I SAT in the salon’s chair with my phone in hand, reading through the numerous happy birthday messages my friends had sent the night before, while the stylist finished straightening my freshly coloured hair. I ignored the incoming call from my father as I browsed, and my lips turned down when I realised I still had nothing from Walker. Not that he had any reason to text when in just a matter of hours I’d see him again. But after last night, when we ate our Chinese with nothing but a “Do you like it?” and a “Yeah” passed between us, I guess I was left with a sour taste in my mouth.
The night ended abruptly once we’d finished our takeout, and when he went to his room, I went to mine. As suspected, when I woke up this morning, his empty protein shake was in the sink, and he’d already worked out and left for work. It was Finley who came up to the penthouse with a bouquet of white roses, wishing me a happy birthday. And it was Finley who ushered me downstairs and into his BMW.
With instructions from Walker, he drove me to Mayfair, where I shopped religiously in Balmain. It was fun, yet lonely. Freeing, yet repressive.
Actually, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt. I’d always imagined that turning eighteen would make me feel more of an adult, when up until now, almost every day of my life had reminded me of my childhood. And those thoughts festered as I purchased two dresses for tonight’s dinner and the event Friday.
The festering only leered me to want to make a statement. Something that said I was all woman. Grown. An adult. That the past was the past, and today was another core memory towards my future. Because of that, I settled on a metallic green mini dress with a plunging neckline for dinner, and for fight night, I purchased a short black leather dress which left little to the imagination.
I had to ask myself if I was doing this for Walker’s attention. But regardless of me falsely agreeing with his admission yesterday–that he wanted me, but it wasn’t right–I wasn’t going to dwell. It was one thing attempting to persuade my father into doing what I wanted; it was another when it came to a man I’d barely known for a week and a half. As crazy as it seemed, our brief time together felt like nothing, when in his presence, I felt the strange familiarity of knowing him my entire life. Perhaps that was the hopeless romantic in me. Or an illusion of the broken shards of my memory that I’d never entirely pieced together.
Half the day later, dressed in my metallic green minidress, my hair pin-straight, and my make-up simple yet sexy, Finley pulled the car up outside a luxury restaurant not so far from the penthouse. With my feet inside my Loubigirl heels, he took my hand and helped me from the front seat.
“You look magnificent,” he told me as I righted myself on the pavement with a thank you and a smile.
“I don’t think anyone has ever called me magnificent before.”
He gave me a friendly wink, wished me a lovely time, and then I was on my way up a set of marble steps, either side of me encased by tall green vines. Once I reached the door, I gripped my clutch bag and made my way inside. My eyes scanned just how busy the restaurant was, a flutter of nerves filling my stomach.
Standing at the entrance of the restaurant, I waited to be acknowledged. Or at least spotted by Walker. But looking around the tables in view, full of people dressed exceptionally well, I didn’t spot him anywhere.
My attention was stolen when the maître d’ greeted me, her hazel eyes and brown hair darkened further by the ambient lighting and greenery surrounding us. “Welcome to The Grant. Do you have a reservation?” Her smile seemed genuine. Kind, even. And she didn’t attempt to rush me when I found myself lost for words. Assuming Walker was there somewhere, I swallowed back my nerves and nodded.
She clicked something on the tablet in her hand and then blinked at me, expectant yet completely at ease.
“Name, please?”
Shit. Did I give her my name or Walker’s?
Before I could answer, I felt a presence behind me and the warmth of a palm on my lower back. Even through the material of my dress, I could feel the heat of Walker’s skin. Butterflies took off through my body from his touch alone, replacing the nerves in my stomach with something more giddy. Subtly, I took a breath between my parted lips, and then his lips were against my ear.
“Happy birthday, brat. Sorry, I’m late.”
As hot as he’d made me only a moment ago, a chill now floated down my spine. He couldn’t have known, but I’d grown fond of the nickname. Whether he meant it as an endearment or not was still to be decided, but it beat kid.
“Mr Walker.” She smiled up at the man behind me as if he wasn’t a stranger. “It’s been a while, Mr Walker. Are you here with–”
“Blue Sterling,” he said with a tone I couldn’t decipher.
