@violent-urges and I went together and it was so much fun!
So first off- it was so good!!! The set design was SO COOL! The ensemble was a few sailors, who moved the props around during the show in a way that really worked and didn't distract from the scene. The setting starts in New York and eventually gets to Boston and off the coast of Provincetown. THAT'S LITERALLY LIKE RIGHT WHERE I LIVE and hearing him just say the word Boston for some reason was so hot 😂
Everyone in the show was amazing- the chemistry, the emotional displays- everything was great.... but Tom.
Tom was just... brilliant. For those who haven't seen the show, he talks in this insanely gruff, authentic sexy Irish accent that like. actively had me gaping and honestly blushing from time to time 🤣 his character is totally unhinged and raunchy and he was just absolutely incredible. My jaw was on the floor by the end.
Also watching him kiss someone in real life made my brain short circuit for sure 😳
Waited in the freezing cold for a bit after (worth it). The very first thing I said to him was "is this real life?" and he looked at me like 🤨🤨 LMAOOOOO
He's like..unreal in person idk how to even describe it. I was expecting him to tower over me but he's just about my height, which was more intimidating because eye contact is scary 🤣 he's smol lol. But also he's SO BUFF HIS ARMS ARE HUGE???
He looked absolutely exhausted and I said that to him without thinking lol! He agreed cause it was a two show day, so I really hope he went home and slept so good he deserves it
I asked him how he manages accents so well and he was just like "it takes a little bit of practice" 😂😂
I wanted to mention I live where the show is set and tell him to go to Provincetown during pride week, but forgot that part
I also definitely embarrassed myself gushing at him. I told him something really personal and he was so kind. He's really inspiring to me because I've always wanted to be an actress, but never had the confidence (or time lol). There was a Comic Con panel in Holland he did a couple years ago where he gave acting advice to someone who asked. He basically said to just always be acting when you can- to make videos with friends, practice monologues. I've actually tried to do stuff like that and it helped my confidence a lot! I offhandedly mentioned that I haven't been able to do it recently because I have a two year old now, and his face just LIT UP and he said "congratulations" really excitedly, I think my ovaries exploded 🤣🤣 also, I got my book recommendation! When I asked he obviously had a million thoughts in his head so I narrowed it down to old school stuff, and he immediately had one-
"The Mayor of Casterbridge" if anyone else wants to check it out. With my unmedicated ADHD I'm sure it will take me forever but I'm determined to read it all, then see him in another show and share my thoughts (or so I hope lmaoooo)
Jae gave him a BEAUTIFUL piece of art they made and he definitely loved it. He said "oh wow" and that it was amazing (it was!!!) he's just so fucking sweet 😭😭
Also holy handsome. unbelievably handsome. brain exploding in person.
ALSO ALSO!!! you could definitely tell he doesn't like to sit still because he occasionally would fidget with his hands. it worked with the scenes but it was so endearing
All in all 10/10 experience and I may never recover, send help
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom,
Two weeks later, and following some private fittings at the studio, your first day on set arrived with absolutely no mercy.
It was not an early call time by industry standards.
It was, however, an early call time by the standards of your nervous system, which had woken you at five-thirty in the morning and immediately begun presenting you with several hundred urgent thoughts in no particular order.
You had never shot a sex scene.
You had never shot a proper, extensive, full-body kissing scene where there would be cameras and marks and lighting and someone saying things like, can you move your hand slightly lower, actually no, not there, bit more natural.
And you had absolutely never done any of that with a man you had last seen in a hotel room in New York after lying about your age, where he was leaving before sunrise, and you spending the following year trying very hard not to think about his hands, lips and other body parts.
So, all things considered, your morning had started badly.
You had stood in front of your wardrobe for forty-seven minutes.
Not roughly.
Actually forty-seven, because you had checked the time four times, forgotten what time you had checked, checked again, got distracted by a loose thread on a jacket sleeve, then remembered you were meant to be leaving in eighteen minutes and nearly screamed.
Your first mistake was putting on proper make-up.
Your second mistake was choosing clothes that looked like you had thought about them.
A fitted dark skirt. A cream blouse. Boots. A jacket. Lipstick you had wiped off and reapplied twice, because the first time it looked too red, the second time too deliberate, and the third time like the sort of lipstick a woman wore when she was trying to convince herself she was not walking into a professional disaster.
James saw you in the hallway and stopped.
He looked you up and down.
Not appreciatively.
Confused.
“Are you going to set or to negotiate custody of a small European country?”
You were trying to fasten an earring and find your keys and remember whether you had packed your marked-up script, all at once.
“It’s a Kurt O’Callaghan movie.”
James blinked.
“Yes.”
You stared at him.
“So?”
“So they do your on-screen make-up for you.”
You stopped.
The earring slipped out of your fingers and hit the floor.
For one dreadful second, both of you watched it bounce under the console table.
You pointed after it.
“That earring has betrayed me.”
James did not smile.
He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching you crouch down and pat blindly under the table with increasing irritation.
“You’re nervous.”
“Astute.”
“You don’t need to be.”
“Great. I’ll let my central nervous system know.”
Your fingers closed around the earring. You stood too quickly, knocked your hip against the table, swore, then nearly dropped the earring again while putting it in.
James’s mouth tightened.
He had been watching you like this all morning. Not helping. Not unkind exactly. Just observing you in that faintly superior way that made you feel as if every anxious movement was evidence in a case he had already won.
He said, quieter, “Well, for what it’s worth, I still wish they had cast someone else.”
You looked at him through the mirror.
You knew who he meant.
Not you.
Tom.
Your stomach did that now-familiar, irritating little drop.
****************
Backflash….
Ten days ago, James had asked who the male lead was.
Not casually. James rarely asked things casually. He asked things as if there was a correct answer and he wanted to see whether you knew it.
You had been lying on the sofa with your script over your face, trying to absorb lines by osmosis, when he said from the kitchen:
“Who is opposite you again?”
Your whole body had gone still beneath the pages.
You had considered lying.
Not because you owed him details.
Because telling the truth felt like opening a cupboard and finding a live animal inside.
“Tom Sturridge.”
James had appeared in the doorway with a glass of water in his hand.
His expression changed at once.
“Ugh.”
You had lowered the script slowly.
“What?”
“I can’t stand that guy.”
Your heart had begun beating very carefully.
“Why?”
James gave a humourless laugh.
“He’s an ass.”
“That’s very detailed. Thank you.”
“We had a run-in at the BAFTAs.”
You had sat up before you meant to, too quickly, script sliding off your lap.
“What kind of run-in?”
James shrugged, but the shrug was too practised.
“It happened at a casual pre-drinks event. There was a writer there, I was making a point, he decided to turn himself into some kind of advocate for a woman no one really knew and told me to let her finish.”
Something had moved in your chest.
Not admiration.
Absolutely not.
Just information.
Interesting information.
“Were you interrupting her?”
James looked at you.
“That’s not the point.”
It was, very clearly, exactly the point.
“Then what is the point?”
“The point is he made a spectacle of it. Agreed with everything she said just to make me look like a prick.”
You had blinked.
“Did she make a good point?”
James’s face cooled.
“Don’t be childish.”
There it was.
The gentle slap dressed as maturity.
You had looked down at the script, picking at the corner of the page until it softened beneath your thumb.
“What happened then?”
“He kept fidgeting. Couldn’t sit still. Tapping his glass. I told him to stop.”
You had looked up again despite yourself.
“You told him to stop fidgeting? Why?”
“Because he was being distracting.”
“Really?”
James gave you a flat look.
“Yes, and then he said something very smug about me only noticing because I was losing the argument.”
You had almost smiled.
Almost.
Then remembered, suddenly and unpleasantly, that this was not just some amusing story about two arrogant men disliking each other at an awards event.
This was James.
This was Tom.
This was the man you were engaged to talking about the man who had slept with you in New York.
And, somehow worse, the man who had also slept with Jess.
James’s sister.
Your friend.
The thought had landed in your head with the grim absurdity of a dropped plate.
Hmm.
That guy slept with me and your sister.
And I absolutely cannot tell you that because you will just make everything ten times worse for me.
So, you had said nothing.
James had watched you a beat too long.
“Why are you making that face?”
“What face?”
“That face.”
“This is just my face.”
“No. That was your ‘I’m thinking too much’ face.”
You had looked back down at the script.
“I have many faces.”
***************
Now, ten days later, standing in the hallway dressed like someone who had misunderstood what a film set was, you could still feel the echo of that conversation.
James stepped closer.
“I’m serious. Be careful around him.”
You reached for your bag.
“James.”
“No, listen to me. I’ve heard things.”
Your hand paused on the strap.
There it was.
James did this sometimes. Dropped information like a coin into a glass and waited for the sound to make you nervous.
“What things?”
He gave a small, impatient exhale, as if he was already regretting having to explain the obvious to you.
“Industry stuff. He’s a bit of a player, apparently. Not with co-stars, from what I’ve heard, but other actresses, models, whoever is pretty and happens to be around since he broke up with that—God, what was her name?”
“Liliana Hart.”
James looked at you.
A second too long.
“You know her name?”
Your stomach tightened and you immediately decided to lie.
“I googled him when I agreed to take the role. She came up on the searches.”
“Right.”
He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.
You hated that smile. It made you feel as if you had just failed a test you had not known you were taking.
“Anyway,” he said, “maybe that’s all just an act.”
You frowned.
“An act for what?”
James tilted his head.
“Well, personally, I reckon he isn’t into women at all.”
For one second, you actually stopped breathing.
Not because you believed him.
God, no.
Unfortunately, your body had a considerable amount of evidence to the contrary.
Too much evidence.
Evidence with hands. Evidence with a mouth. Evidence that had ruined several ordinary things for you, including hotel corridors, cigarettes on balconies, and the way certain men said your name in a low voice.
You stared at James.
“That is a very stupid theory.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Have you seen his latest movie?”
You blinked.
“No.”
James looked at you as if you had just admitted to not knowing what a chair was.
“No?”
“No, James. You know I barely watch any new cinema unless Jess is in it or I am researching a director.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Yes, of course. You and your stupid black-and-white films.”
You turned properly then.
“They’re called classics.”
“They’re called depressing.”
“Only because you have no soul.”
“And because every time I walk into a room you’ve got some dead French woman smoking at a window and staring into the middle distance.”
“That is cinema.”
“That is a cry for help.”
Despite yourself, despite the nerves and the earring and the fact that your entire morning felt like it had been constructed specifically to expose you, you almost smiled.
Almost.
James saw it and used it, because James always used any softening as permission to continue.
“Anyway,” he said, “his latest movie is very moving.”
You looked at him through the mirror.
“That sounded dangerously close to praise.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Good. I was worried.”
His mouth tightened.
“It’s also the third time he’s played gay. Very convincingly if I may add.”
For a second, there was silence.
Then you laughed.
Not politely.
Not delicately.
You actually laughed, a sharp, disbelieving little sound that escaped before you could stop it.
James’s face changed.
“What?”
“Sorry.”
You pressed your fingers briefly to your mouth, trying to compose yourself.
You failed.
Another laugh slipped out.
“No, sorry, it’s just—James.”
“What?”
“It’s called acting.”
His expression cooled.
“I know what acting is.”
“Do you? Because this is a very worrying conversation.”
“Don’t be childish.”
You stopped laughing.
“I’m not being childish.”
James gave you a look.
“You are.”
“No, James. I am trying to make a point while you sound homophobic.”
His face hardened at once.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then don’t stand there making speculations about someone’s sexuality in that degrading tone of yours.”
You reached for your bag.
“And anyway, if you genuinely think he’s gay, then I shouldn’t have anything to worry about, should I?”
James went quiet.
You looked at him.
“So your warning about him has just become redundant.”
You did not wait for him to find an answer.
“I have to go.”
“Y/N—”
“I’m late.”
Then you opened the door and walked out.
*******
By the time you got into the car, you were already late.
Not catastrophically late.
Just late enough for your brain to start making it catastrophic.
The driver missed a turn. You checked your phone. Then your script. Then your phone again. Then you opened your script and realised the pages were out of order because you had removed one last night to make notes on the back of a receipt and then forgotten to put it back.
You found it folded inside your bag beside three lipsticks, two pens, one dead pen, a half-eaten protein bar, a charger with no plug, sunglasses, paracetamol, and a tiny plastic dinosaur you had absolutely no explanation for.
By the time you reached the studio, your brain felt like static.
You walked in reading.
Which was a terrible habit.
Everyone in your life had repeatedly told you to stop doing it because you became a pedestrian hazard, but it made you feel marginally more in control. Your eyes skimmed the page while your feet moved on instinct. Your lips shaped lines under your breath. Your bag slid down your shoulder. Your jacket caught on a door handle. You muttered “fuck, sorry” to the door handle as if it had feelings.
The studio was chaos.
Not disaster chaos.
Professional chaos.
Film-set chaos.
Headsets and walkie-talkies and clipboards and coffee cups. A runner weaving through bodies carrying waters and protein bars like a battlefield medic. Someone asking for a department head. Someone else shouting about a missing prop. Someone laughing too loudly near a monitor. Cables everywhere. Half-built walls. Black curtains. Tape marks. A smell of coffee, dust, hairspray, and hot electrics.
You were still looking down when you heard Kurt’s voice.
“Y/N.”
You looked up too fast.
The script nearly slid out of your hand.
Kurt O’Callaghan stood beside a camera rig with his arms folded, glasses pushed up into his hair, looking exactly like a man who had already solved six disasters and found three new ones.
Your father stood beside him.
So did Tom. And someone else.
Your stomach dropped.
Not elegantly.
It fell out from under you.
Tom was there already, of course.
Of course he was there already.
Unlike you, he was actually on time.
He stood slightly apart from the others, script in one hand, thumb working restlessly at the edge of the pages. Dark pants. Dark shirt. Sleeves shoved back. Hair a little messy, but not in the way yours was messy. His looked intentional even when it probably was not. His jaw was tight. One foot angled out as if he had been about to move and had forced himself still.
He looked up when you came in.
For one second, all the noise seemed to narrow.
Blue eyes.
A flicker of recognition.
Then annoyance.
Immediate.
Sharp.
A flash of of course.
You hated him a little for being annoyed first.
That was meant to be your thing.
You hurried over, already talking too fast.
“Sorry. I know, traffic was stupid, and then the driver went to the wrong gate, and I did say the south entrance but apparently there are two south entrances which feels like a planning issue more than a me issue, although obviously I am still sorry—”
Kurt held up one hand.
“Can we not be late again, please?”
You stopped.
Your face went hot.
“Yes. No. I mean yes, we can not. I will not. Sorry.”
Tom looked down at his script, pressing his lips together in a sharp little smile.
It was subtle.
It still felt like a slap.
Your father cleared his throat, trying to smooth the moment.
“Morning.”
You looked at him.
“Hi.”
He smiled, and for a second you hated that too, because it made you feel six years old and twenty-four and wildly underqualified all at once.
“You alright?”
“Fantastic.”
Kurt snorted.
“Convincing.”
Your father gave you a warning look, but fond.
Tom did not smile now.
Kurt glanced between you and Tom, then down at his notes.
“Right. Since we’ve lost fifteen minutes—”
“Nine,” you said automatically.
Everyone looked at you.
You blinked.
“Sorry. Not the point. Continue.”
Tom’s mouth tightened again, trying not to smile.
Kurt stared at you for half a second, then shook his head.
“Since we’ve lost time, we’re skipping a full sit-down rehearsal this morning.”
Your stomach tightened again.
“Skipping?”
“Not uncommon,” Kurt said. “Not ideal, but not uncommon. Tight budget, tight schedule, and I hate wasting time.”
Your father cut in gently, probably because he had seen something shift in your face.
Not panic.
Not visibly.
Just the small internal adjustment of someone realising that the thing she had been dreading was no longer theoretical.
“Kurt’s method is usually less about rehearsing a scene to death in an artificial environment,” your father said, “and more about attempting it properly on the roll. He prefers to use the time getting more takes once the cameras are up.”
You nodded.
“Right.”
You understood that.
You even respected it, in theory.
In practice, you would have enjoyed maybe forty-five minutes alone somewhere quiet with the script, a pencil, and absolutely no one watching your face to see whether you were coping.
Kurt glanced down at the schedule in his hand.
“The first two scenes for today are clean and expect them to be wrapped up by two o’clock. Therapy office first. Scene nine, Rose’s first visit and interaction with Jason’s secretary. Then scene eleven, Rose and Jason meet properly in the same space.”
You looked at your own sheet, though you already knew what was on it.
You had read the schedule enough times to practically burn the numbers into your eyes.
“Scene nine,” you said, mostly to prove to yourself that your voice still worked. “Rose with the receptionist and then scene eleven, Jason comes in after. First proper meeting.”
“Exactly,” Kurt said.
Tom stood beside you, silent.
Not relaxed. Never relaxed. But contained.
His thumb moved once over the edge of his script, then stopped. His eyes were on Kurt, but you could feel him beside you in a way that was inconveniently physical. Like your body had registered him as a hazard before your brain had decided what to do with him.
Kurt continued.
“Then after lunch, wardrobe change and then we will shoot scene twenty-seven in Jason’s office which, I know, is a lot for day one.”
You looked down, even though you did not need to.
You knew scene twenty-seven.
Everyone knew scene twenty-seven.
Rose and Jason alone in the office after the argument. Too close. Too angry. Too honest by accident. Then the kiss that changed the whole shape of the film.
Not a sex scene.
Not technically.
But worse, somehow.
Because a kiss with tension was harder to fake than a body under sheets.
Your father’s voice stayed calm.
“Marie is here as an intimacy coordinator. You’ll have a closed-set briefing before every intimate scene as well as a full debrief meeting first thing this morning.”
You nodded again.
“Yes. I saw that on the call sheet.”
Your father studied you for a second.
“You alright?”
You hated that he asked.
You hated more that he asked kindly.
“Yes,” you said. “I knew they were scheduled for today.”
Which was true.
You had known.
You had known for two weeks, and somehow knowing had not made it less dreadful. It had only given your mind more time to build the whole thing into a private weather system.
Kurt looked between you and Tom.
“The intimate scene today is not complicated mechanically. It’s complicated emotionally. That’s why I don’t want to over-rehearse it.”
Your stomach tightened.
Tom’s jaw shifted slightly.
For the first time, his eyes moved to you.
Briefly.
Directly.
It was not quite annoyance now.
It was worse.
Recognition.
As if he knew exactly what part of that sentence had landed.
You looked back down at the sheet before your face could betray you.
“Understood,” you said.
Very calm.
Very professional.
Your face did not move.
Your skin, however, tried to leave your body.
Tom noticed.
Of course he noticed.
His eyes flicked to you briefly, then away.
Your father turned to him.
“Tom, I don’t think I’ve properly introduced you two yet either. I am sorry mate.”
A small, vicious laugh nearly escaped you.
You swallowed it.
Your father smiled, oblivious.
“This is my daughter Y/N. She’ll be playing Rose.”
Tom looked at you.
You looked at Tom.
There were several ways to handle that moment.
You chose the worst one.
You stuck out your hand.
For half a second, you genuinely wanted to vanish.
Your hand was just there now, suspended between you, stupid and formal and attached to an arm you no longer wanted.
Your father was standing beside you.
Kurt was watching.
People moved around you with coffees and cables and urgency.
And you were offering a polite handshake to a man who had once had his mouth on your throat.
Tom looked at your hand.
Then at your face.
Something flickered in his expression.
Not amusement.
Disbelief.
Irritation.
Maybe even offence, as if he could not decide whether you were taking the piss or simply this bad under pressure.
Then he took it.
His hand closed around yours.
Warm.
Dry.
Horribly familiar.
Your entire body remembered him before your brain could issue any formal objection.
“Tom,” he said.
Level. Professional. Cold enough to be plausible.
“Y/N.”
You let go too quickly.
Too quickly to be natural.
But not quickly enough for anyone else to notice, apparently.
Your father’s gaze moved between you for one half-second, then passed on. Kurt was already checking his watch. Crew were moving behind you. Someone asked for wardrobe. Someone else called for art department.
So.
Fine.
Pretending you had never met worked.
Or at least, it worked in the specific sense that no one immediately pointed at you and said, why do you look like you have seen that man naked?
Tom’s face gave away nothing.
Nothing useful, anyway.
His expression was professional, faintly bored, almost cold. The kind of expression actors wore when they were saving the real work for the camera.
Only his thumb moved once against the edge of his script.
Then stopped.
Kurt checked his watch.
“Marie will meet you both in thirty for the initial induction. Until then, wardrobe needs final checks, and then hopefully we roll the first scene by ten.”
You nodded.
“Okay.”
Your voice sounded normal.
A miracle, really.
Tom gave one short nod beside you.
“Fine.”
Fine.
Of course he said fine.
As if this was fine.
As if the two of you were not standing three feet apart in front of your father, your director, and half a crew, pretending New York had not happened with such determined professionalism that it almost looked suspicious.
Your father touched your shoulder once before he left.
Not possessive.
Not even really parental.
Just a small, reassuring pressure that unfortunately made you feel much less reassured.
“You’ll be fine,” he said quietly. “And I won’t be around to distract you. I’ll only check in before and after every day, as promised.”
Wonderful.
Brilliant.
Very subtle.
You could actually feel yourself becoming embarrassed in real time.
Not because he had done anything wrong, exactly. He was your father. He was trying to be careful. He was trying not to hover. But he was doing it in front of Tom, which made you feel suddenly and violently twelve years old.
Tom stood there, watching politely.
Too politely.
His face gave away nothing, but his eyes moved once from your father’s hand on your shoulder to your face, and you wanted to crawl directly under the nearest lighting rig and stay there until production wrapped.
“Dad,” you said under your breath.
Your father seemed to realise.
A second too late.
“Right. Sorry.”
He kissed the air near your cheek, thought better of it halfway through, then settled for an awkward half-hug that made everything worse.
“Good luck. First day.”
“Thank you,” you said, in the tone of someone trying not to die.
He gave Tom a professional nod, then followed Kurt toward video village.
You watched them go.
You did not look at Tom.
You were not giving him that.
Instead, you looked down at your call sheet and pretended to read it, though the words had stopped being words. Your brain snagged on useless things. Scene numbers. The bent corner of the paper. The tiny coffee stain near the margin. The fact that your father had said as promised like you were a nervous child who needed accommodation.
You adjusted your bag.
Then your sleeve.
Then your bag again.
Stop.
You forced your hand still.
Tom cut in, still looking at you.
“I need a word.”
Your eyebrows lifted.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Kurt said wardrobe.”
“I heard him.”
“Then perhaps you also heard the part where we are apparently rolling by ten.”
His jaw shifted.
His thumb dragged once against the edge of his script, too hard, bending the paper. Then he stopped himself so abruptly it was almost more noticeable than the movement.
You noticed.
