“How’s the chicken?”

“It’s good.” I nodded slowly, my fork pressed against the food in front of me as my mind drifted back to two days ago, at work with Alex.

“Nat?”

“Yeah.” My eyes rose up to meet Marcus’, and when I saw his warm face staring back at me, I instantly felt guilty for not giving him my full attention.

“You aren’t even eating chicken. It’s pork.”

I glanced down quickly to see if he was right, and as always, he was. We were sitting at our usual table in our favourite restaurant in the middle of Leeds city centre. It was the same place we ate at once a month – a kind of celebration of our relationship, and a reminder of where Marcus brought me one drunken night to woo me. It worked, so now this place was his lucky charm spot.

It was our midweek date night, yet I was mentally somewhere else.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly, shaking my head as I looked back up at him through dazed eyes.

“Bad day at the office?”

“Something like that.” I smiled softly.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Yes. Yes, I did want to talk about it, only I couldn’t. All the people I would usually go to were no longer an option. I couldn’t tell Marcus. Not because I believed he would have had an issue with me for it, but more due to the fact that I didn’t want him to see even a hint of longing on my face when I told him Alex was back in town. The same applied to Sammy. How could I talk to her about what I was feeling? I was dating her brother now. His happiness was paramount to her, as it should be. Suzie was out of the question. The two of us were still close, but by some miracle, she and Paul had survived the testing university years and were now off living life to the full. They were having fun. I didn’t want to spoil that for them. I also didn’t want to give Paul any insight into how I felt when I saw Alex. Not after being told he was drip-feeding information to the other side. Danni had landed a modelling contract with some hippy agency in London, and she was now off travelling the delights of Europe and would only have told me to pull myself together, anyway. And my parents… No. I couldn’t do it to them all over again.

“It’s just work stuff, Marcus. Don’t worry about it.”

“I do worry. You know I hate it when you go into yourself like this. You’re here but you’re not. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

“The heebie-jeebies?” I smirked, trying to turn the conversation as playful as it should have been.

“Yeah. It’s a similar freak out to the feeling I have when I see your hairy toes.”

“Hey!” I gasped, reaching over for a prawn cracker and aiming it straight at his head. Marcus caught it quickly and began to chuckle before he bit down on it and gobbled it up. “I do not have hairy toes.”

“There she is. My feisty girl woke up.”

There was something ridiculously flattering about being called his girl. Even tonight, after just another busy day at work with his collar undone and his hair a floppy mess, it was impossible to miss the attention he was getting from other women. I could feel the sly glances from the other tables, and yet, it didn’t bother me one bit. It didn’t bother me because Marcus had no fear of showing the world he was taken by me.

I was his girl.

“I shouldn’t like you as much as I do,” I told him quietly.

“I thought you loved me.”

I shrugged a shoulder and flashed him a grin. “Meh.”

“So are you going to tell me what’s on that little mind of yours or am I going to have to take you home and fuck it out of you?”

I took a deep breath at his offer and pressed a hand to the bottom of my stomach. With just a few jovial words, he’d made my anxiety flip to arousal, and I couldn’t have adored him more for it. There was no way I could lie to him, I realised. I respected him too much for that. I just had to figure out a way to make myself look and sound less guilty than I felt – and whether my guilt was misplaced or not, it was there and it was powerful.

Pushing some rice into my mouth to buy myself some time, I began to chew before I plucked up the courage to speak. “It’s nothing serious. A blast from the past just happened to walk through the doors last week, that’s all.”

“Oh yeah?” His eyes went wider, the genuine interest in my troubles enough to squeeze my heart as I watched him tuck into his Chow Mein.

“Mmmhmm.”

“Anyone I know?”

“It was Mr. Law.”

“Who?” he asked, scrunching up his face.

My lips rubbed together nervously as I watched him. He was so innocent sometimes. I envied his lack of worry. “Mr. Law. Nicholas Law.”

“I know that name. Why do I know that name?”

“It’s Alex’s father, Marcus.”

There was a slight pause as his fork travelled to his mouth, but just as quickly as he stumbled, he straightened himself back up and carried on regardless.

“I see,” he said through a mouth full of food. “How did that make you feel? I know that guy was an arsehole to you.”

“Fortunately, he didn’t see me. Barbara dealt with him. I was in the back room making coffee.”

“Still. You must have felt something.”

“That’s what I’m still trying to figure out. I don’t know how I felt about it.”

Marcus dropped his cutlery again and reached across for his bottle of beer. He didn’t take his eyes away from mine as he took a slow sip, though, and I couldn’t get a read on his thoughts.

“I mean,” I carried on nervously, “I guess a part of me always knew he’d either end up in therapy or end up dead too soon, you know? I just never expected it to land on my doorstep. Not after they all left.”

“Who is he seeing?”

“Cleveland.”

“Wow. He must be bad.”

“Apparently he’s doing a favour for someone from another centre. I don’t know the whole story.”

“Do you know who he’s doing the favour for?”

“No,” I admitted weakly, the thought plaguing me as it had been doing since the first day I realised what was going on.

“Was he alone?”

My heart dropped into my stomach as the one question I so desperately wanted to avoid came up, but I shook my head and mumbled a weak “no,” anyway.

“Damn,” Marcus mouthed, dropping his beer back down on the table and taking a moment to stare at his food.

I hated the look on his face, and I hated that I was the one causing it, but when I opened my mouth to reassure him Alex wasn’t going to be a problem, he cut me off completely.

