Marcus had always been a good kisser. He wasn’t just one of those men that made your lips tingle and your fingers twitch; he was more than that. With one brush of his mouth against mine, I became lost in him. He barely had to touch me before I was struggling to breathe. My body would sway forward, unable to wait for the moment we connected, greedy in its desire to quieten the mind with just a single second of tenderness from my boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

The term still seemed so alien to me, even after almost twelve months as an official couple. A couple who friends would refer to as Marcus and Natalie, Nat and Marcus. We were no longer single people. We no longer did things alone or were seen as two separate identities. In just a year, three hundred and sixty-five days, we had become one.

I wondered every single day if that was something I was ever going to get used to.

“Good morning, sleepy-head,” he groaned in that half asleep, half awake voice of his as he turned to face me in his bed. The white pillows and bed sheets framed his dark features perfectly, and when he unleashed his green eyes on me, the whole universe seemed to sparkle behind him as if to showcase him in his greatest light. It was saying, ‘Look at him, Natalie. Look at how gorgeous he is. Can you see the way he looks at you? Can you see the way we’ve highlighted the creases in his muscular shoulders and the way we’ve let the shadows fall on the curves of his biceps? Can you see the way the soft curls of his black hair fall perfectly onto his tanned face? Look at him, Natalie. Look how gorgeous he is.’ And I heard it all. I saw it all. I saw how lucky I was to have him in my life.

Marcus had taken me away from a world of pain and expected nothing much in return except for me to do whatever made me happy. After over a year of him convincing me that Preston was a good university to go to, I’d put my trust in him and studied Criminology and Psychology for three years of my life. As he had promised me, the first twelve months of my courses were spent around him, and it had been one of the best years of my new life. He’d gone out of his way to make me feel comfortable – at home – like I’d been around his friends and his lifestyle since the day I had been born. Marcus was that constant that was always there for me should I stumble or fall. He was an extension of my best friend, Sammy, and when she couldn’t be there, he was.

When he finished uni and returned home to find full-time employment, I felt lost in Preston. I’d made friends there, mostly thanks to him, but I didn’t have anyone like him or Sammy by my side. But still, I carried on and worked hard. I joined anything and everything I could – after class activities, sports clubs, even the debate team. I woke up at the crack of dawn, showered, dressed and then went out into the world. I worked and worked and worked. I wore my brain out, and I sweat until I couldn’t feel my muscles when I collapsed in bed. I knew the reason behind my behaviour, but it was very rare I allowed myself to acknowledge why I was so intent on keeping myself busy. If I didn’t have the time or the energy for those thoughts, they couldn’t take me over. They couldn’t turn me weak again.

And I’d done it. I’d succeeded. I’d completed my course with a first and now I was back in Leeds, lying in bed next to a man who had refused to give up on me.

Turning my body so I was facing him, I tucked both hands under my cheek and tried to blow the stray hair out of my face before I flashed him a smile. The hair never budged an inch, though, and without me having to say a word to him, Marcus reached over and brushed it away for me.

“Thank you.” I smiled softly while he traced his finger down my cheek, my neck and across my shoulder, instantly bringing my skin to life.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Like I was dead.”

“Definitely not dead.” He sighed through a half-smile. “The dead don’t snore.”

My leg moved instinctively, flying forward under the duvet to kick him playfully in the shin.

“Shit, woman. I bruise like a peach.”

“And you lie like a criminal.”

Marcus laughed roughly before he reached out and pulled me closer to him. There wasn’t any resistance from me. The first ten minutes of every morning were always my favourite with him. I let him guide me where he needed me to be, and once my hips were flush with his, I looked up into his eyes and tried to school my face to one of indifference.

“I won’t ever lie to you,” he whispered.

I believed him, too. He had no reason to lie to me. He’d always been more open and honest than I thought it was possible for a man to be. If anyone was the secret-keeper of the two of us, it was me. That very thought had my face falling just a little, but it didn’t matter how small the flinch, Marcus always saw it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his hand rising to brush through my hair in soothing, gentle strokes. It lulled me back into a sense of security, and as I closed my eyes and pulled in a breath, I also found the strength to smile. When I looked up to stare at him again, I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I closed the distance between us, and I kissed him. I kissed him the way I loved to kiss him – with absolutely nothing held back at all. That didn’t mean it was hungry or greedy. This was slow, almost painfully so. I’d spent so long perfecting this since we’d got together. I loved the way it silenced every thought I’d ever had. When I was mouth to mouth with Marcus, I felt sated. I felt warm. I felt loved and I felt at peace. It was why I knew I could spend my life glued to him this way. I didn’t need any energy to forget myself.