Of course you noticed.
You were horribly good at noticing tiny things when you were trying not to notice large ones.
His eyes flicked to yours, as if he had caught you catching him.
That annoyed you.
Everything about him annoyed you.
The controlled voice. The clenched jaw. The restless hand pretending not to be restless. The fact that his shirt sleeve was pushed higher on one arm than the other. The fact that your brain had catalogued that against your will.
Tom lowered his voice.
“Now, before this becomes a disaster.”
Your stomach tightened.
“This?”
His eyes held yours.
“Yes.”
There it was.
The thing neither of you had said in front of anyone else.
The entire hotel room in one word.
You looked past him toward wardrobe.
“Fine. Say it.”
“Not here.”
“Of course not.”
He glanced toward the corridor, then back at you.
“Rehearsal room three. Five minutes.”
You blinked.
“Five minutes?”
“I’m going for a smoke.”
Of course he was.
Of course he needed to stalk off dramatically and inhale poison before having a difficult conversation.
You gave him a bright, false smile.
“Fine. Great. Yeah. Wonderful idea. Nicotine. Then confrontation. Very healthy.”
His mouth tightened.
“Five minutes.”
Then he turned and walked away.
He did not look back.
You stood there for half a second, still holding your call sheet too tightly.
Then, because you were extremely calm and mature, you whispered, “prick,” to absolutely no one and went the opposite direction to find the bathroom, wardrobe, or a hole in the floor.
***********
You made it to rehearsal room three in four minutes and thirty seconds.
Not because you were eager.
Because your brain could not bear the suspense of being late to the argument.
Tom was already there.
Of course he was.
The room he chose was half-built, half-abandoned. One wall painted a bruised green, another raw with exposed edges. A rolled rug sat in the corner. A lamp stood on a side table without a cord. Two crates were stacked beneath a fake window. Dust hung in pale bands of light.
It smelled faintly of paint, coffee, old fabric, and cigarette smoke clinging to him.
The door shut behind you.
The noise of the set dulled at once.
Not gone.
Just far enough away to make the silence between you feel deliberate.
Tom turned.
For a second, neither of you spoke.
He was gripping his script in one hand. His other hand went to his hair, then dropped, then went to his hip, then his mouth, then back to the script. Like every part of him wanted to move at once and he was furious with all of it.
You noticed because you were the same.
Not in the same way.
His restlessness came in sharp little corrections. Thumb against paper. Jaw flex. Fingers to mouth. Stop. Reset. Mask.
Yours wanted to spill everywhere. Foot shifting. Thoughts branching. Eyes catching on the wrong details. The crooked tape by the crate. The fake lamp. The smudge of paint on the wall. The fact that his left sleeve was still pushed higher than his right.
You hated that you noticed that.
You hated more that he noticed you noticing.
You stayed near the door.
Not trapped.
Not exactly.
Just unwilling to let him have the centre of the room.
“So,” you said. “What?”
He stared at you.
“What?”
“That is traditionally how conversations begin when someone says they need a word.”
His laugh was short and entirely humourless.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Great. Productive start.”
“Why did you take this film?”
You blinked.
Of all the things you had expected, that was not the first one.
Your spine straightened.
“Because it’s a good role.”
“Right.”
The disbelief in his voice landed exactly where he meant it to.
Your face warmed.
“No. Actually. Because it is a good role.”
“And it never occurred to you that us having slept together might be an issue?”
There it was.
Blunt.
Ugly.
Out loud.
For one strange second, your brain supplied the room in New York. The sheets. The balcony. The city below. His cigarette between his fingers. Your dress on the floor.
Your mind did that sometimes.
No warning.
No permission.
Just opened the wrong door and flooded the room.
You pushed it away.
“I didn’t know you were attached when I said yes.”
Tom gave you a flat look.
“Come off it.”
“No, seriously. I didn’t know.”
“You accepted a role opposite me in a film produced by your father, and you didn’t know who the male lead was?”
Every word felt chosen to bruise.
You folded your arms, then unfolded them, then folded them again because suddenly you had no idea what arms were meant to do.
Tom’s eyes flicked down.
Caught it.
Filed it away.
You hated him.
“Careful with what you’re accusing me of.”
“Am I wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you sound like a condescending prick.”
His eyes flashed.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I didn’t know because when I met you in New York, I didn’t know your name.”
That landed.
You saw it.
One tiny interruption in his anger.
Then his expression hardened again.
“Convenient.”
You stared at him.
“You think I planned this?”
“I think I’m standing on a set finding out that the woman I slept with a year ago is now my co-star, playing my love interest, in a film produced by her father. So yes, from where I’m standing, it feels like I’m missing several key pieces of information.”
“So am I.”
“You had two weeks.”
Your stomach tightened.
“What?”
“You found out two weeks ago, did you not?” he said. “Because that’s when the final cast sheet was sent out.”
You looked at him.
Then away.
The tape on the floor had a bubble under it. Someone had smoothed it badly.
You hated that your brain gave you that information now.
“Okay. Fine. I knew then. Maybe a little after.”
His expression tightened.
“And?”
“And what?”
“And you said nothing.”
“To who? You? I don’t have your number.”
“Production.”
You let out a disbelieving laugh.
“And say what exactly? Hello, just flagging that I accidentally slept with the male lead in New York before I knew who he was?”
“Yes.”
You stared at him.
“You would have done that?”
Tom opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
His thumb pressed into the corner of his script, bending it.
His silence answered first.
Eventually, he said, “No. Obviously not like that.”
“Right.”
“But you had a chance to pull out.”
You actually laughed then.
Not because it was funny.
Because the alternative was making a sound that would have been humiliating.
“From a Kurt O’Callaghan movie? Are you insane?”
“What’s insane is us acting opposite each other after what happened in New York in a movie like this.”
“A movie like what?”
His jaw clenched.
“Do not pretend you don’t know what I mean.”
“No, go on. Say it.”
“A film where we’re playing lovers.”
“We’re actors.”
“Actors who have slept together.”
“Actors sleep with people, Tom. Tragic industry first.”
“Don’t patronise me.”
“Then stop talking to me like I’m a problem you need to solve.”
“You are a problem.”
The room went still.
His face shifted almost immediately, but it was too late.
You felt the words hit, then settle.
Not because he was wrong, exactly.
Because they sounded too much like something you already believed about yourself.
A problem.
Too much. Too fast. Too difficult to manage unless someone corrected, contained, redirected, medicated, softened, edited you down.
You looked at him, cold now.
“Nice.”
He exhaled sharply.
“That is not what I meant.”
“No, you meant the situation.”
“Yes.”
“But you said me.”
Silence.
Tom looked away, dragging a hand over his mouth.
His foot shifted once, then again. He caught himself and went still so abruptly it almost looked painful.
He did it too.
That was the annoying thing.
He masked differently, but he masked.
Where you filled silence, he compressed himself into it until he looked calm to people who did not know better.
You knew better already.
That was irritating.
“This situation is a problem,” he said, more controlled now. “And it becomes a bigger one if anyone finds out. It doesn’t only put us in breach of contract, it also jeopardises production if –“
You cut him off right there.
“No one is going to find out.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that I’m not going to tell anyone.”
His eyes came back to you.
Sharp.
Restless.
“And why should I believe you?”
You went still.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You lied before.”
Your mouth tightened.
There it was.
The thing you had known was coming.
“About your age,” he said.
“That was a white lie.”
Tom stared at you.
“A white lie?”
“Yes.”
His face changed.
“You said you were twenty-eight.”
“Yes.”
“You were twenty-two.”
The words sounded worse in his voice.
Colder.
More damning.
You swallowed.
“I was almost twenty-three.”
His expression darkened.
“Do not do that.”
“Do what?”
“Trim the edges off it so it sounds better.”
Heat rose up your neck.
“I didn’t lie to trap you.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You are saying it like I did.”
“I am saying I slept with someone I thought was twenty-eight and later found out she was twenty-two.”
“I was an adult.”
“That is not the only point.”
“It seems to be the point you keep circling.”
“Because I was nearly forty.”
The room went very still.
He looked angry saying it.
Not at you only.
At himself.
At the room.
At the memory.
At the fact that it existed now and could not be changed.
“I was nearly forty,” he said, lower, “and you were twenty-two, so do you have any idea what this looks like from the outside?”
There it was.
All of it.
Laid out brutally.
You hated that hearing it from him made it sound worse.
You hated that he hated it too.
You hated that underneath the anger, you could hear panic.
Not loud.
Not uncontrolled.
But there.
The panic irritated you, because you understood it.
Understanding him was not something you wanted to do.
“Oh my God, Tom,” you said, your voice sharpening before you could stop it. “If the age difference is really such a moral catastrophe for you, how do you explain several hookups with Jess?”
Tom went very still.
Good.
You wanted him still.
You wanted him caught.
You wanted the neat little courtroom he had built around you to suddenly have evidence on his side of the table.
“She is half a year younger than me.”
His jaw flexed.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“No, go on.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this.”
“No, it doesn’t, and for the record,” he said, voice low now, “I did not know her connection to you, so you don’t get to use her as proof that I’m some kind of hypocrite here.”
“Convenient.”
His eyes flashed.
“And she should not have talked about it.”
You blinked.
The anger in you changed direction so fast it almost made you dizzy.
“Excuse me?”
“We agreed—”
“You agreed?”
“Yes.”
“You agreed what?”
“That it was casual. That it was private.”
A laugh came out of you before you could stop it.
Sharp.
Disbelieving.
Too loud for the room.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“You led her on.”
His face hardened.
“I did not lead her on.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I did not.”
“She liked you.”
“That is not the same thing as me leading her on.”
“You never even bothered to message her back.”
“Because, again, I was clear.”
“Oh, please.”
“No,” he snapped, and the word cracked through the room hard enough to make you stop for half a second. “This is exactly the problem.”
Your eyes narrowed.
“What problem?”
He was breathing harder now.
Not much.
Enough.
Enough for you to see that his calm had slipped, that the cold professional mask had finally split under the pressure of you, Jess, New York, the call sheet, the closed door, all of it.
“Immaturity,” he said.
The word landed.
Then, as if he had already gone too far and decided to make it worse anyway, he added, “You and her both.”
For a second, everything in you went quiet.
Not calm.
Worse.
The kind of quiet that happened just before you said something you could not take back.
Tom seemed to realise it too.
His mouth tightened, but he did not apologise.
Of course he did not.
You stepped closer.
“Say that again.”
His eyes held yours.
“You heard me.”
“No, I want you to say it properly.”
“Fine. You are both acting like girls who confuse sex with a promise.”
The room seemed to shrink around you.
Heat rushed up your throat.
“Fuck you.”
“That’s not an argument.”
“No, it’s a summary.”
His laugh was short and ugly.
“Brilliant. Great argument from the girl who lied about her age, used nepotism as a way into a major indie, and cheated on her fiancé with a man over sixteen years older than her. It’s a summary. Good fucking job.”
You stared at him.
For one second, you actually could not breathe.
The words had gone past cruel and into something else.
Something deliberate.
Something chosen.
Tom’s face shifted almost immediately, as if he had heard himself properly only after saying it.
But again, too late.
Your fingers tightened around your script until the pages buckled.
“Wow.”
His jaw flexed.
“That is not—”
“No, finish it.”
“Y/N—”
“No, come on. You were doing so well.”
Your voice was too calm now.
Too thin.
Too bright at the edges.
“Perfect start to a work relationship, right? Spoiled little nepo baby lies her way into your bed and then into your film. Is that the pitch?”
His eyes flashed.
For one second, you thought he would deny it.
You almost wanted him to.
Instead, his mouth tightened.
“Is it untrue?”
The room went silent.
Not quiet.
Silent.
As if even the set beyond the door had dropped away for the pleasure of hearing that land.
You stared at him.
Tom stared back, breathing a little too hard now, his script bent in one hand, his thumb pressed into the paper so firmly it had started to crease.
Then his face changed.
Just slightly.
A flicker of regret.
Too late.
Far too late.
You gave a small, disbelieving laugh.
There was no humour in it.
“My friends were right.”
His jaw shifted.
“About what?”
“That you are an asshole.”
Then the door opened.
Both of you turned too fast.
The shared assistant stood there with one hand still on the handle, her eyes flicking between you, then to the bent scripts in both your hands, then back up again.
Her smile appeared by force.
“Sorry. Wardrobe’s been looking for you two.”
For one awful second, no one spoke.
You could feel your pulse in your throat.
Tom’s breathing had not quite settled.
The assistant glanced down at her tablet, clearly regretting every career choice that had brought her to this doorway.
“Kurt wants final checks now, and Marie’s ready in twenty-five.”
Honestly, The Man I Love was an amazing film and I definitely teared up afterwards.
The subject matter hit quite close to home for me. Being close to the LGBTQ+ community myself, and having experienced family rejection and estrangement, some parts were genuinely hard to watch. It felt very real.
Visually, the film is beautiful. I really like the style of Ira Sachs’ work in general, and this was no exception. It gives you space to think and feel without becoming overly dramatic or macabre.
As for Tom, I hate to say it because there was great work from Rami Malek and Luther Ford as well, but I thought Tom’s performance was the standout. The others often expressed emotion more outwardly, whereas Tom brought this incredible stillness to the role. The subtle changes in his facial expressions, particularly in the hospital scenes, absolutely broke me. I cried.
His voice felt deeper here too, but could become incredibly gentle when the scene called for it. Overall, he played the most likeable character in the film — kind, gentle and restrained until the moments where he finally snapped. It felt completely believable.
For those asking:
* Yes, there are kisses.
* You do see Tom’s bare back (and yes, the S tattoo is still there).
* There’s only a brief glimpse of chest hair.
* No, Tom doesn’t sing.
* There are some very intimate scenes between Tom and Rami (kissing in bed, and Tom’s character washing Rami).
* If you’re wondering about nudity, there’s very little from Tom.
Overall, I loved it. Thanks, Tom. You made me cry.
Now to the contra: I still wish there would have been more focus on Tom’s character too. I think there was too little as really he was a main character and the caregiver of Jimmy.
I will give the movie a 9 out of 10.
I think it could have gone for another half an hour to delve deeper into Tom’s character as well as Luther’s character’s mindset.
I couldn’t take any photos as the theatre was booked out with 700 people and there was a clear message from the film festival crew upfront. I wasn’t going to get kicked out!
Warnings: Age Gap, Domestic Abuse, Arranged Marriage, Sexual Abuse, PTSD, Religious Extremism; Implied Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Child Abduction, Smut
Moments later, the glass doors whispered shut behind you, muting the distant crash of waves into a low, steady thrum that seemed to live inside the walls themselves. The bedroom was a cavern of white linen and weathered wood, the giant bed a pristine altar at its center, and the breeze from the open terrace doors made the sheer curtains dance like ghosts in the golden, late-afternoon light.
The air inside was cooler than the beach, carrying the mingled scents of sun-warmed citrus from the garden below and the faint, clean salt that clung to your skin.
Tom turned to face you, and his eyes, that deep, warm blue, traced the curve of your bare shoulders, the way your dark, salt-crusted curls had spiraled into a wild, untameable mess around your face.
He reached out and brushed a damp ringlet away from your cheek, tucking it behind your ear with a tenderness that made your breath catch.
The pad of his thumb lingered, tracing the shell of your ear, the sensitive spot just behind the lobe, and then his hand slid into the tangled mass of your hair, cupping the back of your head with a gentle, possessive pressure.
“You looked so good out there,” he murmured, his voice a low, rough rumble that you felt in your belly. His lips barely moved against your temple, the words a vibration more than a sound.
“That bikini. Your hair.” His fingers tightened, massaging your scalp, nails scraping along the salty grit.
You laughed, a soft, slightly embarrassed sound, and reached up to touch the frizzy, uncooperative halo of your hair.
“It’s a disaster in these conditions. Everything frizzes, it’s a nest. I look like a drowned poodle.”
Tom’s mouth curved against your skin.
“You do not look like a drowned poodle.”
“You didn’t see the back of it.”
“I saw all of it.”
His hand slid lower, fingers spreading at the nape of your neck, thumb brushing slow circles into the damp skin there.
“Repeatedly.”
You huffed a laugh, but it came out thinner than you meant it to, because he was standing too close now. Because his chest was still warm from the sun, because his shirt was open, because he smelled like salt and sunscreen and Tom.
“You are beautiful like this,” he then said as he ran one of his hands through your hair in a deliberate motion, and his other hand came up to frame your face, both hands now cradling your skull as if it were something precious.
His thumbs stroked your cheekbones, wiping away a faint smear of sunscreen that had melted in the heat. “And I love your wild hair. I love everything about you when you’re like this.”
“Like this?”
Tom’s gaze moved over you again, slow and unguarded.
Not polished. Not red-carpet beautiful. Not dressed and careful and braced for the world.
This.
Barefoot. Sun-warmed. Salt on skin. Hair wild around your face. A little tired from the sea. A little undone from happiness. Looking at him like you were still half-surprised to be wanted.
His thumbs kept moving over your cheekbones.
“Like this,” he said softly. “When you forget to be careful.”
Your breath caught.
“I’m always careful.”
“I know.”
He said it without teasing this time.
That was worse.
His forehead touched yours, and for a moment there was only the soft drag of his breath against your mouth, the quiet hush of the curtains, the low pulse of the sea through the glass.
“But not today,” he murmured. “Not on the beach. Not when you were laughing. Not when Luka called clams snot shells and you tried so hard not to laugh that you nearly cried.”
You made a small sound.
“That was objectively funny.”
“It was.”
His smile brushed yours.
“And you were happy.”
The word sat between you, terrifying in its simplicity.
You looked down, but his hands held you there gently. Not stopping you. Just reminding you that you did not have to vanish.
“Tom.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
His voice was very low now.
“I know you don’t trust it yet.”
Your eyes burned at once, which was unfair, because you were standing in a beautiful room in Italy with a man looking at you as if you were the only thing in it worth seeing.
“Trust what?”
He kissed your temple.
“Being safe.”
Another kiss, lower, at the edge of your cheek.
“Being loved.”
Another, at the corner of your mouth.
“Being allowed to want things.”
You closed your eyes.
His hands slid down from your face, over your shoulders, slow enough that you felt every inch of the movement. His fingers traced the straps of your bikini, not pulling, not rushing, just following the lines as if he had been thinking about doing it since the beach.
“I want you like this,” he said. “Not perfect. Not arranged. Not trying to be anything.”
You opened your eyes.
“A drowned poodle?”
He laughed softly, the sound warm against your mouth.
“A very beautiful, very impossible drowned poodle.”
You shoved lightly at his chest.
“You’re awful.”
He caught your hand and pressed it flat against him, over the steady beat of his heart.
“You love me.”
You looked at your hand on his chest. The warmth of him. The dark hair beneath your palm. The fact that he was real and here and looking at you with such open affection that it made something inside you ache.
“Yes,” you said quietly. “I do.”
Tom went still.
Not because he did not know.
Because sometimes hearing it still caught him somewhere unprotected.
His hand came up over yours.
“Say it again.”
You looked back at him.
“I love you.”
His expression shifted.
Softened. Darkened.
“Again.”
You smiled despite the tightness in your throat.
“Greedy.”
“Desperately.”
You rose onto your toes and kissed him.
“I love you.”
His mouth found yours properly then.
The gentleness did not disappear. It changed shape. Became heat. Became his hand sliding into your hair again, his other arm wrapping around your waist and pulling you against him until there was no polite space left between you.
With in seconds, the kiss became a claiming, a desperate, hungry press of lips and tongue that tasted of salt and the faint, metallic tang of desire.
His tongue swept into your mouth, hot and knowing, and you moaned into him, your hands fisting in the linen of his shirt. The fabric was translucent in patches, revealing the dark smudge of his chest hair beneath.
You tugged at the hem, your knuckles brushing the firm, warm plane of his belly, and he broke the kiss just long enough for you to peel the shirt upward.
Tom raised his arms, the muscles of his shoulders shifting under his still pale skin, and the shirt fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
You didn't let him lower his arms; instead, you fitted your mouth to the hollow of his throat, licking the salt that had gathered there throughout the day, feeling the strong, steady beat of his pulse against your lips.
“Jesus, Y/N,” Tom groaned in response.
His skin was hot and taut, and the coarse, dark hair that spread across his chest tickled your nose as you kissed lower, tracing the line of his sternum with your tongue. You tasted the ocean, the faint remnants of sunscreen, and the primal taste that was purely Tom—a mix of warm skin and exertion.
Meanwhile, his hands were at your dress—a sheer, floaty slip of white cotton that had dried into a stiff, salty shell around your body. He gathered the fabric in his fists, lifting it inch by torturous inch.
His knuckles grazed the sides of your thighs, your hips, the sensitive dip of your waist, leaving goosebumps rising in their wake.
You raised your arms, and he drew the dress over your head with maddening care, as if even that required attention. It slipped from his hands and joined his shirt on the floor.
Now you stood before him in only the nude-coloured bikini, still slightly damp from the swim you had stolen in the pool after the children had gone to bed. The fabric clung softly to your skin, the straps pressed faint marks into your shoulders, the bottoms sitting low on your hips.
Tom took half a step back.
Not far.
Just enough to look at you.
His gaze moved over you slowly, and the heat in it made your stomach tighten. There was no performance in his face now. No teasing. No cleverness. Just want, plain and unguarded, and something gentler beneath it that made it almost harder to bear.
His breathing changed.
“Look at you,” he murmured.
You shifted under the attention, suddenly shy despite everything.
“Don’t.”
His eyes came back to your face at once.
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like that.”
Tom’s expression softened, but the heat did not leave it.
“I can’t help it.”
You tried to laugh, but it caught somewhere in your throat.
“You’re making me feel…”
“What?”
You shook your head, embarrassed.
He stepped closer again, one hand finding your waist, the other lifting to your cheek.
“Tell me.”
You looked up at him.
“Wanted.”
Something moved across his face then, quick and deep.
“Good.”
His thumb brushed over your cheekbone.
“Because you are.”
Your breath caught.
Tom bent his head, his mouth close enough that you could feel the words before he said them.
“So much.”
Then he kissed you.
Not gently this time.
Not roughly either.
Just with the kind of certainty that made your knees go weak and your hands clutch at his shoulders. He drew you against him, warm skin to warm skin, and the feel of him wanting you was unmistakable now, impossible to ignore.
You made a small sound against his mouth.
Tom broke the kiss only enough to breathe, forehead pressing to yours as he reached behind you, and you felt the quick, expert flick of his fingers on the clasp of your bikini top. The string loosened, and the triangles fell away from your breasts, baring them to the cool, breeze-touched air.
Your nipples crinkled instantly into hard, tight peaks, the areolas dark and pebbled. Tom didn’t touch them. He just looked, his gaze heavy, before he bent his head and took one swollen nipple into his mouth. The wet heat of his tongue was a shock, the gentle scrape of his teeth a delicious counterpoint.
