looked down.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“You appear to be missing something important.”
Luka looked at his hands.
“Rabbit?”
“Trousers.”
Luka sighed like adults were exhausting.
The airport was worse.
Nothing had prepared you for the airport.
Not the trial. Not the press. Not motherhood. Not the fact that Tom somehow owned seven identical black T-shirts but had forgotten his flip flops.
The airport was bright, loud, glassy, and full of people dragging suitcases with the blank desperation of the damned.
Luka went quiet the second you walked inside.
You felt it through his hand.
His fingers tightened around yours.
You looked down.
His face had changed.
Too pale. Too still.
Tom saw it at almost the same moment.
He crouched in front of him, ignoring the flow of people moving around you.
“Hey.”
Luka looked at him.
“Are we going home?”
Your heart cracked.
Tom’s face stayed gentle.
“No, mate. We’re going on holiday.”
“On the plane?”
“Yes.”
Luka looked past him at the departure boards.
“Not with him?”
You closed your eyes for half a second.
Tom did not flinch.
“No,” he said firmly. “Never with him.”
Luka’s bottom lip trembled.
“What if he comes?”
Tom took both his small hands.
“He can’t.”
“But what if?”
“Then he would have to get past me, your mum, airport security, the police, Mia, Ellie and probably your rabbit.”
Luka sniffed.
“Rabbit bites.”
“Exactly.”
Mia stepped closer and put her hand on Luka’s shoulder.
“And I’d kick him.”
You looked at her.
“Mia.”
She shrugged.
“I would.”
Tom nodded gravely.
“Reasonable.”
Somehow, that helped.
Not all at once. Luka still clung to Tom through check-in. He still refused to put his backpack on the conveyor belt until Tom promised the whisk would come back. He still cried when airport security wanted Rabbit to go through the scanner.
“He doesn’t like tunnels!”
The security officer, a man with kind eyes and the weary patience of someone who had seen everything, leaned down.
“I’ll make sure he comes out first.”
Luka stared at him suspiciously.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Rabbit emerged from the scanner thirty seconds later.
Tom lifted him triumphantly.
“He’s very brave.”
Luka grabbed him and pressed his face into his fur.
“He hated it.”
“Fair.”
By the time you reached the gate, you were sweating, Mia was hungry, Ellie was thirsty, Luka had dropped a dinosaur in WHSmith, and Tom had bought three bottles of water, two packets of crisps, one magazine he did not want, and a tiny toy plane because he had no self-control around anxious children.
You looked at the toy plane.
“Really?”
Tom handed it to Luka.
“Therapeutic.”
“Enabling.”
“Same family.”
The flight was short.
Miraculously, it was fine.
Luka sat by the window between you and Tom, gripping Rabbit in one hand and Tom’s sleeve in the other. The plane took off, and you braced for panic, but Luka only stared out at the shrinking city below.
“We’re very high.”
Tom leaned over.
“We are.”
“Can dinosaurs fly?”
“Some could.”
“Not stegosaurus.”
“No.”
“Too chunky.”
“Exactly.”
Mia, across the aisle, opened her book and pretended she was not listening.
Ellie was watching her ipad next to her.
You looked at Tom over Luka’s head.
He smiled faintly.
You had survived take-off.
That felt like a victory.
Italy was warm when you landed.
Warm in a way that felt different from England. Softer. Brighter. The air smelled like salt and sun-warmed stone and coffee. Luka perked up the moment he saw palm trees.
“Are those holiday trees?”
Tom looked out the car window.
“Yes.”
“Do we have them at home?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because they only grow in nice weather and Britain’s weather is appalling.”
You laughed for the first time since leaving the house.
The drive took you along pale roads and glimpses of blue water. Ellie looked pleased with herself in the front, practising Italian under her breath every time you passed a sign, then repeating it louder when Tom failed to praise her quickly enough.
“That means beach,” she announced.
Tom glanced at her.
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
“Impressive.”
“You’re meant to say molto bene.”
“Molto bene.”
“Your accent is terrible.”
“Thank you, darling.”
Mia pressed her forehead to the window, trying to look unimpressed and failing every time the sea appeared between the buildings. Luka fell asleep with his mouth open, still holding the toy plane. Tom’s hand found yours in the back seat and stayed there.
You expected a hotel.
A nice one, maybe. Tom had said family-friendly resort, which you imagined meant a pool, breakfast buffet, children shouting in several languages and you trying not to look overwhelmed.
The car turned through a gate.
Then along a private road lined with olive trees.
Then stopped outside a villa.
Not a room.
Not a suite.
A villa.
White stone walls. Terracotta roof. Flowers spilling over balconies. A private pool glittering blue beyond the open terrace. And past that, impossibly close, the beach.
The sea.
You stepped out of the car and just stood there.
Someone from the resort appeared with towels and a tray of drinks. Champagne for you and Tom. Bright mocktails for the children, with fruit on the glasses.
Ellie took hers like she had been expecting nothing less her entire life.
Mia held hers with both hands, eyes huge.
Luka woke properly at the sight of an umbrella sticking out of his glass.
“Mine has furniture.”
Tom crouched beside him.
“Very sophisticated.”
“Can I keep it?”
“The umbrella?”
“And the drink.”
“The drink is sort of the point.”
Luka stared at him.
“And the glass.”
“No.”
Luka looked offended, as though Tom had ruined Italian hospitality personally.
You were still staring at the villa.
Tom watched you for a moment, then stepped closer.
“You all right?”
You turned to him slowly.
“Tom.”
His mouth twitched.
“Yes?”
“What is this?”
“A villa.”
“I can see that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
You looked back at the pool, the terrace, the beach beyond it.
“This is too much.”
His expression softened.
“No, it isn’t.”
“It absolutely is.”
“It’s ten days.”
“In paradise.”
“That was the intention.”
Ellie, who had already wandered three steps ahead, turned back and said, “Dad, there are stairs down to the beach.”
Luka gasped as if she had announced buried treasure.
“Beach?”
Mia looked at you.
“Can we go now?”
You blinked.
“We have literally just arrived.”
“Exactly,” Ellie said. “We’re already here.”
Tom looked at you, amused.
“Hard to argue with that logic.”
“You try unpacking four suitcases while they all go feral.”
“I can unpack.”
You stared at him.
“You fold like an escaped prisoner.”
“I can place things in drawers with confidence.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Luka tugged on your hand.
“Mum. Beach. Please.”
Mia was trying not to look too desperate, which somehow made it worse.
Ellie had already taken off her shoes.
You looked at Tom.
He gave you a small smile.
“We can unpack later.”
So ten minutes later, the suitcases were abandoned in the villa like evidence of a crime, and everyone was changing in different rooms while Luka shouted through a door that he could not find his swimming shorts, which turned out to be on his body.
The beach was close enough that you could hear the water before you reached it.
Warm sand. Blue sea. People scattered under umbrellas. Children shrieking in Italian and English and French. The bright flash of towels. The smell of salt and sunscreen.
You stood for a moment, bare feet sinking slightly into the sand, and felt something inside you loosen.
Then Tom came out behind you in board shorts and sunglasses, a towel slung over one shoulder, and your brain temporarily stopped doing anything useful.
He looked ridiculous.
Not actually ridiculous.
That was the problem.
He looked stupidly good. Dark hair messier than usual. Chest bare with his rather attractive patch of chest hair. Skin pale in the very British way that suggested the sun was personally suspicious of him. Long legs. Easy posture. That irritating, effortless handsomeness that made you want to be annoyed with him and touch him at the same time.
He noticed you looking.
Of course he did.
His mouth curved.
“What?”
You looked away too quickly.
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
“You need sunscreen.”
He glanced down at himself.
“I put some on.”
“Where?”
“Generally.”
“Generally is not a body part.”
Ellie passed behind you, already carrying a bucket she had somehow acquired.
“Dad burns if someone says UV.”
Tom pointed at her.
“Betrayal.”
Mia, who was helping Luka build a moat before he had even built a castle, said, “Mum’s right. You’re very pale.”
Tom looked wounded.
“This family is cruel.”
You took the sunscreen from the bag and stepped toward him.
“Stand still.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Bossy.”
“Burnt is not attractive.”
“So you do think I’m attractive.”
You squeezed sunscreen into your palm.
“I think you are British and pale.”
“Mm.”
You pressed your hand to his shoulder and began rubbing it in.
His skin was warm under your palm.
“And incredibly handsome,” you added quietly.
Tom’s smile changed at once.
Softer. More private.
“Am I?”
You moved your hand across his collarbone, then his chest, trying to appear practical and failing because he was looking at you like that.
“Don’t be smug.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m being covered in sunscreen by a beautiful woman on an Italian beach. I think a little smugness is proportionate.”
You rolled your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you.
He leaned down and kissed you.
Only briefly.
Warm mouth. Salt air. His hand at your waist.
Then Luka yelled, “Tom! The sea is moving!”
Tom rested his forehead against yours for half a second.
“Duty calls.”
“The sea does tend to do that.”
He kissed you once more, then jogged down toward the water, where Luka was standing ankle-deep and looking deeply suspicious of the tide.
Ellie went in first, fearless, laughing when the water hit her thighs. Mia followed more carefully, holding Luka’s hand until he decided he was brave enough and then immediately announced he was a sea dinosaur.
Tom stayed with them, waist-deep in the water, lifting Luka over the small waves while Ellie splashed him and Mia pretended she was above splashing anyone, then absolutely splashed him when his back was turned.
You watched from the shallows, smiling so much your face hurt.
For a while, nothing happened.
No phone calls.
No lawyers.
No emails.
No one needing you to be brave or careful or composed.
Just the children in the water and Tom laughing with his head tipped back, and the sun turning everything gold.
When he came back to you, wet and grinning, you tried to step away.
“No.”
His eyes lit.
“No?”
“You are wet.”
“We’re at the beach.”
“I am peacefully dry.”
“Not for long.”
“Tom.”