He eventually broke away, and as his alarm started to blare in the background, he groaned in annoyance before we both began cursing the world of work that was about to drag us away from one another.

It was just another typical Wednesday in Marcus’ apartment, and here I was after we’d both showered, watching him dress in his suit, shirt and tie, while I stepped into my dress. I didn’t need to ask him to lift the zip at the back for me. Within seconds of the fabric touching my shoulders, he’d crossed the room to fasten me in, planting a small kiss to my neck before he stepped away and grabbed his briefcase.

“Will I see you tonight?” he asked me on his return, once again pulling me closer to him by the waist. I loved how handsy he was with me. He’d never been shy in showing me how he felt, and I liked that. I liked that a lot. It made me feel desired.

“I don’t know,” I said, smirking as I swayed in his arms. “I think I might have a date with my other boyfriends tonight. I’ll have to check my calendar.”

“Give me their names and addresses now.”

“Why?”

“So I can kill them all immediately.”

“But then you’ll go to prison, and I’ll have to find somebody else to make me my full English breakfast on a Sunday morning.”

“It’ll be worth it.”

“Life would never be the same,” I joked.

“Good for me I know an exceptional therapist who could put me back together again once I’d screwed up.” His eyes widened, and so did his grin, right before he kissed me on the lips one last time and turned to leave.

“I’m a receptionist at a counselling centre,” I called out to him.

Pausing at the door, he spun around and gave me a winning wink. “Not for long.”

Then he left to go and spend his day in the office, computer programming, and I found myself moving around the apartment with a smile on my face, hoping he was right. For reasons I couldn’t quite explain, I’d gravitated towards the psychology courses available at Preston when it came to filling out my final application. Once back in Leeds, I’d headed straight out to as many interviews as I could get my hands on in the counselling environment. These were people’s lives I was going to be responsible for. At the age of just twenty-two, and without adequate experience to feel comfortable enough to counsel a grieving mother or a man with sociopathic tendencies, I’d jumped at the chance to be a receptionist at The Oakmere Centre.

I was doing what my sister had always told me to do. I was paying attention, trying to look beyond the bubble and learning from afar so when the time came, I could be good at what I chose to do.

It was late August and the weather was stifling hot for us. West Yorkshire, England, wasn’t exactly notorious for its heatwaves, but here we all were, milling about the streets of Leeds with sweaty foreheads and looks of absolute exhaustion on our faces before 8.30am.

As I pushed through the glass double doors of the building I worked in, I greeted everyone I knew with a smile. A weird energy seemed to be running through me that morning, and I couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason for it. The balls of my feet felt like they had springs built inside them, and even my blonde ponytail was bouncing behind me with a rare sense of enthusiasm as I slipped through the door to the reception area, spotting Barbara, my colleague, sitting there looking her usual, cheery self.

“Whoa,” she cried as she spun in her black leather chair and turned to face me. “Turn down the lights, darling. That smile is too bright for this time of morning.”

I rolled my eyes. “Good morning, Barbara.”

“It seems to be for you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” I was trying to brush her off and ignore her beady eye, even though I knew that I looked how I felt. It was weird. Everything felt off, like I was at the very top of a rollercoaster waiting to be dropped down, only the whole world had been put on pause, and all I was left with was this twisted feeling in my gut.

“Uh huh. Uh huh.” She nodded, watching my every move as I slipped into the chair beside her and glanced at her from the corner of my eye. Barbara was twice my age, but she never told me exactly how old. ‘Old enough to be your mother’ was all she ever said, even though a part of me always wondered if she was lying. Her flawless, Caribbean skin gave away no signs of age, and the bright whites of her eyes did nothing to make me believe she was even in her forties, never mind any older. There was no doubt about it, though, she loved to play the mother hen. Part of me wondered if that was because she’d never managed to have any kids of her own. “I know that look. Someone got the good stuff last night.”

