Chapter Twenty-One
Bailey shoved her ancient laptop into her holdall with shaking hands. It took three tries, but she finally forced the wide, plastic carcass past the zipper of the bag. Her breath was fast and laboured, as if she’d just run a mile—but she hadn’t run at all. No; she’d left the living room and climbed each flight of stairs at a sedate pace, as though she were a duchess and not an interloper who’d just been quite firmly put in her place.
Shit.
Releasing a long, shaking sigh, she sat down heavily on the bed. The bed where just last night, she’d allowed herself to believe that she’d found an impossible man. A man who was capable of real partnership.
Of real love.
She should never have judged her mother. But Bailey hadn’t realised just how convincing men could be. How they could speak with a look, with a touch, and then open their mouths and bring the fantasy crashing down.
Fuck, Cash had been clear from the start. He’d told her exactly what he wanted. She’d agreed! And still, she ended up ascribing impossible values to intangible things. Ended up developing feelings, for Christ’s sake. She’d made a damned fool of herself, and she deserved the humiliation.
But she didn’t have to like it.
With a huff of disgust, Bailey tore off her glasses, swiping angrily at the tears that threatened to overflow from her lashes. Was she a child to tantrum over rejection? Her own mother had handled divorces with more dignity than this.
Clutching that thought tightly to her heart, Bailey took a deep breath. Then another, and another, until the shard of ice in her chest felt like nothing more than a splinter. She cleaned her glasses on the bed sheet and pushed them back into place, then tied her locs up neatly.
There. Now she was being sensible. Now she was in control.
First things first: she had no ride. If she wanted to leave, that meant ordering a taxi to the middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve. And she was pretty sure that Uber wouldn’t be an option.
Okay, so she’d Google it. The price would be astronomical, but she had some savings. Humiliated flight from her boss’s family home wasn’t exactly what she’d intended to use those savings for, but whatever.
Her movements calmer now, Bailey stood and went over to the little pile of luggage Cash had left by the wardrobe. Between their busy night and a day spent entertaining the kids, they hadn’t really had time to unpack. Her mother would’ve called that a sign.
Some of their things had been pulled out and left on top of the pile, though, and Bailey spied one of her favourite cardigans amongst the mess. She wasn’t about to leave that behind, or anything else; if he had to return any of her things at work, she’d die of mortification.
God, work. She’d have to see him every day. Everyone would want to know how their Christmas went. Of course, that was assuming he wouldn’t sack her, after this mess. But he’d never do something like that.
Would he?
Bailey flicked through her mental Rolodex of men, the archetypes she’d created through years of watching her mother’s mistakes. For what felt like the thousandth time, she tried to figure out exactly what kind of man Cash Evans really was.
There was the Roger: a guy who was looking for a trophy, a badge of honour, another enviable possession for his collection.
That wasn’t Cash. If it was, he’d hardly go for a girl like her.
Okay. The Paul: a mess of a man whose big dreams were eclipsed only by his sense of entitlement. Work was for others; rewards were his due. Probably called his bedmates Mummy. Thought ‘girlfriend’ was code for ‘live-in maid’ and ‘wife’ was code for ‘slave’.
But Cash didn’t fit that mould either.
Who else?
The Mike: desperate to be loved—not to love in return, but to feel like he was worth something. Charming one minute, hateful the next. Every insult he sent your way was originally meant for himself. Toxic to the core. Needed a punching bag with a pussy.
Was that Cash? The man who’d spent all day playing tirelessly with his nephews, the man who worshipped his mother in his own quiet way and loved his sister so dearly?
She was starting to think that he didn’t fit into any of her categories. In fact, the more she considered the man she’d come to know, the more she thought that he might simply be… Good.
Good, and not at all in love with her. Obviously.
Irritated, Bailey tugged roughly at the sleeve of her cardigan, hanging out from beneath all their other luggage. It came loose—and pulled down the whole pile of stuff with it. For fuck’s sake.
She knelt on the floor and picked everything up. It was mostly Cash’s: his clothes, the box of condoms they’d almost emptied—she felt her cheeks heat up and hated herself for it. And—what was this?
His sketchbook. No—not the kind she’d seen before, the kind he left lying around the shop and bought in bulk because he went through them so fast. This one was smaller, heavier, bound in buttery leather. A loose sheaf of pages hung from its edge—they must have been dislodged when everything fell. Bailey picked up the book with brisk hands, pushing the loose pages back in.
But then her gaze caught on a slice of familiarity, cast in black Biro. The corner of a smile, the edge of a thick pair of glasses, a few long locs.
That was her. Cash had drawn her.
She eased the paper slowly out from the sketchbook’s embrace, her heart pounding. She shouldn’t be doing this. It felt like reading somebody’s diary. A small part of her brain said Fuck him, anyway! But most of her was horrified at her own audacity. Not to mention her weakness. She shouldn’t want to look inside his head--she shouldn’t even want to look at him.