He caught you easily, arms around your waist, pulling you against his wet chest while you tried not to laugh and failed completely.
“You are awful.”
“You love me.”
“Against my better judgement.”
He kissed you again, slower this time.
Not enough to be inappropriate. Enough that Ellie groaned from the shallow end of the water.
“Dad!”
Tom did not even turn around.
“Yes, darling?”
“We can see you.”
“Then look away.”
Mia made a disgusted noise.
Luka shouted, “Are you eating Mum?”
You broke away at once.
Tom closed his eyes.
“Brilliant.”
You covered your face.
“I cannot take you anywhere.”
“That was not my fault.”
“You were the one apparently eating me.”
Tom leaned in, lowering his voice so only you could hear.
“I was kissing you.”
His mouth brushed your ear.
“I can, however, eat you later.”
You went completely still.
Tom pulled back with a look of perfect innocence, which was deeply unconvincing.
“Beach,” he called to the children, as if he had not just ruined your ability to think. “Who wants another swim?”
You stayed at the beach until everyone was sandy and tired and hungry enough to become dangerous.
Back at the villa, the children showered in shifts with varying degrees of competence. Luka emerged still somehow with sand behind one ear. Mia changed into the blue dress she had packed for “Italy.” Ellie appeared in a white skirt and announced she looked “resort appropriate,” which made Tom stare at her for several seconds like he had missed a developmental stage.
“When did you start saying things like that?”
Ellie looked at him.
“When you started wearing linen.”
Tom looked down at his shirt.
“This is a perfectly normal shirt.”
“It’s very British dad on holiday.”
You made a sound that was not dignified.
Tom turned to you.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not.”
The restaurant was on the resort terrace, open to the sea, with lanterns strung overhead and the sound of water below. The staff greeted Tom by name, which made you give him a look.
He pretended not to see it.
The food was insane.
That was the only word for it.
There was bread still warm from the oven. Olive oil so green it looked unreal. Bowls of pasta with glossy sauce. Grilled fish. Tomatoes that tasted like sunshine. Tiny clams in shells, which Luka stared at in horror.
“Are those snails?”
“No,” Tom said. “Clams.”
“Baby snot shells.”
Mia choked on her water.
Ellie immediately lost it.
You tried to be stern and failed because Tom was laughing silently into his napkin.
Luka pointed at the bowl.
“They look like beach bogies.”
“Right,” you said, pressing your lips together. “That’s enough.”
Tom’s shoulders were shaking.
You kicked him under the table.
“Ow.”
“Stop encouraging him.”
“I am doing nothing.”
“You are laughing.”
The children ate ridiculous amounts. Mia tried everything. Ellie ordered in Italian and looked smug when the waiter understood her. Luka ate pasta with butter, two pieces of bread, half of Tom’s chips, and one clam after Tom told him it was pirate food.
Then he announced:
“I like baby snot shells.”
“Please don’t say that to the waiter,” you said.
“Why?”
“Because Italy has done nothing to deserve it.”
By the time dessert came, the sky had turned purple over the water.
Luka was half-asleep against Tom’s side. Mia was quiet in the good way, full and happy, her hair still damp from the shower. Ellie had stopped pretending not to enjoy being part of the chaos and was leaning across the table to steal bites of Mia’s dessert.
You looked at all of them.
Then at the candles.
Then at the sea.
Then at Tom.
He was watching Luka try to keep his eyes open, one hand resting protectively at the back of his chair. He looked tired and sun-warmed and utterly at ease.
Your chest tightened.
“Tom.”
He looked up from Luka, who was half-asleep against his side and still holding a piece of bread in one hand.
“Mm?”
You lowered your voice.
“Thank you.”
His face softened, but he did not look surprised. Not exactly. More as if he had been waiting all evening for you to stop arguing with the kindness of it.
“You’re welcome.”
You looked away toward the darkening sea.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“For all of this.”
His thumb brushed over the back of your hand.
“Love, this is what we needed.”
You breathed out slowly.
“It’s perfect.”
Tom smiled.
“Good.”
By the time you got back to the villa, the children were barely conscious.
Ellie still attempted to be sophisticated about it, announcing she was “not tired, just resting her eyes,” before nearly walking into the side of the sofa. Mia made it up the stairs with more dignity, but only just. Luka had to be carried, warm and heavy against Tom’s shoulder, mumbling something about snot shells and pirates.
Within twenty minutes, the villa was quiet.
Not silent. The good kind of quiet.
The sea moving in the dark. The faint hum of air conditioning inside. The occasional sleepy creak from one of the children’s rooms.
You changed into a soft dress and found Tom outside on the terrace, a bottle of wine open between two glasses and a chess board set up on the low table.
You paused in the doorway.
“Chess?”
He looked up, one arm stretched along the back of the outdoor sofa.
“It’s been a while.”
You came outside and sat opposite him.
“It has.”
The wine was cold. The night was warm. Tom had changed into loose linen trousers and a shirt he had not bothered to button properly, because apparently Italy had destroyed whatever remained of your ability to behave normally around him.
You tried to focus on the board.
You really did.
For at least twenty minutes.
Tom moved a knight and leaned back, watching you.
“Your move.”
You looked at the pieces.
Then at him.
Then back at the pieces.
“I know.”
His eyes narrowed with amusement.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
You picked up your bishop, hesitated, then put it down again.
Tom smiled.
“That was not confidence.”
“I am thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
You gave him a look.
He took a sip of wine.
“Take your time. I’m about to make an excellent move.”
You looked at him properly then. At his bare throat. The open buttons. The dark hair on his chest. The lazy, sun-warmed ease of him.
And perhaps it was the wine.
Or the sea.
Or the fact that, for once, no one was frightened.
You stood.
Tom’s gaze followed you immediately.
“What are you doing?”
You walked around the table and sat beside him instead of opposite him.
“Changing strategy.”
His mouth curved.
“That so?”
You leaned in and kissed him.
Slowly at first. Softly enough that it could still have been innocent if either of you were inclined to lie.
Tom hummed against your mouth, one hand sliding to your waist.
“Mm.”
You kissed him again.
His fingers tightened slightly.
“You’re trying to distract me from making a good move.”
You pulled back just enough to look offended.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“No?”
“I am very committed to the integrity of the game.”
His eyes dropped as your fingers went to the next button of his shirt.
You opened it.
Then the next.
Your palm settled over his chest, warm skin and soft hair beneath your hand.
Tom’s breath changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
“Ah.”
You looked up at him through your lashes.
“Ah what?”
He glanced down at your hand, then back to your face.
“You want sex.”
You pressed your lips together, pretending to consider this.
“Maybe.”
His smile went slow and dangerous.
“Maybe?”
Your fingers spread over his chest.
“I could also be appreciating the linen.”
“You hate the linen.”
“It’s not my favourite look.”
Tom laughed under his breath, then caught your wrist gently and kissed the inside of it.
The touch sent heat straight through you.
“And now?” he asked.
You swallowed.
“Now I think it has potential.”
His eyes darkened.
“For chess?”
“No.”
That was all he needed.
Tom reached for the chess board without looking and slid it carefully to the far side of the table.
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Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom,
Mid 2026...
A few weeks before filming was meant to begin, Tom received an email with the subject line:
CASTING UPDATE — CONFIDENTIAL
That was almost never good.
Good news did not arrive in all caps. Good news did not call itself confidential. Good news was usually delivered by phone, or by someone’s agent sounding artificially casual while pretending they had not been waiting all morning to say it.
Tom was at his kitchen table when it came through, still in the clothes he had slept badly in, one coffee gone cold beside his script and another sitting untouched near his elbow because he had made it and then forgotten why he had gone into the kitchen.
His laptop was balanced on three unread scripts and a book he had started, misplaced, found again, and then decided he was not emotionally available for. There were toast crumbs on the table, a lighter near his elbow, Ellie’s hair tie inexplicably looped around his wrist, and a pencil behind his ear that he had spent ten minutes looking for.
He opened the email.
Then read it twice.
Then sat back.
“Fantastic.”
No one answered.
That was probably best.
Florence Pugh had pulled out.
Schedule delay. Existing contractual commitments. Dune. Rescheduling pressure. Production regret. A replacement had been cast and would be announced soon.
Tom stared at the screen for another few seconds, his fingers drumming against the table.
He had been looking forward to working with Florence.
Not in the vague, polite, industry way people said they were looking forward to working with someone because publicists might hear. He had genuinely meant it. She was brilliant. Properly brilliant. Instinctive, precise, dangerous on screen in that way actors were when they did not seem to be asking for permission from the camera.
And the script needed that.
The film was strange. Intimate. Ugly in places. Uncomfortable. A psychological movie that could either become something sharp and memorable or collapse into expensive nonsense if the wrong people got hold of it.
Florence had made sense.
Florence had made him relax.
Now there was a replacement.
Unnamed.
Recently cast.
To be announced soon.
Tom did not like any of those phrases.
He pushed the laptop away and reached for the script, then immediately lost interest in it. The film was still good. The director was still Kurt O’Callaghan, and Kurt had not made a boring thing in his life. Olivia was still attached, which helped. Tom liked Olivia. She was funny, clever, and he had worked with her before. They were friends.
So no.
It was not ruined.
It was fine.
Probably.
He told himself that for the rest of the morning, with limited success.
By evening, he had an event for a fashion label he had no particular liking for and no emotional strength to attend.
He went anyway.
This was the problem with adulthood. One did not simply avoid rooms because they sounded annoying. One had commitments. Relationships. Obligations. A publicist who sometimes wrote messages with such deadly politeness that Tom understood resistance would only create more admin.
The event was in one of those spaces that had clearly been designed by someone who believed discomfort was elegant. Too much glass. Not enough chairs. Lights low enough to flatter everyone except anyone trying to read a message. Music just loud enough to make people lean in and ask one another to repeat themselves until conversation became a test of stamina.
Tom lasted fourteen minutes before deciding he needed air.
Then he remembered he had already been told not to disappear too early.