“I guess some people just don’t know when to walk away from something so destructive.”

“Marcus, I–”

“But I also guess it makes sense that she’d be there with him. She put up with it for years. She wasn’t going to just stop when she got so far, you know? Poor woman. I bet he’s had to be dragged to therapy kicking and screaming.”

She? I frowned in confusion, unable to take my eyes away from him as he casually picked up his cutlery and began to eat again without a care in the world.

“I hate how that woman spoke to you that night, though. God, I’ll never forget how upset you were when you climbed back into that cab. It can’t have been easy seeing either of them at the centre. What did you say his poor cow of a wife was called?” he mumbled.

“Umm,” I croaked, clearing my throat quickly to correct myself. “Beatrice.”

Shrugging, he shook his head as though completely bewildered and peeked up at me with a cheeky grin on his face.

“Sounds to me like you had a lucky escape. Good job you know the only thing I’ll ever be addicted to is screwing you on my sofa after a night of watching Netflix.”

My nervous laughter ripped free at how casually he spoke about these things and how little he cared about the mention of my ex’s parents making a return to my life. I knew I should have corrected him and told him it was Alex who had been there with his dad. I just couldn't, not when Marcus looked so content.

“You’re such a romantic.”

“You know it.”

“I love you.” I chuckled. “I hope you know that.”

He winked. “Just be careful, Nat. You can’t save everyone, especially those that have no desire to be saved. I know this is personal for you.”

“Don’t worry. I’m only a receptionist. His troubles aren’t mine anymore.”

“Only a receptionist for now. Soon you’ll be so much more. Remember that.”

I grinned genuinely then. He’d pulled me back out again, and as I watched him polish off his meal while I looked on at him through love-struck eyes, I tried to imagine a life without him around.

There wasn’t life without Marcus.

He was the sunshine to my heart.

Alex was the storm now.

One was night and one was day.

Right then, all I wanted to do was bask in the glorious heat that sat in front of me. Storm chasing was too dangerous, and I wasn’t that desperate for a thrill.

Four hours and several cocktails later, the two of us stumbled down the street to his apartment, a little worse for wear than we usually got on a work night. Whether he’d sensed my tension and staged an unspoken intervention of his own or not, I didn’t know. All I did know was that the more cocktails he poured down my throat, the more relaxed I felt. The blurrier things got, the happier I became, until I was begging him to take me to a lap-dancing bar just for fun.

“I need to get you home,” he’d laughed, holding me by the waist as he walked backwards and I pressed all my body weight against him.

“Let’s go see some naked ladies,” I slurred with a sleepy look on my face as we made slow progress together.

“Are you hiding some hidden girl-on-girl fantasies from me? ‘Cause I’ve got to tell you, that’s the sort of shit you really don’t need to keep to yourself. Sharing is caring.” Marcus pressed a kiss to my nose while I huffed out a small laugh and batted my eyelashes at him.

“No, arseface. I was thinking more along the lines of me learning some new moves from those temptresses to seduce you with. I want to be perfect for you.”

“Baby?”

“Hmm.”

“It’s after midnight.”

“It is.”

“And you have work at the arse crack of dawn.”

“I do.”

“And your hangover is going to be a stinker.”

“Hmm.” I grinned dopily as his hands travelled farther down my spine, resting on the top of my bum cheeks.

Digging his fingernails in, he pulled me to the side and slammed my back against a cold brick wall, forcing all the air to pour out of my lungs in one long stream as I blinked furiously and took a peek at him. There wasn’t any room between us as he pressed his hips against mine, one arm raised against the wall while his other hand went on a little path of discovery, starting at my hipbone, travelling all the way up my body until he was cupping my neck. My body shivered with anticipation. I knew this feeling well. I knew what the shift in his tenderness meant. It meant he was hard and I was in trouble.

The right kind of trouble.

“One final thing,” he moaned as his mouth brushed across my jaw.

“Hmm?”

“You’ve been perfect for me since the first time I laid eyes on you again, five years ago. If you got any more perfect, I’d be a walking, talking, permanent boner.”

A slow, satisfied-before-we’d-even-started grin took over my face. I wasn’t aware of where we were, who could hear us or who could see. I didn’t have the good sense to care, either. Hitching a leg up to his waist, I stroked his arse with my calf and turned my head to allow him to kiss his way down my neck. Our hips began to rock in a slow rhythm as we got lost in the moment, and I could feel his erection pressing against me already. I needed it. I needed him.

“Marcus,” I whispered, bringing both my hands up to the back of his neck to push my hands up through his hair. He groaned in response, his head falling back as I tugged on his curls harshly and brought his face to mine.

His gaze fell to my mouth as I dragged my teeth over my bottom lip.

Marcus had beautiful eyes. He was all the man I ever needed and then he was so much more. He was funny, he was charming, he was genuine and he was honest. He had a direct line to both my mind and my heart, and there wasn’t anything else I could wish for him to be.

So I had no idea why I thought what I thought as I stared into those green eyes of his.

I had no idea why I imagined them to be hazel for a second.

I had no idea why I thought he’d just smirked when he hadn’t.

I had no idea why, in the arms of the most perfect man on earth, I was standing there thinking about the one who’d let me go.

“Marcus,” I repeated.

He grinned that perfect grin of his and waited for me to carry on, and with one flash of his smile, I remembered who I belonged to and where I was. I let everything else drift away, even my decency.

“Take me to bed,” I begged him in a husky voice. “Make me ache so bad I won’t be able to walk or think straight for a week.”