“I always get the good stuff,” I boasted through a small chuckle as I rearranged some files on my desk.

“Nope, this is different. First of all, you never brag. The fact that you’re admitting you’re a lucky son-of-a-bitch to climb into bed with that man of yours every single night is already so out of character for you, I’m thinking Mr. Green Eyes must have pulled at least three or four big Os from you last night.”

“Barbara!” I whispered, scanning around the foyer to make sure nobody heard her. I wasn’t just grinning anymore; I was showing all of my pearly whites to the world. “You’re wicked, woman.”

“And you’re…”

“Going to make coffee,” I interrupted, pushing myself up from my chair before walking away and slipping into the small, behind-the-scenes area where only staff were permitted to go. It was like a shed in there. While the more public areas of the centre looked good to those that passed through, behind closed doors, it was a jumbled mess of old photocopiers, boxes and boxes of psychology books, and the odd treasure chest with enough caffeine inside it to get us all through the year.

There wasn’t a door to block off the sounds of the reception area, so even while I made coffee for the two of us, I could still hear Barbara as she laughed and chatted to herself about the possible reasons for my enthusiasm that morning. I could hear her as she answered calls with that rare receptionist’s charm of hers that most people weren’t used to.

I could hear her as the first of our patients came to the front desk. I could hear her as she greeted him with a good morning smile. I could hear her as she asked him to speak up when he gave his name. I could hear her as she repeated it back to him, too.

“Nicholas Law?”

“That’s correct,” came a voice.

His voice.

The voice I’d been pretending not to hear for over five years.

Alex.

Every goosebump on my body broke free in desperation, as though they were individually sticking their heads above the surface to take a peek for themselves – to see if it was really him I was hearing, and not just some cruel trick of the imagination that was there to test me.

The spoon I was holding landed on the floor with an almighty clang that seemed louder than it probably was, and as my knees began to shake and my feet felt like they were going to give way beneath me, my hands flew to the counter to grab on tightly.

My mouth fell open, my hair fell forward, and my breaths – they had fallen away completely. I tried to blink and focus, but nothing was happening. White noise started to ring in my ears, until it felt like I couldn’t hear anything at all but the screams of my past.

“Okay, Nicholas,” Barbara practically shouted, the hint of her accent somehow seeming more pronounced all of a sudden. “If you’d just like to take a seat.”

Then there was the silence – a pause for thought moment – until he eventually spoke again.

“Nicholas is my father. I’m here to support him. Dr. Cleveland is aware. He asked me to assist my dad today.”

“No problem at all. If you’d both just like to take a seat.”

“I’ll stand, thank you.”

His voice had travelled through to where I was standing, and somehow grabbed hold of my heart in a few seconds flat. The grip it had on me was frightening. The pain that tore through my body was excruciating, forcing me to lean over the counter as I tried desperately to pull in some oxygen.

Five years I’d been hiding.

Five years I’d been pretending he didn’t exist.

Five years of trying to live, destroyed in five small seconds. All the memories of our time together came flooding back to hit me square in the chest, and I hadn’t even laid eyes on him yet. The very thought of seeing him made me hyperventilate.

I stared down into two half-made cups of coffee, willing myself to grow some strength, or at the very least, some backbone to go out and hold my head up high, but I knew that all of that was wishful thinking.

My Alex was standing out there. My Alex.

How could I be strong around him? He was the one person who had the ability to break me completely. He wasn’t even aware I was nearby, and he was already succeeding. These feelings – the absolute panic and hysteria, the nausea – they were all too much.

He was too much to me.

Swallowing down the giant lump in my throat, I growled quietly and closed my eyes to find the fortitude to push myself up and dust myself off. One task at a time – that’s all I had to manage. Open my eyes, pick up the spoon, continue to stir. Push back my shoulders, and try to breathe. Breathing. Breathing was important. In and out. In and out. Feel the oxygen enter my lungs, then let it all out.

“Excuse me,” Alex called back to Barbara, causing me to flinch and close my eyes like he’d just thrown a spear at my chest.

“May I help you?” I didn’t miss the flirtatious tone she’d adopted. I could practically see her now: shoulders forward, elbow on desk as she tucked one side of her thick, black hair behind her ear and assessed him. Alex had made an impression on everyone when he was younger. I could only imagine how much he’d perfected that skill in the last few years.