So he compromised by standing near a wall and touching the button of his jacket repeatedly until Sam, had he been there, would have physically removed his hand.
Olivia found him there.
She looked irritatingly good. Effortless in the way that had definitely required effort, though she had the taste not to show the labour. She had a champagne flute in one hand and an expression that said she had already decided to enjoy his misery.
“Well. You look thrilled.”
Tom glanced at her.
“I am containing myself.”
“Badly.”
“It’s the venue.”
“It’s not the venue.”
“It’s partly the venue.”
Olivia laughed and kissed his cheek.
“You heard about Florence?”
Tom exhaled through his nose.
“Yes.”
“Shame.”
“More than a shame.”
“I know.”
“She would’ve been brilliant.”
“She still is brilliant. Just not in this.”
“Deeply unhelpful distinction.”
Olivia took a sip of champagne and made a face.
“God, that’s awful.”
Tom looked at his beer.
“I made the right decision.”
“You usually do with drinks. Less so with women.”
He gave her a look.
“That was unprovoked.”
“Accurate, though.”
“Still unprovoked.”
She smiled, then nodded toward a quieter corner where a few of their mutual friends had gathered around a high table already cluttered with glasses, phones, napkins, and the general debris of people pretending not to be bored.
Tom followed.
For a while, they spoke about the film generally. Kurt’s new notes. The revised ending. The rumours about the third act being softened, which Olivia dismissed with immediate violence.
“If they soften it, the whole thing dies.”
Tom nodded.
“It has to stay nasty.”
“Exactly.”
“Not gratuitous.”
“No.”
“But nasty.”
“Nasty with purpose.”
He pointed his beer at her.
“There we are. Put that on the poster.”
Olivia leaned back against the table.
“Kurt won’t soften it. He’s too stubborn.”
“He let them push the start date.”
“That’s logistics, not taste.”
“Sometimes logistics become taste.”
“Christ, you’re cheerful tonight.”
Tom rubbed at his jaw.
“Because I liked the cast as it was and I don’t like change.”
“You liked Florence Pugh.”
“Yes, because I have eyes and a professional understanding of performance. So excuse me for having been excited to work with her.”
Olivia’s expression shifted slightly.
Then she laughed and looked around the room, then back at him.
“Do you know who they’ve cast?”
Tom stilled.
“No.”
“Rumour has it…”
He already hated the sentence.
“…it’s the producer’s daughter.”
Tom stared at her.
“The producer’s daughter.”
“Apparently.”
“As the female lead.”
“Yes.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Tom laughed once, without humour.
“Wow. Fabulous. That doesn’t devalue the film at all.”
Olivia laughed despite herself.
“Don’t pretend you aren’t a nepo baby.”
“Excuse me.”
“You heard me.”
“I did one film for my father.”
“You were in several things connected to your father.”
“When I was a child.”
“Still counts.”
Tom gave her a flat look.
“It does not and one would hope the producer’s daughter is well and truly over eighteen, so there is no excuse.”
One of the men beside Olivia, a stylist Tom vaguely knew and whose name had escaped him three times that evening, leaned in.
“I think she’s early twenties? Maybe mid-twenties. She’s been in some stupid teen comedy show.”
Tom looked at him. Then he took a slow drink of his beer because it gave him something to do with his mouth that was not immediately say something rude.
The producer’s daughter.
Early to mid-twenties.
As his opposite lead.
In this script.
With those scenes.
He looked at Olivia.
“That screams confidence.”
Olivia lifted one shoulder.
“Not the best look.”
“No. It’s a terrible look, because she is the producer’s daughter.”
“Kurt apparently wasn’t happy with the other options.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“A few people tested. Some didn’t work. Some weren’t available. Some had conflicts.”
“And nepotism had availability.”
“Possibly talent too.”
Tom’s expression said he doubted that with every bone in his body.
Olivia smiled.
“Let’s hope she’s okay.”
“Okay is not enough.”
“No.”
“This isn’t a decorative part.”
“I know.”
“The whole film depends on her.”
“I know.”
“And the scenes—”
Tom stopped, then lowered his voice.
“Have you read the latest pages?”
Olivia’s smile grew.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re doing something with your face.”
“I just enjoy when you panic.”
“I’m not panicking.”
“You are a little.”
“I do not particularly want to spend twelve weeks making out with the producer’s daughter on camera while her father watches playback, especially if she really doesn’t have experience with this kind of work.”
Olivia laughed.
Tom stared at her.
“That is not funny.”
“It is a bit funny.”
“It is absolutely not.”
“It’s very actor-problem funny.”
“The man signs the cheques.”
“And now you’ll have to kiss his daughter for art.”
“Again. Not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
Tom dragged a hand down his face.
“This film is going to kill me.”
“You’re always saying that.”
“Because my work keeps trying.”
The conversation moved after that. Someone started talking about Venice. Someone else mentioned an awards dinner. Olivia was pulled briefly into a conversation about a campaign she had shot. Tom tried to listen and failed.
Producer’s daughter.
Early twenties.
Lead role.
He hated that he was already forming an opinion without having met her. He knew that was unfair. He also knew fairness had never stopped his mind from arriving early and bringing luggage.
Maybe she was good.
Maybe she was very good.
Maybe she had worked twice as hard because everyone assumed exactly what he was assuming now.
Or maybe she had a famous father and a pretty face and enough people around her saying yes that she thought discomfort on camera meant depth.
Tom finished his beer.
He needed another.
The bar was crowded, of course. The entire event seemed to have decided at once that the only way to survive the music, the lights, and the perfume was alcohol.
Tom stood behind two women discussing a model he did not know and began folding the corner of a cocktail napkin he had picked up without realising.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
Then he saw her.
Jess.
Near the other end of the bar, half-turned toward someone, laughing.
Tom’s hand stopped.
For one ridiculous second, his first instinct was to turn around and leave the drink. To abandon the beer. To abandon dignity. To abandon the entire building if necessary.
Fuck.
No.
Nope.
Absolutely not.
It had been nearly ten months since he had last seen her. Nine since the message.
You know you could have just said you didn’t want to see me again.
He could still remember reading it outside that bar. The cigarette burning down between his fingers. Sam and Rob making the same wince. The terrible embarrassment of realising that his version of clear had not, perhaps, been clear enough.
Jess turned before he could move.
Saw him.
Of course she saw him.
Her face changed, but only slightly. The laugh faded. Not badly. Not dramatically. She simply registered him.
Then she came over.
“Hey, Tom.”
He put on a careful smile.
“Jess.”
She looked older.
That was his first thought, and then he was irritated with himself for having it because it had not even been a year. Still, she did. Not older in any visible, physical way exactly. More composed. Less bright with effort. The sharpness was still there, but it had been sanded down at the edges by something like self-awareness.
Or perhaps he was inventing that because guilt made men sentimental.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Good. You?”
“Good.”
“Good.”
A pause.
Awful.
Jess’s mouth twitched.
“Beautifully done.”
“Yes. Seamless.”
“At least we’ve matured.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
She smiled properly then, and some of the old warmth returned with it.
Tom felt himself relax half an inch before immediately telling himself not to.
Jess glanced over him.
“Congratulations, by the way.”
“For?”
“The Man I Love.”
“Oh.”
“Fantastic film.”
“Thank you.”
“You were very good.”
“That sounds as if it pained you to say.”
“It did a bit.”
He laughed before he meant to.
Jess smiled into it.
“And Cannes. I saw bits.”
“Bits?”
“Photos. Clips,” shesaid before continuing with “you looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
“That must have been misleading.”
She gave him a look.
“Still doing that, then.”
“What?”
“Acting like every nice thing is a clerical error.”
Tom looked away first.
That annoyed him.
Jess did not push. She glanced toward the bar.
“Do you want a cigarette?”
He looked back at her.
“You don’t smoke.”
“I do now.”
His eyes narrowed.
She rolled hers.
“Relax. Not because of you.”
“I did not say that.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking it would be hypocritical of me to object.”
“It would.”
He studied her for another second.
She sighed.
“I started during rehearsals. Everyone was outside smoking, and I wanted five minutes where no one asked me to do vocal warm-ups or share my feelings about character motivation.”
“That does sound fatal.”
“Exactly.”
She tilted her head toward the exit.
“Come on. You look like you need one more than I do.”
He should have said no.
He nearly did.
Then someone behind him knocked into his shoulder, the music climbed another impossible inch, and he thought about the producer’s daughter, the email, Florence leaving, those scenes, Kurt’s expectations, the industry machine turning around him with its teeth showing.
A cigarette sounded reasonable.
That was always how bad decisions entered his life.
Reasonably.
Outside, the air was cool and damp, and the street had that glossy London look it got after rain, everything shining under taxi lights and shop windows. Jess pulled a packet from her small bag and offered it to him.
Tom took one.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He lit hers first because his manners, unlike his judgment, remained mostly intact. She leaned in, cigarette between her lips, eyes lowered to the flame.
Then he lit his own.
For a moment they stood side by side, not speaking.
It was almost comfortable.
That made it worse.
Jess exhaled and looked out at the street.
“I wanted to say sorry.”
Tom glanced at her.
“For?”
“That last message I sent.”
His stomach tightened.
“Jess—”
“No, it’s fine.” She shook her head, almost laughing at herself. “It was dramatic.”
“It wasn’t entirely unfair.”
She looked at him then.
He took a drag to avoid adding something worse.
Jess’s expression softened slightly.
“You were clear.”
Tom nearly laughed, except there was nothing funny about it. Not when Sam and Rob’s voices still lived somewhere in the back of his head.
Technically clear to a barrister, emotionally confusing to everyone else.
“I could have been clearer.”
“You could have been less you about it.”
“That is unfortunately a lifelong condition.”
She smiled faintly.
“I know that now.”
He studied her.
He did not mean to.
It just happened.
The last time he had seen Jess properly, she had still looked like someone trying very hard to prove that none of it had hurt. Bright mouth. Chin lifted. A little too quick with every joke, as if she could outrun disappointment by being clever enough.
