I texted Callum an hour ago—Liam's coming tonight, meeting him at the harbour, I'm sorry—and shoved the phone into my pocket without reading whatever he sent back. Reading it would require a version of me that handles consequences, and she clocked out around lunchtime.
Liam is at the far end of the sea wall, hands in his jacket, watching the water and pretending he isn't waiting. I pass him without stopping, and he falls into step beside me.
"You didn't have to meet me out here." He's beside me now. "Perfectly good pub with your name on the door."
"The pub has a bartender with my name on his face every time I do something stupid." Wind pulls my hair across my mouth. "This seemed kinder."
The sun starts its exit—copper and violet bleeding into the sea. I can feel his gaze on the back of my neck like a hand that hasn't landed.
"I lie next to Celine at night and think about the way you used to steal my jumpers." His voice is low, stripped of decoration. "You'd wear them to bed with nothing underneath and tell me they were yours now."
My throat constricts. The memory arrives whole—cotton against bare skin, his hands sliding underneath. "I still steal jumpers. Just someone else's now."
His footstep stutters on the gravel. I don't know why I said it except that part of me needs the knife to go both ways.
"Are you trying to hurt me?" Careful, slow. His eyes search my profile while I watch the crumbling edge where land meets the drop.
"Maybe." The sea fills the pause.
"It's working," he says quietly, and I wait for satisfaction that doesn't come—just a metallic taste below my ribs.
We stop where the path widens above the water. I turn to face him, arms crossed—a barricade that wouldn't fool a child. "Why did you really come?"
"Because you told me not to and I couldn't stand the thought of obeying." His mouth twists. I shake my head.
"That's not a reason." He steps closer, the space between us shrinking to something I can measure in heartbeats.
"Fine. I told myself I could marry Celine and be decent about it, then spent two weeks calling you every night and realised decent left somewhere around day three."
"And what am I supposed to do with that?" He pushes a hand through his hair and my chest folds at the familiarity. "Nothing about this is good enough—not for you, not for her, not for me."
I grab the front of his jacket. "Then stop being noble for five minutes." His hand covers mine on his collar.
"You told me evidence isn't everything. It broke my brain, Odette." His pulse throbs under my knuckles. "I haven't been able to put it back together since."
The B&B is four hundred metres away. His hand finds mine, and the door gives way under his shoulder because his other hand won't let go.
I pull him through by his collar and his mouth finds mine before the door closes. My back meets the wall, his hands frame my jaw, the kiss open-mouthed and tasting of salt air, his tongue sliding against mine.
His jacket hits the floor. Mine follows. We're both fumbling with shirts, breathing into each other's mouths between kisses.
We barely reach the bed. His hands shake as they trace down my sides—both of us trembling before we've finished undressing. He unhooks my bra and his mouth drops to my collarbone, tongue tracing the hollow of my throat while my nails drag down his bare chest.
"Odette." My name in his mouth like a question held behind his teeth for months. His hands slide my jeans down my hips, mouth moving lower, lips dragging over the swell of my breast, tongue circling my nipple until my spine curves off the mattress.
"Stop thinking." I pull him up by the neck and kiss him, my teeth catching his lower lip. He breathes I can't against my mouth, forehead pressed to mine, eyes open and too close.
My hand slides between us, wrapping around him, stroking slow and firm. His hips push into my grip and the sound that escapes his throat is wrecked—broken open. "Try," I whisper, and his hand mirrors mine, fingers sliding between my thighs, parting me with slow deliberate strokes.
Two fingers push inside, curling deep, and my back arches off the bed—one hand fisting the sheets, the other gripping his shoulder hard enough to leave crescents. His thumb circles my clit while his fingers move, and the eye contact is worse than the pleasure—too intimate, too much like being known.
"I've been trying for months." His voice fractures. "It doesn't work." His fingers curl deeper and I lose whatever I was going to say to the white heat building behind my navel.
I pull him closer with my thigh hooked over his hip, and he enters me slow—agonisingly, devastatingly slow—a shudder running through his whole body. My mouth opens against his jaw, a sound I can't contain.
He stills with his full length inside me, breathing hard, trembling, forehead dropped to mine. Then he moves—each stroke a full withdrawal and return that drags across every nerve, slow but relentless.
My nails score his back. He groans into my neck, hips rolling deeper, and my legs wrap around him. The angle shifts and the noise I make is something I won't repeat in daylight. His hand grips my thigh, pulling me harder against him, mouth finding my breast again, tongue hot against my nipple.
His fingers press circles against my clit while he moves inside me, and the dual sensation crests fast—thighs shaking, breath coming in gasps that sound like his name. I come with my teeth in his shoulder, body clenching tight around him.
He doesn't stop. His pace quickens—hips driving harder, breath ragged against my throat. I grip his jaw and make him look at me, and his eyes are dark and blown and completely undone. He comes with my name splintering between his teeth, hips stuttering, weight collapsing.
Stillness. He rolls onto his back beside me, one arm across his eyes, chest heaving. The room smells like sweat and salt and neither of us moves for a long time.
"I've broken every promise I made to myself." Wrecked, muffled behind his forearm. My head turns on the pillow, watching his ribs.
"Do you regret it?" My voice thin, stripped bare. He drops his arm and looks at me—no armour, no rehearsal, just his face cracked open in the half-dark.
"The worst part is I don't. Not even slightly." His throat works. "That makes me the man in those photographs after all."
"You're not that man." My hand finds his jaw. "You were never that man." He almost smiles—terrible, sad.
"The evidence says otherwise." I trace his lower lip with my thumb, still swollen, still warm.
"There's that word again. Evidence." He goes quiet. His gaze moves across my face—memorising or mourning—and then his arm comes around me and I press my ear to his chest.
His heartbeat: fast, then slowing, then steady. Neither of us speaks, because the next sentence from either mouth will be something we can't take back.