He sucked, pulling the sensitive nub deeper, and his free hand came up to palm your other breast, kneading the soft weight, his thumb circling the nipple until you were arching into him, a keening sound escaping your throat. He switched his mouth to the other breast, giving it the same devoted attention, his tongue laving and flicking, his lips tugging, while his hand slicked down your belly, fingers hooking into the waistband of your bikini bottoms.
He didn’t yank them down. Tom was never hurried when he undressed you. He peeled the thin, clingy fabric away with an agonizing slowness, his thumbs tracing the deep crease where your thigh met your groin, skin still tacky from salt. The elastic left faint red marks on your hips where it had pressed, and he stopped to kneel in front of you before kissing each one, his mouth hot and open against the tender skin.
The bikini bottoms came away damp in his hand, and he dropped them onto the growing pile of clothes. You were now utterly bare before him, and the breeze from the open doors kissed the wetness already gathering between your thighs, making you shiver with a combination of chill and raw need.
He knelt before you, the vivid blue of his eyes never leaving yours, and his hands slid up the backs of your thighs, cupping the curve of your ass, pulling you gently forward until your mound was level with his lips.
The heat of his breath seeping into your folds made your knees tremble.
“You smell so fucking perfect,” he whispered, the words vibrating against the sensitive flesh of your pubic bone. “It’s the best smell in the world.”
“Tom –“
You were going to protest but then his tongue swept through you.
One long, flat, unapologetic stroke from the very bottom of your slit, where the delicate skin of your perineum began, all the way up over your entrance, through the soaked, swollen lips, to circle your clit with a precision that made you cry out.
Your hands flew to his hair, grabbing fistfuls of his dark strands, and you bucked involuntarily against his face. He didn’t stop. He hummed against you, the vibration zinging straight to your core, and his tongue traced every fold, memorizing your topography. He dipped into your entrance, thrusting shallowly, the wet muscle filling you just enough to make you ache for more, then retreated to lap at the sweet, sensitive spot right around your clit.
“Oh, fuck… Tom, your mouth…”
He ate you like a man starved, but there was a deep, devoted art to it. He knew exactly how to make you come apart, and he wielded that knowledge with patience and love. His tongue circled your clit in slow, teasing loops, then flicked rapidly against the underside of the hood, then flattened broad and wet to grind against the entire bud. His lips sealed around it, sucking with a gentle, rhythmic pressure that had your vision spotting white. All the while, his hands were on your ass, kneading the globes, pulling you tighter, his face buried completely in your cunt, his nose nudging the skin at the top of your mound.
Your legs were shaking uncontrollably, little moans and gasps spilling from your lips in a broken stream.
“Oh god, Tom… don’t stop…”
He didn’t. Instead, he wrapped his lips around your clit and sucked harder, and at the same moment, he slid two thick fingers inside you. The sudden, perfect fullness made you scream, the sound echoing in the high-ceilinged room.
His fingers curled upward, finding that rough, spongy patch of your inner front wall, and he stroked it with a persistent, deep pressure that matched the rhythm of his mouth’s suction on your clit.
He fucked you with his fingers, slow and deep, each curl sending lightning bolts up your spine. The wet, obscene sounds of his mouth working your cunt filled the room—the slick glide of his tongue, the soft sucking, the squelch of your own juices dripping down his hand and wrist.
The orgasm built like a wave far out at sea, gathering power, and when it crashed, it was a complete, body-shattering surrender.
You came with his name ripped from your throat, your cunt clamping down on his thrusting fingers in rhythmic, powerful contractions, and he kept his mouth sealed over your clit, sucking and licking through every pulse, swallowing down the flood of your release as if it were the sweetest nectar.
Your legs gave out, and he caught you, guiding you with gentle pressure until you were sitting on the vast mattress, your body a trembling, oversensitive heap. He stayed between your legs for a long moment, licking you gently through the aftershocks, soft little kitten licks that soothed and tormented in equal measure, until you finally twitched away from the overstimulation with a breathless laugh.
“Come up here,” you managed, your voice hoarse. “I want you in my mouth. I want us together.”
He rose, and you reached for the swollen front of his swim shorts. The drawstring was already loose, and you pulled the heavy fabric down over his hips. His cock sprang free, and the sight of it never failed to make your mouth water. It was thick, a true handful, the shaft veined and ruddy with need, the broad, plum-shaped head already slick with pre-cum that glistened in the golden light. The dark, curling hair at the base was damp with sweat and seawater, and you leaned forward, before doing anything else, and pressed a kiss right there, at the root of him, nuzzling into that musky scent. He groaned, hips twitching.
“You have such a perfect cock,” you then said before you took the base of his cock in your hand, squeezing just enough to feel him pulse, and gave a slow pump.
The skin slid silky and hot over the rigid core. He was so hard it looked painful.
“Jesus, Y/N,” he groaned as you swirled your tongue around the crown, tasting the salt and the bitter-sweet tang of his pre-cum, and he hissed, his fingers finding your hair and tangling in the wild curls.
“Lie down,” you whispered against his wet, hot skin.
He obeyed instantly, stretching out on the pale sheets, his body a landscape of pale skin and dark hair, the thick cock jutting up from his groin, curving slightly toward his belly. You crawled over him, turning so that your knees were on either side of his head, your still-dripping cunt poised just above his mouth.
Tom groaned in response, eagerly reaching for you already and you felt his hot breath on your exposed, sensitive folds, and you shivered, bracing your hands on his thighs. From this angle, you could see his entire body stretched out before you—the swell of his chest, the ridges of his abs, the thick, proud column of his cock.
Then, you lowered your head and took him into your mouth.
The salt taste of him filled your senses, along with the musky, intoxicating scent of his arousal. You took him deep, relaxing your jaw, letting the head of his cock bump the soft back of your throat before you swallowed around him. Tom’s whole body arched, a guttural moan punched out of him, and then his own mouth latched onto your cunt again, his tongue immediately plunging inside you while his nose rocked against your still-throbbing clit.
The pleasure was dual, shared, a perfect feedback loop of giving and receiving. You bobbed your head, using your tongue to trace the thick vein that ran along the underside of his shaft, hollowing your cheeks to create suction. Your hand worked the base of him in a twisting motion, the other reaching down to cup his balls, rolling the warm, heavy sac in your palm. They were drawn tight to his body, a sign of how close he was. Every time you swallowed him deep, he groaned into your cunt, and the vibrations made you moan around his cock, which made him groan louder.
He ate you relentlessly, his tongue stabbing into your entrance, then flattening to lap from clit to perineum.
He was messy, with raw, hungry devotion, his chin and cheeks slick with your arousal. You returned the favor, letting drool drip down his shaft, using the slickness to pump him faster, your mouth a hot, wet, hungry sheath.
“I’m close,” he grunted against your wetness, the words muffled but desperate. “Fuck, I’m so close… don’t stop…”
You moaned your acknowledgement, the sound vibrating directly against his cockhead, and you took him even deeper, your nose pressing into the coarse hair at the base of him. You could smell him, taste him, feel the pulse of his impending climax against your tongue. He sucked your clit hard at the same moment, two fingers twisting inside you, and your own second orgasm detonated without warning, a white-hot flash that made you cry out around his cock. Your cunt spasmed in rhythmic, prolonged contractions, and the sensation of your climax, the way your whole body clenched and shuddered, triggered his.
His hips bucked, and he let out a long, raw groan, the sound ripped from his chest, as the first hot, thick rope of cum shot into your mouth. You swallowed instantly, the taste clean and salty and overwhelmingly his. He pulsed again, and again, filling your mouth so fast that some escaped the seal of your lips and trickled down your chin, dripping onto his thigh. You kept sucking, milking him, feeling his cock kick and jerk against your tongue, the hot spurts of his release flooding you. He came a lot, always did, and you savored the feeling of him emptying himself completely, his body tensing and shaking beneath you, until he finally fell limp, breathing in great, heaving gasps.
You released him with a soft, wet pop, licking your lips, and rolled off to lie beside him, both of you panting. The room smelled of sex and the sea, the salt breeze doing little to clear the dense, animal scent of your mingled releases. For a long moment, there was only the crash of waves and the rush of your breathing. Tom rolled his head toward you, his eyes glazed with pleasure, and he reached over to wipe the saliva and cum from your chin with his thumb, before licking it clean.
Then his mouth curved.
“You look…”
You lifted an eyebrow, still trying to catch your breath.
“Careful.”
Tom laughed under his breath, low and rough.
“Beautiful.”
You gave him a doubtful look.
“That was not where that sentence was going.”
“No,” he admitted, still smiling. “It wasn’t.”
His thumb traced your lower lip once more, slow and affectionate.
“You look completely undone.”
Heat climbed your throat.
“Tom.”
“What?”
“You sound far too pleased with yourself.”
“I am far too pleased with myself.”
You huffed a laugh and rolled onto your back, covering your face with one hand.
“Unbearable.”
He shifted closer, propping himself on one elbow, his free hand settling over your waist.
“You started it.”
You peeked at him through your fingers.
“I absolutely did not.”
“You opened my shirt during chess.”
“That was strategy.”
“Mm.” His mouth brushed your shoulder. “A devastating one.”
You smiled despite yourself.
Tom kissed the warm skin just beneath your ear, slower now, gentler, all the urgency softened into something drowsy and affectionate.
“Come here,” he murmured.
You did not hesitate.
You shifted closer, looking at him for one suspended second before slowly guiding him back against the pillows. He let you, his eyes never leaving your face, one hand resting loose and warm at your waist.
Your palm found his chest.
Your fingers sank immediately into the coarse, dark hair there, still damp from heat and sweat, and the solid warmth of him beneath your hand made your breath catch all over again.
You traced the dark furrow down his sternum, over the ridges of his abs, to his navel, and then lower, to where his cock lay, still half-hard, glistening, resting in a small pool of his own cum on his belly. Without thought, your hand wrapped around it again. It was impossibly hot, velvety, and as you gave a single, lazy stroke, you felt it twitch and thicken in your grip.
“Hmm,” he breathed, but his eyes were on your face, raw with want, his hips already beginning to roll into your touch. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
You squeezed, feeling him harden further. It didn’t take much. With Tom, it never did.
“I want you inside me,” you whispered, the words as much a command as a plea. “I want to feel you come again, deep inside me. I want to feel you fill me up.”
A sound, somewhere between a groan and a desperate laugh, escaped him. “Yes. Fuck, yes. Come here.”
You pushed yourself up and swung a leg over his hips, straddling him. His cock stood upright against his belly, slick with his own cum and your saliva, the broad head already beading with a new translucent pearl of pre-cum. You grasped it, the heat of him searing your palm, and positioned the thick crown at your entrance. It nestled against your slick, swollen folds, and for a heated, agonizing moment, you just rocked there, not taking him in, letting the glans part your lips, coating him in your combined fluids. He was breathing through his teeth, his hands clamped onto your hips, not forcing, just holding.
“Please,” he rasped. “Y/N, please.”
You sank down.
The stretch was exquisite—a slow, incremental filling that seemed to go on forever. Inch by thick inch, you took him in, the ridge of his corona pressing past your tight, inner muscles, until you were seated against him, your clit nestled in the coarse, dark thatch of his pubic hair. You both moaned, the sound synchronized, and for a beat, you just stayed like that, fully connected, feeling the thick, thrumming pulse of him deep inside your core.
“Fuck that feels good,” he said, his voice wrecked, his eyes fixed on where you were joined.
You began to move.
It started as a slow grind, your hips rolling, circling, letting the base of his cock press and massage that deep, hungry spot inside you. His hands slid from your hips up to your breasts, cupping them, thumbs rasping over your still-hard nipples. You leaned forward, bracing your hands on his chest, your fingers immediately curling into the mat of dark hair, tugging, scratching. The wiry strands wrapped around your fingers, and you pulled, intentionally, feeling his skin bunch under your nails. He hissed, not from pain, but from the sharp edge of pleasure, his hips bucking up into you.
“Don’t stop,” he groaned and, of course, you wouldn’t.
You rode him harder. The rhythm became faster, more urgent, the wet, slapping sound of your bodies colliding filling the room, mingling with the pound of the distant surf. Your nails raked red lines down his chest, through the hair, over his ribs, and he arched into the sharp sensation, his hands clamping onto the globes of your ass to pull you down harder, to meet each thrust. His cock hit that sweetest spot inside you with every downward motion, and the friction of his pubic bone against your clit was constant and perfect.
He was babbling now, a stream of filthy, worshipful praise. “That’s it, baby, take what you need… you feel so fucking good… so tight… so wet… “
You leaned down, capturing his mouth in a messy, desperate kiss, all tongue and teeth and broken breath. “I love you,” you gasped against his lips. “And I want to feel you cum deep inside me.”
His control snapped. He planted his feet on the mattress and began to fuck up into you from below, a powerful, driving rhythm that had you crying out, your back bowing. His hands were a vice on your hips now, slamming you down onto his pistoning cock. The bed creaked and shook.
You felt your third climax building, a massive, cresting wave that was more than just physical—it was emotional, a complete surrender to this man and this moment.
“I’m going to -,” you sobbed, the words tearing from your throat. “Tom, I’m going to—”
You never finished your sentence.
Your orgasm shattered through you, and you screamed his name, your cunt clamping down on his shaft in a series of powerful, milking contractions.
The sensation was so intense that his own release was immediate. With a raw, primal shout, he thrust deep one last time and held there, his cock pulsing and kicking as he emptied himself inside you.
You felt it—the hot, thick spurts of his cum flooding your depths, painting your inner walls, the sheer volume of him filling you so completely that you could feel it flooding the space around his shaft, warm and wet and utterly primal.
He kept coming, pulse after pulse, and you ground down, milking every last drop, your body accepting all of him. Some of his release leaked out around the seal of your bodies, a creamy, white slick that smeared your thighs and his groin, but you didn't care. You loved that feeling—the wet, messy evidence of his passion, the way he filled you impossibly full.
You collapsed onto his chest afterwards, your bodies a tangle of sweaty, sticky, still-joined limbs. His cock was still semi-hard inside you, and you had no intention of moving.
His arms came around you, one hand cradling your head, the other spread low on your back, his fingers tracing lazy circles on your slick, heated skin. His heart was a thunderous drum beneath your ear, gradually slowing. The breeze washed over your cooling bodies, drying the sweat and salt, and you shivered, but the warmth radiating from him was enough.
He pressed a kiss to your hairline, then your temple, then the corner of your eye where the intensity had drawn a stray tear. “I love you,” he murmured against your damp skin, the words so soft and so full of everything he was. “I love you more than I know how to say.”
You nuzzled into the crook of his neck, breathing him in — salt, sun, warmth, Tom.
“I love you too,” you whispered. “So much.”
You did not need to say anything else.
The room had gone quiet around you, softened by the steady hush of the sea beyond the glass. Tom pulled the thin cotton sheet over both of you, tucking it loosely around your shoulders with a care that made your chest ache. You shifted closer, your leg sliding over his, your hand settling in the warm dip of his waist.
His fingers moved lazily through your hair, working at the salt-tangled curls with slow, gentle patience.
“Your hair really is impossible,” he murmured, voice drowsy.
You smiled against his skin.
“I told you.”
“Beautiful,” he corrected.
You were too tired to argue.
His breathing deepened first. Then yours followed. Somewhere outside, the waves kept folding over themselves in the dark, and you fell asleep wrapped around him, warm and bare beneath the sheet, with his hand still resting in your hair.
*********
Morning arrived in pale gold.
You woke slowly, not all at once, but in pieces.
The cool weight of linen over your hip. The sound of the sea. The faint call of birds somewhere beyond the terrace. Tom’s arm heavy around your waist, his chest warm against your back.
For a few seconds, you did not move.
You just lay there and let yourself know where you were.
Italy.
The villa.
The children still asleep.
Tom beside you.
Then his mouth brushed the back of your shoulder.
“Morning,” he murmured.
You smiled before opening your eyes.
“Morning.”
His lips moved to the side of your neck, soft and lazy.
“Did you sleep?”
“I think I died briefly.”
He laughed quietly, the sound rough with sleep.
“Good holiday, then.”
You turned in his arms to face him.
His hair was a mess. His eyes were half-lidded and warm. There was a crease from the pillow on one cheek, which made him look younger and more beautiful in a way you found deeply unfair.
You lifted a hand to his face.
“You look ridiculous.”
“That’s not very romantic.”
“Ridiculously handsome.”
His mouth curved.
“Better.”
You kissed him.
It was meant to be small. A morning kiss. Lazy, affectionate, half-asleep.
But Tom made a sound against your mouth, low and pleased, and his hand slid to your waist beneath the sheet. The kiss deepened almost without either of you deciding it should. Your fingers found his chest, the familiar warmth of him, and you shifted closer until his leg slid between yours.
He pulled back just enough to look at you.
“The children?”
You listened.
Nothing.
No footsteps. No arguing. No Luka demanding cereal or accusing furniture of looking at him.
“Quiet,” you whispered.
Tom’s eyebrows lifted.
“Suspicious.”
“Don’t ruin this.”
He smiled.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
You kissed him again, a little more deliberately this time, your hand sliding over his shoulder, down his chest. Tom’s breath changed. His fingers tightened at your waist.
“You,” he murmured against your mouth, “are very affectionate this morning.”
“Am I?”
“Mm.”
You kissed the corner of his mouth.
“Maybe I’m still trying to distract you from chess.”
“That game was abandoned hours ago.”
“Coward.”
He laughed and rolled you carefully beneath him, bracing one hand beside your head.
“You are being very rude.”
You smiled up at him.
“I am –“ you began to say before, suddenly, the rest of the sentence vanished.
Your stomach turned.
Hard.
Sudden and violent enough that you went completely still.
Tom noticed instantly.
“Love?”
You swallowed.
The room tilted.
“I—”
Another wave of nausea hit before you could finish.
You shoved at his shoulder, not because you wanted him away, but because you needed to move now.
Tom was off you in a second.
“Are you okay?”
You barely made it to the bathroom.
Then you were on your knees in front of the toilet, one hand braced on the cool tile, retching so hard your eyes watered.
Tom followed, but stopped at the doorway as if afraid of crowding you.
“Y/N?”
You waved one hand weakly behind you.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Don’t look.”
“I have seen you give birth-level threats over airport security and a toy rabbit. This is not going to frighten me.”
You groaned, then retched again.
Tom came in anyway.
Of course he did.
He gathered your hair back from your face with one hand and crouched beside you, the other rubbing slow circles between your shoulder blades.
“It’s all right.”
“It is not all right.”
“It’s just being sick.”
“Incredibly glamorous.”
“I still love you very much.”
You gave him a murderous look through watery eyes.
He softened immediately.
“Sorry.”
You sat back eventually, shaky and mortified, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand before Tom silently passed you a damp cloth.
You took it without looking at him.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I am. I’m just…”
You took a breath, then immediately regretted it.
“Ugh.”
Tom’s hand stayed at your back.
“Food?”
“Probably.”
“Was it the snot shells?”
Despite everything, a horrible little laugh escaped you.
“Don’t.”
“Sorry.”
“I mean it. If Luka finds out, he’ll never let me live.”
Tom stood and reached for the robe hanging behind the door, shaking it out before wrapping it around your shoulders.
You clutched it closed.
“Oh God.”
“What?”
You stared at the floor.
“How embarrassing.”
Tom looked genuinely baffled.
“Being sick?”
“Yes. Naked. On the bathroom floor. After –“
His mouth twitched.
“After what?”
You looked up sharply.
“Do not make me say it.”
He held up both hands, but he was smiling.
“I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
“Maybe.”
You groaned and leaned your head back against the wall.
Tom crouched in front of you again, his expression sobering.
“Do you feel feverish?”
“No.”
“Dizzy?”
“Not really.”
“Pain?”
“No. Just sick.”
He studied your face.
“We’ll take it easy today.”
“No, Tom. It’s the first proper day.”
“Exactly. First proper day of relaxing.”
“The children will want to do something.”
From somewhere beyond the bathroom door came a faint, distant thud.
Then Luka’s voice, muffled but clear:
“I found the tiny fridge!”
Tom closed his eyes.
You stared at him.
A second voice followed. Ellie, unimpressed.
“That’s a minibar, don’t touch anything.”
Then Mia:
“Luka, put down the tiny bottle.”
Tom opened his eyes.
“I’ll handle that.”
You tried to stand.
“No, I’ll—”
He gently pressed you back down.
“You’ll brush your teeth, drink some water, and I will handle the kids.”
Warnings: Age Gap, Enemies to Lovers, Secret Relationship, Possibly Unexpected Circumstances, Playboy Tom,
Meanwhile, across town, you, Jess, and Maddy were having lunch somewhere much more expensive, much better lit, and much less emotionally prepared for disaster.
It was one of those places Maddy liked because the chairs were uncomfortable but the bathrooms were beautiful, which, according to her, meant it had standards.
Jess had arrived in sunglasses despite the weather being grey and miserable.
You had arrived six minutes late, with one earring in, your sunglasses on your head, three missed calls from your agent, a script half-sticking out of your bag, and the very strong feeling that you had forgotten something important.
You checked your bag twice.
Phone.
Lip balm.
Wallet.
Script.
Fred.
Other earring.
No.
Still missing.
You frowned.
Maddy watched you rummage.
“What have you lost?”
“My earring.”
“The one in your ear?”
You touched your left ear.
“No, the other one.”
Jess looked at you over the top of her sunglasses.
“Why are you only wearing one?”
“Because I put the other one somewhere safe.”
Maddy nodded solemnly.
“Gone forever, then.”
“Obviously.”
The restaurant was too bright.
Not objectively.
Just for your brain.
Too many glasses catching light. Too many knives set at perfect angles. Too many conversations happening at once, all of them arriving in pieces. Someone behind you was talking about a yacht. Someone to your left kept saying the word “cleanse.” A waiter was describing fish with far too many adjectives.
You moved your water glass half an inch to the right.
Then back.
Then moved the bread plate because it was visually annoying.
Maddy stared at your hand.
“Are you rearranging the table?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“It felt wrong.”
“The table?”
“The spacing.”
Jess smiled faintly, which meant she was trying to be normal.
For the first twenty minutes, the conversation was normal.
Or as normal as conversation with Maddy ever got.
Maddy talked about a fitting that had nearly ended in violence because a model had called silk “too slippery.” Jess talked about rehearsals. You talked about finishing the West End run, though mostly you complained that your character had one speech in act two that had too many commas and was, in your view, structurally hostile.
“A comma can be hostile?” Jess asked.
“Yes.”
Maddy took a sip of wine.
“I do believe her on this.”
You pointed your fork at her.
“Thank you.”
Then you forgot you were holding the fork and used it to gesture through a story about the stage door, nearly knocking over the salt.
Maddy caught it without looking.
“Hands.”
