As soon as my heels touched the sidewalk, I shut the cab door, and thanked the driver. The cab drove away almost immediately, rushing to his next destination, as my sigh blew into a white cloud before my face.

I wiggled my feet out of the heels, and groaned when my sore feet touched the cold sidewalk tile. Gosh, I’d never done so much standing and walking in these ridiculously high heels. At least not for a few years.

I was out of practice now.

Picking up my shoes in one hand, I held my jacket tight around my body with the other as I made my way down the street. All there was left to do now was fall into my bed and pass out.

Because when you’ve been jobless for almost six years, then suddenly take your ass to work one day, your body is most likely to complain the rest of the day. It was that day for me today.

And I had left my phone at home, which was the root cause of my tensed shoulders throughout the day. It felt ridiculous to even imagine it, but I couldn’t help glancing back and forth between the club doors. Since everything from my past had seemed to be aligning perfectly into my present, it was not totally delusional to expect another coincident.

And as thrilling as it sounded, I was relieved it did not happen.

The last thing I wanted was to see Ian walking in through the doors and seeing me in the club. Not that I intended to hide anything from him. I would tell him everything. Soon.

As I approached the house, a black car parked outside the front caught my attention. A very familiar car.

There was no much light shedding from the distant streetlight to clear out the view, but when I was close enough, a smile stretched across my tired face.

Niall’s r8.

He stood with his back pressed against the other side of the car, all I could see was the back of his head over the roof.

“Look, who paid me a visit.” I chuckled, making my way around the car to him. “Took you long enough to—” my words came to an abrupt halt when my eyes locked with a pair of clear blue eyes.

“Ian?” Warmth bloomed in my chest.

He stared back at me for a long moment, without uttering a single word. His name hanging in the air between us. He looked as gorgeous as ever in the brown sweater and beige trousers. But something about the look on his face was bothersome.

It was because of the phone. I just knew it.

When he did not make any attempts to move, I dragged my bare feet toward him and slumped my body against his, circling my free hand around his neck.

I pressed a kiss to his Adams apple, before nuzzling it. “Hi,”

He didn’t respond immediately. But I felt some of the tension leaving his body, when his arms come around me in a gentle hold, basking me in his warmth, in his soothing

presence.

You never knew how desperate you could get for something, until it was far away from the reach. Then every second of every minute you spend, you’d find your mind wandering away to meet them. That had been my condition throughout the day today.

“I forgot my phone at home. Left early in the morning, so couldn’t text you. I must have worried you.” I tipped my head up, resting my chin against his chest and staring up at him longingly. “I’m sorry.”

He looked deep in thought as he brought his eyes down on me. But he looked distracted. Like he was here but not here, with me. I must have worried him a lot. To the extent that he had to come here himself to check up on me.

My considerate psychia— No. Boyfriend.

My considerate, gorgeous boyfriend.

With my hand at his nape, I pulled him down and pressed my lips against his, sighing when the warmth of his mouth seeped through my own. Ian too, seemed to have come back to me by the touch, because his hands ran up my back and into my hair, gripping the base of my neck. Tugging my head back almost painfully, he kissed me harder, using his other hand to pull me flush against his body.

Instantly, my mind fogged up and body came alive with a new warmth. Blood rushed to my head and pulses between my legs as his tongue slipped through my lips and into my mouth, coiling with mine, dancing together. It was a whole days’ worth of kisses in one.

When I pulled back to catch a breath, Ian kept his hand at the back of my head, pressing my forehead against his. We were breathing into each other’s mouth. Breathing in each other.

“Where were you, Maeve?” His voice was a faint whisper against my lips. And unwillingly, my arms tensed around him.

At work. Two simple harmless words, but they stuck right below my wind pipe, refusing to leave my mouth.

Why was he asking me that? And why like that?

At my lack of response, Ian pushed away from my forehead to look at me, eyes void of anything I could point out.

His unwavering stare burned into mine as he asked, rather softly, “Where were you?”

I blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Again.

“At work.” Finally voicing out the words, I searched for the usual glint in his eyes. The playful Ian just waiting to jump out and say “Gotcha!”.

He was nowhere in sight.

I searched for anything at all. Nothing. His eyes were blank. Something very unpleasant crawled up the back of my neck.

“Ian?” God, why did I sound like I was guilty of something?

His fingers soothed my hair out of my face, and an expression—closely resembling pain—flashed across his face. Too quickly for me to catch, but I did. I caught it. I caught and clung to it, because it was the first emotion that I was able to point out in his face.

“Where were you, Maeve?” He asked again, voice close to breaking.

This time a frown twisted its way up my face, and I furrowed my brows in confusion. “I was at work, Ian. At work. What is wrong? Why are you acting like this?” I cupped my palm around his jaws, making him face me, and held his eyes. “Is it because of the phone? Because I didn’t text you? Then come in right now with me. I left it somewhere in the bedroom. You can see for yourself if you don’t believe me—”

“I want to,” he blurted out, cutting off my voice which had raised against my will. He dropped his eyes and I caught the second expression crossing his face. Defeat.

