Page 15 of Just Like You (Square Mile Rogues #2)

Kieron

I took him for dinner, and we sat at a table with our feet in the sand, drinking rosé and talking nonsense. Discussing series we’d watched on Netflix and foods we liked to cook. A comfortable existence where I suddenly didn’t feel so wound up.

Because I’d spent the past twenty-four hours being so wound up that I’d knotted myself into someone I no longer recognised. I was exhausted, and not only from travelling and not having spent the night in a proper bed.

I wanted this. I wanted this to be perfect, and I wanted him to feel what I felt.

Which made me, once again, the arsehole, because I wasn’t completely delusional. I was just allergic to this thing called reality and liked to live my life by certain rules, ones I made up for myself.

I was losing the plot here, trying to hold a conversation when I could barely hold my eyes open.

“You can go to bed, you know,” he said softly, nudging my leg with his foot under the table.

“But then I’d miss out on all of this.” I said back, trying to sound charming, but instead I thought I might have slurred.

The rosé was exceptional. The surroundings stunning, the sound of the waves and the scent of the sea, my now bare feet on the sand.

And him. Sat there with a little smile on his face.

His normally coiffed hair now a blustery mess, his cheeks sporting a blush from the earlier sun.

And those lips on him? I wanted to kiss them.

Who was I kidding? I needed to go to bed and have him wrapped around me, and then I might be able to sleep and figure out how to function again. Not sit here and drool and have no idea what I wanted to eat.

“I’d go with the Malay curry. Nice and warming,” he said, gesturing at the menu that I was attempting to read. I’d brought my glasses on this trip, but of course I’d forgotten to put them in my shirt pocket. Like a plonker.

“Old age,” came out of my mouth. “I need reading glasses, but I forgot them.”

How to ruin a date in one simple sentence, but he just smiled.

“Hey, my contacts are out; I can’t see a thing either. But I heard the waiter recommend it.”

“So we’re both blind, sat here trying to read a menu neither of us can see?”

I loved how he laughed. How we did stupid things like this, and how it wasn’t as bad as I made it seem. It was fine. I was an idiot, and he just accepted that.

I loved that he did. That he didn’t roll his eyes at me or scold me with harsh words.

I could be embarrassing, I knew that. And that was the last thing I wanted to be here. I wanted to be perfectly acceptable and make him smile, the way he did now, adjusting himself in the seat.

“It doesn’t have to be fancy. Let’s just eat something, then I’ll take you back and put you to bed.”

“Okay,” I said quietly.

“To sleep. No more fucking. My arse needs a break.”

“Sorry.” I grinned. Hadn’t meant to but yeah, he was smiling too. Like we agreed that that part? Yes. Good. Very good.

“I keep thinking,” he said quietly. “How nice this is.”

Okay, I took it all back. I wanted to scoop him up in my arms and run away so I would never have to be without him again. Insanity speaking again, but that’s how I felt.

“Told you,” I replied softly. “It’s perfect. ”

“It’s been a few hours, Kieron. I still have no idea who you are or why the hell I agreed to bring you here, but you were right about one thing. You’re good company. It’s been, honestly, lovely so far.”

“I can imagine.” I tried to sit up straighter.

“That doing this job can get lonely, but also, I get what you said earlier, that you like your own space. Being able to come to a place like this and just enjoy it without any expectations or other people telling you what to do. Just to sit here and exist. I felt that earlier, how incredibly…”

Okay, now I was talking nonsense. Complete rubbish.

“Yes?” He leant forward in his seat as the waiter came and topped up our glasses.

I couldn’t even open my mouth, but he seemed to understand, quickly and politely getting all the words out, thanking the waiter and asking for more water, when I couldn’t even make myself speak.

“You were saying?” He took another sip of wine, my muddled brain just staring at his lips.

“I felt…honest,” came out of my mouth. “I don’t know why, but in my work, I sell things that don’t exist. I sell a dream of success, of huge incomes and massive sales and increased profits and…

It’s all lies. It’s things I make up, and it becomes so normal in your head that you forget what life can be like when you don’t have to lie.

When you can just exist, quietly in your own space. ”

“I absolutely get that,” he said, nodding like he did.

“Sorry, I’m talking nonsense. ”

“No, you’re not. I think there’s probably more to what you’re saying, especially as a queer man.”

“A queer man.” I smiled. “I don’t quite live my life like a queer man.

I work and eat and sleep, and sometimes opportunities present themselves, and the rest of the time, my head is too muddled to even register where I am.

Work does that to you. I go out and drink with my colleagues on a Friday afternoon.

I catch up with people. The weekends? I still sit at home with my laptop open, and I work. ”

“I’m starting to see why you need me.” His voice was soft and gentle. And for the second time today? I felt like I was about to burst into tears.

“I think,” I said, snorting and looking away.

Trying desperately to talk like a normal person.