“Sorry.”
Jess had gone quiet in that way that meant she wanted someone to ask.
It did not help, either, that watching you talk with your hands always reminded her of someone else.
Not exactly.
Not neatly.
Yours was different. Brighter. Less controlled. More chaotic, as if your thoughts arrived too quickly for your body to keep up and your hands were simply trying to catch them in the air.
But there was something in the restlessness.
The shifting glass.
The fork tapping once, twice, then stopping when Maddy looked at you.
The way you interrupted yourself, corrected yourself, then jumped three thoughts ahead before anyone else had finished crossing the first one.
It made Jess think of him.
Tom.
The movement. The nervous energy. The mind too loud under the skin.
Except with Tom it was darker. Sharper. More contained until it wasn’t.
With you, it looked almost charming.
That annoyed her too.
Maddy noticed first.
Of course she did.
“What?”
Jess blinked.
“What?”
“You have a face.”
“Everyone has a face.”
“Not like that. That is a confession face.”
You looked up from attacking an olive with your fork.
You had not eaten the olive.
You had just stabbed it several times because it kept rolling away from you and, for reasons unclear to anyone, you had taken that personally.
“Did you steal something?”
Jess sighed.
“No.”
Maddy narrowed her eyes.
“Did you sleep with someone?”
Jess’s silence answered.
Maddy sat back.
“Oh, excellent. Who?”
Jess looked between you both, then picked up her water glass and set it down again without drinking.
You noticed because you did things like that too. Picked things up. Put them down. Picked them up again. Forgot why. Turned objects into evidence. Especially when you were about to admit to something bad.
“Remember that guy I used to hook up with about ten months ago?”
Maddy’s expression sharpened immediately.
“The 40-year old actor?”
Jess grimaced.
“Yes.”
“The one who ignored your texts like a dick?”
“He didn’t ignore all of them.”
Maddy stared.
Jess looked away.
“Fine. That one.”
You put down your fork too quickly.
It clattered.
Three people at the next table looked over.
You smiled at them like a woman who had absolutely not just murdered an olive.
Then you turned back to Jess.
“Oh, Jess.”
Jess pointed at you.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a tiny wounded bird who flew into a window.”
Maddy lifted her glass.
“No, babe, you flew into the same window twice.”
Jess glared.
“Thank you.”
“What happened?” you asked.
Jess exhaled.
“He was at that event last night.”
Maddy made a face.
“Of course he was.”
“We talked. It was actually fine.”
Maddy’s eyebrows went up.
“Dangerous sentence.”
Jess ignored her.
“He was funny. Annoying. Same as before. We went outside for a cigarette.”
You stared.
“You smoke now?”
“Occasionally.”
Maddy pointed at her.
“That means yes.”
“It means occasionally.”
“It means yes.”
You frowned.
“Occasionally smoking is just smoking with commitment issues.”
Maddy pointed at you.
“Exactly.”
Jess rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, we talked, and I said sorry for that message I sent after New York.”
Maddy’s face softened a little despite herself.
“Okay.”
You reached for your wine, then forgot to drink it because your brain had snagged on New York.
New York.
For one stupid second, your own New York flickered up.
Hotel room.
Balcony.
Blue eyes.
Cigarette.
No name.
You shoved it away.
Wrong New York.
Wrong guy.
Jess’s New York.
Focus.
“And then we went back to mine,” Jess said.
You closed your eyes briefly.
“Jess.”
“I know.”
Maddy leaned forward.
“Did you sleep with him?”
Jess looked down at the table.
“Obviously, yes.”
Maddy groaned.
“Oh, Jess, no.”
Jess’s expression flickered.
Defensive first.
Then embarrassed.
Then, very unwillingly, pleased.
“God, it was good.”
Maddy dropped her head back.
“That is the worst possible update.”
“I know.”
“No, because if it had been bad, at least we’d be free.”
“It wasn’t bad.”
“Clearly, because you look insane.”
Jess’s mouth twitched.
Not enough to hide how much she liked remembering it.
You finally remembered the wine and took a sip too fast.
“Did he stay?”
Jess smiled too quickly.
“No.”
Maddy stared.
“Right.”
“I told him it was casual.”
“Did you mean it?”
Jess said nothing.
Maddy pointed at her again.
“There it is.”
Jess sighed.
“I texted him this morning.”
Both you and Maddy looked at her.
Jess lifted her chin.
“Not desperately.”
Maddy closed her eyes.
“How many times?”
“Three.”
“Jess.”
“They were normal.”
“Three normal texts is not normal.”
You tried to be gentle, but your brain had already started constructing an emotional flow chart and then immediately lost the top left corner.
“Were they three separate thoughts or one thought split into three messages?”
Maddy looked at you.
“That is not the issue.”
“It matters. Tone-wise.”
Jess blinked.
“One was about his lighter.”
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“That’s a hook text.”
Maddy turned to you.
“How do you know that?”
You opened your mouth.
Closed it.
“I read people.”
“You forget people’s names.”
“That is different. Names are floating labels. Behaviour is theatre.”
Jess looked at you like she wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously.
You softened.
“Has he replied?”
Jess looked away.
“Not yet.”
Maddy reached across the table and took Jess’s hand, but her voice stayed blunt.
“Why would you go down that road again?”
Jess swallowed.
“Because I’m apparently thick.”
“You’re not thick.”
“No, I am. Emotionally, at least.”
You softened too fast.
You always did that. Went from frantic to tender without warning, like your feelings had no gear changes.
“You liked him.”
Jess laughed once, miserably.
“I did.”
Then, quieter, “I do.”
That landed differently.
Maddy heard it too.
Jess picked at the edge of her napkin.
“But I also know he’s not good for me. Because, emotionally, he is unavailable.”
You glanced at her then.
“That’s not the same as not wanting him.”
Jess looked at you.
For a second, neither of you said anything.
Then Jess asked to change the topic, and Maddy, who had the attention span of a firework and the emotional timing of a drunk surgeon, pointed at your bag.
“Anyway, speaking of mistakes, I can see a script sticking out of your bag.”
You looked down.
The corner of the script was, in fact, visible.
So was a pen.
And a receipt.
And one packet of mints you had bought because the box was a nice colour.
“Oh. Yeah.”
Maddy’s eyes narrowed.
“What is it?”
“Work.”
“Obviously.”
Jess wiped under one eye quickly and straightened.
Too quickly.
You noticed.
Not fully.
But enough.
“New thing?” Jess asked.
“Yes.”
“Film?”
You hesitated.
Then started winding the corner of your napkin around your finger.
Too tight.
You unwound it.
“Yes.”
Maddy sat forward.
“Why are you being weird?”
“I’m not being weird.”
Jess tilted her head.
“You are being incredibly weird. Weirder than me.”
“That feels unfair given the three texts.”
“Deflection.”
“Accurate, though.”
Maddy snapped her fingers softly in front of you.
“Film. Focus.”
You blinked.
“Right. Yes. Film.”
Then you sighed before worrying at the napkin again.
“Okay. Don’t judge me.”
Maddy smiled.
“I’m going to.”
“My dad’s producing it.”
Maddy’s smile vanished.
“Oh, babe.”
“Don’t.”
“No, I’m not judging, I’m just emotionally bracing for the press.”
You spoke too quickly.
“It’s a good script. Like, actually good. Not good because Dad said it was good, because Dad once said a three-hour film about a man in Russia with a horse falling over in the snow was life-changing and I wanted to remove my own spine.”
Maddy stared at you.
“What?”
“I don’t know. There was a horse. Or possibly a donkey. Something sad with hooves.”
Jess blinked.
“That is not narrowing it down.”
Maddy blinked.
“That was a lot.”
“Sorry. Point is, it’s good.”
Jess had gone very still.
You noticed.
Not fully.
But enough.
Your brain caught the shape of it three seconds late and then lit up with alarm.
“Kurt O’Callaghan is directing,” you said quickly. “And I initially said no.”
Maddy’s face changed.
“Sundance winner Kurt O’Callaghan?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s different.”
“Thank you.”
“Still a nightmare, but different.”
You looked at Jess.
She had not said anything.
“What’s wrong?”
Jess blinked.
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
Maddy looked between you both.
“What?”
Jess’s eyes moved to the script sticking out of your bag.
“What’s the film called?”
You told her.
“The Second Room.”
Jess’s mouth parted slightly.
Maddy frowned.
“Why do you look like that?”
You looked at Jess more carefully now, worrying instantly, your thoughts scrambling through six possible explanations and stopping on the worst one.
“Did you try to get cast for it?”
Jess shook her head immediately.
“No. Never.”
“Jess.”
“I didn’t. I knew your dad was producing it when my agent sent it to me about a year ago, so I obviously didn’t try.”
Maddy snorted.
“Because nepotism?”
Jess glanced at you apologetically.
“Because your dad scares me.”
You laughed despite yourself.
“He scares me too.”
Jess smiled faintly, but it did not hold.
You leaned in, then realised you were leaning too far and nearly knocked the water glass with your elbow.
You caught it at the last second.
“Sorry. What is it, then?”
Jess hesitated.
Then said, “Tom is doing that movie.”
You stared at her.
“Tom?”
Maddy, who had already sensed chaos like a shark sensing blood, was pulling her phone out.
“Who is Tom?”
Jess looked at you.
“The guy.”
You frowned.
“What guy?”
Maddy’s fingers were already moving over her screen.
Jess swallowed.
“That guy.”
Your eyes widened.
“The asshole guy you’ve been sleeping with?”
Jess winced.
“Yes.”
You sat back.
“Oh.”
Then your brain caught up.
It did that sometimes. Let the first sentence arrive in your mouth before the second one had finished loading.
“Oh, I’m filming a movie with the guy you have been—”
Before you could finish, Maddy made a strangled sound.
“Oh my God.”
Jess turned on her.
“Maddy.”
Maddy looked from her phone to Jess.
“You’ve been shagging Tom fucking Sturridge?”
Jess went bright red.
“Shhh.”
You froze.
“Who?”
Maddy stared at you.
“Seriously?”
“What?”
“You don’t know who Tom Sturridge is?”
You frowned.
“Should I?”
Maddy looked at Jess.
“She’s hopeless.”
You pointed at her.
“Don’t do that.”
Maddy’s expression shifted into sudden memory.
“Actually, no. Fair. You once stood next to Johnny Depp at an event and asked me who the man with the scarves was.”
Jess blinked.
“You did what?”
“He had a lot of scarves.”
Maddy shook her head.
“That is not the point.”
“It felt point-adjacent.”
“It was Johnny Depp.”
“Yes, but I met him out of context.”
Jess stared.
“Out of context?”
“Some people need their hat or their movie lighting.”
Maddy turned the phone toward you.
“This is Tom Sturridge. He’s a British actor.”
You looked.
For one second, nothing happened.
A man’s face on a screen.
Dark hair. Blue eyes. Familiar bone structure made unfamiliar by red carpet lighting and a black suit and the terrible clarity of public photographs.
Then the room dropped.
Not dramatically.
Not visibly.
Just inside you.
Everything went cold and hot at once.
Your brain, which usually had eighteen tabs open, suddenly closed all of them except one.
Him.
You inhaled too fast.
Wine went the wrong way.
You spat directly into your glass.
Maddy yanked her phone back.
“Oh my God.”
Jess went rigid.
“What?”
You coughed, grabbed your napkin, dropped it, grabbed it again, and stared at the phone like it had personally attacked you.
“No.”
Maddy looked between you and Jess.
“What no?”
You pointed at the screen.
“No way.”
Jess’s face changed.
Slowly.
“Y/N.”
You looked up at her.
“That’s him.”
Maddy looked at you, blank.
“Yes, that’s the guy Jess has been shagging. The asshole who didn’t reply to her messages. We have established that.”
You shook your head.
Too fast.
“No.”
Maddy frowned.
Jess had gone completely still.
You swallowed.
“That’s him.”
Maddy’s face stayed confused for one more second.
Then it changed.
“Oh.”
You nodded, barely.
Then your voice came out thin.
“The guy from New York.”
There was a silence.
A much larger one this time.
Jess stared at you.
Maddy stared at Jess.
Then Maddy stared back at you.
“I’m sorry.”
She pointed at the phone.
“This is your forty-year-old one-night stand from New York?”
You winced.
“Almost forty.”
Maddy stared harder.
“That is not the correction you think it is.”
Jess made a tiny, strangled sound.
“Oh my God.”
You took the phone from Maddy and looked again, as if the face might change if you disliked the situation enough.
It did not.
Same eyes.
Same mouth.
Same man who had smoked with you on a balcony and corrected you with that stupid little almost.
Your thumb hovered over the screen.
For one ridiculous second, you nearly zoomed in on his mouth.
Absolutely not.
You handed the phone back like it was hot.
Jess had tears in her eyes.
That made everything worse.
Not because you were angry with her.
You weren’t.
You were just weirded out.
Deeply, physically weirded out, as if someone had taken one private, reckless thing you had done months ago and dragged it into daylight, given it a name, a career, a daughter, a film contract, and apparently your best friend’s emotional breakdown.
Your brain began running in too many directions.
Jess slept with him.
You slept with him.
You lied about your age.
He was in the movie.
The movie had intimate scenes.
James.
Oh God, James.
No, not now.
Back to Jess.
Jess was crying.
You reached for her hand, missed because your depth perception had apparently resigned, and touched the salt cellar instead.
Maddy saw.
Said nothing.
Rare mercy.
You corrected course and took Jess’s hand.
“Jess.”
She shook her head too quickly.
“No. Don’t.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I really didn’t know. If I had known, I would have told you. Immediately. Probably too immediately. Like, horrifyingly fast.”
Jess laughed once through the tears.
Tiny.
Broken.
“I know.”
Her voice cracked on the second one.
Maddy looked between you both, unusually quiet for about three seconds.
Then she inhaled.
“So let me get this straight.”
You closed your eyes.
“Maddy.”
“No, I need the board.”
“There is no board.”
“There should be a board.”
Jess wiped under one eye.
“Please don’t make this worse.”
Maddy pointed at the phone.
“Your amazing one-night stand from New York—”
“I did not say amazing.”
Maddy gave you a look.
“You did. You went on about it for months because he found your G-spot, babe. That’s amazing.”
Jess looked at you.
You blushed.
Maddy continued, merciless.
“But anyway. Let’s recap. It turns out that your one-night stand from New York is also Jess’s emotionally unavailable asshole older actor—”
Jess winced.
“Maddy.”
“—who ignored her texts, then slept with her again last night, and now you are about to film a movie with him.”
You covered your face with one hand.
“Please stop.”
Maddy sat back, eyes wide.
“That is not awkward. That is cosmic.”
You dropped your hand.
“It is not cosmic.”
“It is cosmic.”
“It is horrifying.”
“Cosmic things often are.”
You stared at her.
Then at Jess.
Then at the phone.
Then at the script sticking out of your bag like it had personally ruined your life.
You could feel your thoughts speeding up again, trying to outrun the feeling.
Cancel the movie.
Call Dad.
Fake illness.
No, too dramatic.
Break ankle?
No.
Could you break your own ankle professionally?
Insane.
Stop.
You said the first thing that came out.
“I’ll tell Dad I can’t do the movie.”
Jess looked up.
Too fast.
“Yes.”
You blinked.
Maddy looked at her.
“What?”
Jess swallowed and tried to arrange her face into something reasonable.
It did not quite work.
“I mean… maybe that’s best.”
You went still.
“Best?”
Jess wiped under one eye, though the tears were already drying now, replaced by something sharper. Something she was trying very hard to hide under hurt.
“For everyone.”
Maddy’s eyebrows lifted.
“Everyone?”
Jess looked at her.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“My face is correct.”
You looked between them, your brain already running too fast again.
Tom.
Jess.
Movie.
Dad.
Script.
Sex scenes.
Jess saying yes too quickly.
The wine glass was suddenly too close to your elbow, so you moved it.
Then moved it back.
Then picked up your napkin and folded one corner over itself until it made a small, useless triangle.
“Wait,” you said. “You think I shouldn’t do it?”
Jess hesitated.
Only for half a second.
But enough.
“I think it will be awful for you, because you and I –“
Maddy sat back and interrupted Jess.
“That is not what she asked.”
Jess’s jaw tightened.
“It’s true.”
“It might be awkward,” Maddy said. “That does not mean she gives up a good film.”
Jess turned on her.
“It is not just awkward.”
The edge in her voice startled you.
Jess seemed to hear it too, because she softened immediately, reaching for your hand.
You let her take it.
Her fingers were cold.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry. I just mean… think about it. You and him. The intimate scenes. Because I’ve heard there are a lot of them in that movie. Me. James. Your dad producing it. It’s a disaster.”
Maddy looked at her hand on yours.
Then at Jess’s face.
“It is messy,” Maddy said carefully. “It is not a reason to run away from career changing work, Jess. The movie could be huge.”
Jess laughed once.
Not nicely.
“Easy for you to say.”
You blinked.
“Jess.”
She looked at you, eyes wet again, but there was something possessive underneath the sadness now. Something ugly and human and very young.
“No, I’m sorry, but I’m trying to be honest. I don’t know if I can sit there and watch you go off to set with him every day.”
The table went quiet.
Maddy’s expression changed.
You felt it too.
A shift.
A small reveal Jess had not meant to give away so cleanly.
You pulled your hand back slowly.
Jess noticed.
Her face flickered.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Maddy said, “I think you did.”
Jess looked at her.
“Fuck off, Maddy.”
Maddy did not flinch.
“No.”
You stared down at the napkin triangle between your fingers.
Your thoughts were skipping.
Jess was hurt.
Jess was jealous.
Jess was your friend.
Jess had texted him three times this morning.
Jess wanted you to quit.
Tom had a name.
Tom had a mouth you remembered.
The script was good.
You wanted it.
You hated wanting it.
You looked up.
“First, I don’t want to put you in a weird position.”
Jess seized on that immediately.
“Exactly.”
Maddy’s eyes cut to her.
You kept going, the words tumbling faster now because if you stopped, you might cry too.
“No. I mean it. You’re my friend. He’s already messed with your head once, and apparently twice now, and I don’t want to be the person who walks onto a set with him and makes it worse.”
Jess nodded too quickly.
“It would make it worse.”
Maddy leaned forward.
“Jess.”
“What? It would.”
“For you.”
Jess’s mouth tightened.
“Yes. For me. I’m allowed to say that.”
That shut everyone up for a second.
Because she was.
She was allowed to say it.
It still did not feel clean.
You dragged your fingers over the stem of your wine glass.
Maddy quietly moved the glass half an inch away from you before you could knock it.
You noticed and whispered, “Thanks.”
Then you looked back at Jess.
“And second, I don’t want to put myself in a weird position either.”
Jess’s eyes flickered to the script.
You nodded.
“The movie does have like five or so intimate scenes.”
Maddy’s eyebrows rose despite herself.
“Five?”
“Yes.”
You exhaled, too fast, then tried again.
“And they’re not random. They matter. They’re part of the whole psychological mess of it.”
Jess looked down.
For a moment, you thought she was upset for you.
Then she said, very quietly, “Exactly.”
Your stomach sank a little.
Maddy heard it too.
You said, voice lower now, “And I’m meant to do that with him? The man I had a one-night stand with? The man who slept with my friend too and then never responded to her messages?”
Jess flinched.
You hated yourself immediately.
“Sorry.”
“No,” Jess said, too quickly. “Don’t. It’s true.”
But her eyes had gone bright again.
Not only hurt this time.
Angry.
Humiliated.
Jealous.
“And that is why you shouldn’t do it.”
Maddy set her glass down with deliberate care.
“No.”
Jess looked at her.
“No?”
“No,” Maddy said. “She is not giving up a good movie because of some cosmic coincidence where two friends ended up with the same emotionally unavailable asshole.”
“This is not just a coincidence.”
“It is exactly a coincidence.”
“It’s humiliating.”
“For whom?”
Jess stared at her.
Maddy held her gaze.
You looked between them, heart beating too fast.
“Maddy.”
“No. I’m serious. We are all adults. Adults have sex. Shit happens.”
Jess gave a small, disbelieving laugh.
“Don’t do that.”
Maddy’s expression barely changed.
“Do what?”
Jess’s eyes were bright again.
“Make it sound cheap because it’s convenient for your argument.”
The table went quiet.
You looked at Jess.
Her voice was lower now, but sharper. More exposed.
“You know it meant more to me than just sex.”
Maddy’s face softened, but only slightly.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because it doesn’t sound like it.”
Maddy exhaled carefully.
“Jess, I love you. I do. But this is not just about your feelings.”
Jess flinched as if the words had hit her.
Maddy leaned forward a little.
“It is about Y/N’s career too.”
Jess looked away.
Maddy kept going, quieter now, but firmer.
“And I think, in a few years, when you are not hurt and embarrassed and waiting for this man to text you back, you might look at this differently.”
Jess’s jaw tightened.
“Don’t.”
“You might look back and feel awful that you wanted her to walk away from something important because of him.”
Jess’s eyes snapped back to hers.
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t. But I know you.”
That landed.
Jess swallowed.
Maddy’s voice softened another fraction.
“And I know you are not cruel. Not really.”
For one second, Jess looked like that might break her.
Then pride slid in.
Fast.
Ugly.
Protective.
“I’m not being cruel.”
Maddy said nothing.
Jess looked at you.
“I’m trying to protect myself.”
You nodded, because that was true.
It was true and still not the whole truth.
Jess’s gaze flickered to your bag.
To the script.
Then away.
“And maybe I’m trying to protect you too.”
Maddy’s mouth tightened.
“From what? A job?”
Jess’s eyes flashed.
“From him.”
You went still.
Maddy did too.
Jess looked immediately like she regretted how quickly she had said it.
But it was out now.
Tom.
Not the movie.
Not the press.
Not the awkwardness.
Him.
Maddy sat back slowly.
“Right.”
Jess folded her arms.
“Don’t say right like that.”
“I’ll say it however I like.”
“You think I’m pathetic.”
“No,” Maddy said. “I think you’re too into a man who has not been kind enough to you to deserve this much power.”
Jess looked down.
Her fingers were tight around the stem of her glass.
You watched her knuckles pale.
Your chest hurt for her.
And then, horribly, something else twisted underneath it.
Irritation.
Because she was hurt.
Because she was your friend.
Because you loved her.
Because she was trying, gently or not, to make her heartbreak your decision.
Maddy looked at you then.
Not Jess.
You.
“The script is good?”
You swallowed.
“Yes.”
“You want it?”
You looked down at the bag.
The corner of the script stuck out like an accusation.
“Yes.”
Jess’s face changed.
Only slightly.
But you saw it.
Maddy saw it too.
A flash of disappointment before she could cover it.
Maddy’s voice went very calm.
“Then that matters.”
Jess looked wounded by that.
And because she was wounded, she became sharper.
“Fine. Then do it.”