“I hope so.” The tone of his voice had changed, and where he was once soft, like velvet, he now sounded husky, hoarse and deep. “I was wondering if I could ask you a question. It’s kind of personal.”

“We like personal around here. Especially me.” Her chair squeaked as she leaned forward, no doubt shuffling her boobs closer together. Jealousy ripped through me with a fierceness I’d not felt since I’d seen him with Bronwyn. I hated it. I hated it beyond all hate.

Alex huffed out a small laugh in response. “That’s handy for me, Mrs…”

“Miss Elland.”

“Miss Elland,” he practically purred. Hearing him speak that way to someone else, someone I knew, was excruciating. Hearing him at all was bad enough. Stupid images of him with other women over the years suddenly made my legs begin to shake again, and the air around me became thick and hot. The problem I had was that there was nowhere to go except out the way I came in… And I couldn’t let him see me.

“Call me Barbara.”

He huffed out a laugh again, and it was then that I realised that he didn’t sound like my Alex at all. There was a cockiness to him now – an arrogance, and above all else, an absolute certainty that he had Barbara in the palm of his hand.

Which he did.

Arsehole.

“Barbara. Listen. I don’t mean to pry, and you can tell me to go away if this seems like a strange thing for a stranger to ask, but…”

“Go on.”

“I was wondering what perfume you were wearing.”

“My perfume?” she asked before she obviously lifted her own wrist to her nose and inhaled sharply. “I’m afraid I’m not wearing any today, young man. Unless you count the Eau de Fabulous I wake up wearing each morning.”

“You’re not wearing any perfume?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” I didn’t catch Barbara’s answer that time. The mumbled words exchanged between the two of them were too low for me to pick up clearly, probably because everything inside my body was currently screaming at me to run away. I was just about to turn and face the music when the sound of hands slapped against the reception desk made me jump again. “My mistake. Sorry to trouble you.”

“Your mistake?” Barbara called after him.

“I thought I smelled something that reminded me of someone I used to know.”

The silence held itself in the air like a swinging pendulum for quite some time as my mouth stayed open in surprise, while both my hands pressed into my stomach.

The smell of my own perfume suddenly seemed to rise from my skin and drift under my nose, just to tease me, as did the realisation that I’d been wearing the same fragrance for over six years now. It had been Lizzy’s favourite. It reminded me of her.

“Old memories?” Barbara asked, unable to hide the sympathy and understanding in her voice.

“Something like that,” he eventually answered.

“I imagine a handsome man like you attracts a lot of attention. She must have been very special for her to stay with you that way.”

There was that pause again, and with my eyes closed, I imagined the old Alex and the face he could possibly be making. I remembered the way he wore his indecision well – half annoyed at himself, half too curious to care. A smile tried to tug on the corner of my mouth before I banished it.

“She was. I imagine she still is.”

“The one that got away, Mr. Law?”

“Alex,” he corrected. “Alex Law.” Even the sound of his name as confirmation had my hands pushing farther into the flesh of my stomach. “And please, ignore me. It’s probably my mind playing tricks on me. Miss Elland, I thank you for your time.”

“Anytime, darling.”

“Mr. Law?” came another voice – a voice I knew well as Dr. Cleveland’s. “If you’d both like to come this way, I’m ready for you now.”

I listened to three pairs of feet moving forward.

I waited until I heard the door close, too.

Then I bent over and curled my arms around my legs until I was in some kind of balanced foetal position, trying to remember how to breathe, and more importantly, how to stop myself from shaking.

I must have lost track of time, because before I had a chance to stand up and dust myself off, Barbara was swinging herself around the doorframe in search of me.

“That coffee you made me is so hot, it’s burning my mouth,” she began to joke.

Looking up through cautious eyes, I could only imagine how I looked to her. Lucky for me, I didn’t need to say anything at all. Her lips parted as she stared at me, and then, as though all the pennies were dropping at once, Barbara glanced over her shoulder to where Alex had been standing, then back at me again. A few repetitions of that movement and she eventually gave in, bringing her body down beside mine before looking up at me with sadness in her eyes.

“Oh, shit, Natalie.”