I hadn’t looked at him yet, and as eager as I was, I wanted to wait until we were seated, hoping I’d have calmed my racing heart and pulled myself together. Why was it that a public dinner with him felt so… so… intimate? We hadn’t even sat down yet. And it’s not like it was a date. He was being kind, taking me out for a birthday dinner, knowing I had no one else in London besides him to spend it with. There were no friends or family to celebrate, what with my father in Miami, distant relatives abandoned, and my mother… dead. If she were here… If she were alive and my parents were still married… I wondered how we’d celebrate my eighteenth. I wondered if I’d have grown up in London. I wondered if I’d have been the same Blue I was today. Would I have been a little less broken and a lot more whole? Would me and Walker have met in different circumstances? Would we have met at all?
My hand crept to my neck and clawed at the ghostly restraint around my throat. All the what ifs seemed to restrict air from flowing into my lungs. The atmosphere around me was so dry and irritable, I was surprised I hadn’t choked on it.
Walker’s hand on my lower back, rubbing circles with his thumb, helped me regain some sort of composure. Did he know? Did he understand? Did he read into my thoughts as if I’d spoken them aloud?
I blinked out of my stupor, noticing the maître d’ opening and closing her mouth, looking over my shoulder to Walker and then down at the computer tablet in her hand. Then, nodding to no one in particular, she swiped a pen over its screen. Time felt slow, but I was aware it had barely been minutes. That was the thing about anxiety. Though life seemed to continue on around me, it often felt like I was stuck in a box. A box I was unable to completely crawl out from.
“You happen to have the best seats in the house tonight,” she told us.
She led us to a table in the far corner of the restaurant, a more secluded spot beside a bifold door that looked out into the darkening sky. Walker pulled out my chair for me, and I obliged him by sitting down.
Still a little on edge, I told him, “Thank you.” Yet, I wasn’t ready to look at him. Too apprehensive about what I might find in his gaze. And perhaps a little nervous that whatever was going on between us was, in fact, really gone.
I heard him sit down in his seat opposite, but instead of looking up at him, I turned in my chair, glancing outside the window. It was beautiful–a path of white marble which led to a fountain. Except, at a closer glance, I realised the fountain wasn’t a fountain at all.
It was a fire.
I spun around so fast in my seat, my knee bumped the table and the cutlery rattled against the cloth.
“Breathe easy, Blue.”
I didn’t have to look at him to know he was concerned.
“I’m breathing.”
“Not easy.”
Blinking slowly, I took a deep breath and found something to focus on that didn’t remind me of my mother. That didn’t make me wonder the what ifs. That didn’t make me wonder more of why or have me seeking solutions to questions without answers and answers without questions, like that dredged night when I was three.
Dryness lined my throat as I stared at the table and asked, “Why is the table set for three?”
And then, I was three again, and all I heard was the faint sound of Walker rising from his chair before everything went dark.
I woke to the sound of a horn–my body stiffening when a hard thud hit our car. My lips parted in a scream, and as we skidded across the road, I felt something wet against the side of my face. Thunder sounded, and I was hanging upside down from my car seat. With bunny’s ear still clutched in my little hand, his legs touching the roof, I screamed for my mummy, who sat silently in the front seat. When I looked back down at my bunny, he wasn’t pink anymore–he was red. I turned my head to the side, and all I saw was the upside-down face of a boy, punching his bloody fist through the broken glass of my window.
My body trembled, but only when I felt fingers under my chin and light returning inside my wet eyes did I finally allow myself to look at Walker, who was no longer seated in front of me but crouched at my side.
“Hey.” He swallowed noticeably. “Where did you go just now?”
From the shadow of facial hair against his perfect jaw to his lazy styled chocolate hair, I forced myself to forget about the flames burning not so far behind me, about the memory that probably wasn’t an accurate recollection. About the innocent child I used to be or the woman I could have been if only things had panned out differently.
Instead, I focused my attention on him. I allowed his eyes to take me someplace else. The green and brown were so prominent, so alluring, that I barely noticed the crinkles lining either edge or the usual frown glued to his forehead.
What was he like as a boy?
Would he have saved me?
Would he have taken me away from my dying mother as I screamed for her?