You blinked.
“Jess.”
“No, do it. If the script is so good, do it.”
The words were supportive.
The tone was not.
Maddy noticed.
You noticed too, but your brain did that awful thing where it tried to explain away the thing it had just noticed because noticing meant having to deal with it.
Jess leaned back and folded her arms.
“It’ll be fine. You can spend weeks doing intimate scenes with him. I’m sure that won’t be weird at all.”
Maddy’s voice cooled.
“That is unfair.”
Jess’s eyes flashed.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“She asked me what I thought.”
“And you answered like someone who wants this asshole to text her back.”
Silence.
Sharp.
Immediate.
Jess’s face went white, then red.
“That was cruel.”
Maddy nodded once.
“Yes. It was. It was also true.”
You stared at Maddy.
Then at Jess.
Jess looked like she might cry again, but underneath it, there was something else. Something almost exposed now. Want. Embarrassment. Possession over a man who had not given her the right to it.
Your chest hurt for her.
And then, horribly, you were annoyed too.
Because you had almost given up the film.
Because for three minutes you had let a man, who had not even walked into the room yet, become larger than the work.
You looked down at the script.
It still felt like a trap.
But it also felt like work.
And you had fought too hard to be taken seriously to walk away because a man had turned out to be an inconveniently named mistake.
You pressed your thumb hard into the folded napkin.
One thing.
The work.
Kurt wanted you.
The script was good.
You wanted it.
That was allowed to matter too.
You exhaled.
“Okay.”
Jess looked up quickly.
“Okay?”
You sat back, heart still beating too fast.
Your knee bounced once under the table.
Then again.
You stopped it with your own hand.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
Jess’s face changed.
Just for a second.
Disappointment.
Then she buried it under a smile.
It was not quite fast enough.
Maddy saw it.
You saw it too.
Jess said, “Good.”
But it landed wrong.
Small.
Tight.
Not real.
Maddy smiled more openly.
“Good.”
You picked up your wine.
Carefully this time.
Then you drank to that and, for a moment, the lunch pretended to recover.
Then Jess’s phone lit up on the table.
All three of you looked down before anyone could pretend not to.
Jess snatched it up too fast.
Too eager.
Too hopeful.
Then her face fell.
Not him.
She turned the phone over.
Maddy looked at you.
You looked at the script.
And somewhere between the too-bright restaurant lights, the folded napkin under your thumb, and Jess’s badly hidden disappointment, you understood something you did not want to understand.
This was already worse than awkward.
**********
Later, at home, James fell asleep before you did.
That was not unusual.
James slept like a man with no unfinished business. Flat on his back, one arm above his head, breathing steady, face softened into something almost boyish in the dark.
You hated when he looked like that.
It made everything more complicated.
You lay beside him with your eyes open, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet hum of the room and the occasional sound of traffic outside.
You had told Maddy and Jess you would do the movie.
You had meant it.
You still meant it.
Probably.
But now the room was dark, and James was asleep, and there was no wine, no Maddy, no Jess’s wet eyes, no ridiculous restaurant lighting to make the whole thing feel like a farce.
There was just you.
And Tom.
Tom Sturridge.
His name still felt wrong.
Too public.
Too attached to articles and credits and red carpets and Jess’s trembling voice.
That man.
The man from New York.
The man you had spent months refusing to think about properly, except when you did. Except when you were alone and angry or bored or restless and your mind slipped back to that hotel room like it had its own key.
His mouth.
His hands.
That stupid almost.
The cigarette on the balcony.
The way he had looked at you like he knew you were lying about being braver than you were and had decided to enjoy it.
You shut your eyes.
Immediately regretted it.
Because the dark made it worse.
How could that be the same man?
How could the man who had made you feel like your skin was too small for your body, the man whose voice you still sometimes thought about when you needed to get yourself off, be the same man who had slept with Jess and then left her staring at her phone?
Jess.
Your friend.
Your friend with tears in her eyes at lunch, trying to be noble because she loved you and the work more than she loved her own humiliation.
Your loyalty should have been simple.
Tom had hurt Jess.
Therefore Tom was an arsehole.
That should have been the whole equation.
Clean.
Useful.
Done.
But New York sat in the back of your mind like evidence for the defence.
You hated that.
You hated him a little for it.
You hated yourself more.
Because you remembered laughing with him.
You remembered him being annoying in a way that had made you want to kiss him and slap him and keep him talking at the same time.
You remembered the shock of realising he knew exactly what he was doing.
You remembered him leaving before dawn, handsome and wrecked.
And now you were meant to act normal near him.
Normal.
As if you had not lied about your age.
As if he had not slept with Jess.
As if you were not engaged to James, who was sleeping beside you now, warm and real and completely unaware that your life had turned inside out at lunch.
You turned your head and looked at him.
James shifted slightly in his sleep, his hand flexing against the sheet.
Your stomach twisted.
You should tell him.
Absolutely not.
You could not tell him.
You could already hear his voice.
“You slept with him?”
Not surprised.
Worse.
Disgusted.
Possessive.
Wounded in the way that somehow always made you feel guilty even when you knew you had not technically done anything wrong. You and James had been on a break then. A real one. One he had agreed to when it suited him, then later treated like a loophole you had exploited.
You looked away from him.
No.
You were not doing that tonight.
You reached for your phone instead.
A mistake.
Obviously.
Within seconds, Tom’s face was on your screen again.
Tom Sturridge.
Actor.
Forty.
No.
Almost forty then.
Forty now.
Daughter.
Ex-wife.
Broken engagement.
Interviews.
Photos.
A whole life you had not known existed when he was just a man in a hotel room with blue eyes and dark hair and a cigarette between his fingers.
You scrolled once.
Then stopped.
This was insane.
You locked your phone and put it face down on the bedside table.
James stirred.
“Mm?”
You froze.
“Nothing.”
His eyes did not open.
“You awake?”
“No.”
A sleepy pause.
“Liar.”
You forced a small smile in the dark.
“Go back to sleep.”
He mumbled something and turned slightly toward you, one hand finding your waist under the sheet. Familiar. Heavy. Claiming even in sleep.
You lay very still.
After a moment, his breathing evened out again.
You stared into the dark.
The intimacy scenes rose in your mind like a threat.
A rehearsal room.
Scripts.
Kurt watching.
An intimacy coordinator explaining boundaries while you stood opposite a man who had already seen too much of you. A man who would know, the second he recognised you, that you had lied.
Twenty-eight.
God.
You pressed both hands over your face.
“Idiot,” you whispered.
James did not wake.
Of course he did not.
You lowered your hands and stared at the ceiling again.
Fine.
You would do the movie. You would walk into that room. You would be professional. You would not let Tom Sturridge see you panic. You would not let him make you feel small. You would not think about New York. You would not think about Jess. You would not think about his mouth. You would not.
You turned onto your side, away from James, eyes open in the dark.
Warnings: Age Gap, Domestic Abuse, Arranged Marriage, Sexual Abuse, PTSD, Religious Extremism; Implied Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Child Abduction,
A few more weeks passed in a blur of ordinary things that did not feel ordinary at all.
School bags. Library shifts. Therapy appointments. Mia’s homework. Luka suddenly deciding he would only eat toast if it was cut into “dinosaur rectangles,” which apparently were different from regular rectangles in ways no adult could understand.
And then there was Tom’s script.
You found it on the kitchen table one evening, printed and bound, with a scatter of yellow sticky notes poking out from the edges. At first, you assumed he had left it there by mistake, but then you noticed one note on the front in his handwriting, marking the sections he still needed to reread.
He had said you could read it.
So, naturally, you did.
Tom came downstairs twenty minutes later to find you sitting cross-legged on the sofa in your pyjamas, glasses low on your nose, holding the script in both hands like it was evidence in court.
He stopped.
“Oh no.”
You looked up slowly.
“Two.”
Tom blinked.
“Two what?”
You lifted the script.
“Two sex scenes.”
His mouth twitched.
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“I wondered when you’d get there.”
You flipped a page aggressively.
“One of them says, and I quote, ‘he pushes her against the door with barely restrained hunger.’”
Tom leaned against the doorway, looking far too amused.
“That’s not my line.”
“It is your body.”
He laughed.
“My body has to pay the mortgage.”
You stared at him.
“Your body can pay the mortgage with dialogue.”
“I’ll mention that to the director.”
You looked back down at the page, frowning.
“This woman has too many buttons.”
That did it. He laughed properly then, coming over and taking the script from your hands before you could start making notes in the margin.
“You are not allowed to annotate my sex scenes.”
“Someone has to.”
“No one has to.”
“Page forty-eight lacks realism.”
He bent over the back of the sofa and kissed the side of your head.
“Page forty-eight is going to have an intimacy coordinator.”
“Good. Tell her I have concerns.”
“I am absolutely not telling the intimacy coordinator that my girlfriend has concerns about button distribution.”
You tipped your head back to look at him.
“Coward.”
He kissed you upside down.
“Jealous little thing.”
You immediately gasped.
“I am not jealous.”
From the next room, where Luka had been building a tower out of blocks and pretending not to listen, he said very seriously:
“Mum is jealous of buttons.”
Tom shut his eyes.
You pointed at him.
“This is your fault.”
“I did nothing.”
“You left the script where I could reach it.”
“A terrible error.”
It became the kind of month where everything kept moving before you could properly process it.
The school had a fundraiser, which you somehow ended up helping with after making the fatal mistake of saying, “I can probably manage the book stall for an hour.”
An hour became three.
Three became you standing behind a trestle table in the school hall, trying to sell second-hand paperbacks while Ruth marched past with a clipboard, Maddy turned up with takeaway coffees she was not technically meant to bring inside, and Tom was cornered by two Year Six girls who had realised he was famous but could not work out why.
One of them narrowed her eyes at him.
“You were in that sleep show Mum watched.”
Tom looked gravely haunted.
“Possibly.”
Her eyes narrowed further, as if trying to match the man in front of her to some half-remembered adult conversation.
“She said you were pretty.”
Tom went very still.
From behind the book stall, you made a strangled sound into your coffee.
Which is when Ruth stopped beside you and looked at the stall.
“You’ve sold nearly everything.”
You looked down, surprised.
“Have I?”
“Yes.” Ruth glanced at Tom, who was now being asked whether actors got to keep swords. “And he seems to be useful.”
“He is very cheap labour.”
“Is he?”
You followed her gaze.
Tom had one child on either side of him now and was explaining, with total seriousness, that no, he did not personally own a dragon.
You sighed.
“Emotionally expensive.”
Ruth smiled into her coffee cup.
“Aren’t they all?”
Then Mia turned eleven.
She decided she did not want a big party. No house full of people. No noise. No relatives asking questions. No balloons, because Luka had screamed at one once when it popped and everyone still remembered.
She wanted the theatre.
“Just a few friends,” she said. “Nothing embarrassing.”
Tom, who had walked into the kitchen halfway through this sentence, made the terrible mistake of saying:
“I can take them.”
You and Mia both looked at him.
Mia’s eyes narrowed.
“You?”
Tom put a hand to his chest.
“That sounded hurtful.”
“No offence,” Mia said, already offending him. “But you don’t know what eleven-year-old girls are like.”
“I have an eleven-year-old daughter.”
“Ellie is different.”
“How?”
Mia thought about it.
“She is…well…Ellie.”
Tom considered that.
“Fair.”
So, two Saturdays later, Tom found himself in charge of five eleven-year-old girls at a matinee, while you stayed home with Luka because Luka had announced that theatre seats “folded people up” and he did not trust them.
Tom texted you twenty-three minutes after arriving.
Tom: One of them has lost a lip gloss.
You: Already?
Tom: Apparently it is emotionally significant.
You: Find it.
Tom: I am trying. There are five of them and they move like birds.
You: Happy birthday to Mia.
Tom: I regret everything.
A second text came five minutes later.
Tom: Found lip gloss.
Tom: Different child now crying because the theatre is “too loud.”
You: Is Mia okay?
Tom: Mia is fine. Mia is the general. I am infantry. Ellie is conducting admin.
When he finally returned them all home that afternoon, he looked as if he had crossed a continent on foot.
Mia, glowing, clutching a programme and a bag of sweets, kissed your cheek.
“It was perfect.”
Tom stood behind her, pale and hollow-eyed.
“They discussed a boy called Archie for forty-six uninterrupted minutes.”
Mia turned.
“You were listening?”
“I was trapped in a row.”
********
Then, the day after, the divorce lawyer called.
You knew before she finished the first sentence. Something in her voice had already prepared you.
Your husband would not sign.
Of course he would not sign.
He wanted delays. Obstruction. Control from a locked room. Another way to put his hand on your life and leave a mark.
You stood very still in the kitchen, phone pressed to your ear, nodding though no one could see you.
“Right,” you said. “Yes. I understand.”
Tom was at the sink rinsing Luka’s lunchbox. He turned when your voice changed.
You kept nodding.
“No, I know. Thank you. Yes. Please proceed with whatever the next step is.”
When you hung up, the room seemed too bright.
Tom dried his hands slowly.
“He won’t sign?”
You shook your head.
For one humiliating second, your mouth trembled.
“No.”
Tom came closer, but carefully. Always carefully when you looked like that.
“Love.”
“It’s stupid,” you said quickly. “I knew he wouldn’t. I knew he would do this. I don’t know why I—”
“Because you wanted one thing to be simple.”
That hurt more than it should have.
You covered your face.
“I just want it finished.”
Tom’s arms came around you.
“I know.”
“I want my name back. I want my life back. I want him to stop being attached to everything.”
“He doesn’t get to keep you because he refuses to sign a form.”
You pressed your forehead against his chest.
“It feels like he does.”
Tom kissed the top of your head.
“I know it feels like that.”
You pulled back enough to look at him.
His face was calm, but not dismissive. Not pretending this did not matter.
“But we knew this was probably going to happen,” he said quietly. “Your lawyer knew it too. It changes the route. It doesn’t change the destination.”
You breathed out shakily.
“That sounds like something from a very expensive therapist.”
“It was from Sarah, actually.”
You gave a watery laugh despite yourself.
“Of course it was.”
He brushed his thumb beneath your eye.
“We keep going.”
“I’m tired of keeping going.”
“Then I’ll keep going for a bit.”
You looked at him.
“You can’t divorce him for me.”
“No,” Tom said. “But I can stand next to you while you do it.”
And because you were tired, and because you loved him, and because that was somehow enough for the next minute if not the whole day, you let him hold you until Luka came in and asked why everyone was hugging without him.
After that, the book became real in a way that frightened you more than you expected.
At first, it had been a manuscript. Then a proof. Then a cover mock-up Sarah showed you on her phone while you pretended not to feel sick. Then advance copies, quietly circulating to reviewers and booksellers and festival organisers.
That all happened weeks ago.
And now the invitations started arriving.
Not small ones.
Not polite local things where someone asked whether you might be able to sit in a library with a cup of tea and talk about resilience.
Proper invitations.
A writers’ festival in Edinburgh.
A conversation event in Manchester.
A panel chaired by a journalist whose name you recognised from television.
An all-expenses-paid weekend at a serious literary festival where the moderator’s email said she had read the pre-release copy and had been “deeply moved.”
You stared at that one for a long time.
“Why are they paying for my hotel?”
Tom, sitting at the other end of the sofa with Luka asleep half on his lap and half upside down, looked over.
“Because they want you there.”
“But why?”
“Because you wrote a book.”
You gave him a look.
“Thank you, that clears everything up.”
“A good book,” he added.
You looked back at the email.
“It feels like a mistake.”
“It isn’t.”
“What if they expect me to be clever in person?”
Tom smiled.
“You are clever in person.”
The biggest invitation came on a Wednesday afternoon, forwarded by your publisher with too many exclamation marks.
A private publisher event in London. Editors, agents, booksellers, press, donors, festival programmers. Speeches. Drinks. A conversation on stage.
You read the email three times.
Then you put your phone down on the table and walked away from it.
Tom picked it up.
“Is this the thing Sarah mentioned?”
“I don’t know.”
He scanned it.
His eyebrows rose.
“Oh.”
“What does oh mean?”
“It means I’m going.”
You turned back.
“You are?”
“Yes. It says plus one.”
You looked at him.
He tried to arrange his face into something respectable.
It lasted half a second.
“And I’m going to be your arm candy,” he said.
You stared.
“My what?”
“Arm candy.”
“You are forty.”
“Still edible.”
You made a strangled sound.
“Please never say that again.”
He leaned back, delighted with himself.
“You’re taking me, aren’t you?”
“I mean, yes. Of course. If you want to come.”
“I do. I’ll stand there looking decorative and proud.”
**********
Then, as if your life had not already become strange enough, Sarah organised an Instagram page.
You discovered this because Maddy sent you a screenshot with thirteen question marks.
The profile picture was the book cover. The bio was tasteful. Minimal. Your author name. Publisher. Contact through agency. No children. No personal address. No private details.
You stared at it like it might bite.
“I have Instagram.”
Tom looked up from his tea.
“Do you?”
“Apparently.”
He took your phone and looked.
“Oh, very clean.”
“The agency is managing it.”
“Good.”
“They take ten per cent.”
“Less good.”
“Sarah says it’s normal.”
“Sarah says many expensive things are normal.”
You sat beside him.
“She said I need some kind of public presence for the book.”
Tom made a face.
“Unfortunately, she’s probably right.”
You looked at him.
“You hate this stuff.”
“Yes.”
“You refuse all of it.”
“I’m an actor,” Tom said. “I’m not selling anything.”
You looked at him.
“That is almost exactly what Sarah said.”
Tom gave a small shrug.
“Sarah is rarely original, but she is often correct.”
You scrolled down.
There were already posts scheduled. Quotes from reviews. A photo of the proof copy. A blurred shot of the publisher’s office. Nothing of Mia. Nothing of Luka. Nothing of your house.
You relaxed by one degree.
“I said no children.”
“Good.”
“Sarah said no children, but occasional Tom.”
Tom slowly turned his head.
You looked at him.
He looked at the account.
Then at you.
His face lit with unbearable smugness.
“See?”
“No.”
“Arm candy.”
“You are not calling yourself that again.”
“I’m basically promotional material now.”
“You are unbearable.”
“Occasional Tom,” he said, delighted. “I should put that in my Wikipedia page.”
You snatched the phone back and Tom couldn’t help but laugh.
But not everything was funny.
The first ugly email came through the agency, forwarded to Sarah and your publisher but not directly to you until Sarah called and asked whether you wanted to know.
You did not.
Then you did.
Then you wished you had not.
It was from someone you did not know. A long, furious message accusing you of making your country of birth look barbaric. Of selling shame. Of feeding Western prejudice. Of betraying women by making private suffering public.
You read only half of it before your hand started shaking.
Tom found you in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed with your phone dark in your lap.
He stopped in the doorway.
“What happened?”
You looked up.
“Someone wrote to the agency.”
His face changed.
“About the book?”
You nodded.
He came in and sat beside you, not touching you yet.
“Bad?”
You swallowed.
“They said I’m putting Iran in a bad light.”
A silence.
Then Tom said, with a control that meant he was furious:
“Right.”
“Maybe I am.”
“No.”
“Tom—”
“No.”
You stared down at your hands.
“I knew people would say things. I just thought…”
“What?”
“I don’t know. That maybe if I was careful enough, no one would think I was attacking everyone.”
Tom leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“You wrote about what happened to you.”
“I know.”
“That is not the same as condemning an entire country.”
Your eyes burned.
“It feels complicated.”
“It is complicated,” he said. “But that email is not complexity. It’s cruelty dressed up as principle.”
You let out a small, unsteady breath.
He took your hand then.
“You can love where you came from and still tell the truth about what hurt you there.”
That undid you a little.
Not loudly.
Just enough that you leaned into him and let your head rest against his shoulder.
“I’m scared,” you admitted.
Tom kissed your hair.
“I know.”
“What if there’s more?”
“There probably will be.”
You pulled back.
“That was not comforting.”
“Lying would be less useful.”
You laughed once, weakly.
He squeezed your hand.
“But there will be more good, too. More people who read it and feel less alone. More people who understand something they didn’t before. More women who see themselves in it. More men who should be deeply uncomfortable.”
You looked at him.
“You make it sound braver than it feels.”
“Most brave things feel awful while you’re doing them.”
You were still thinking about that three days later when the suitcases came down from the attic.
The holiday had existed in theory for weeks.
Ten days.
Italy.
A family-friendly resort by the beach.
Tom had booked it with Sarah’s help and refused to show you anything beyond flight times, which was irritating and suspicious.
You packed like a woman preparing for siege.
Mia packed neatly.
Luka packed three dinosaurs, one rabbit, two mismatched socks, a single wooden train track and, for reasons no one could explain, a whisk.
Tom held it up.
“Why is this in your backpack?”
Luka looked offended.
“In case.”
“In case of what?”
“Whisking.”
Tom looked at you.
“I have no argument.”
Your bedroom became a disaster zone.
Clothes on the bed. Swimwear folded and refolded. Passports checked four hundred times. Sunscreen. Medication. Chargers. Books. More books. Mia’s theatre programme, because apparently it had to come. Luka’s stuffed rabbit, who now required his own seat in the car.
Tom walked in carrying another suitcase and stopped dead.
“How many people are we taking?”
“Five.”
“This looks like eight.”
“Children need things.”
He picked up a tiny pair of sandals.
“These weigh nothing.”
“Exactly, so stop complaining.”
Mia appeared in the doorway, holding two dresses.
“Which one looks more Italy?”
Tom turned solemnly.
“That one.”
“You didn’t even look.”
“I felt the answer.”
Mia rolled her eyes and looked at you.
“Mum?”
You pointed to the blue one.
“That one.”
Tom looked betrayed.
“That’s what I said.”
“You guessed.”
“Intuitively.”
Luka came in wearing his backpack, swim goggles, and no trousers.
“I’m ready.”
Tom looked down.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“You appear to be missing something important.”
Luka looked at his hands.
“Rabbit?”
“Trousers.”
Luka sighed like adults were exhausting.
The airport was worse.
Nothing had prepared you for the airport.
Not the trial. Not the press. Not motherhood. Not the fact that Tom somehow owned seven identical black T-shirts but had forgotten his flip flops.
The airport was bright, loud, glassy, and full of people dragging suitcases with the blank desperation of the damned.
Luka went quiet the second you walked inside.
You felt it through his hand.
His fingers tightened around yours.
You looked down.
His face had changed.
Too pale. Too still.
Tom saw it at almost the same moment.
He crouched in front of him, ignoring the flow of people moving around you.
“Hey.”
Luka looked at him.
“Are we going home?”
Your heart cracked.
Tom’s face stayed gentle.
“No, mate. We’re going on holiday.”
“On the plane?”
“Yes.”
Luka looked past him at the departure boards.
“Not with him?”
You closed your eyes for half a second.
Tom did not flinch.