Now she looked different.
More settled into herself.
Still beautiful. Still sharp. Still trouble in a black dress. But not reaching for him. Not trying to make herself vivid enough that he would be forced to notice.
She already knew he noticed.
That was worse.
She smiled then, and the quiet between them changed.
Not suddenly.
Not cheaply.
It shifted slowly, like pressure building before rain.
Tom felt it in the space between his shoulder and hers. In the way she held the cigarette lower now. In the way neither of them had moved back inside. In the fact that he had already decided not to ask for another drink.
He knew this temperature.
He knew Jess at this temperature.
That was the problem.
Jess took another drag, then said, “I was naïve.”
Tom said nothing.
“And arrogant,” she added.
That surprised him.
“Arrogant?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
She looked at him directly.
“You.”
He did not like that.
Not because it was insulting.
Because it was accurate in a way he could not immediately defend against.
Jess smiled without much humour.
“I thought I was too self-aware to get stupid about you. I thought if I said all the right things and acted casual enough, then it would be casual.”
Tom’s jaw shifted.
“Jess.”
“I know.” She held up a hand. “I’m not saying that so you’ll apologise again. Please don’t. It’ll be painful for both of us.”
“I wasn’t going to make it painful.”
“You absolutely were.”
He looked away, unwillingly amused.
Jess smiled properly then.
There it was.
That little strike of heat.
Annoying. Immediate. Familiar.
He remembered, despite himself, what it used to be like with her.
Good.
That was the irritating part.
It had been good.
Not stupid good. Not unreal good. Not the kind of good that followed a man back across an ocean and waited for him in quiet moments like the one-night stand in New York with a woman whose name he had not even got. That had been different. Ridiculous. Physical, yes, but also disarming in a way he still resented. She had been silly without trying. Funny without constructing the joke first. Nervous and bold and too young and too lovely, with a mouth that said reckless things before her brain could stop it.
That had felt like falling into something.
Jess had never felt like that.
Jess was sex.
Good sex.
Sometimes very good sex.
But sex.
There had never been any great mystery to it, not really. No hidden ache. No strange sense of being seen.
With Anya, sex had been clean. Elegant. Mutually understood. Almost restful in its lack of emotional debris.
With Layla, it had been soft, flattering, and dangerous because of that softness.
With Jess, it had always been sparks
Not softness.
Not safety.
Sparks.
Heat.
And a little too much pretending sometimes.
Jess was quick, yes, but sometimes he could feel the machinery of it. The reaching for the line. The extra second before the joke landed. The tiny flicker of satisfaction when she made him laugh, as if she had passed a test he had never set.
It could be exhausting.
Not in bed.
In bed, the effort became something else. Heat. Performance. Nerve. She used it well there, turned that slightly desperate brightness into something sharp and physical. She wanted reaction. Wanted proof. Wanted him to lose his composure. And that was fun. Sometimes.
But outside of that, he had felt it.
The strain.
The trying.
Jess was not naturally ridiculous the way the New York girl had been. She was not accidentally funny. She did not tumble into honesty and then look annoyed with herself for landing there. Jess built her charm carefully and threw it at him like a dare.
And that had been fine.
More than fine.
That was probably why he did not leave now.
Because ‘fine’ was enough for now.
***************
For a while, they stayed outside longer than either of them needed to.
The first cigarette became a second one Jess insisted she only wanted half of and then smoked most of while Tom pretended not to notice.
They talked about work first because work was safe.
Or safer.
Jess told him about the play she had just finished, about the director who had treated silence like a sacred text and the actor opposite her who kept improvising in previews even though everyone had begged him not to.
“Improvising in theatre should be punishable by exile,” Tom said.
Jess looked at him.
“You improvise.”
“I clarify.”
“You absolutely improvise.”
“Only when the writing deserves help.”
“That is the most actor thing you’ve ever said.”
“It’s not even in the top ten.”
She smiled, and he felt that old, irritating flicker of pleasure when he made her laugh.
Not because it meant anything.
It did not.
It was just nice.
That was the dangerous stupidity of it. Sometimes chemistry disguised itself as ease.
Jess asked about his play in New York, and he told her enough to be polite. The hours. The strange loneliness of coming off stage too wired to sleep and too tired to go out. The audience member who had fallen asleep in the front row so profoundly that another actor had thought he might be dead.
Jess laughed hard at that.
“That would ruin me.”
“It nearly did. I was giving a very serious monologue about grief and there he was, mouth open, spiritually elsewhere.”
“Maybe he was moved.”
“He was snoring.”
Jess smiled despite herself.
They talked about New York. About London. About how both cities made people feel important and disposable at the same time. Jess said London had become unbearable after she came back because everyone knew everyone, and every party contained at least three people you had kissed, offended, lied to, or disappointed.
Tom looked at her.
“Only three?”
“I’m selective.”
“That has not been my impression.”
She gave him a sharp look, but she was smiling.
“Careful.”
“I’m famously careful.”
“No, you’re famously controlled. Different thing.”
That landed closer than he liked.
He looked out at the street.
Jess noticed, of course. She always noticed the wrong things and missed the obvious ones, which Tom found both inconvenient and reassuring.
“Sorry,” she said, though she did not sound especially sorry.
“No, you’re right.”
“That’s rare. Can you say it again?”
“Absolutely not.”
She laughed again, softer that time.
They talked about family next, though not deeply.
Jess mentioned her brother briefly, then rolled her eyes at something he had apparently done involving a borrowed jacket and an unpaid parking fine. Tom mentioned Ellie because he always mentioned Ellie eventually, even when he told himself he would not. She slipped into conversations as if his mouth made room for her before his brain had approved it.
“How is she?” Jess asked.
Tom glanced at her, cautious.
Not because Jess had ever been cruel about Ellie.
She had not.
But Ellie was separate.
Ellie belonged to the part of his life he did not offer casually to women he slept with, or had slept with, or might be idiotic enough to sleep with again.
“Fifteen,” he said.
Jess nodded solemnly.
“My condolences.”
That surprised a laugh out of him.
“Thank you.”
“Terrible age.”
“Were you terrible at fifteen?”
Jess looked at him.
“I was luminous and misunderstood.”
“So yes.”
“Obviously yes.”
He smiled, then looked down at the cigarette between his fingers.
“She’s good. Mostly. Clever. Moody. Very dramatic about her phone.”
“That sounds fair. Social media presence is important.”
“Is it?”
Jess grinned.
“You still sound so old when you talk about that stuff.”
“I am old.”
“You’re not old.”
“I am to you.”
There it was.
Not said heavily.
Not said flirtatiously either.
Just put between them.
Jess took a drag and let the smoke out slowly.
“Less than you think.”
Tom looked at her.
She did not look away.
For a moment, the conversation stopped being about work or cities or Ellie or anything safe.
Then Jess broke it first.
“Anyway, I’m twenty-four now.”
“Ah.”
“Practically middle-aged.”
“Practically dust.”
“Exactly,” Jess said as she flicked ash onto the pavement. “And for what it’s worth, I’m not that girl anymore you met a year ago.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You’re what now?”
“Much worse.”
He laughed under his breath.
“That seems likely.”
She turned slightly toward him.
“And much less likely to mistake sex for fate.”
Tom’s eyes moved to hers.
There it was.
No coyness.
No pretending they were discussing anything else.
Jess held his gaze.
“Don’t look so alarmed.”
“I am not alarmed.”
“You look as if I’ve asked you to marry me.”
His mouth twitched.
She moved closer by one small, deliberate step.
Not enough to touch him.
Enough that he noticed.
“I mean it,” she said. “I’m not asking for anything complicated.”
“Jess.”
“No brunch. No staying over. No messages with hidden emotional traps.”
“That sounds very organised.”
“I’ve been in therapy.”
He looked at her.
“Have you?”
“No.”
He laughed properly then.
Jess smiled.
“But I have had several very stern conversations with myself and my obnoxious friends, which is pretty much the same thing.”
Her eyes dropped briefly to his mouth.
Tom felt it like touch.
He hated that.
Or he told himself he hated it.
“The sex was good,” Jess said.
He looked at her sharply.
She shrugged.
“It was.”
“Subtle.”
“I’m not trying to be.”
“Clearly.”
“And apparently clarity matters to you.”
That made him huff a laugh.
“You’re enjoying yourself.”
“A bit.”
“At my expense.”
“Mostly.”
He should have stopped it there.
He knew that.
He was forty years old. He had a daughter nearly closer to Jess’s age than Jess was to his. He had already learned this exact lesson once, and apparently not well enough. He had no excuse, no confusion, no possible defence that did not make him sound like an idiot.
But Jess was standing under streetlight with rain in her hair and smoke leaving her mouth, looking at him like she knew precisely what he was and had decided not to require better.
That was a terrible kind of permission.
Tom finished his cigarette.
Jess watched him do it.
“Your place?” he asked.
Her smile changed.
“Unless you’ve started inviting women to yours.”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
**********
They ordered an Uber from the kerb.
The wait was four minutes.
Four minutes was an absurd amount of time in which to reconsider one’s entire life and then not do so.
They stood too close while pretending not to. Jess checked the number plate twice. Tom put his hands in his coat pockets because otherwise he would touch his ring, or his cigarettes, or the back of his neck, or her.
The car arrived.
They got in.
For the first few minutes, neither of them spoke.
The driver had the radio on low. Rain dragged thin silver lines down the window. London slid by in dark glass and traffic lights.
Jess sat beside him, her knee occasionally brushing his.
Not accidental.
Not quite deliberate enough to call deliberate.
Tom looked at her.
She looked back.
“Still suspicious?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“It means you’re thinking.”
“I’m always thinking.”
“No, you’re always generating noise. Different thing.”
He laughed under his breath.
“You have matured. You’re ruder.”
“I was always rude.”
She smiled and turned toward the window.
For a minute he let himself look at her reflection instead of her face. It felt safer. More deniable.
