I nod. Yawn.
And eventually I fall asleep happy.
Chapter Eighteen
Carrie
Jack tries to act super normal next morning, even though I wake in his arms with my hair all over his pillow. He gives me a smile and disentangles himself and heads off for a shower like this is just any other day.
But it isn’t.
Now I’ve slept in his bed I don’t want to sleep alone again.
It felt too good to feel someone’s body against mine. It felt too good to have someone hold me for the first proper time in my life.
Now I know how it feels to be safe and warm in someone’s arms I can’t let it go, and I won’t.
But I can’t choose, either.
I can’t choose either man over the other, they both mean too much to me.
When I was being passed around foster homes like a bad smell, all I ever wanted was one person to give a shit about me. Now there’s the chance I have two. Two men who care enough to give me a chance. And they love me, he said so, and Jack isn’t the kind to lie.
I’m eating a bowl of cereal when he joins me in the kitchen. He pours himself one and takes a seat opposite, smelling ocean fresh with a navy-blue t-shirt over jeans.
“You don’t have many clothes, do you?” he asks, but it’s not a dig. I look down at the top I’m wearing, another basic cami, and one he’s seen already this past week.
“How many do I need? I can’t wear them all at once.”
He smiles. “It was an observation. Most girls I’ve ever met love clothes, can’t get enough of them.”
“I’m not most girls.”
“You got that right.”
He digs his wallet from his jeans and I put down my spoon as he counts out a load of notes. He slides them across the table at me. “What’s that?” I ask.
“For you,” he tells me. “I was thinking of buying you some things, clothes, boots, whatever, but you earned the money, you should spend it on whatever you want.”
Nobody has ever given me cash before. Gifts, but not cash. Nobody trusts me with cash.
“I don’t want it,” I tell him all the same. “I won’t be bought.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m trying to buy you for a hundred quid? Please. I’m hardly that much of a miser. I’m paying you for your work on the fence.”
“But I don’t want it,” I tell him. “I did it for me, not you.”
“Then I’m paying you for our fence, Carrie. Take the money please. A good job is a good job and worth paying for.”
I stare at the notes like they could bite me. “That’s too much.”
“Hardly. It’s not even minimum wage.”
“But what if I spend it all?” My eyes are so guarded when they meet his.
“I hope that you do. You need some new boots if you’re going to be trekking through fields every day, those old things are a health hazard.”
Slowly, so slowly I reach out and take the money. “Thanks,” I say, trying to play down how touched I am. Not just for the money, but because he trusts me enough to have it.
“I can take you into Gloucester if you like? Take you shopping?”
I shake my head quickly, much too quickly. “I’ll get the bus.”
He nods. “Okay, suit yourself. Be back in time for movie night though, yes? I’m getting in the popcorn.”
I turn the notes over and over in my fingers. One hundred pounds. A whole hundred pounds.
I think of the things I could buy. New underwear and boots and maybe a pack of cigarettes of my own, to smoke in the fields after a hard day of fencing. Maybe I could buy a new hairbrush and a lipstick. I’ve only got one lipstick, not that I ever wear the stuff.
“Carrie,” he says to call me back to my senses. “You’ll be back in time for movie night, yes? Don’t let us down.”
“I won’t,” I say. “I won’t let you down.”
And I won’t.
I’m never going to let him down. Nor Michael, either.
Michael
I slept a lousy sleep. It’s my phone that wakes me up, bleeping away on my bedside table.
I rub my eyes before I reach for it, and realise the daylight is blazing through the crack in the curtains.
“Wake up sleepyhead,” Jack says at the end of the line. “It’s almost midday.”
I check my alarm clock. He’s right.
That’s what a night pacing around your living room does for you.
“Guess I overslept.”
“Guess you did. You should’ve stayed over.”
I sigh. “I hardly think that would’ve been a good idea.”
“She loves you,” he says, just like that, and I sit bolt upright.