The weight of his words weighed down on my shoulders. He wanted to believe me? So he didn’t already? And why did it sound like he was talking about something else?

"Ian," I leaned up and pressed out foreheads together, my tone softening on its own. "What's wrong, baby? Please tell me."

Ian closed his eyes and released a slow breath, contemplating something silently in his head. My nerves twitched and knotted together, stirring up a warning inside me.

Something had happened. I hadn't seen Ian so tensed and stiff since I ran into him at the court building. No, not even when I saw him breaking up with his girlfriend.

The realization twisted in my guts.

"Ian?"

“Can I take you somewhere?” He finally raised his eyes to me, and I was vaguely aware of his arms no longer wrapped around me.

I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Every inch of my body that was not touching his, felt incomplete. He was a part of me now. How could I ever feel complete when a part of me—the most important one—was missing?

When I could not point out another emotion in his face, I grabbed his hand in mine and pressed his cold knuckle against my chest, hoping he’d feel the unsteady thumping of my heart against it. Of how the slightest change in his behaviour had my nerves in a knot.

“Take me wherever you want.”

The deafening silence that was stretching further and further inside the car had spiked my anxiety up to the sky.

Ian’s hand rested on the steering wheel, eyes strained forward on the road, and attention remained away from me. By every passing second, I was feeling him slip away from me little by little, and that thought was clogging up my throat, leaving me unable to utter a single word to him.

The worst-case scenarios forced it's way into my head, and one of them was hauntingly ticking all the boxes.

Did he know? Did he finally find out before I could tell him? Was it really too late?

Marwick’s words rang in my ears unbidden.

“You must tell him before he finds out from somewhere else. You know how that will end.”

I think I was going to find out how.

When Ian finally pulled over, he killed the engine and hopped out without even sparing me a glance. He didn’t open my door. Just walked away.

Ian always opened my door.

Feeling the bits of the world I created slowly crumbling one by one to my feet, I climbed out of the car and shut the door, before making my way over to his side.

We were at the roadside park. The one where I had stormed off to from his clinic on the first day of my therapy session. The one where he had followed me, to make sure I was okay.

Ian clasped his hands behind his head, pacing back and forth like he was trying to accumulate enough energy to do something. I didn't know what. Probably to tell me something I’d not want to hear.

I stood at the hood of the car, watching him pace impatiently. In the short time that I had been fortunate enough to spend with

him, I had never seen him so agitated, so out of sorts.

My eyes raised to his when his figure approached me, and grabbed my hand, before dragging me towards the park with him, away from the night traffic.

His pace was fast, and my heels bit into the back of my ankle as I tried to keep up with him. But I didn't complain. I quietly followed after him.

When he finally came to a stop, we were somewhere far inside the park, surrounded by the dim light shedding from the lamp posts lined along the pavers.

His hand slipped away from mine, and the lack of contact left me shivering under the jacket. It was cold.

Without him wrapped around me, I was always cold.

Ian puffed out a white cloud of breath, then turned to me, looking at my feet rather than face.

Please look at me.

“Is there anything I need to know, that you would want to tell me about?” His voice went straight past me. It didn’t crawl

around my skin and settle in my stomach like usual.

There was so much I wanted to tell him, but I didn’t even know if he wanted to hear how my first day at work was, or the kitten that I fed at the back of the club. We were beyond the casual chitchat.

I thought that once something was put behind us, it remained there. In the past. But the lines between past and present were blurring away for a moment, and that cruel moment stretched between us, drawing us further apart.

“Nothing?” I raised my eyes to him when his voice fell on my ears again. His face twisted into something between anger and hurt. It was blended so perfectly that I couldn’t point out what was dominating his thoughts. His heart.

He brought a hand up and fished out something from under his sweater. A piece of paper. He stared at it for a moment too long and an invisible grip around my neck tightened.

“Blue Heaven,” he whispered, loud enough for my ears. He flung the piece of paper to the ground between us, then raised his glossy eyes to me. “Does that sound familiar, sweetheart?”

My eyes settled on the business card lying on the grass between us—which was supposed to be hidden behind the wine glasses at my house—and in a split of a second, every question in my head wiped clean. My head went blank, and the stirring anxiety subsided. My body went stiff, not with tension, but with realization. A bitter realization that my biggest fear had taken form right before my eyes.

I could see it. In Ian’s face.

“Yes,” my voice was faint as I answered him. “It does.”

Ian looked at me like I had punctured a fist right through his chest and squeezed his heart dead.

"It does?" He shook his head with a bitter chuckle. “Is that why—” he breathed out and started pacing again. “Is that why you felt so familiar? Everytime I looked at you, touched you,” he crouched down and buried his face in his hand. “everytime I fucked you. Is that why you felt familiar to me? Because I had done those things before?”

Something clutched at my chest, but my tears refused help it drain out of my body. My face was pretty much blank, contradicting the emotional turmoil inside me. I had this coming. But in a whole different scenario. Where Ian wasn’t crouched on the grass and I wasn’t standing still like a statue.

But this wasn’t an alternate dimension. This was reality, where people rightly preferred looks over character, lust over love and virgins over…prostitutes.

I guess I was out of the equation then.

Finally.