The streetlights moved over her features. Cheekbone. Mouth. The dark sweep of her lashes when she looked down at her phone and then locked it without checking anything.
Jess knew he was looking.
Of course she knew.
She did not call him on it.
That was new too.
The first time around, she would have. She would have made a joke, sharpened it, thrown it back at him, forced the moment into language before it could become too honest. Tonight she let it sit between them.
That unsettled him more.
It made him think, abruptly and inconveniently, of New York.
Of a hotel room.
Of a nameless brunette with big eyes and nervous wit and a Tamagotchi in her bag.
That had been different.
He had known it even then, though he had refused to name it because naming things gave them weight.
With the girl in New York, everything had felt uncontrolled from the start. A spill of champagne. A look across a room. Her mouth saying something ridiculous before she could stop herself. His own judgment loosening by degrees until he had followed her upstairs as if it were inevitable.
There had been heat, yes.
Plenty.
But beneath it there had been something else. A strange, dangerous softness he had not known what to do with. Her inexperience had not made him feel powerful. It had made him careful in ways that annoyed him. Protective in ways he had no right to be. Amused, wanting, caught out.
She had looked at him like she was trying to pretend she was not overwhelmed.
And he, idiot that he was, had liked overwhelming her.
Not cruelly.
Not thoughtlessly.
But he had liked being the reason her confidence faltered. Liked watching the performance fall away. Liked that she argued with him even while giving in. Liked that afterwards, on the balcony, with smoke between them and the city below, she had made him feel less like a man recovering from betrayal and more like a man being seen too closely by a stranger.
Jess was not that.
And yet, somehow, Jess reminded him of her. The stranger. And he never quite understood why.
************
The Uber turned down her street.
Jess glanced over.
“You’ve gone quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“No, you’re always deciding whether to speak.”
“That’s just quiet with process.”
She smiled.
“Were you thinking about me?”
“Obviously.”
He lied.
She knew he lied but she didn’t call him up on it.
Then, luckily, the car pulled up.
Jess thanked the driver. Tom got out after her, scanning the wet pavement, the dark doorway, the windows above. Habit. Restlessness. A mind looking for somewhere to put itself.
Jess unlocked the building door.
“You coming?”
He looked at her.
She held the door open, eyebrow raised.
He stepped inside.
*********
Her flat was different from the New York unit. Smaller, London-expensive, warmer. More hers. Shoes by the door, scripts stacked on a chair, a vase of tulips on the table, three mugs in the sink, a jacket thrown over the back of the sofa.
Not tidy.
Not chaotic.
Lived in.
Tom stepped inside and immediately noticed a framed photo on the shelf. Jess with her brother, whom, to him, looked familiar in that blurry, half-recognised way people did when he had seen them at some industry-adjacent dinner or opening night and not retained the name because he had been thinking about leaving. Next to them were two older adults, probably her parents.
He looked away before he seemed too interested.
Jess dropped her bag on the sofa.
“Drink?”
“No.”
“Straight into it then?”
“I am efficient.”
Jess laughed, and the sound settled something in the room.
Then she walked toward him.
Not quickly.
Not with the old dare in her face.
She came like she had already made peace with the decision and was interested in whether he had caught up yet.
Tom watched her approach.
“You’re sure?”
Jess stopped just in front of him.
There it was again. The look.
Not offended.
Not naïve.
Not wounded by the question.
Just amused.
“Yes, Tom.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
“I’m not trying to be patronising.”
“You are a little.”
He closed his mouth.
She smiled and, before he could say anything else, she moved closer again and kissed him.
It was not like the first time.
The first time she had kissed him like she was proving something. Like she could meet him at his level through sheer nerve alone. She had been all challenge then, all bright panic disguised as confidence, kissing him too hard because she was trying to make it impossible for him to think about her age.
This time, she kissed him like she remembered enough not to rush.
That was worse.
Tom’s hand went to her waist. Jess stepped into him, one hand sliding to the lapel of his jacket, fingers curling there. The kiss deepened with old recognition and new restraint, and for a moment the months between them thinned to nothing.
Jess made a small sound against his mouth when he pulled her closer.
Not soft.
Not sweet.
Impatient.
That was Jess all over. Even wanting sounded like irritation on her.
Tom smiled into the kiss.
She felt it.
She pulled back an inch.
“Don’t look smug.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Quietly.”
Her eyes flashed.
“I hate that I remember that.”
“I hate that you do too.”
Then she kissed him again, harder.
This time it moved quickly.
Too quickly.
Her hands were at his coat, pushing it from his shoulders. He caught one of her wrists, not to stop her, only to slow the pace because she had always tried to turn desire into a race.
Jess looked up at him, breathing already changed, mouth a little swollen from his.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then let go.”
“Ask nicely.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“Absolutely not.”
He laughed once.
Then he let go.
She shoved his coat off properly, and it fell somewhere near the sofa. Tom did not look to see where. That alone told him the night was already lost.
Jess backed toward the hallway, pulling him with her by his shirt.
It was graceless.
That was another difference.
With Anya, everything had a kind of adult choreography. Clean lines. Beautiful rooms. Good lighting. Two people who knew what they wanted and had the manners not to complicate it.
With Jess, they nearly knocked into a side table.
She cursed.
He caught the vase before it could fall.
Jess stared at him.
“Did you seriously just save the flowers?”
“They looked expensive.”
“They were twelve pounds from Tesco.”
“Still.”
She laughed, breathless and bright, and kissed him again before he could say anything else.
That was what sex with Jess had always been like.
Interrupted by laughter.
By provocation.
By one of them saying the wrong thing on purpose and the other rising to it despite knowing better.
Not smooth.
Not tender in any obvious way.
Combative. Playful. Hotter because neither of them wanted to yield first.
In the bedroom, she turned on one lamp and then immediately changed her mind and switched it off again. Then turned it back on.
Tom watched this with interest.
“Indecisive?”
“Shut up.”
“Lighting is important.”
“You are not giving notes on my lighting.”
“I might.”
She turned back to him.
“Take your shirt off before I throw something.”
He looked around.
“What are the options?”
Jess grabbed a pillow.
Tom lifted both hands.
“All right.”
Her smile came fast and wicked, and for a second he saw the Jess from New York again. The Jess who wanted to win. The Jess who had mistaken being wanted for being chosen. The Jess who had watched him leave too many times and pretended each exit meant less than it did.
Then it passed.
Something steadier replaced it.
She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him like she was allowing herself to enjoy the view without turning it into a confession.
That was new.
Tom unbuttoned his shirt.
Jess watched his hands.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
“Still smug,” she said.
“Still not.”
“You’re worse than I remember.”
“You invited me here.”
“Temporarily.”
“Very clear.”
“See? Growth.”
Tom laughed once, low and disbelieving, and then she was pulling him down with her.
After that, there was very little room for cleverness.
The bed shifted under their weight. Jess’s hands were in his hair, then at his shoulders, then dragging at the rest of his clothes with none of the patience she had pretended to have downstairs. Tom did not slow her much. He only paused once, long enough to get his wallet from his discarded trousers.
Jess saw the condom and gave a breathless little laugh.
“Of course.”
Tom looked down at her.
“What can I say? I am a responsible adult.”
Then even that disappeared.
It did not take long before Jess was beneath him, naked and a mess, hair spread over the pillow, mouth swollen, eyes dark with the awful realisation that she remembered exactly why this had been a bad idea.
Because it was good.
Not tender. Not slow. Not careful in any romantic way.
Good.
Immediate.
Physical.
The kind of good that made her forget she had come into this pretending to be sensible. The kind that made all her little speeches outside — no brunch, no staying over, no emotional traps — feel embarrassingly theoretical.
There was not much foreplay.
There did not need to be.
They knew enough. Remembered enough. Wanted enough.
And Tom was Tom: controlled until he wasn’t, experienced in a way that made Jess hate him a little, because he knew exactly when to make her stop talking and exactly how to make her remember him.
Afterwards, he stayed beside her for maybe two minutes.
Maybe three.
Long enough for her to start hoping.
Not openly. Not stupidly.
Except, yes, stupidly.
Then he sat up.
Jess stared at his back as he reached for his shirt.
There it was.
The old choreography.
His body still warm from hers, already leaving.
She had told him to go. That was the worst part. She had practically handed him the script.
No staying over.
No brunch.
No complications.
And now she wanted to snatch every word back.
“You’re really going?”
She hated herself immediately.
Tom paused and looked over his shoulder.
“Jess.”
Soft.
Careful.
Worse than cruel.
She smiled quickly.
“No, I know. I said.”
“You did.”
“I’m not being dramatic.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Your face did.”
His mouth twitched.
“My face is tired.”
She laughed, and it almost sounded real.
Tom finished dressing. His shirt was buttoned slightly wrong, his hair wrecked from her hands, his mouth still looking kissed.
Jess looked at him and thought, you idiot.
Not him.
Her.
You absolute idiot.
Because part of her was already doing it again. Already collecting evidence.
He had come back.
He had wanted her.
He had laughed with her.
He had said her name like that.
Maybe he would text.
Maybe this time he would want to see her again.
Maybe this time she had been casual enough to make him stay interested.
She knew better.
She absolutely knew better.
Apparently knowing better had done nothing useful for her.
Tom came back to the bed and bent to kiss her once. Brief. Warm. Almost kind.
That made it worse.
“Goodnight, Jess.”
She held the smile.
“Goodnight, Tom.”
Then he left.
The door shut quietly behind him.
Jess lay still for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling, skin still hot, pride somewhere on the floor with her dress.
Warnings: Age Gap, Domestic Abuse, Arranged Marriage, Sexual Abuse, PTSD, Religious Extremism; Implied Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Child Abduction,
Two weeks after Luka started kindergarten, the Father’s Day newsletter arrived in your inbox.
You stared at it for a long time.
Not because it was unusual.
It was, in fact, aggressively normal.
Blue border. Clip-art ties. A cartoon man holding a barbecue spatula. Three exclamation marks after Father’s Day Breakfast!