The page slid free and she came face to face with herself, and her doubts disappeared. She simply didn’t have room for them anymore.
God, he was talented. She hadn’t known that he could do this—portraiture, and so realistic, too. The drawing took up the whole page; just her, smiling at nothing, wearing one of her Christmas jumpers, the one with the snowflake pattern. The image was cut off just below her chest, but that was enough to recognise her clothing. In the corner, he’d written: Bailey, life, 16/12/17.
She turned the page over. There was more.
This side featured multiple drawings, much smaller than the other one, and more cartoon-like in style. There were four, and she was in all of them. But she wasn’t always alone.
In the first, she was drawn from above, lying down in bed. Naked. She remembered his words the night before: I always see you naked, when I dream of you. Her locs were arranged into heart-shapes that fanned out around her head, scattered with roses. The sight made her smile. Then she wiped her expression clean. No smiling. No softening. No weakness.
In the second ,she was another version of herself, a winged version whose hair rose about her head in a maelstrom, with terrible eyes and a wicked smile, wearing a gown that looked like a dark wedding dress.
In the third, she was her usual self, clad in jeans and a jumper, but she held hands with someone whose body was just out of frame. Only their forearm was visible. A forearm decorated in familiar ink, tentacles wrapping around its wrist.
In the fourth, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. There was a smiling, curly-haired toddler in her lap.
She stared at the fourth picture for a long time. A long, long time.
Then she opened the sketchbook.
Bailey, life, 21/12/17. Bailey, 17/12/17. Bailey, life, 12/12/17. She worked back from the middle to the front
09/12/17.
28/11/17.
20/11/17.
Bailey, life, 30/10/17.
What the fuck? In these images, she was in the coffee shop, her sleeves rolled up and her hair in a bun, steaming milk or stacking mugs or serving a customer.
He’d been drawing her since the coffee shop?
She flicked to the very first page. It was a quick sketch of she and Tara, laughing together behind the counter. Labelled Coffee Girl, life, 12/10/2017. In bold, block caps beneath the label, Cash had written: TOMORROW, FIND OUT HER NAME.
She remembered that day. The first time he’d come in, dragged by a pretty girl with blue hair and a lip ring. She’d never seen the girl again.
But she’d seen Cash.
A light knock interrupted her snooping. She dropped the book like it was on fire, then picked it up again and closed it carefully, laying it on top of Cash’s suitcase.
“Hello?” She called, rising awkwardly. Her left foot had gone to sleep.
“It’s me, love!” Came the loud response.
Biting her lip, Bailey sat down on the bed. “Come in.”
The door swung open and Karen entered like a tornado, crossing the room in what felt like a single swoop. She pulled Bailey up off the bed and into her arms, her ample cleavage like a pillow to the gut.
“Oh, you poor thing. That bloody son of mine. Ooooh, I could throttle him!” Her grip on Bailey’s waist came dangerously close to a similar level of violence. But then she let go suddenly and stepped back, slapping her palms to her own cheeks. She looked like a cartoon character. “Monroe told me not to get involved. I told her bugger off, it’s my right to get involved; and anyway, I’m not getting involved! I just wanted to tell you something—”
“Karen,” Bailey said. “You really don’t need to—”
But the other woman interrupted Bailey with a wail, her gaze going to the holdall on the bed. “Oh, Lord, you’re packing! You’re not going, are you? How will you get home? Well, of course, George would drive you. But I don’t want you to leave! That won’t do at all. Cash can leave! It would serve him right! He lives to give me grey hairs, that boy.” She shook her head. “Listen, now Bailey, I know I’ve got a cheek. But I like you. I really do. And I like what you’ve done for my boy.”
“I haven’t done anything for him,” Bailey mumbled.
“Oh, now that’s not true.” Karen plopped herself down on the bed and patted the space beside her, waiting until Bailey sank reluctantly onto the mattress. “He rings me every day, you know. But I suppose he never told you that.”
Bailey’s brows shot up in surprise. “…No, he never…”
“Doesn’t fit his image, I’m sure. You know these magazines and all, they think he’s a proper bad boy! Honestly. My little Cashew Nut! Well.” Karen adjusted her apron with a sniff. Lord only knew why she was still wearing the thing, but she rarely seemed to take it off. “It started when he went on his little world tour. He was very anxious about leaving me to my own devices, so he called me at least once a day. But never mind that; I’m waffling. I only came up to say one thing, just one thing! Is that alright?”
Karen was gazing at Bailey very seriously, as though it really would take just a word for her to leave without completing her speech. But the little woman was near bursting with desperation; that much was obvious.
“Okay,” Bailey said. Her voice was almost a whisper.
“Good. Good. Well. Now I barely know where to begin! But I should tell you the whole story, shouldn’t I? So: I met Cash’s father when I was fifteen. He was twenty-seven years old.”