I sat up a little straighter, fully awake now. I'd tried like hell not to eavesdrop on the whispered conversation he'd had out in the lounge, but it was impossible not to catch his angry tone. "Everything okay?" I asked. "Phone calls in the dead of night are never a good thing."

He sat down heavily at the edge of the bed. There was a lost look about him, an air of defeat, but also of determination. I shifted down the bed until I was sitting next to him.

He looked up and shot me a wan smile and then looked out, focused on some spot in the middle distance. "You're right," he finally sighed. "It wasn't a good thing at all."

"Bad news?"

He sort of shrugged with one shoulder. "No worse than it's been all along, I suppose."

"Niall?"

"Yeah?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about right now."

He took a deep breath. The words came out of him slowly, like he was pulling them free from sucking mud. "That was my ex."

I was proud of how I didn't react. Didn't startle, didn't stiffen. Of course he'd have an ex. There were probably a bunch of notches in his bedpost, women desperate to get into his bed and stay there. Whoever this woman was, she'd obviously been something to him, it was clear in the way his shoulders slumped and he kept staring at that spot on the wall. "Well, what did she want?" I pressed, eager to find out reasons why I should hate her.

"Izzy," he said softly, then looked up at me. "That was - is - her name." His lopsided grin only lifted one side of his mouth. "So you know. Like, in case you hear the guys talking about her or something."

"Got it. Izzy, your ex-girlfriend."

"Ex-fiancee," he corrected.

This time I did stiffen, though hopefully not so much that he'd see. "You were engaged?"

He nodded. "I was all set to marry her, actually. Right down to the joint bank account and credit cards in her name."

"But you're not any more," I said quickly, remembering his face between my legs. I hugged my chest tightly.

He put his hand on my arm. "No, Reese. I'm not a cheater. It's well and truly over with Isadora, don't you worry."

"How can you say that when she's clearly fine with calling you in the middle of the goddamned night?" I was angry though I wasn't exactly sure who my anger was directed to. Him? Her? Myself?

"I can say that because I broke it off with her three months ago."

"Why?"

"Because three months and one day ago I found out she'd spent all my money."

I opened my mouth to laugh - you're rich as hell, I wanted to say, why would you care about... - but his face caught me short and I smothered my laugh with a cough. "All of it?"

He nodded. "Well, all that was available to her. Cleaned me out."

"How?"

"She's a gambler," he said, turning to face me head on. "She kept it secret from me. I had no idea this side of her until one day I tried to use my bank card and it was declined. Checked my balance and it was gone."

It felt like someone was pouring ice water into my chest. "Oh my god," was all I could say. That old fear of mine, the one born of poverty and not ever feeling one-hundred percent secure in the world, made me want to reach out and hold him. But the other part of me, the closed off part, wanted to scoff at him for thinking he had any idea what it was like to have no money at all.

He looked at me like he could read my thoughts. "It's not like I'm pissed about the money, yeah? I mean I am, but that's not the part that hurts."

I blinked. "You're not mad about the money?"

"Not at all," he said, with such vehemence I had to believe him. "I have far more resources than most, and I know this."

This time, my surprise wasn't a surprise at all. One more item for my list.

"So tell me why you're mad then?"

He nodded, looking down at his hands and the words suddenly came out in a rush."It's that she was in trouble for a long, long time. She had to be, right? But instead of coming to me and asking me to help her, and as I said I had all the resources in the world to do just that, she just went further into her secret life. She thought she could pull the wool over my eyes, that I'd never notice it was gone because she'd win it all back before I needed it. " My heart was beating faster as he looked back up and resumed staring at the wall again. "She stole from me, yeah, but it was her money too, on paper anyway. I would have forgiven her if she'd just come to me when she was in trouble. I would have been fine with setting things right, putting her in a recovery program - "

"But she was trying to trick you." I was suddenly furious at this woman who didn't seem to care about the good thing she'd had.

My rage seemed to make Niall smile. He turned and closed his hand around mine, squeezing it a little. "I don't know if she was, consciously. Just that she thought she could set things right alone, and isn't the whole point of being with someone doing it together?"

This time the feeling was of my chest being frozen solid. I couldn't catch my breath with frozen lungs, so I sat there a long while, not breathing at all. His words clanged in my head like the church bell across the street growing up that would chime all day, rousing me from pleasant daydreams to remind me where I really was. "I honestly don't know," I finally told him. "I've always had to do things on my own."

I heard him swear softly, and then suddenly felt myself gathered into his arms. I hugged him back and his embrace was deep and tight and good. He felt like something I could hold on to for a long, long time.