My hands fisted in his hoodie as I buried my face in his neck, inhaling his masculine scent. We stood there for a long time, holding each other, not exchanging a single word. I felt his gratitude in how tightly he held onto me, and I got the sense he had a lot of stuff churning around in his head. Drawing away a little to look up at him, I said, “I know there are things you’re not telling me, but if you need help just say the word.”

His expression turned tender as he ran a hand over my cheek. “If I asked you to go up those stairs right now and wait for me to come back, would you do it?” he asked, his eyes piercing.

“That wouldn’t help either of us.”

“Right now, it’s the help I need.”

I couldn’t say no to him, not again, so I simply shook my head. Some of the tension returned to his body as his expression sobered. “You’d better leave, then.”

“When I say I want to help, I mean it, Lee. Stop taking everyone’s load onto your own shoulders.”

“If you wanted to help, you’d go to my room, take off your clothes, and warm my bed,” he growled, gripping my hair and tugging gently. The sensation gave me a small tingle between my legs. “You’d make everything I own smell like you, and you’d stop leaving me all the time.”

“When I leave, it’s not because I want to.”

“Then stay,” he murmured, dropping his mouth to mine and allowing our lips to meet in a brief, barely there kiss.

I stepped away from him, trying to communicate my turmoil in one tortured look.

“Nah, didn’t think so,” Lee said harshly.

I took a deep breath, turned on my heel, and walked out the door.

***

“Bad day?” Alexis asked when I came into her room, crawled into bed beside her, and rested my head on the rounded part of her belly, which was growing bigger by the day.

“Something like that,” I answered tiredly. “Can I sleep in here with you tonight?”

“Sure. Want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay.”

A quiet fell between us, and I could feel her stomach rising and falling as she breathed.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to call the baby when it’s born?” I asked, trying to think of something that made me happy rather than something that made me sad.

She let out a long sigh. “This is probably fucked up since he abandoned me, but if it’s a boy, I don’t think I can call him anything other than Oliver. Olivia if it’s a girl, I guess.”

“Those are both good names.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice a whisper.

“Does your heart still hurt when you think of him?” I asked, unable to help it.

I heard her inhale in a quiet gasp, and she was silent for a long time before she responded. “Every day.”

“My heart hurts when I think about Lee. Does that mean I love him like you love King?”

Another gasp escaped her, this time for an entirely different reason, as she looked down at me, her expression stunned. “Oh, Karla, I had no idea. I mean, I knew you two were doing things, but I didn’t know it was like that.”

“I don’t want it to be.”

“Neither did I.”

I let out a small, joyless laugh. “What a pair we make.”

Her answering laugh was just as joyless, the sound echoing my sentiments and agreeing wholeheartedly.

Two weeks passed. Two horrible, agonising weeks. Everything seemed to amplify my loneliness, like how the fabric of my uniform brushed coldly at my skin, no humanity in the touch, or how I’d lie in bed and get a phantom-like whisper of his scent. I knew it wasn’t real, because I’d washed and changed my sheets several times since we’d last shared a bed. It was branded into my memory, though, and every time I was at work and smelled a man’s cologne that reminded me of his, my gut twisted.

I was on the night shift with Tony, driving around town in the patrol car, when my phone buzzed with a text. Tony’s attention was fixed on the road as I pulled it out, looking down to see Lee’s name on the screen. All at once, a brick dropped to the pit of my stomach. He was making contact, but it was after eleven. I just hoped this wasn’t some kind of booty call.

Lee: Its Stu. Ned u @ our boozer. Lee in bad wey.

My heart pounded as I read the misspelled text, questions swirling around in my head. Had he been in a fight? Had somebody beaten him like Liam had been beaten? Looking to Tony, I said, “Hey, I have a friend who’s in a spot of trouble. You wouldn’t mind taking a little detour with me, would you?”

“No problem, it’s been a quiet night anyway.”

A couple of minutes later, we were parked outside the pub. I gave my appearance a quick look in the mirror, taking my hat off and fixing my hair in the usual bun I wore to work.

“You want me to come in with you?” Tony asked.

“Nah, you take a break. Check in with the girls. I won’t be long.”

He nodded and I got out, my heart thrumming as I stepped inside the noisy pub. The place was busy for a Wednesday, but then I remembered there was a football match on earlier. They’d probably been watching it on the flat-screen TV that hung in the far corner of the bar. A couple of men eyed me aggressively, wondering what a cop was doing in their local, but once I didn’t bother them, they returned to their conversations and ignored me.

I walked through, scanning the faces of those around me, until I saw Stu having what appeared to be a heated argument with two other men.