“I am starting to understand my mum. People thought she was a complete nutter, but she wasn’t.

She just had all these ideas of things she wanted to do.

She didn’t want a boyfriend or a high-flying job.

She had lots of money, trust funds and income from her family’s holdings, but she didn’t care.

She just wanted to be happy and live and show me all these things she found fascinating.

It was a brilliant childhood. I just didn’t… ”

Fuck.

“You didn’t understand the need for more. The…drugs? Perhaps she masked it well.”

“She did. I was just a kid.”

“Exactly. And sometimes we do bad things. Sometimes we feel sad, and sometimes it’s not even us. The world can be a terrifying place. ”

“How did you become so wise?”

“School of life. I never made it to uni. Did a college course in Travel and Tourism and hopped on a plane. Here I am.”

“Here you are.”

We sat in silence for a while, letting the world just exist around us. I’d never realised how good exactly that felt. Where the expectations and pressures that usually held me down were simply drifting somewhere in the background.

Comfortable. It felt good. Like, I was finally able to relax. Also? The wine helped.

“Rice?” he asked, as I shook myself out of the haze I’d entered. The waiter watching me curiously, with a plate in his hand.

“Yeah,” I said, letting my hands scratch my face, as he rattled off something that I failed to take in.

“Allergies?” he said. I stared at him blankly. “Ki, do you have any allergies?”

“Ki?” I grinned.

“Idiot. Arsehole. Wanker. Which one do you prefer?”

“Now you’re being rude.”

“No allergies then. Look at the charred prawns, I’m so hungry I could eat all of those myself.”

“Greedy,” I laughed, then picked one up with my fingers. Zero manners. But I was, comfortable. Relaxed and happy and for once? It felt right. So incredibly right .

We ate, steering the conversation to lighter grounds, laughing about passengers he’d encountered. Celebrities. Lost children. Stories about colleagues who’d got themselves in a pickle.

“This girl met a guy on a night out in Miami.” His mouth was full of food, but he still talked.

Cute. Mine. Fuck everything else. “Got a little too drunk, so he took her back to his place. Shenanigans, you know.” He winked.

I grinned. “She woke up the next morning, pulled the curtains and all she could see was the sea. She was alone in this staff cabin on board a cruise ship, and they were miles out at sea.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. She had to stay on board until the next stop, obviously missed her flight home and had all her belongings in the crew hotel room. So she found herself in Bermuda, no passport, no ID, nothing but a fancy dress and a pair of heels, and all her belongings were in Miami. She lost her job and was flown home in shame.”

“Poor girl.”

“Yes, but she’s an adult, and she was at work. There was really no excuse.”

“Harsh. But yes. Agreed.”

“I had a steward once who rang me an hour before pickup and told me he was locked in someone’s flat in New York, couldn’t get out and had no idea how to ring the police to get help. It was…absurd.”

“Gosh. ”

“I had to break into his hotel room, packed all his clothes and had his uniform ready in a plastic bag as we went to the airport. He turned up at the gate an hour later in a pair of diamanté hotpants.”

“Brilliant.”

“At least he was sober.”

“True.”

“Ki.”

“Julian.”

Smiles. Warmth.

I could feel it. My skin was warm, but my insides were simmering in feelings. How I’d ended up here? Stupidity and guts. Perhaps a tiny bit of luck.

We walked back to our room, his finger hooked in mine. Like we were a couple, when we clearly weren’t. I knew that. Understood how this worked.

“I want to…” I said, feeling my face once again take on blood.

The darkness of the outside had made me brave, yet now I was suddenly bathed in the stark light from the ceiling as Julian was pressing all the buttons, trying to get the fan on and the light right.

And I was just standing here in my flimsy shorts and a shirt that had curry down the front, and I wanted. I wanted so much.

“I know you said your arse needed a break, but can I at least…”

“You can do anything you want,” he said softly. “As long as I can walk tomorrow. ”

“Be careful what you’re asking for,” I warned. I didn’t mean it like that, but…

“I trust you,” he said.

I swallowed. Hard.

“Not many people trust me,” I admitted. “I’m not always a good person.”

“I think you are. You haven’t given me any reason not to trust you. You’ve been honest and open about what you want and who you are, and I respect that. You have also been careful and respectful with my body, my needs and my wants. That is a massive green flag in my book.”

Wow.

“Not that I am ready to propose, Ki. You get that, right?” He said that part too fast, like he was taking all the words right back, when I knew he wasn’t.

Alcohol and happiness made you loose-lipped, but he had meant every word.

I could tell from the look on his face. The way he was trying to take it all back with every strained breath, when he couldn’t.

“I get that. I like you, Julian. And I will never do anything to hurt you.”

“That’s a big promise, Ki.”

It was. And my insides felt like they were turning themselves inside and out. But in that moment? I could see all the solutions. The future I wanted had blinded me.

I was allergic to reality, and somehow? I needed to find an antidote to that.