“No,” he said firmly. “Never with him.”
Luka’s bottom lip trembled.
“What if he comes?”
Tom took both his small hands.
“He can’t.”
“But what if?”
“Then he would have to get past me, your mum, airport security, the police, Mia, Ellie and probably your rabbit.”
Luka sniffed.
“Rabbit bites.”
“Exactly.”
Mia stepped closer and put her hand on Luka’s shoulder.
“And I’d kick him.”
You looked at her.
“Mia.”
She shrugged.
“I would.”
Tom nodded gravely.
“Reasonable.”
Somehow, that helped.
Not all at once. Luka still clung to Tom through check-in. He still refused to put his backpack on the conveyor belt until Tom promised the whisk would come back. He still cried when airport security wanted Rabbit to go through the scanner.
“He doesn’t like tunnels!”
The security officer, a man with kind eyes and the weary patience of someone who had seen everything, leaned down.
“I’ll make sure he comes out first.”
Luka stared at him suspiciously.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Rabbit emerged from the scanner thirty seconds later.
Tom lifted him triumphantly.
“He’s very brave.”
Luka grabbed him and pressed his face into his fur.
“He hated it.”
“Fair.”
By the time you reached the gate, you were sweating, Mia was hungry, Ellie was thirsty, Luka had dropped a dinosaur in WHSmith, and Tom had bought three bottles of water, two packets of crisps, one magazine he did not want, and a tiny toy plane because he had no self-control around anxious children.
You looked at the toy plane.
“Really?”
Tom handed it to Luka.
“Therapeutic.”
“Enabling.”
“Same family.”
The flight was short.
Miraculously, it was fine.
Luka sat by the window between you and Tom, gripping Rabbit in one hand and Tom’s sleeve in the other. The plane took off, and you braced for panic, but Luka only stared out at the shrinking city below.
“We’re very high.”
Tom leaned over.
“We are.”
“Can dinosaurs fly?”
“Some could.”
“Not stegosaurus.”
“No.”
“Too chunky.”
“Exactly.”
Mia, across the aisle, opened her book and pretended she was not listening.
Ellie was watching her ipad next to her.
You looked at Tom over Luka’s head.
He smiled faintly.
You had survived take-off.
That felt like a victory.
Italy was warm when you landed.
Warm in a way that felt different from England. Softer. Brighter. The air smelled like salt and sun-warmed stone and coffee. Luka perked up the moment he saw palm trees.
“Are those holiday trees?”
Tom looked out the car window.
“Yes.”
“Do we have them at home?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because they only grow in nice weather and Britain’s weather is appalling.”
You laughed for the first time since leaving the house.
The drive took you along pale roads and glimpses of blue water. Ellie looked pleased with herself in the front, practising Italian under her breath every time you passed a sign, then repeating it louder when Tom failed to praise her quickly enough.
“That means beach,” she announced.
Tom glanced at her.
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
“Impressive.”
“You’re meant to say molto bene.”
“Molto bene.”
“Your accent is terrible.”
“Thank you, darling.”
Mia pressed her forehead to the window, trying to look unimpressed and failing every time the sea appeared between the buildings. Luka fell asleep with his mouth open, still holding the toy plane. Tom’s hand found yours in the back seat and stayed there.
You expected a hotel.
A nice one, maybe. Tom had said family-friendly resort, which you imagined meant a pool, breakfast buffet, children shouting in several languages and you trying not to look overwhelmed.
The car turned through a gate.
Then along a private road lined with olive trees.
Then stopped outside a villa.
Not a room.
Not a suite.
A villa.
White stone walls. Terracotta roof. Flowers spilling over balconies. A private pool glittering blue beyond the open terrace. And past that, impossibly close, the beach.
The sea.
You stepped out of the car and just stood there.
Someone from the resort appeared with towels and a tray of drinks. Champagne for you and Tom. Bright mocktails for the children, with fruit on the glasses.
Ellie took hers like she had been expecting nothing less her entire life.
Mia held hers with both hands, eyes huge.
Luka woke properly at the sight of an umbrella sticking out of his glass.
“Mine has furniture.”
Tom crouched beside him.
“Very sophisticated.”
“Can I keep it?”
“The umbrella?”
“And the drink.”
“The drink is sort of the point.”
Luka stared at him.
“And the glass.”
“No.”
Luka looked offended, as though Tom had ruined Italian hospitality personally.
You were still staring at the villa.
Tom watched you for a moment, then stepped closer.
“You all right?”
You turned to him slowly.
“Tom.”
His mouth twitched.
“Yes?”
“What is this?”
“A villa.”
“I can see that.”
“Then why did you ask?”
You looked back at the pool, the terrace, the beach beyond it.
“This is too much.”
His expression softened.
“No, it isn’t.”
“It absolutely is.”
“It’s ten days.”
“In paradise.”
“That was the intention.”
Ellie, who had already wandered three steps ahead, turned back and said, “Dad, there are stairs down to the beach.”
Luka gasped as if she had announced buried treasure.
“Beach?”
Mia looked at you.
“Can we go now?”
You blinked.
“We have literally just arrived.”
“Exactly,” Ellie said. “We’re already here.”
Tom looked at you, amused.
“Hard to argue with that logic.”
“You try unpacking four suitcases while they all go feral.”
“I can unpack.”
You stared at him.
“You fold like an escaped prisoner.”
“I can place things in drawers with confidence.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Luka tugged on your hand.
“Mum. Beach. Please.”
Mia was trying not to look too desperate, which somehow made it worse.
Ellie had already taken off her shoes.
You looked at Tom.
He gave you a small smile.
“We can unpack later.”
So ten minutes later, the suitcases were abandoned in the villa like evidence of a crime, and everyone was changing in different rooms while Luka shouted through a door that he could not find his swimming shorts, which turned out to be on his body.
The beach was close enough that you could hear the water before you reached it.
Warm sand. Blue sea. People scattered under umbrellas. Children shrieking in Italian and English and French. The bright flash of towels. The smell of salt and sunscreen.
You stood for a moment, bare feet sinking slightly into the sand, and felt something inside you loosen.
Then Tom came out behind you in board shorts and sunglasses, a towel slung over one shoulder, and your brain temporarily stopped doing anything useful.
He looked ridiculous.
Not actually ridiculous.
That was the problem.
He looked stupidly good. Dark hair messier than usual. Chest bare with his rather attractive patch of chest hair. Skin pale in the very British way that suggested the sun was personally suspicious of him. Long legs. Easy posture. That irritating, effortless handsomeness that made you want to be annoyed with him and touch him at the same time.
He noticed you looking.
Of course he did.
His mouth curved.
“What?”
You looked away too quickly.
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
“You need sunscreen.”
He glanced down at himself.
“I put some on.”
“Where?”
“Generally.”
“Generally is not a body part.”
Ellie passed behind you, already carrying a bucket she had somehow acquired.
“Dad burns if someone says UV.”
Tom pointed at her.
“Betrayal.”
Mia, who was helping Luka build a moat before he had even built a castle, said, “Mum’s right. You’re very pale.”
Tom looked wounded.
“This family is cruel.”
You took the sunscreen from the bag and stepped toward him.
“Stand still.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Bossy.”
“Burnt is not attractive.”
“So you do think I’m attractive.”
You squeezed sunscreen into your palm.
“I think you are British and pale.”
“Mm.”
You pressed your hand to his shoulder and began rubbing it in.
His skin was warm under your palm.
“And incredibly handsome,” you added quietly.
Tom’s smile changed at once.
Softer. More private.
“Am I?”
You moved your hand across his collarbone, then his chest, trying to appear practical and failing because he was looking at you like that.
“Don’t be smug.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m being covered in sunscreen by a beautiful woman on an Italian beach. I think a little smugness is proportionate.”
You rolled your eyes, but your mouth betrayed you.
He leaned down and kissed you.
Only briefly.
Warm mouth. Salt air. His hand at your waist.
Then Luka yelled, “Tom! The sea is moving!”
Tom rested his forehead against yours for half a second.
“Duty calls.”
“The sea does tend to do that.”
He kissed you once more, then jogged down toward the water, where Luka was standing ankle-deep and looking deeply suspicious of the tide.
Ellie went in first, fearless, laughing when the water hit her thighs. Mia followed more carefully, holding Luka’s hand until he decided he was brave enough and then immediately announced he was a sea dinosaur.
Tom stayed with them, waist-deep in the water, lifting Luka over the small waves while Ellie splashed him and Mia pretended she was above splashing anyone, then absolutely splashed him when his back was turned.
You watched from the shallows, smiling so much your face hurt.
For a while, nothing happened.
No phone calls.
No lawyers.
No emails.
No one needing you to be brave or careful or composed.
Just the children in the water and Tom laughing with his head tipped back, and the sun turning everything gold.
When he came back to you, wet and grinning, you tried to step away.
“No.”
His eyes lit.
“No?”
“You are wet.”
“We’re at the beach.”
“I am peacefully dry.”
“Not for long.”
“Tom.”
He caught you easily, arms around your waist, pulling you against his wet chest while you tried not to laugh and failed completely.
“You are awful.”
“You love me.”
“Against my better judgement.”
He kissed you again, slower this time.
Not enough to be inappropriate. Enough that Ellie groaned from the shallow end of the water.
“Dad!”
Tom did not even turn around.
“Yes, darling?”
“We can see you.”
“Then look away.”
Mia made a disgusted noise.
Luka shouted, “Are you eating Mum?”
You broke away at once.
Tom closed his eyes.
“Brilliant.”
You covered your face.
“I cannot take you anywhere.”
“That was not my fault.”
“You were the one apparently eating me.”
Tom leaned in, lowering his voice so only you could hear.
“I was kissing you.”
His mouth brushed your ear.
“I can, however, eat you later.”
You went completely still.
Tom pulled back with a look of perfect innocence, which was deeply unconvincing.
“Beach,” he called to the children, as if he had not just ruined your ability to think. “Who wants another swim?”
You stayed at the beach until everyone was sandy and tired and hungry enough to become dangerous.
Back at the villa, the children showered in shifts with varying degrees of competence. Luka emerged still somehow with sand behind one ear. Mia changed into the blue dress she had packed for “Italy.” Ellie appeared in a white skirt and announced she looked “resort appropriate,” which made Tom stare at her for several seconds like he had missed a developmental stage.
“When did you start saying things like that?”
Ellie looked at him.
“When you started wearing linen.”
Tom looked down at his shirt.
“This is a perfectly normal shirt.”
“It’s very British dad on holiday.”
You made a sound that was not dignified.
Tom turned to you.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not.”
The restaurant was on the resort terrace, open to the sea, with lanterns strung overhead and the sound of water below. The staff greeted Tom by name, which made you give him a look.
He pretended not to see it.
The food was insane.
That was the only word for it.
There was bread still warm from the oven. Olive oil so green it looked unreal. Bowls of pasta with glossy sauce. Grilled fish. Tomatoes that tasted like sunshine. Tiny clams in shells, which Luka stared at in horror.
“Are those snails?”
“No,” Tom said. “Clams.”
“Baby snot shells.”
Mia choked on her water.
Ellie immediately lost it.
You tried to be stern and failed because Tom was laughing silently into his napkin.
Luka pointed at the bowl.
“They look like beach bogies.”
“Right,” you said, pressing your lips together. “That’s enough.”
Tom’s shoulders were shaking.
You kicked him under the table.
“Ow.”
“Stop encouraging him.”
“I am doing nothing.”
“You are laughing.”
The children ate ridiculous amounts. Mia tried everything. Ellie ordered in Italian and looked smug when the waiter understood her. Luka ate pasta with butter, two pieces of bread, half of Tom’s chips, and one clam after Tom told him it was pirate food.
Then he announced:
“I like baby snot shells.”
“Please don’t say that to the waiter,” you said.
“Why?”
“Because Italy has done nothing to deserve it.”
By the time dessert came, the sky had turned purple over the water.
Luka was half-asleep against Tom’s side. Mia was quiet in the good way, full and happy, her hair still damp from the shower. Ellie had stopped pretending not to enjoy being part of the chaos and was leaning across the table to steal bites of Mia’s dessert.
You looked at all of them.
Then at the candles.
Then at the sea.
Then at Tom.
He was watching Luka try to keep his eyes open, one hand resting protectively at the back of his chair. He looked tired and sun-warmed and utterly at ease.
Your chest tightened.
“Tom.”
He looked up from Luka, who was half-asleep against his side and still holding a piece of bread in one hand.
“Mm?”
You lowered your voice.
“Thank you.”
His face softened, but he did not look surprised. Not exactly. More as if he had been waiting all evening for you to stop arguing with the kindness of it.
“You’re welcome.”
You looked away toward the darkening sea.
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“For all of this.”
His thumb brushed over the back of your hand.
“Love, this is what we needed.”
You breathed out slowly.
“It’s perfect.”
Tom smiled.
“Good.”
By the time you got back to the villa, the children were barely conscious.
Ellie still attempted to be sophisticated about it, announcing she was “not tired, just resting her eyes,” before nearly walking into the side of the sofa. Mia made it up the stairs with more dignity, but only just. Luka had to be carried, warm and heavy against Tom’s shoulder, mumbling something about snot shells and pirates.
Within twenty minutes, the villa was quiet.
Not silent. The good kind of quiet.
The sea moving in the dark. The faint hum of air conditioning inside. The occasional sleepy creak from one of the children’s rooms.
You changed into a soft dress and found Tom outside on the terrace, a bottle of wine open between two glasses and a chess board set up on the low table.
You paused in the doorway.
“Chess?”
He looked up, one arm stretched along the back of the outdoor sofa.
“It’s been a while.”
You came outside and sat opposite him.
“It has.”
The wine was cold. The night was warm. Tom had changed into loose linen trousers and a shirt he had not bothered to button properly, because apparently Italy had destroyed whatever remained of your ability to behave normally around him.
You tried to focus on the board.
You really did.
For at least twenty minutes.
Tom moved a knight and leaned back, watching you.
“Your move.”
You looked at the pieces.
Then at him.
Then back at the pieces.
“I know.”
His eyes narrowed with amusement.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
You picked up your bishop, hesitated, then put it down again.
Tom smiled.
“That was not confidence.”
“I am thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
You gave him a look.
He took a sip of wine.
“Take your time. I’m about to make an excellent move.”
You looked at him properly then. At his bare throat. The open buttons. The dark hair on his chest. The lazy, sun-warmed ease of him.
And perhaps it was the wine.
Or the sea.
Or the fact that, for once, no one was frightened.
You stood.
Tom’s gaze followed you immediately.
“What are you doing?”
You walked around the table and sat beside him instead of opposite him.
“Changing strategy.”
His mouth curved.
“That so?”
You leaned in and kissed him.
Slowly at first. Softly enough that it could still have been innocent if either of you were inclined to lie.
Tom hummed against your mouth, one hand sliding to your waist.
“Mm.”
You kissed him again.
His fingers tightened slightly.
“You’re trying to distract me from making a good move.”
You pulled back just enough to look offended.
“No. Absolutely not.”
“No?”
“I am very committed to the integrity of the game.”
His eyes dropped as your fingers went to the next button of his shirt.
You opened it.
Then the next.
Your palm settled over his chest, warm skin and soft hair beneath your hand.
Tom’s breath changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
“Ah.”
You looked up at him through your lashes.
“Ah what?”
He glanced down at your hand, then back to your face.
“You want sex.”
You pressed your lips together, pretending to consider this.
“Maybe.”
His smile went slow and dangerous.
“Maybe?”
Your fingers spread over his chest.
“I could also be appreciating the linen.”
“You hate the linen.”
“It’s not my favourite look.”
Tom laughed under his breath, then caught your wrist gently and kissed the inside of it.
The touch sent heat straight through you.
“And now?” he asked.
You swallowed.
“Now I think it has potential.”
His eyes darkened.
“For chess?”
“No.”
That was all he needed.
Tom reached for the chess board without looking and slid it carefully to the far side of the table.
Warnings: Age Gap, Domestic Abuse, Arranged Marriage, Sexual Abuse, PTSD, Religious Extremism; Implied Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Child Abduction,
Two weeks after Luka started kindergarten, the Father’s Day newsletter arrived in your inbox.
You stared at it for a long time.
Not because it was unusual.
It was, in fact, aggressively normal.
Blue border. Clip-art ties. A cartoon man holding a barbecue spatula. Three exclamation marks after Father’s Day Breakfast!
You read it once.
Then again.
Then a third time, although by then the words had stopped meaning anything and had become shapes on the screen.
Dear families,
We are excited to invite all dads, grandfathers, uncles, special friends and father figures to our Father’s Day breakfast on Friday morning…
You closed the laptop.
Then opened it again almost immediately, because closing it did not, apparently, cancel Father’s Day.
Luka was on the floor in the sitting room, lying on his stomach with a dinosaur pressed dramatically against a wooden rabbit.
“No,” he said in a deep voice. “You cannot go in the hole because you are a meat eater.”
You watched him for a moment.
He looked fine.
That was the problem, really.
He so often looked fine until he suddenly wasn’t.
By the following morning, you had spoken to his teacher.
You did it at drop-off, quietly, once Luka had vanished inside with his backpack bouncing against his legs and his dinosaur of the week clutched in one hand. His teacher, Ms Harris, was kind without becoming too soft, which you appreciated. You had grown to dread that look people got sometimes, the one that made you feel as though grief had entered the room before you had.
“I just wanted to mention the Father’s Day activities,” you said, keeping your voice low.
Ms Harris nodded at once.
“Yes. I did wonder whether we should have a chat.”
You nodded too, gripping the strap of your bag.
“He might be fine. Or he might not. I honestly don’t know. But his biological father…”
You stopped, because there was no simple way to say it in a kindergarten corridor next to a wall display of paper plate suns.
Ms Harris’s face softened.
“I understand.”
You were not sure she did, exactly, but you were grateful she did not make you explain.
“There’s a breakfast, isn’t there?” you said.
“Yes. The Friday before Father’s Day. We’re making invitations this week. Then cards and a little photo frame for Sunday. There’s also a small ‘All About My Dad’ sheet for show and tell.”
Your stomach tightened.
“Right.”
“We can absolutely adapt it,” she said quickly. “He doesn’t have to participate. He can make something for someone else, or do a different activity entirely. We have children with all sorts of family structures. We’re very careful.”
You swallowed.
“Thank you.”
“And I’ll speak with him gently,” she added. “Not in front of the others.”
You looked through the glass panel in the classroom door. Luka was sitting beside another little boy, already talking with both hands as if he were in the middle of an urgent board meeting.
“He may say he doesn’t want to do it,” you said.
“Then he won’t.”
“He may say he does and then get upset.”
“Then we’ll stop.”
You nodded again.
You wanted to be reassured.
You were.
That did not make you feel better.
Father’s Day had never been something you had expected to fear. It was supposed to be school stalls and ugly mugs and paper ties. It was supposed to be ordinary and, before everything had happened, and before Luka was so confused with life, it was you who had attended these events. Because there was no father and there was no father figure before.
But ordinary had always been where the hardest things hid now. Especially after the abduction.
*******
That afternoon, Ms Harris approached Luka during quiet activity time.
The children were scattered across the tables, surrounded by crayons, glue sticks and paper offcuts. One table was making invitations. Another had started on cards. There was glitter already on the floor, though no glitter had technically been opened yet, which Ms Harris considered one of the enduring mysteries of early childhood education.
Luka sat with his dinosaur beside his elbow, carefully sharpening a blue pencil that did not need sharpening.
“Luka,” Ms Harris said softly, pulling a small chair beside him.
He looked up.
“Yes?”
“We’re doing some Father’s Day crafts this week.”
He blinked at her.
“All right.”
“And I just wanted to tell you that you don’t have to make one if you don’t want to.”
He frowned.
“Why?”
Ms Harris paused.
“Well, sometimes children have different families. Some children might make things for their dad, or their grandad, or their uncle, or someone special.”
Luka stared at her with growing suspicion.
“I have a dad.”
Ms Harris went very still.
“Oh,” she said carefully.
Luka looked almost offended now.
“I do.”
“Of course,” she said, recovering quickly. “Then would you like to make an invitation for him?”
“Yes.”
“Lovely. That’s absolutely fine.”
He picked up a sheet of folded paper, apparently satisfied that the adult had stopped being strange.
Ms Harris sat with him while he worked.
The front of the invitation was supposed to show the child and their father doing something together. Some children drew footballs. Some drew cars. One child drew their father asleep on the sofa, which Ms Harris privately thought was probably the most accurate submission of the day.
Luka drew a person.
Then he added dark hair.
Then, very carefully, he added two earrings to one very large ear.
Ms Harris looked down at the paper.
The figure had a book in one hand. Beside him was a rabbit. Or possibly a potato with ears. There were also two socks, each a different colour, floating near the figure’s feet.
“What are those?” Ms Harris asked gently.
“Socks.”
“Right. And why are they different?”
“Because he can’t find them properly.”
“I see.”
“He says they are the same if they both go on feet.”
Ms Harris pressed her lips together.
“That’s very practical of him.”
“No, Mum says it’s horrifying.”
Luka added what appeared to be a dinosaur wearing a crown.
“And is that you?” Ms Harris asked.
“No. That’s Judge Roary.”
“Of course.”
“He does dino court.”
“I remember dino court.”
Luka looked pleased by that.
Then he opened the card and, with enormous concentration, began making marks inside.
The card itself was mostly pre-written.
Dear Dad,
Happy Father’s Day!
Thank you for…
Ms Harris moved closer.
“What would you like it to say after thank you for?”
Luka thought seriously.
His tongue poked out a little at the corner of his mouth.
“Reading to me,” he said.
Ms Harris wrote it down.
“Reading to me,” she repeated.
“And tugging me in.”
“Tucking?”
“No. Tugging.”
Ms Harris hesitated.
“Do you mean tucking you in at night?”
“Yes. Tugging.”
“Right.”
She wrote tucking me in, then immediately felt dishonest.
“And being funny sometimes,” Luka added.
“Only sometimes?”
“He is funny a lot, but sometimes he is annoying when he uses the big voice.”
“The big voice?”
“When he does the story and makes the dragon sound like Maddy’s friend Sam.”
Ms Harris had no idea who Sam was, but she nodded as if this explained everything.
“So,” she said, “thank you for reading to me, tucking me in, and being funny sometimes.”
Luka nodded.
“And then I love you very much Luka.”
Ms Harris’s pen paused.
Just for half a second.
Then she wrote it.
I love you very much.
Luka.
She looked at the card.
Then at the invitation.
Then at Luka, who was now attempting to glue an entire handful of glitter onto the photo frame without using his hands.
“Luka,” she said, carefully, “what is your dad’s name?”
He looked at her as if this was a very basic question.
“Tom.”
“Oh.”
Ms Harris sat back slightly.
That did explain things.
