Chloe’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and he drank in the sight of her. She was wearing pink, pinstriped pajamas with buttons down the front, the kind grumpy old men wore. She had a lot in common with grumpy old men, actually, except for the part where he was desperate to kiss her.

Instead of her hair’s usual neat, shiny bun, it looked like she’d grabbed the dark waves with a fist, shoved a hair tie over them, and hoped for the best. It was what Red did with his own hair when he was working out. Judging by her small mountain of blankets and the mess strewn across her coffee table, it was what she did when she felt like shit. He was probably the worst kind of monster because Chloe was sick, but he still thought she was unbelievably sexy. Then he remembered that she was always sick, so maybe poor health wasn’t something that should de-sex a person.

Definitely couldn’t de-sex Chloe.

He cleared his throat and stood, looking around the room. The empty water bottles and cardboard boxes she left by her front door had reproduced like bunnies, creeping down the hall until they were visible from here. “You should call me when you need things recycled.”

“Maybe,” she mumbled, snuggling deeper into her blankets.

“Definitely. It’s my job.” Although a cautiously excited voice in his head whispered, Not for long. This idea he’d had about finding his own place, about trying again with his art … it wouldn’t let go. He rolled it around his mind like whiskey in his mouth while he gathered Chloe’s empty teacups and glasses of juice.

“Don’t clean up,” she told him. “I can cope, you know.”

“And I could cope without electricity, but why the fuck should I?”

She tutted. “Surely you have better things to do with your evening.”

Nothing I’d enjoy more than being here with you. The words flashed up in his mind without permission, but thankfully he controlled his mouth more easily than his thoughts. “You can’t get rid of me, Button. You’re mine tonight. I booked you.”

“You booked … ?” Her eyes flew open. “Oh, my goodness. I completely forgot. Your website.”

His lips quirked. “You forgot? You mean your brain is actually a squidgy gray thing and not a computer? I’ve been wondering.”

She didn’t smile back. “I have done something, you know. I have the home-page design to show you, and I wanted to go through the shop’s functionalities, but we’ll have to move to my desk—” She sat up and winced. Just a tiny tightening of her features, but he felt like someone had ripped out his heart.

“Sit your arse down. Relax. It’s not a big deal.”

“Don’t you want—”

“No,” he said firmly. Then, when she looked genuinely disappointed, he added, “Send me a link tomorrow. I’m—”

She leapt on his hesitation, her eyebrows raised. “You’re … ?”

Eager. “I’m starting to get excited about work again. That’s all.” He shrugged, as if it didn’t make him feel electrified. “So I’ll look tomorrow. If you’re feeling better.”

She gave him a delighted, if faintly exhausted, smile. “That’s wonderful. That’s fantastic.”

“Uh, thanks. So, do you want more juice, or not?”

The smile became a narrow glare. “I can get my own juice.”

“But why would you do that when you have a willing servant?”

She rolled her eyes. He knew why she hesitated. Considering the way her so-called friends and fiancé had dropped her, she was sensitive about letting people get close. When she finally closed her eyes and said, “Continue, if you must,” he felt like he’d climbed a fucking mountain.

When he returned to the living room, she sat up for the juice without wincing and he said, “Is it me, or do you seem better than you were ten minutes ago?”

“You’re right.” She took a sip. “The power of your company has cured me. The doctors were right about natural endorphins all along.”

“Uh …”

“It’s because the buprenorphine patch I put on finally started pulling its weight. I am drugged to high heaven. It’s delightful.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I should have powered through,” she told him, “since it’s my strongest painkiller and I’m not supposed to build up an immunity to opiates in my thirties, but I was fed up with feeling my joints scrape together inside me like knives, so I have no regrets.”

He stared. “You really are a badass.”

She waggled her bunny slippers. “Yes.”

“Have you eaten?”

She shrugged, sipped her juice some more, and said in a suspiciously casual tone, “Not yet.”

Ah. She was one of those. He should’ve known. “I’ll put that another way: When did you last eat?”

Chloe’s face took on the shiftiest expression ever made by a human being in the history of the world. She hid guilt about as well as the average family dog. “I’m not sure.” As if on cue, her stomach rumbled. She looked down irritably and muttered, “Et tu?”

“Today?” he nudged.

She shrugged.

Oh, for God’s sake. “You haven’t eaten today? Are you serious?”

“I couldn’t be bothered,” she snapped.

“Right, sure. You’re too lazy to feed yourself. It’s not because you feel like shit or anything.”

“Oh, be quiet.”

He stood, and she looked up at him, something bleak and resigned in her gaze. In the second before she schooled her expression, he realized that she thought he was leaving. His heart constricted. He wanted to find every friend who’d ever ditched her, and especially her fucking fiancé, and force them all to walk barefoot across a room full of Legos for the rest of their lives. Not that he’d been thinking much about punishments.

“What do you want to eat?” he asked briskly, hoping she wouldn’t hear the emotion rumbling beneath his voice.

Her mouth opened, closed, opened again. “You—I don’t—”

“You like stir-fry?”

She shot him a mutinous glare, like he’d offered to piss on her PlayStation or something. “Red—”

“I mean, who doesn’t like stir-fry? Weirdos, that’s who.” He headed for the kitchen.

It took a second or two, but she stumbled after him, her blanket wrapped around her like a cape. Cutest, prissiest Batman he’d ever seen. When she said, “Red, you’re not cooking for me,” he smiled to himself, just a bit.

 

The flat’s little kitchen, all tiles and steel, always seemed cold to Chloe—but today, the air vibrated with sultry heat even before the stove was turned on. That was Red’s fault. He stood in front of the fridge looking horribly sexy in his usual T-shirt and jeans, bending over at an angle that should be illegal for men who had backsides like his. She sat in her comfortable little kitchen chair and fiddled with the neckline of her pajamas. Maybe her current haze, partly feverish fatigue and partly the patch on her back pumping drugs through her skin, was a blessing in disguise. If she weren’t feeling so rubbish it would be much, much harder to ignore how pretty he was.