You read it once.
Then again.
Then a third time, although by then the words had stopped meaning anything and had become shapes on the screen.
Dear families,
We are excited to invite all dads, grandfathers, uncles, special friends and father figures to our Father’s Day breakfast on Friday morning…
You closed the laptop.
Then opened it again almost immediately, because closing it did not, apparently, cancel Father’s Day.
Luka was on the floor in the sitting room, lying on his stomach with a dinosaur pressed dramatically against a wooden rabbit.
“No,” he said in a deep voice. “You cannot go in the hole because you are a meat eater.”
You watched him for a moment.
He looked fine.
That was the problem, really.
He so often looked fine until he suddenly wasn’t.
By the following morning, you had spoken to his teacher.
You did it at drop-off, quietly, once Luka had vanished inside with his backpack bouncing against his legs and his dinosaur of the week clutched in one hand. His teacher, Ms Harris, was kind without becoming too soft, which you appreciated. You had grown to dread that look people got sometimes, the one that made you feel as though grief had entered the room before you had.
“I just wanted to mention the Father’s Day activities,” you said, keeping your voice low.
Ms Harris nodded at once.
“Yes. I did wonder whether we should have a chat.”
You nodded too, gripping the strap of your bag.
“He might be fine. Or he might not. I honestly don’t know. But his biological father…”
You stopped, because there was no simple way to say it in a kindergarten corridor next to a wall display of paper plate suns.
Ms Harris’s face softened.
“I understand.”
You were not sure she did, exactly, but you were grateful she did not make you explain.
“There’s a breakfast, isn’t there?” you said.
“Yes. The Friday before Father’s Day. We’re making invitations this week. Then cards and a little photo frame for Sunday. There’s also a small ‘All About My Dad’ sheet for show and tell.”
Your stomach tightened.
“Right.”
“We can absolutely adapt it,” she said quickly. “He doesn’t have to participate. He can make something for someone else, or do a different activity entirely. We have children with all sorts of family structures. We’re very careful.”
You swallowed.
“Thank you.”
“And I’ll speak with him gently,” she added. “Not in front of the others.”
You looked through the glass panel in the classroom door. Luka was sitting beside another little boy, already talking with both hands as if he were in the middle of an urgent board meeting.
“He may say he doesn’t want to do it,” you said.
“Then he won’t.”
“He may say he does and then get upset.”
“Then we’ll stop.”
You nodded again.
You wanted to be reassured.
You were.
That did not make you feel better.
Father’s Day had never been something you had expected to fear. It was supposed to be school stalls and ugly mugs and paper ties. It was supposed to be ordinary and, before everything had happened, and before Luka was so confused with life, it was you who had attended these events. Because there was no father and there was no father figure before.
But ordinary had always been where the hardest things hid now. Especially after the abduction.
*******
That afternoon, Ms Harris approached Luka during quiet activity time.
The children were scattered across the tables, surrounded by crayons, glue sticks and paper offcuts. One table was making invitations. Another had started on cards. There was glitter already on the floor, though no glitter had technically been opened yet, which Ms Harris considered one of the enduring mysteries of early childhood education.
Luka sat with his dinosaur beside his elbow, carefully sharpening a blue pencil that did not need sharpening.
“Luka,” Ms Harris said softly, pulling a small chair beside him.
He looked up.
“Yes?”
“We’re doing some Father’s Day crafts this week.”
He blinked at her.
“All right.”
“And I just wanted to tell you that you don’t have to make one if you don’t want to.”
He frowned.
“Why?”
Ms Harris paused.
“Well, sometimes children have different families. Some children might make things for their dad, or their grandad, or their uncle, or someone special.”
Luka stared at her with growing suspicion.
“I have a dad.”
Ms Harris went very still.
“Oh,” she said carefully.
Luka looked almost offended now.
“I do.”
“Of course,” she said, recovering quickly. “Then would you like to make an invitation for him?”
“Yes.”
“Lovely. That’s absolutely fine.”
He picked up a sheet of folded paper, apparently satisfied that the adult had stopped being strange.
Ms Harris sat with him while he worked.
The front of the invitation was supposed to show the child and their father doing something together. Some children drew footballs. Some drew cars. One child drew their father asleep on the sofa, which Ms Harris privately thought was probably the most accurate submission of the day.
Luka drew a person.
Then he added dark hair.
Then, very carefully, he added two earrings to one very large ear.
Ms Harris looked down at the paper.
The figure had a book in one hand. Beside him was a rabbit. Or possibly a potato with ears. There were also two socks, each a different colour, floating near the figure’s feet.
“What are those?” Ms Harris asked gently.
“Socks.”
“Right. And why are they different?”
“Because he can’t find them properly.”
“I see.”
“He says they are the same if they both go on feet.”
Ms Harris pressed her lips together.
“That’s very practical of him.”
“No, Mum says it’s horrifying.”
Luka added what appeared to be a dinosaur wearing a crown.
“And is that you?” Ms Harris asked.
“No. That’s Judge Roary.”
“Of course.”
“He does dino court.”
“I remember dino court.”
Luka looked pleased by that.
Then he opened the card and, with enormous concentration, began making marks inside.
The card itself was mostly pre-written.
Dear Dad,
Happy Father’s Day!
Thank you for…
Ms Harris moved closer.
“What would you like it to say after thank you for?”
Luka thought seriously.
His tongue poked out a little at the corner of his mouth.
“Reading to me,” he said.
Ms Harris wrote it down.
“Reading to me,” she repeated.
“And tugging me in.”
“Tucking?”
“No. Tugging.”
Ms Harris hesitated.
“Do you mean tucking you in at night?”
“Yes. Tugging.”
“Right.”
She wrote tucking me in, then immediately felt dishonest.
“And being funny sometimes,” Luka added.
“Only sometimes?”
“He is funny a lot, but sometimes he is annoying when he uses the big voice.”
“The big voice?”
“When he does the story and makes the dragon sound like Maddy’s friend Sam.”
Ms Harris had no idea who Sam was, but she nodded as if this explained everything.
“So,” she said, “thank you for reading to me, tucking me in, and being funny sometimes.”
Luka nodded.
“And then I love you very much Luka.”
Ms Harris’s pen paused.
Just for half a second.
Then she wrote it.
I love you very much.
Luka.
She looked at the card.
Then at the invitation.
Then at Luka, who was now attempting to glue an entire handful of glitter onto the photo frame without using his hands.
“Luka,” she said, carefully, “what is your dad’s name?”
He looked at her as if this was a very basic question.
“Tom.”
“Oh.”
Ms Harris sat back slightly.
That did explain things.
By the time they reached the All About My Dad worksheet, Ms Harris had the mild, dazed expression of a woman who had started the morning expecting a sensitive pastoral issue and instead found herself fact-checking the private life of an actor through the medium of crayon.
My dad’s name is: Tom
My dad does this for work: Actor
I like to do this with my dad: Lego. Reading. Dino court. Feed bunnies. Football but he is bad.
My dad likes: Books. The red football team. Coffee. Vanilla ice cream.
Ms Harris looked down at the sheet.
“The red football team?”
“Arsenal,” Luka said.
“Oh.”
“He says it like this.”
Luka put on a very serious face and, in an accent that was neither Tom’s nor any known dialect on earth, said:
“Ah-sen-al.”
Ms Harris choked slightly.
“And football but he is bad?” she asked.
Luka nodded gravely.
“He tries.”
“That’s important.”
“Yes,” Luka agreed. “Mum says trying is important when someone is hopeless.”
Ms Harris made a mental note to never let the school counsellor read these worksheets without warning.
That afternoon, when you picked Luka up, Ms Harris caught your eye.
“He did the Father’s Day activities,” she said quietly.
Your heart gave a strange, hard kick.
“Oh.”
“He was very happy to.”
You looked toward Luka. He was standing at his bag hook, shoving something inside his backpack with the urgency of a jewel thief.
“He was?”
“Yes.” Ms Harris hesitated. “He made them for Tom.”
The name landed in you softly and painfully at the same time.
“Right,” you said.
“He was very clear.”
You glanced again at Luka.
He looked up at that exact moment and shouted, “No looking!”
You froze.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were nearly.”
“I was not nearly.”
“You were nearly looking with your eyes.”
Ms Harris turned her face slightly, but you saw the smile.
On the walk home, the top corner of something cardboard stuck out of Luka’s bag.
“Can I help you carry that?” you asked.
“No.”
“It looks heavy.”
“It is secret.”
“I see.”
“No touching.”
“I wasn’t going to touch it.”
“You do touching sometimes.”
“I do touching sometimes?”
“Yes. Like with washing.”
“That’s because washing needs to be touched.”
“This doesn’t.”
You left it alone.
At home, Luka took the bag upstairs, disappeared into his room, then came back down five minutes later with his dinosaur tucked under his arm and a look of grave emotional strain on his face.
Tom was in the sitting room, reading a script with a pencil between his fingers. His bare feet were on the edge of the coffee table while he balanced a mug of coffee precariously beside a stack of pages.
You were in the kitchen, technically chopping carrots, actually watching.
Luka stopped in the doorway.
Tom looked up.
“All right?”
Luka nodded once.
Then shook his head.
Then nodded again.
Tom lowered the script.
“That’s a lot of answers.”
Luka hugged the dinosaur tighter.
“I have something.”
“Is it alive?”
“No.”
“Is it sticky?”
“No.”
Luka looked offended.
“Good. That’s my preferred category of object.”
Luka took three small steps forward, then stopped.
Tom’s expression changed. Not obviously. Not enough to startle him. But you saw the shift. The way he set the script aside properly. The way he gave Luka all of his attention without making a performance of it.
Luka held out the invitation.
Tom took it.
For a second, he did not understand what he was looking at.
Then he did.
The paper was folded unevenly. The front was covered in glitter, pencil marks, a dinosaur, something that might have been a rabbit, and a tall figure with dark hair, earrings, a book and catastrophic socks.