By the time they reached the All About My Dad worksheet, Ms Harris had the mild, dazed expression of a woman who had started the morning expecting a sensitive pastoral issue and instead found herself fact-checking the private life of an actor through the medium of crayon.
My dad’s name is: Tom
My dad does this for work: Actor
I like to do this with my dad: Lego. Reading. Dino court. Feed bunnies. Football but he is bad.
My dad likes: Books. The red football team. Coffee. Vanilla ice cream.
Ms Harris looked down at the sheet.
“The red football team?”
“Arsenal,” Luka said.
“Oh.”
“He says it like this.”
Luka put on a very serious face and, in an accent that was neither Tom’s nor any known dialect on earth, said:
“Ah-sen-al.”
Ms Harris choked slightly.
“And football but he is bad?” she asked.
Luka nodded gravely.
“He tries.”
“That’s important.”
“Yes,” Luka agreed. “Mum says trying is important when someone is hopeless.”
Ms Harris made a mental note to never let the school counsellor read these worksheets without warning.
That afternoon, when you picked Luka up, Ms Harris caught your eye.
“He did the Father’s Day activities,” she said quietly.
Your heart gave a strange, hard kick.
“Oh.”
“He was very happy to.”
You looked toward Luka. He was standing at his bag hook, shoving something inside his backpack with the urgency of a jewel thief.
“He was?”
“Yes.” Ms Harris hesitated. “He made them for Tom.”
The name landed in you softly and painfully at the same time.
“Right,” you said.
“He was very clear.”
You glanced again at Luka.
He looked up at that exact moment and shouted, “No looking!”
You froze.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were nearly.”
“I was not nearly.”
“You were nearly looking with your eyes.”
Ms Harris turned her face slightly, but you saw the smile.
On the walk home, the top corner of something cardboard stuck out of Luka’s bag.
“Can I help you carry that?” you asked.
“No.”
“It looks heavy.”
“It is secret.”
“I see.”
“No touching.”
“I wasn’t going to touch it.”
“You do touching sometimes.”
“I do touching sometimes?”
“Yes. Like with washing.”
“That’s because washing needs to be touched.”
“This doesn’t.”
You left it alone.
At home, Luka took the bag upstairs, disappeared into his room, then came back down five minutes later with his dinosaur tucked under his arm and a look of grave emotional strain on his face.
Tom was in the sitting room, reading a script with a pencil between his fingers. His bare feet were on the edge of the coffee table while he balanced a mug of coffee precariously beside a stack of pages.
You were in the kitchen, technically chopping carrots, actually watching.
Luka stopped in the doorway.
Tom looked up.
“All right?”
Luka nodded once.
Then shook his head.
Then nodded again.
Tom lowered the script.
“That’s a lot of answers.”
Luka hugged the dinosaur tighter.
“I have something.”
“Is it alive?”
“No.”
“Is it sticky?”
“No.”
Luka looked offended.
“Good. That’s my preferred category of object.”
Luka took three small steps forward, then stopped.
Tom’s expression changed. Not obviously. Not enough to startle him. But you saw the shift. The way he set the script aside properly. The way he gave Luka all of his attention without making a performance of it.
Luka held out the invitation.
Tom took it.
For a second, he did not understand what he was looking at.
Then he did.
The paper was folded unevenly. The front was covered in glitter, pencil marks, a dinosaur, something that might have been a rabbit, and a tall figure with dark hair, earrings, a book and catastrophic socks.
Inside, in careful adult handwriting beneath Luka’s attempt at letters, it said:
Please come to Father’s Day breakfast.
Tom went very still.
You stopped chopping.
Luka shifted from one foot to the other.
“It’s at kindy,” he said quickly. “There is toast. Maybe muffins. And the dads come. But you don’t have to. Ms Harris said you don’t have to if you are busy or if you don’t want to or if you have work or if you get shy.”
Tom blinked.
“If I get shy?”
“Mum says sometimes you get shy and pretend you are being difficult.”
Your knife paused above the carrot.
Tom looked up at you.
You turned back to the chopping board with great interest.
“Did she?” he said.
You said nothing.
Luka pushed on, words tumbling faster now.
“And there are seats, and we sing a song, but I don’t know the song yet because Jaxon kept making fart noises. And I made you an invite because you are my dad for school.”
Tom’s throat moved.
“For school?” he asked softly.
Luka looked suddenly uncertain.
“And home too,” he said. “If you want.”
The room became unbearably quiet.
Tom stared at him for half a second too long, and Luka’s face began to fold in on itself with worry.
So Tom moved.
He put the invitation down carefully on top of the script, then opened his arms.
“Come here.”
Luka went at once.
Not cautiously. Not politely.
He launched himself at Tom, dinosaur and all, and Tom caught him with a small, broken sound that might have been a laugh if it had managed to survive the journey.
“I’d love to come,” Tom said into his hair.
Luka’s arms tightened around his neck.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You can eat toast?”
“I am extremely experienced with toast.”
“And muffins?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“And singing?”
Tom hesitated.
“I can stand near singing.”
Luka pulled back, serious.
“You have to sing.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” Tom said. “But if the song is terrible, I’m blaming Jaxon.”
Luka nodded, completely accepting this arrangement.
Then he pressed his face back into Tom’s shoulder.
You turned away from the carrots because you were not going to cry over a glittery kindergarten invitation.
You absolutely were not.
Tom looked over Luka’s head at you.
His eyes were bright.
Yours were too.
Neither of you said anything, because if either of you did, the whole room would probably fall apart.
*********
The Father’s Day breakfast was, by every possible measure, chaos.
It began at eight-thirty in the morning, which was already an act of aggression against families.
Tom stood in the kindergarten playground wearing a navy jumper, his hair still slightly damp from the shower, holding Luka’s hand in one hand and a paper plate in the other.
Luka had insisted they arrive early.
Then, the moment they arrived early, had become suspicious of being early.
“Where are the muffins?” Luka asked.
“They’ll be inside.”
“What if the dads eat them first?”
“I think we are part of the dads.”
Luka looked up at him.
“Yes,” he said, then smiled so suddenly Tom almost lost the ability to stand normally.
Inside, the classroom had been rearranged with small tables, tiny chairs, plates of toast, cut fruit, muffins and urns of coffee that had clearly been made by someone who considered coffee a rumour rather than a beverage.
Tom folded himself into a kindergarten chair beside Luka.
His knees were not where knees ought to be.
Luka looked delighted.
“You’re too big.”
“I had noticed.”
“You look silly.”
“I feel silly.”
“Good.”
A grandfather across the table smiled at him.
“First one?”
Tom looked at Luka.
“Yes,” he said. “First one.”
Luka beamed into his toast.
The young intern teachers were trying very hard not to stare.
They were not succeeding.
One of them, Miss Abbey, stood near the craft shelf holding a jug of orange juice and whispering to the other, “That is definitely him.”
The other, Miss Clare, whispered back, “I know. He dropped off Luka the a few days ago.”
“He’s really handsome.”
“I know.”
“Like, really attractive.”
“I know.”
Tom, who had spent twenty years developing a near-supernatural awareness of being discussed in rooms, pretended not to hear.
Luka, who had no such filter and also no respect for whispered privacy, turned around in his tiny chair.
“He is my mum’s,” he announced.
Both interns froze.
Tom closed his eyes.
Ms Harris, across the room, made a small noise that suggested she had swallowed a laugh whole.
Miss Abbey went bright pink.
“Oh,” she said. “Of course, Luka. That’s very lovely.”
“He sleeps in her bed,” Luka added helpfully.
Tom opened his eyes.
“Luka.”
Luka turned back.
“What?”
“That’s enough.”
“But you do.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“And sometimes you snore.”
“I absolutely do not.”
Luka took a bite of toast.
“You do a little bit.”
The grandfather across the table coughed violently into his coffee.
Tom stared at the wall.
Ms Harris turned away completely now.
The singing was worse.
The children stood in a line at the front of the classroom and performed a song about dads being heroes, dads fixing things, dads lifting children high and dads loving them forever.
Tom had expected to feel awkward.
He had not expected to feel dismantled.
Luka did not know half the words. He sang three seconds behind everyone else. At one point he waved at Tom instead of doing the actions. During the line about dads fixing things, Luka pointed directly at Tom and shook his head.
Several parents laughed.
Tom did too, though his face felt strange.
After the song, Luka ran back to him with a muffin.
“I got you chocolate because you don’t like fruit.”
“Very thoughtful.”
“It has banana.”
“That is fruit.”
“It is hiding.”
“Sinister.”
Luka climbed onto his lap even though the chair was already performing miracles.
Tom put an arm around him.
And for the rest of the breakfast, with weak coffee cooling in front of him and glitter stuck to his sleeve and Luka’s elbow in his ribs, Tom felt something settle into place with a tenderness so sharp it was almost pain.
**********
Then, on Sunday morning, Tom was told to stay in bed.
This was not unusual in the sense that Tom liked staying in bed.
It was unusual in the sense that Ellie stood at the foot of it at eight in the morning with a level of authority that suggested she had inherited all of Ruth’s organisational skills and none of Tom’s respect for sleep.
“Do not come downstairs,” she said.
Tom opened one eye.
“Good morning to you too.”
“I mean it.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“Being annoying before breakfast.”
“That feels pre-emptive.”
“It’s based on extensive evidence.”
He looked beside him. Your side of the bed was empty, which meant you had either been recruited into this operation or had escaped before the coup began.
Ellie pointed at him.
“Stay.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“Just stay.”
Then she left.
Five minutes later, she returned carrying coffee with both hands and an expression of deep concentration.
Tom sat up carefully.
“You made this?”
“Yes.”
“I’m frightened.”
“You should be. I wasn’t sure which machine button was correct.”
He took the mug.
“Thank you.”
“It might be decaf.”
“That would be a betrayal.”
“It might also be very strong.”
“That would be a blessing.”
Ellie hovered for a second, suddenly less sharp around the edges.
“Happy Father’s Day,” she said, too quickly.
Tom looked at her.
Something moved across his face before he could stop it.
“Thank you, El.”
She shrugged, already embarrassed.
“It’s not the real present. This is just coffee.”
“Coffee is often the real present.”
Before she could answer, there was a thundering noise from the hallway.
Then Luka burst into the room.
He was wearing dinosaur pyjamas, one sock, and the expression of a child who had been waiting his entire life for this precise moment.
“Happy Father’s Day!”
He climbed directly onto Tom.
The coffee sloshed dangerously.
“Careful,” Tom said, laughing. “I’d like to remain a father figure with skin.”
Luka wriggled onto his lap and dumped three wrapped parcels and a card onto the doona.
One of the parcels was soft. One was flat. One appeared to have been wrapped by someone during a minor earthquake.
“I made them,” Luka said.
“I can see.”
“And I didn’t tell you.”
“You were very secretive.”
“I nearly told you five times.”
“I noticed.”
Luka sat back on his knees, suddenly shy.
Tom glanced at you then, because you had appeared in the doorway quietly, arms folded across your chest, hair loose around your face.
You looked soft and tired and terrified.
Tom understood why a second later.
Luka put both hands on the doona.
“I know you’re not my real dad,” he said.
The words hit the room with the force of something much larger than his little voice.
Tom went still.
Ellie froze in the doorway behind you as she was on the way back down.
Luka kept looking at his hands.
“But I wanted to see if you wanted to be my dad anyway. Because you kind of are. And everyone has a dad at kindy and I picked you because you do dad things and you came to breakfast and you know how I like the dragon voice and you make Mum happy even when she does the face.”
You pressed a hand to your mouth.
Tom’s voice, when it came, was rough.
“What face?”
Luka looked up.
“The sad face when she thinks no one sees.”
Tom’s eyes flicked to you.
You looked away.
Luka leaned forward, urgent now.
“So do you want to? You don’t have to. Ms Harris says special people can be lots of different people, and Mum said families don’t have to match other families, but I thought maybe you could be my dad because you already are and also because I made the card say dad.”
Tom did not answer immediately.
Not because he did not know.
Because knowing was too big for speech.
He set the coffee carefully on the bedside table.
Then he reached for Luka and pulled him in.
“Yes,” he said, and the word was barely steady. “Yes, sweetheart. I would love that.”
Luka went boneless with relief.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Forever?”
Tom closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“You have to say promise.”
“I promise.”
“You have to not go away.”
The room changed.
You saw it go through Tom. Saw the pain, the care, the understanding that some promises had to be made with truth and not panic.
He held Luka a little closer.
“I am not going away,” he said. “I promise I am going to do everything I can to be here. Always.”
Luka considered that.
Then nodded into his chest.
“Okay.”
Tom kissed his hair.
Ellie looked down quickly, pretending to inspect the carpet.
You failed entirely at not crying.
Luka, who had apparently finished with the emotional portion of the morning, sat back up and shoved the flat parcel at Tom.
“Open this one. It has too much glitter.”
“It certainly has some glitter.”
“It has the right amount.”
The card said Dear Dad in big uneven letters. Inside, beneath the teacher’s careful handwriting, Luka had drawn a dinosaur, a rabbit, Tom, you, Mia, Ellie, and himself. Everyone had long arms. Tom had earrings bigger than his head.
Tom stared at it for a long moment.
“I look very glamorous.”
“You are.”
“Thank you.”
The photo frame was next. It was covered in dinosaurs, foam stars, stickers, and so much glitter it seemed structurally dependent on it. Inside was a photo taken at kindergarten breakfast. Luka was grinning. Tom was folded beside him on a miniature chair, looking far too tall, far too emotional, and entirely unaware of the glitter on his cheek.
Tom ran his thumb once along the edge of the frame.
“This is perfect,” he said.
Luka watched him closely.
“You like it?”
“I love it.”
“Good. Because it took a very long time and Jaxon put glue on my chair.”
“That sounds like Jaxon.”
“It does. And now you need to get up for Ellie’s surprise.”
**********
Downstairs, Ellie had already made breakfast.
This was impressive until you reached the kitchen and saw the full scope of it.
There was coffee.
There was a bowl of Cheerios.
There was milk in a small jug.
There was a side bowl of yoghurt with exactly one strawberry placed on top like a decorative apology.
Tom looked at the table.
Ellie stood beside it, arms crossed.
“I know you hate fruit,” she said, “but it looked ugly without it.”
Tom looked at the strawberry.
“It does add drama.”
“It’s garnish. You don’t have to eat it.”
“Thank God.”
“And I toasted bread but Luka ate one.”
“I was hungry,” Luka said from the table, already climbing onto his chair.
“You ate the corner of three pieces.”
“I was checking them.”
Tom turned to Ellie.
“This is brilliant.”
She shrugged.
“It’s cereal.”
“It’s not the cereal.”
He stepped forward and hugged her.
For a second she stiffened in that teenage way of hers, all elbows and pride. Then she softened and hugged him back.
“Happy Father’s Day,” she muttered into his jumper.
“Thank you.”
“I got you something too.”
He let her go.
“You did?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
“I’m not shocked.”
“You look shocked.”
“I’m emotionally versatile.”
“You’re weird.”
She handed him a small wrapped present and a card.
The wrapping was much neater than Luka’s, which meant Ruth had absolutely been involved. The card was sharp and funny and painfully Ellie: a drawing of Tom asleep on a sofa, mouth open, script on his chest, with a speech bubble that said I AM RESTING MY EYES.
He laughed properly.
“That is defamatory.”
“It’s documentary.”
The present was a new leather bookmark, engraved with his initials on one side and, on the other, in tiny lettering:
Stop folding the corners.
Tom stared at it.
Ellie smiled, awkward and pleased.
“Mum said it was either that or socks, but I thought socks was depressing.”
“It is excellent,” Tom said quietly.
“You like it?”
“I love it.”
“Good.” She cleared her throat. “Also Mum says happy Father’s Day.”
You smiled, but your eyes had moved toward the stairs.
Mia had not come down.
Tom noticed because Tom noticed everything where the children were concerned now, even when he pretended not to.
“She all right?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know,” you said.
You tried to keep your voice neutral.
It didn’t quite work.
The worry had been sitting in you all morning. Mia was older. Mia understood more. Mia remembered more. Father’s Day for Luka was becoming something simple because Luka needed it to be simple. Tom was here. Tom loved him. Tom tucked him in and came to kindergarten breakfast and played dino court badly but with commitment.
For Mia, nothing was simple.
She had once had a father.
A terrible one.
A frightening one.
But still.
Blood made people say stupid things. The world was full of stupid things said in the name of blood.
Tom looked toward the hallway.
“I can go up.”
“No,” you said quickly. “Maybe give her a minute.”
He nodded, though you could tell it cost him not to move.
Luka was halfway through telling Ellie that the strawberry was “performing decoration” when you heard footsteps on the stairs.
Mia appeared in the doorway wearing leggings and an oversized jumper, her hair still messy from sleep.
She was holding something behind her back.
“Sorry,” she said at once. “I couldn’t find the sticky tape, so I improvised.”
Her voice was too casual.
Her eyes were not.
Tom straightened slightly.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s not. Well. It might be. The wrapping is bad.”
“That’s all right. I’ve already seen what Luka considers wrapping.”
“Mine has less glitter.”
“Then you’re ahead.”
Mia came forward slowly.
She looked at you first.
You gave the tiniest nod.
Then she looked at Tom.
Her face did something that made her look suddenly much younger than ten. Not small exactly. Just unguarded in a way she so rarely allowed.
“Happy Father’s Day,” she said.
Tom stared at her.
You could see him trying to react correctly. Not too much. Not too little. Not to frighten her away with the size of what it meant.
“Thank you, Mia,” he said softly.
She handed him the card first.
It was handmade. Cream paper. Pressed flowers carefully glued around the edges. The handwriting inside was neat, deliberate, and there were places where she had clearly stopped and started again.
Tom opened it.
You watched his face as he read.
Dear Tom,
Thank you for being there for me and Luka and Mum too.
I am glad you are part of our life.
Thank you for being like a dad to us, even when things are hard or weird.
Love you.
Happy Father’s Day.
Mia.
Tom did not move.
Not for several seconds.
Then he closed the card very carefully, as if roughness might damage something more than paper.
Mia shifted.
“I know it’s not… I mean, I didn’t know if I should write dad, because I don’t call you that, and I didn’t want it to be strange, and maybe it is strange, but Luka was making things and Ellie was doing breakfast and I thought—”
Tom set the card down.
“Mia.”
She stopped.
His voice was quiet.
“It’s not strange.”
Her mouth pressed together.
“It is a bit.”
He smiled faintly.
“Yes. All right. It’s a bit strange.”
That made her breathe out, almost a laugh.
“But it’s lovely,” he said. “And I’ll keep it forever.”
She looked down.
“You don’t have to say forever.”
“I mean forever.”
Mia’s fingers tightened around the wrapped present.
Then she pushed it toward him.
“This is also not much.”
Tom took it.
It was clearly a book. Badly wrapped in brown paper, with one corner exposed and what appeared to be a ribbon stolen from a Christmas box.
“You are all very determined to make me cry before nine in the morning,” he said.
Mia’s eyes widened.
“No. Don’t cry.”
“I said determined. I didn’t say successful.”
Ellie snorted.
“You’re already halfway there.”
“I am not.”
“You’re doing the voice.”
“What voice?”
“The emotionally constipated one.”
“Ellie.”
“What? You are.”
Mia smiled despite herself.
Tom opened the present.
Inside was a second-hand copy of Tolstoy. Old, worn at the edges, the spine softened by other people’s hands. Not one of the obvious ones. Not one he already had.
He stared at it.
Mia spoke quickly.
“I know you like that guy. I looked at your shelves, and you didn’t have that one. Or I couldn’t see it. You have too many books, so maybe you do have it somewhere, but I tried to check properly. When I went out with Maddy, I asked if we could stop at the second-hand bookshop, and I bought it with my pocket money. Sorry it isn’t new.”
Tom looked up.
His eyes were bright again.
Mia’s face changed with panic.
“Oh no.”
Tom laughed once, but it broke a little.
“No, darling. It’s not—”
He stopped, swallowed, and tried again.
“It’s perfect.”
“You really didn’t have it?”
“I really didn’t.”
“And you like old books.”
“I love old books.”
“Because they smell weird.”
“Because they have history.”
“They smell weird.”
“They also smell weird.”
She nodded, satisfied.
Tom ran his thumb over the cover.
“You chose this yourself?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he reached out, slowly enough that she could refuse if she wanted to.
She didn’t.
He pulled her gently into a hug.
Mia stood stiffly for half a second.
Then something in her gave way.
She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into his shoulder.
Tom closed his eyes.
You turned toward the sink and wiped your face with the heel of your hand.
Ellie pretended to be very invested in pouring milk.
Luka looked around at everyone, then announced, “Everyone is being leaky.”
Mia laughed into Tom’s jumper.
That was what undid him, you thought.
Not the card.
Not the book.
Not even the word dad hovering over the room in all its strange, delicate forms.
It was Mia laughing while she held onto him.
“Thank you,” he said, so quietly you almost did not hear it.
Mia pulled back after a moment, wiping at her face with her sleeve and immediately embarrassed.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s more than fine.”
“Don’t make it a thing.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
“You’re making the face.”
“I have a lot of faces, apparently.”
“You do.”
Luka nodded solemnly.
“Mum has sad face. Tom has wet face.”
Tom looked at him.
“Wet face?”
“Your eyes are doing water.”
“Thank you, Luka.”
“You’re welcome.”
Ellie put the cereal bowl in front of him with a flourish.
“Eat your Cheerios, Wet Face.”
Tom looked at all of them.
Ellie, standing there in pyjamas and trying not to look too pleased with herself.
Mia, still close enough that her shoulder almost touched his arm.
Luka, licking yoghurt off his spoon and somehow already glittery again.
You, by the sink, crying badly and pretending you were not.
The kitchen was a mess. The coffee was probably terrible. The toast was half-eaten, the strawberry had been rejected, and there was a dinosaur sitting in the sugar bowl.
Tom looked at the card from Luka, the bookmark from Ellie, the pressed-flower card from Mia, the old Tolstoy in his hand.
Then he looked at you.
You smiled through tears.
He smiled back.
And for once, he did not make a joke quickly enough to hide behind it.
He simply sat there at the kitchen table, surrounded by children who had made room for him in different, complicated, beautiful ways, and let himself be loved.
Warnings: Age Gap, Domestic Abuse, Arranged Marriage, Sexual Abuse, PTSD, Religious Extremism; Implied Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Child Abduction,
For the first week after sentencing, peace arrived badly.
Not absent.
Not impossible.
Just clumsy.
It came into the house in strange little pieces, never all at once. It came in the silence after the children were asleep and no one called. It came in Luka eating cereal in his pyjamas without asking whether anyone was coming to take him. It came in Mia leaving her bedroom door unlocked again. It came in Tom making tea in the kitchen with dried blood no longer under his nose, though the bruise had bloomed yellow and purple across the bridge of it in a way that made him look faintly tragic whenever sunlight hit him.