He shuffled on his feet–he couldn’t have been comfortable on the floor. And yet he stayed, for me. I looked further down, drawn to his black suit as it pulled tighter with his current position. The room’s noise returned to my ears, and I frowned through a smile, despite my heart still beating like a drum. Despite the flush on my skin that begged to feel the cold.
I inhaled a ragged breath, then whispered, “You’re not worried about me, are you?”
“Should I be?”
“Do you want the truth or a lie?”
He took a deep breath of his own. “The truth. From now on, always the truth with you.”
I hated opening up. I hated speaking of something that, to this day, made me uncomfortable. But that didn’t stop me from confiding in him. Into giving him a part of me that nobody else had ever touched. Nobody but the boy, the stranger who saved me, anyway. And I didn’t want to share it with him. I didn’t want to have to remember anything about that night at all.
“I lost myself to a memory I’d rather forget.”
There.
Some truth.
His nostrils flared as he dropped his palm to my naked thigh; the slow strokes of his thumb soothing me. However, he didn’t question me further. But he did remain right where he was. Beside me, on the floor, in absolutely no rush to getaway.
“You know, people are staring.”
He smirked. “Worried they’re judging you, brat?”
Feeling myself blush harder, I looked down at my lap.
“They’re staring at you,” he murmured. “You look… exceptional.”
I looked back up at him with a smirk of my own. “Exceptional? Finley said I looked magnificent. Is the word beautiful no longer in a gentleman’s vocabulary?”
He bit back his full bottom lip, his thumb pausing and pressing into my skin as his eyes darted from my cleavage to my mouth. His eyes lingered there for a moment before he met my gaze again. “You wouldn’t consider me a gentleman if I told you what I really thought, and considering you lost yourself just then, it’s better that I keep it to myself.”
As he stood and rounded the table back to his seat, a waiter appeared and popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. Walker kept his eyes on me while my own followed the waiter. He filled my glass with champagne, and only when he went to fill Walker’s glass did Walker shake his head. “No thanks. I’m good with water.” And then he gestured to the third table placement. “We won’t be needing these.”
My heart jerked, dropping into my stomach, although my lips twitched simultaneously. I was a ball of emotions. On edge, yet delighted. And then, I felt confused as the waiter set the champagne bottle down on the table and took away the third cutlery set. Because… “Wait. You’re not drinking?”
“Nope. It’s your birthday. You get to have all the fun tonight.”
“Are you babying me, Mr Walker?”
He dropped his head to the side and studied me, his finger running down the handle of his knife. “I’m just taking care of my asset,” he said with a smirk, and then, in a second breath, “There’s one guess how the night would end if the two of us were intoxicated.”
“With me under you?” I took a sip of my champagne, staring at him over the edge of my glass.
His jaw ticked. “When it comes to restraint, you make me lose it.”
Of course, he hadn’t denied it. How could he? Our sexual chemistry was unquestionable.
I finished off the rest of my glass, only to fill it again.
“Steady. You haven’t eaten anything yet.”
“Two glasses of champagne are hardly going to do any damage now, are they?”
He’d know.
We were in a silent stare off when the waiter appeared back at our table, placing my meal in front of me. Pulling my eyes away from Walker, I looked down at the food in front of me in question.
“We’re not having a starter?”
He hiked an eyebrow. “Did you want a starter? I didn’t think you’d be too hungry with how much food you ate last night.”
“The chow mein was delicious,” I agreed.
He moved his gaze from me to his plate as the waiter set it down in front of him. “Tonight’s a set menu. Lamb loin with caramelised onions and rhubarb compote.” Holding out a finger to the waiter, they both waited patiently for the answer I was yet to give.
“Are we having dessert?”
“It’s your birthday. If you want dessert, baby, you can have dessert.”
Realising his accidental endearment, he cleared his throat and tipped his chin at the waiter beside him, taking my question for what it was and giving the man permission to leave us to dine in peace.
He didn’t mention the endearment once we were alone. And he didn’t apologise or proclaim he’d never meant to say it. He simply picked up his cutlery and dug into his meal, watching me under his eyelashes as I did the same to him.
“Baby?” I spoke under my breath.
Little did he know, I’d be his baby. I was beginning to believe I’d be his anything if he’d let me. Though perhaps that’s where it was all going wrong, because given our situation, I didn’t think he wanted me to be his.