Inside, in careful adult handwriting beneath Luka’s attempt at letters, it said:
Please come to Father’s Day breakfast.
Tom went very still.
You stopped chopping.
Luka shifted from one foot to the other.
“It’s at kindy,” he said quickly. “There is toast. Maybe muffins. And the dads come. But you don’t have to. Ms Harris said you don’t have to if you are busy or if you don’t want to or if you have work or if you get shy.”
Tom blinked.
“If I get shy?”
“Mum says sometimes you get shy and pretend you are being difficult.”
Your knife paused above the carrot.
Tom looked up at you.
You turned back to the chopping board with great interest.
“Did she?” he said.
You said nothing.
Luka pushed on, words tumbling faster now.
“And there are seats, and we sing a song, but I don’t know the song yet because Jaxon kept making fart noises. And I made you an invite because you are my dad for school.”
Tom’s throat moved.
“For school?” he asked softly.
Luka looked suddenly uncertain.
“And home too,” he said. “If you want.”
The room became unbearably quiet.
Tom stared at him for half a second too long, and Luka’s face began to fold in on itself with worry.
So Tom moved.
He put the invitation down carefully on top of the script, then opened his arms.
“Come here.”
Luka went at once.
Not cautiously. Not politely.
He launched himself at Tom, dinosaur and all, and Tom caught him with a small, broken sound that might have been a laugh if it had managed to survive the journey.
“I’d love to come,” Tom said into his hair.
Luka’s arms tightened around his neck.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You can eat toast?”
“I am extremely experienced with toast.”
“And muffins?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“And singing?”
Tom hesitated.
“I can stand near singing.”
Luka pulled back, serious.
“You have to sing.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” Tom said. “But if the song is terrible, I’m blaming Jaxon.”
Luka nodded, completely accepting this arrangement.
Then he pressed his face back into Tom’s shoulder.
You turned away from the carrots because you were not going to cry over a glittery kindergarten invitation.
You absolutely were not.
Tom looked over Luka’s head at you.
His eyes were bright.
Yours were too.
Neither of you said anything, because if either of you did, the whole room would probably fall apart.
*********
The Father’s Day breakfast was, by every possible measure, chaos.
It began at eight-thirty in the morning, which was already an act of aggression against families.
Tom stood in the kindergarten playground wearing a navy jumper, his hair still slightly damp from the shower, holding Luka’s hand in one hand and a paper plate in the other.
Luka had insisted they arrive early.
Then, the moment they arrived early, had become suspicious of being early.
“Where are the muffins?” Luka asked.
“They’ll be inside.”
“What if the dads eat them first?”
“I think we are part of the dads.”
Luka looked up at him.
“Yes,” he said, then smiled so suddenly Tom almost lost the ability to stand normally.
Inside, the classroom had been rearranged with small tables, tiny chairs, plates of toast, cut fruit, muffins and urns of coffee that had clearly been made by someone who considered coffee a rumour rather than a beverage.
Tom folded himself into a kindergarten chair beside Luka.
His knees were not where knees ought to be.
Luka looked delighted.
“You’re too big.”
“I had noticed.”
“You look silly.”
“I feel silly.”
“Good.”
A grandfather across the table smiled at him.
“First one?”
Tom looked at Luka.
“Yes,” he said. “First one.”
Luka beamed into his toast.
The young intern teachers were trying very hard not to stare.
They were not succeeding.
One of them, Miss Abbey, stood near the craft shelf holding a jug of orange juice and whispering to the other, “That is definitely him.”
The other, Miss Clare, whispered back, “I know. He dropped off Luka the a few days ago.”
“He’s really handsome.”
“I know.”
“Like, really attractive.”
“I know.”
Tom, who had spent twenty years developing a near-supernatural awareness of being discussed in rooms, pretended not to hear.
Luka, who had no such filter and also no respect for whispered privacy, turned around in his tiny chair.
“He is my mum’s,” he announced.
Both interns froze.
Tom closed his eyes.
Ms Harris, across the room, made a small noise that suggested she had swallowed a laugh whole.
Miss Abbey went bright pink.
“Oh,” she said. “Of course, Luka. That’s very lovely.”
“He sleeps in her bed,” Luka added helpfully.
Tom opened his eyes.
“Luka.”
Luka turned back.
“What?”
“That’s enough.”
“But you do.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“And sometimes you snore.”
“I absolutely do not.”
Luka took a bite of toast.
“You do a little bit.”
The grandfather across the table coughed violently into his coffee.
Tom stared at the wall.
Ms Harris turned away completely now.
The singing was worse.
The children stood in a line at the front of the classroom and performed a song about dads being heroes, dads fixing things, dads lifting children high and dads loving them forever.
Tom had expected to feel awkward.
He had not expected to feel dismantled.
Luka did not know half the words. He sang three seconds behind everyone else. At one point he waved at Tom instead of doing the actions. During the line about dads fixing things, Luka pointed directly at Tom and shook his head.
Several parents laughed.
Tom did too, though his face felt strange.
After the song, Luka ran back to him with a muffin.
“I got you chocolate because you don’t like fruit.”
“Very thoughtful.”
“It has banana.”
“That is fruit.”
“It is hiding.”
“Sinister.”
Luka climbed onto his lap even though the chair was already performing miracles.
Tom put an arm around him.
And for the rest of the breakfast, with weak coffee cooling in front of him and glitter stuck to his sleeve and Luka’s elbow in his ribs, Tom felt something settle into place with a tenderness so sharp it was almost pain.
**********
Then, on Sunday morning, Tom was told to stay in bed.
This was not unusual in the sense that Tom liked staying in bed.
It was unusual in the sense that Ellie stood at the foot of it at eight in the morning with a level of authority that suggested she had inherited all of Ruth’s organisational skills and none of Tom’s respect for sleep.
“Do not come downstairs,” she said.
Tom opened one eye.
“Good morning to you too.”
“I mean it.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“Being annoying before breakfast.”
“That feels pre-emptive.”
“It’s based on extensive evidence.”
He looked beside him. Your side of the bed was empty, which meant you had either been recruited into this operation or had escaped before the coup began.
Ellie pointed at him.
“Stay.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“Just stay.”
Then she left.
Five minutes later, she returned carrying coffee with both hands and an expression of deep concentration.
Tom sat up carefully.
“You made this?”
“Yes.”
“I’m frightened.”
“You should be. I wasn’t sure which machine button was correct.”
He took the mug.
“Thank you.”
“It might be decaf.”
“That would be a betrayal.”
“It might also be very strong.”
“That would be a blessing.”
Ellie hovered for a second, suddenly less sharp around the edges.
“Happy Father’s Day,” she said, too quickly.
Tom looked at her.
Something moved across his face before he could stop it.
“Thank you, El.”
She shrugged, already embarrassed.
“It’s not the real present. This is just coffee.”
“Coffee is often the real present.”
Before she could answer, there was a thundering noise from the hallway.
Then Luka burst into the room.
He was wearing dinosaur pyjamas, one sock, and the expression of a child who had been waiting his entire life for this precise moment.
“Happy Father’s Day!”
He climbed directly onto Tom.
The coffee sloshed dangerously.
“Careful,” Tom said, laughing. “I’d like to remain a father figure with skin.”
Luka wriggled onto his lap and dumped three wrapped parcels and a card onto the doona.
One of the parcels was soft. One was flat. One appeared to have been wrapped by someone during a minor earthquake.
“I made them,” Luka said.
“I can see.”
“And I didn’t tell you.”
“You were very secretive.”
“I nearly told you five times.”
“I noticed.”
Luka sat back on his knees, suddenly shy.
Tom glanced at you then, because you had appeared in the doorway quietly, arms folded across your chest, hair loose around your face.
You looked soft and tired and terrified.
Tom understood why a second later.
Luka put both hands on the doona.
“I know you’re not my real dad,” he said.
The words hit the room with the force of something much larger than his little voice.
Tom went still.
Ellie froze in the doorway behind you as she was on the way back down.
Luka kept looking at his hands.
“But I wanted to see if you wanted to be my dad anyway. Because you kind of are. And everyone has a dad at kindy and I picked you because you do dad things and you came to breakfast and you know how I like the dragon voice and you make Mum happy even when she does the face.”
You pressed a hand to your mouth.
Tom’s voice, when it came, was rough.
“What face?”
Luka looked up.
“The sad face when she thinks no one sees.”
Tom’s eyes flicked to you.
You looked away.
Luka leaned forward, urgent now.
“So do you want to? You don’t have to. Ms Harris says special people can be lots of different people, and Mum said families don’t have to match other families, but I thought maybe you could be my dad because you already are and also because I made the card say dad.”
Tom did not answer immediately.
Not because he did not know.
Because knowing was too big for speech.
He set the coffee carefully on the bedside table.
Then he reached for Luka and pulled him in.
“Yes,” he said, and the word was barely steady. “Yes, sweetheart. I would love that.”
Luka went boneless with relief.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Forever?”
Tom closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“You have to say promise.”
“I promise.”
“You have to not go away.”
The room changed.
You saw it go through Tom. Saw the pain, the care, the understanding that some promises had to be made with truth and not panic.
He held Luka a little closer.
“I am not going away,” he said. “I promise I am going to do everything I can to be here. Always.”
Luka considered that.
Then nodded into his chest.
“Okay.”
Tom kissed his hair.
Ellie looked down quickly, pretending to inspect the carpet.
You failed entirely at not crying.
Luka, who had apparently finished with the emotional portion of the morning, sat back up and shoved the flat parcel at Tom.
“Open this one. It has too much glitter.”
“It certainly has some glitter.”
“It has the right amount.”
The card said Dear Dad in big uneven letters. Inside, beneath the teacher’s careful handwriting, Luka had drawn a dinosaur, a rabbit, Tom, you, Mia, Ellie, and himself. Everyone had long arms. Tom had earrings bigger than his head.
Tom stared at it for a long moment.
“I look very glamorous.”
“You are.”
“Thank you.”
The photo frame was next. It was covered in dinosaurs, foam stars, stickers, and so much glitter it seemed structurally dependent on it. Inside was a photo taken at kindergarten breakfast. Luka was grinning. Tom was folded beside him on a miniature chair, looking far too tall, far too emotional, and entirely unaware of the glitter on his cheek.
Tom ran his thumb once along the edge of the frame.
“This is perfect,” he said.
Luka watched him closely.
“You like it?”
“I love it.”
“Good. Because it took a very long time and Jaxon put glue on my chair.”
“That sounds like Jaxon.”
“It does. And now you need to get up for Ellie’s surprise.”
**********
Downstairs, Ellie had already made breakfast.
This was impressive until you reached the kitchen and saw the full scope of it.
There was coffee.
There was a bowl of Cheerios.
There was milk in a small jug.
There was a side bowl of yoghurt with exactly one strawberry placed on top like a decorative apology.
Tom looked at the table.
Ellie stood beside it, arms crossed.
“I know you hate fruit,” she said, “but it looked ugly without it.”
Tom looked at the strawberry.
“It does add drama.”
“It’s garnish. You don’t have to eat it.”
“Thank God.”
“And I toasted bread but Luka ate one.”
“I was hungry,” Luka said from the table, already climbing onto his chair.
“You ate the corner of three pieces.”
“I was checking them.”
Tom turned to Ellie.
“This is brilliant.”
She shrugged.
“It’s cereal.”
“It’s not the cereal.”
He stepped forward and hugged her.
For a second she stiffened in that teenage way of hers, all elbows and pride. Then she softened and hugged him back.
“Happy Father’s Day,” she muttered into his jumper.
“Thank you.”
“I got you something too.”
He let her go.
“You did?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
“I’m not shocked.”
“You look shocked.”
“I’m emotionally versatile.”
“You’re weird.”
She handed him a small wrapped present and a card.
The wrapping was much neater than Luka’s, which meant Ruth had absolutely been involved. The card was sharp and funny and painfully Ellie: a drawing of Tom asleep on a sofa, mouth open, script on his chest, with a speech bubble that said I AM RESTING MY EYES.
He laughed properly.
“That is defamatory.”
“It’s documentary.”
The present was a new leather bookmark, engraved with his initials on one side and, on the other, in tiny lettering:
Stop folding the corners.
Tom stared at it.
Ellie smiled, awkward and pleased.
“Mum said it was either that or socks, but I thought socks was depressing.”
“It is excellent,” Tom said quietly.
“You like it?”
“I love it.”
“Good.” She cleared her throat. “Also Mum says happy Father’s Day.”
You smiled, but your eyes had moved toward the stairs.
Mia had not come down.
Tom noticed because Tom noticed everything where the children were concerned now, even when he pretended not to.
“She all right?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know,” you said.
You tried to keep your voice neutral.
It didn’t quite work.
The worry had been sitting in you all morning. Mia was older. Mia understood more. Mia remembered more. Father’s Day for Luka was becoming something simple because Luka needed it to be simple. Tom was here. Tom loved him. Tom tucked him in and came to kindergarten breakfast and played dino court badly but with commitment.
For Mia, nothing was simple.
She had once had a father.
A terrible one.
A frightening one.
But still.
Blood made people say stupid things. The world was full of stupid things said in the name of blood.
Tom looked toward the hallway.
“I can go up.”
“No,” you said quickly. “Maybe give her a minute.”
He nodded, though you could tell it cost him not to move.
Luka was halfway through telling Ellie that the strawberry was “performing decoration” when you heard footsteps on the stairs.
Mia appeared in the doorway wearing leggings and an oversized jumper, her hair still messy from sleep.
She was holding something behind her back.
“Sorry,” she said at once. “I couldn’t find the sticky tape, so I improvised.”
Her voice was too casual.
Her eyes were not.
Tom straightened slightly.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s not. Well. It might be. The wrapping is bad.”
“That’s all right. I’ve already seen what Luka considers wrapping.”
“Mine has less glitter.”
“Then you’re ahead.”
Mia came forward slowly.
She looked at you first.
You gave the tiniest nod.
Then she looked at Tom.
Her face did something that made her look suddenly much younger than ten. Not small exactly. Just unguarded in a way she so rarely allowed.
“Happy Father’s Day,” she said.
Tom stared at her.
You could see him trying to react correctly. Not too much. Not too little. Not to frighten her away with the size of what it meant.
“Thank you, Mia,” he said softly.
She handed him the card first.
It was handmade. Cream paper. Pressed flowers carefully glued around the edges. The handwriting inside was neat, deliberate, and there were places where she had clearly stopped and started again.
Tom opened it.
You watched his face as he read.
Dear Tom,
Thank you for being there for me and Luka and Mum too.
I am glad you are part of our life.
Thank you for being like a dad to us, even when things are hard or weird.
Love you.
Happy Father’s Day.
Mia.
Tom did not move.
Not for several seconds.
Then he closed the card very carefully, as if roughness might damage something more than paper.
Mia shifted.
“I know it’s not… I mean, I didn’t know if I should write dad, because I don’t call you that, and I didn’t want it to be strange, and maybe it is strange, but Luka was making things and Ellie was doing breakfast and I thought—”
Tom set the card down.
“Mia.”
She stopped.
His voice was quiet.
“It’s not strange.”
Her mouth pressed together.
“It is a bit.”
He smiled faintly.
“Yes. All right. It’s a bit strange.”
That made her breathe out, almost a laugh.
“But it’s lovely,” he said. “And I’ll keep it forever.”
She looked down.
“You don’t have to say forever.”
“I mean forever.”
Mia’s fingers tightened around the wrapped present.
Then she pushed it toward him.
“This is also not much.”
Tom took it.
It was clearly a book. Badly wrapped in brown paper, with one corner exposed and what appeared to be a ribbon stolen from a Christmas box.
“You are all very determined to make me cry before nine in the morning,” he said.
Mia’s eyes widened.
“No. Don’t cry.”
“I said determined. I didn’t say successful.”
Ellie snorted.
“You’re already halfway there.”
“I am not.”
“You’re doing the voice.”
“What voice?”
“The emotionally constipated one.”
“Ellie.”
“What? You are.”
Mia smiled despite herself.
Tom opened the present.
Inside was a second-hand copy of Tolstoy. Old, worn at the edges, the spine softened by other people’s hands. Not one of the obvious ones. Not one he already had.
He stared at it.
Mia spoke quickly.
“I know you like that guy. I looked at your shelves, and you didn’t have that one. Or I couldn’t see it. You have too many books, so maybe you do have it somewhere, but I tried to check properly. When I went out with Maddy, I asked if we could stop at the second-hand bookshop, and I bought it with my pocket money. Sorry it isn’t new.”
Tom looked up.
His eyes were bright again.
Mia’s face changed with panic.
“Oh no.”
Tom laughed once, but it broke a little.
“No, darling. It’s not—”
He stopped, swallowed, and tried again.
“It’s perfect.”
“You really didn’t have it?”
“I really didn’t.”
“And you like old books.”
“I love old books.”
“Because they smell weird.”
“Because they have history.”
“They smell weird.”
“They also smell weird.”
She nodded, satisfied.
Tom ran his thumb over the cover.
“You chose this yourself?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he reached out, slowly enough that she could refuse if she wanted to.
She didn’t.
He pulled her gently into a hug.
Mia stood stiffly for half a second.
Then something in her gave way.
She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his shoulder.
Tom closed his eyes.
You turned toward the sink and wiped your face with the heel of your hand.
Ellie pretended to be very invested in pouring milk.
Luka looked around at everyone, then announced, “Everyone is being leaky.”
Mia laughed into Tom’s jumper.
That was what undid him, you thought.
Not the card.
Not the book.
Not even the word dad hovering over the room in all its strange, delicate forms.
It was Mia laughing while she held onto him.
“Thank you,” he said, so quietly you almost did not hear it.
Mia pulled back after a moment, wiping at her face with her sleeve and immediately embarrassed.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s more than fine.”
“Don’t make it a thing.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“You’re making the face.”
“I have a lot of faces, apparently.”
“You do.”
Luka nodded solemnly.
“Mum has sad face. Tom has wet face.”
Tom looked at him.
“Wet face?”
“Your eyes are doing water.”
“Thank you, Luka.”
“You’re welcome.”
Ellie put the cereal bowl in front of him with a flourish.
“Eat your Cheerios, Wet Face.”
Tom looked at all of them.
Ellie, standing there in pyjamas and trying not to look too pleased with herself.
Mia, still close enough that her shoulder almost touched his arm.
Luka, licking yoghurt off his spoon and somehow already glittery again.
You, by the sink, crying badly and pretending you were not.
The kitchen was a mess. The coffee was probably terrible. The toast was half-eaten, the strawberry had been rejected, and there was a dinosaur sitting in the sugar bowl.
Tom looked at the card from Luka, the bookmark from Ellie, the pressed-flower card from Mia, the old Tolstoy in his hand.
Then he looked at you.
You smiled through tears.
He smiled back.
And for once, he did not make a joke quickly enough to hide behind it.
He simply sat there at the kitchen table, surrounded by children who had made room for him in different, complicated, beautiful ways, and let himself be loved.
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r u gonna give Lilliana anymore air time? it would be interesting to see her have some remorse, or even feel guilty for what she did getting the paps involved. Or you can keep her a villain I don't mind either
She’ll definitely appear again, but realistically there isn’t a huge amount of damage she can do now.
The relationship is public, Tom isn’t hiding it, the family knows, the friends know, and after everything with the abduction, a few paparazzi photos are barely a ripple in comparison.
What’s more interesting to me now is what Liliana thinks about it all. Whether she doubles down, whether she feels guilty, whether she convinces herself she was justified, or whether she has one of those horrible moments where she realises she helped put events in motion that spiralled far beyond what she intended.
So yes, she’ll be back. But she’s lost most of her power over the situation, which makes her a much more interesting character than a straightforward villain.