It came in you waking at three in the morning, heart hammering, convinced you had heard something, and finding Tom half-awake beside you already reaching for your hand.
“It’s all right,” he would murmur, voice rough with sleep. “You’re here. The children are here. He’s not.”
Sometimes that helped.
Sometimes you cried anyway.
Tom never made you feel stupid for it.
He only turned fully toward you, wrapped one arm around your waist, and held you with that careful, total seriousness that still occasionally undid you. As though he had decided long ago that if he could not fix the damage, he could at least make sure you did not carry it alone in the dark.
The outside world, unfortunately, had not agreed to be as gentle.
Stories went out.
Of course they did.
Not all at once. Not cleanly. Little pieces of it leaked, were confirmed, were softened, were spun. The court case had somehow gathered public interest beyond anything you had expected, partly because of Tom, partly because of the abduction, partly because people loved a story they could consume from a distance and call concern.
There were headlines.
Some were careful.
Some were not.
Some said “actor’s partner” as though you were not a person. Some used your new name with startling confidence. Some called your husband “disgraced.” A few tried to make the whole thing sound like some grim celebrity scandal rather than a four-year-old boy being taken from kindergarten by his father with forged papers and a plane ticket.
Sarah contained most of it.
You still had no idea how.
The punch-up in court should have been everywhere. It should have exploded into headlines, grainy sketches, gleeful little sidebars about Tom Sturridge losing control in court. There should have been a thousand opinion pieces about violence and masculinity and whether he had helped or hurt your case.
Instead, somehow, it became “a brief courtroom disturbance.”
Brief.
Disturbance.
You stared at the phrase on Tom’s phone while sitting at the kitchen island and actually laughed.
It came out slightly hysterical.
Tom looked up from the other side of the counter, where he was spreading peanut butter on toast for Luka with extreme concentration.
“What?”
You turned the phone toward him.
“A brief courtroom disturbance.”
Tom looked at it.
Then at you.
Then back at it.
His face went flat.
“That sounds like I knocked over a chair.”
Mia, sitting with one knee drawn up on the stool, said without looking up from her cereal, “You sort of knocked over a man.”
Tom paused with the knife in the peanut butter jar.
Luka looked delighted.
“Tom knocked over a man?”
You closed your eyes.
“No.”
Mia said, “Technically.”
“Mia.”
She looked at you with calm innocence.
“What? He did. Well, almost at least.”
Tom pointed the butter knife at her, then realised it was covered in peanut butter and lowered it.
“You are becoming increasingly difficult.”
Mia smiled into her cereal.
“Thank you.”
Luka kicked his feet under the counter.
“Was it the bad man who took me?”
The kitchen went very still.
Not in the old way.
Not in the way that meant everyone had to pretend nothing had happened.
Just still.
You looked at Luka.
He looked so little sitting there in his dinosaur pyjama top, hair sticking up on one side, mouth slightly shiny from toast. Five soon. Almost five. Too young for courtrooms. Too young for airport police. Too young for the word abduction.
Tom set the knife down slowly.
You went around the island and crouched beside Luka’s stool.
“Yes,” you said carefully.
Luka considered this.
Then nodded slowly and looked at Tom.
“And you knocked him over?”
Tom looked briefly as though he might jump out of the nearest window.
“Not exactly.”
Mia said, “He hit him.”
“Mia.”
“Sorry.”
She did not sound sorry.
Tom rubbed a hand over his face.
“I should not have hit him.”
Luka frowned.
“Why?”
Tom looked at him properly then.
Not dismissively. Not as though Luka was too small to deserve a real answer.
“Because hitting people when you are angry is not how we fix things. It’ wrong.”
Luka thought about that.
Then, with devastating seriousness, “But if someone takes me, you can hit them.”
Your whole chest caved in.
Tom’s face changed.
He came around the counter and crouched too, despite the toast beginning to cool behind him.
“If anyone ever tried to take you again,” he said, very softly, “I would do everything I could to stop them. But I would also try very hard not to do something stupid in the middle of a courtroom.”
Luka nodded.
“Because the judge lady gets cross.”
Mia snorted into her cereal.
You laughed before you could stop yourself.
Tom’s mouth twitched.
“Yes,” he said. “Because judge lady gets very cross.”
That was peace too, you thought.
Not clean.
Not pretty.
But real.
A child turning terror into a judge lady who got cross.
A joke landing where a wound had been.
A kitchen where no one had to lower their voice because your husband might hear.
The following week Tom had to go before a magistrate.
He pretended not to be nervous.
He was appalling at it.
That morning he changed shirts four times, which he insisted was because he could not decide what looked “respectfully apologetic without suggesting guilt beyond the agreed facts.” He paced the bedroom in socks and trousers, hair still wet from the shower, fidgeting with the cuff of one sleeve until you finally caught his wrist.
“Stop.”
He looked down at your hand.
“I’m perfectly calm.”
“You are one shirt change away from a breakdown.”
“That’s not true.”
From the doorway, Mia said, “It is true.”
Tom turned.
“Why are you here?”
“Because you keep coming downstairs in different shirts and Luka thinks you’re doing a fashion show.”
Luka appeared under her arm, clutching a stuffed rabbit by one ear.
“I liked the blue one.”
Tom stared at him.
“Thank you.”
“But not the grey one.”
“Brutal.”
You took the shirt from Tom’s hands and put it on the bed.
“Wear the blue one.”
“The blue one says too relaxed.”
Mia leaned against the doorframe.
“No one thinks you’re relaxed.”
Tom inhaled slowly.
“This family is becoming unsustainable.”
You smiled despite yourself, stepped closer, and fixed his collar.
His hands stilled at his sides.
That always happened now. Not every time. But often enough that you had begun to notice. When you touched him gently and deliberately, some restless part of him seemed to pause and listen.
“You’ll go,” you said. “You’ll apologise. You’ll be told off. You’ll come home.”
His eyes flicked over your face.
“You make it sound simple.”
“It is simple.”
“It is not simple.”
“Tom.”
He exhaled.
“I know.”
You smoothed his collar down.
“It’s over.”
His jaw tightened.
“For him.”
“For us too. Not all of it. But that part.”
He looked at you for a moment, then nodded once.
The magistrate did tell him off.
Thoroughly.
Sarah called it “a stern but survivable judicial scolding.” Tom called it “deeply humiliating.” Maddy called it “character-building.” Sam, who had insisted on going with him because apparently Tom could not be trusted to attend a legal appointment without adult supervision, texted you afterwards.
Told off. Very schoolboy. No prison. No fine worth crying over. He looks like he’s been made to apologise to a headmaster.
When Tom came home, he looked both relieved and irritated.
You were in the hallway when he stepped through the door.
He paused when he saw you.
You had meant to be normal about it.
You were not.
You crossed the hall and put your arms around him.
Tom’s bag slid from his shoulder and landed on the floor with a dull thud.
For a second he just stood there.
Then he folded around you.
“Well,” he murmured into your hair, “that was horrible.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
You pulled back.
“Really?”
He made a face.
“I was told I had brought the administration of justice into disrepute.”
From the living room, Maddy called, “You did punch a man in front of a judge.”
Tom closed his eyes.
“Why is she here?”
Maddy appeared in the doorway holding a mug.
“For emotional support and mockery.”
“For whom?”
“Everyone.”
You laughed, and Tom looked down at you as if the sound was worth the entire miserable morning.
That was happening more too.
You noticing the way he watched for your happiness now. Not greedily. Not proudly. Carefully. As though it reassured him more than anything else did.
Your solicitor started the divorce proceedings soon after.
The paperwork arrived in a thick envelope that sat on the kitchen table for half a day before you touched it.
You had wanted this for years.
You had dreamed of it in secret with the kind of desperation that made the dream feel dangerous. To be divorced. To be legally untied. To no longer have your husband’s name hanging off you like a chain.
And still, when the papers were there in front of you, your hands shook.
Tom did not rush you.
He did not tell you it was good news.
He did not say the obvious thing, which was that your husband was in prison and could no longer stop you living.
He only made tea, set it beside you, and sat across from you without speaking.
Eventually you opened the envelope.
The first page had your married name on it.
You stared at it.
It looked like someone else.
Not entirely.
That was the worst part.
It still knew you.
Tom’s hand appeared slowly on the table, palm up.
Not taking.
Offering.
You placed your hand in his.
His fingers closed around yours.
“They said it may take a while,” you said.
“Because he has to sign?”
“Unless the court progresses it without him eventually. But yes. If he signs, it is quicker.”
Tom’s mouth tightened.
“He won’t sign.”
“No.”
You both sat with that.
Your husband would not sign because signing would mean accepting you could leave him.
He would not sign because refusal was the last bit of control he could reach from a cell.
He would not sign because even if he could no longer take Luka, he could still delay your freedom with a pen he refused to lift.
For a moment anger rose in you so sudden and hot it almost frightened you.
Then Tom squeezed your hand.
Not hard.
Just enough.
“Then we wait him out,” he said.
You looked at him.
“We?”
His expression did something small.
Tender and slightly offended.
“Yes. We.”
The court order allowing travel came faster.
That, more than anything, felt unreal.
A document saying you could take your children out of the country for a holiday without his permission.
A document saying the world was not shut anymore.
A document saying beaches, airports, passports, hotel rooms, suncream, stupid hats, and two weeks of nothing useful could exist again.
Tom read it twice, then looked up from the paper with a kind of fierce, boyish determination.
“Right.”
You knew that tone.
“Tom.”
“We’re going away.”
“We don’t have to do that immediately.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Tom.”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks?”
“School holidays.”
“You don’t even know where.”
He was already reaching for his laptop.
“Beach.”
“That is not a location.”
“It’s a concept.”
“You can’t book a concept.”
He looked at you over the laptop screen.
“Watch me.”
By dinner he had created a spreadsheet.
A holiday spreadsheet.
You stared at it in horror.
“Who are you?”
Tom, sitting beside you looked faintly defensive.
“A responsible adult.”
Mia, walking past with a book under one arm, glanced at the screen.
“That’s new.”
“Why doesn’t anyone have some faith in me?”
Luka climbed onto the sofa between you and Tom, crushing the spreadsheet discussion beneath one small knee.
“Are we going to beach?”
Tom shut the laptop before Luka could press anything catastrophic.
“Yes.”
Luka gasped as if Tom had announced a private moon landing.
“With buckets?”
“Obviously with buckets.”
“And spades?”
“Several spades.”
Luka turned to you, eyes huge.
“Mum. Several.”
That was how the holiday became real.
Not with the court order.
Not with the booking confirmation.
With Luka saying several like it was a sacred number.
In the lead-up to it, life kept rebuilding itself around you.
Luka started at his new kindergarten.
The first morning, he put on his shoes without complaint, which immediately made you suspicious. He allowed Tom to comb his hair, badly. He selected a backpack featuring dinosaurs wearing sunglasses, then changed his mind twice and chose the one with rockets. Then he stood in the hallway and asked whether the teachers knew not to give him to the wrong person.
The air left your lungs.
Tom, crouched in front of him, did not flinch.
“They know.”
Luka stared at him.
“You told them?”
“Yes.”
“Mum told them?”
You swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Police told them?”
Tom glanced at you, then back at Luka.
“The grown-ups have all spoken to each other.”
Luka nodded, serious.
“And if my old dad comes?”
Your stomach turned at the phrase.
Old dad.
As if fathers were jumpers he had outgrown.
Tom’s face stayed calm, but you saw his hand tighten once around the strap of Luka’s backpack.
“He cannot come,” Tom said. “And if anyone you don’t know comes, you find your teacher straight away. But sweetheart, no one is coming to take you.”
Luka looked at you then.
You nodded, even though your eyes had filled.
“No one is coming to take you.”
He considered this.
Then he said, “Can I still have snack?”
Tom blinked.
You laughed in a way that was almost a sob.
“Yes, darling. You can still have snack.”
The new kindergarten was smaller than the old one.
Warmer, somehow. Or perhaps you needed it to be. The teacher had kind eyes and did not look irritated by the extra paperwork, the court order, the carefully explained restrictions, the list of approved people. She crouched when she met Luka and spoke to him directly rather than over his head.
Tom stayed beside you the whole time.
Not because you needed him to speak.
Because he knew you needed him standing there.
When you finally left Luka inside, happily being shown the blocks by another little boy, your knees nearly gave way in the car park.
Tom caught your hand.
You did not hide it.
Not there.
Not anymore.
A woman near the gate looked at your joined hands, then at Tom’s face, then at you.
You looked back.
Calmly.
It startled both of you.
Her eyes moved away first.
Tom’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles.
“All right?”
You inhaled.
The morning air was cool. The sky was pale and clean. Somewhere behind the fence, Luka laughed.
“Yes,” you said, surprised to find you meant it. “I think so.”
************
You went back to the library three days a week.
The first shift felt like walking into an old version of yourself who had kept your place at the desk.
The smell hit you first.
Paper. Dust. Carpet. Rain on people’s coats. The faint plastic warmth of laminated signs. The coffee from the staff room that always tasted slightly burnt no matter who made it.
Mabel cried when she saw you.
Irene pretended not to, then cried harder because Mabel started, and then both of them blamed allergies despite the fact that neither of them had ever had allergies in their lives.
A few regulars looked at you too long.
A few said nothing at all, which was kinder.
By lunchtime you had reshelved three trolleys, found a missing invoice file, ordered more large-print crime novels, and told a man in a raincoat for the fourth time that no, he could not use the library printer to print eighty-seven pages for free because it was “technically educational.”
Normality should not have felt so radical.
But it did.
At two, Tom appeared with coffee.
You were behind the desk.
He looked absurdly pleased with himself.
“Delivery.”
You stared at him.
“You know you cannot just come to my work because you’re bored.”
“I’m not bored.”
He leaned one elbow on the desk and smiled.
Mabel, from the returns trolley, whispered loudly, “Don’t ask him to leave.”
Irene added, “He improves the atmosphere.”
You pointed at both of them.
“Traitors.”
Tom smiled.
“I’ve brought you coffee.”
“I’m working.”
“That’s why I brought coffee.”
You took it because you were weak and because he had remembered exactly how you liked it.
He looked around the library with exaggerated appreciation.
Book club also resumed that Wednesday.
Tom came. Of course.
You had thought perhaps, after everything, the ladies might be gentle.
This was a foolish assumption.
They gave Tom grief within eight minutes.
He had brought biscuits and clearly believed this would buy goodwill. It did not.
Mabel inspected the packet.
“Shop-bought.”
Tom looked wounded.
“I’m sorry, was I expected to bake?”
Irene said, “A man trying to impress a book club should never arrive with anything that says ‘family pack’.”
Tom looked at you.
“I am being bullied.”
You arranged the chairs in a circle and did not help him.
“Yes.”
“By pensioners.”
Mabel sat down with dignity.
“Experienced women.”
“My apologies.”
“Accepted.”
Then they made him read aloud.
He did it badly on purpose for the first paragraph, putting on a melodramatic voice until you kicked his ankle under the table. Then he did it properly.
That was worse.
His voice lowered. Settled. Filled the room without overwhelming it. The ladies went quiet, even Mabel, and you watched him across the circle as he read from the worn paperback you had chosen months ago before your life had split open and rearranged itself.
The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead.
Outside, rain ticked against the windows.
Tom’s thumb moved restlessly over the spine of the book, but his voice stayed steady.
When he finished, no one spoke for a moment.
Then Irene said, “Well. That was irritatingly good.”
Tom smiled.
“Thank you, Irene.”
“Don’t get cocky.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Mabel looked at you over her glasses.
“You may keep him.”
You felt your face warm.
Tom looked at you too.
Just for a second.
But enough.
***********
Your book arrived in print on a Friday.
A box from the publisher sat on the kitchen table like an unexploded object.
You stood in front of it for twenty minutes.
Tom did not touch it.
Mia came in, saw the box, and froze.
“Is that it?”
You nodded.
Luka came in behind her wearing one sock.
“What is it?”
Mia whispered, “Mum’s book.”
Luka looked unimpressed.
“Does it have dragons?”
Tom leaned against the counter.
“Not literally.”
“Boring.”
Mia gasped.
“Luka.”
You laughed, because if you did not, you might cry.
Tom picked up the scissors and offered them handle-first.
“Do you want to open it?”
Your hands shook.
“I don’t know.”
His voice softened.
“All right.”
Mia stepped beside you.
Not touching.
Just there.
“Can I?”
You looked at her.
Her eyes were fixed on the box with an awe that made something inside you ache. Not because she saw you as famous or impressive. Because she had watched you write in the margins of exhaustion. She had seen you scribble notes after school lunches, between bills, after nightmares, during mornings when Luka would not let go of your leg. She knew, more than anyone, what those pages had cost.
You handed her the scissors.
She cut the tape carefully.
The cardboard opened.
Inside were books.
Your books.
Your new name on the cover.
Not the name your husband had given you.
Not the name you had hidden behind.
Yours.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Tom reached into the box and lifted one out.
He held it like it mattered.
Like it was fragile and sacred and alive.
His thumb brushed over your name.
His face went strange.
You could not look at him for too long.
“It looks real,” you said.
Your voice was embarrassingly small.
Tom looked up.
“It is real.”
Mia took the book from him and held it to her chest.
“Mum.”
That was all she said.
Then she burst into tears.
Which made you burst into tears.
Which made Luka burst into tears because everyone else was crying and he did not want to be left out.
Tom, surrounded suddenly by three crying people and a box of books, looked briefly toward the ceiling as if asking God for procedural guidance.
“Right,” he said, voice thick. “Wonderful. Excellent. I’ll just—yes. Tissues. We own tissues.”
Mia laughed through tears.
Luka wailed louder.
You covered your face.
Tom came back with the entire box of tissues, set it on the table, then pulled you into him with one arm and Mia with the other. Luka shoved himself between all of you, offended by any cuddle formation that did not feature him centrally.
For a while, all four of you stood there around the kitchen table, pressed together beside a cardboard box full of the life you had survived long enough to write down.
The publisher was thrilled.
Too thrilled.
Your story being public had changed everything. The very thing you had once feared—being known—had become the thing they wanted to sell. They said it kindly. Professionally. Excitedly. Your name was already in articles. There was public sympathy. There was interest. There was momentum. They wanted to move quickly.
Bookshops.
Libraries.
Panels.
Interviews.
A tour.
The phrase made you feel faint.
“A tour,” you repeated on the phone, sitting on the edge of the bed while Tom folded washing badly beside you.
He looked up immediately.
The publisher kept talking.
You kept saying things like yes and I understand and that sounds wonderful while your fingers twisted into the hem of Tom’s T-shirt.
When you hung up, you sat very still.
Tom put down a pair of Luka’s shorts.
“What did they say?”
“They want me to do a book tour.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“That’s good.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“People will ask questions.”
He sat beside you.
“Probably.”
“About him. About the children. About you.”
“Then we work out what you want to answer before anyone asks.”
You looked at him.
“We?”
He smiled faintly.
“We seem to be doing a lot of we lately.”
You lowered your eyes.
“I don’t want it to become ugly.”
“Then Sarah helps. Your publisher helps. You decide what is private.”
“What if they don’t listen?”
Tom’s expression hardened, just a little.
“Then I become unpleasant.”
You looked at him.
He sighed.
“Verbally.”
You laughed despite yourself.
“Good clarification.”
“I am learning.”
He took your hand.
“You don’t have to do any of it.”
That was what undid you most.
Not encouragement.
Choice.
You had spent so many years being told what would happen to you that being told you could decide felt almost too tender to bear.
You looked down at your joined hands.
“I think I want to.”
Tom’s thumb moved slowly over your knuckles.
“Then you will.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“What if I’m terrible?”
He looked genuinely offended.
“At speaking about books? You?”
“That is different.”
“Not that different.”
“It is very different.”
“Fine,” he said. “Then you’ll be terrible beautifully.”
You shoved him.
He smiled properly then.
And because life had apparently decided to become unrecognisable in several directions at once, Tom also signed on for another film.
It would not start until September.
That was the crucial part, he said. September. Months away. Time to be home. Time for the children. Time for the holiday. Time for your first book events. Time for stillness.
You were not sure Tom understood stillness in any meaningful way, but he seemed determined to attempt it.
For now, he claimed, he liked being a stay-at-home dad.
The phrase sounded so strange coming out of his mouth that you laughed the first time he said it.
He was standing in the kitchen wearing old jeans, barefoot, with Luka’s lunchbox open in front of him and three separate notes from school pinned beneath one magnet. One note was about a father’s day event. One was about sunhats. One was about head lice.
Tom was frowning at all three as though they formed a complex legal puzzle.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
“You said stay-at-home dad.”
He looked at you.
“Yes.”
“You.”
“Yes.”
“Tom Sturridge. Stay-at-home dad.”
He drew himself up.
“I am excellent at it.”
At that precise moment, Luka yelled from the bathroom, “Tom! I put toothpaste in my hair!”
You stared at him.
Tom closed his eyes.
“That feels unrelated to my competence.”
Mia walked past with her schoolbag.
“Does it?”
Tom pointed at her retreating back.
“Increasingly difficult.”
He was good at it, though.
Not in a neat way.
Not in the way someone organised and naturally practical might have been good at it.
Tom forgot water bottles and then ran back for them. He packed too many snacks. He got flustered by school emails and left voice notes for Sarah by accident about whether a five-year-old needed wellies for a “mud kitchen experience.” He let Luka wear odd socks because Luka insisted the socks were friends and separating them would be cruel. He learned the names of Mia’s teachers, remembered which days she liked to be collected quietly and which days she wanted to talk, and once stood in the rain for twenty-three minutes because Luka had found a snail and Tom had apparently been drawn into “a moral conversation about not abandoning Gary.”
But the children relaxed around him.
That mattered more than efficiency.
Mia stopped asking before she put things in the trolley at the supermarket. Luka began announcing to strangers that Tom was “his Tom dad,” which made Tom freeze in horror the first time and the cashier pretend not to hear while beaming into a packet of spinach.
You were not sure what to do with how much it moved you.
Sarah, meanwhile, became increasingly aggressive about Tom being visible in professional ways that did not involve court sketches or paparazzi photos outside schools.
Two photoshoots were apparently necessary.
Tom disagreed.
Sarah won.
You watched one of their phone calls from the sofa while folding laundry.
Tom paced in front of the windows, one hand in his hair, phone pressed to his ear.
“Sarah, I’m not refusing. I’m simply saying I don’t see why I need to stand in a warehouse wearing whatever they want me to wear to prove I’m not having a breakdown.”
A pause.
“Yes, I understand optics.”
Another pause.
“No, I am not saying the word brand.”
You bit your lip.
Mia, doing homework at the table, looked up.
“Is Sarah winning?”
You nodded.
Tom glanced over.
“I can hear you.”
Mia said, “So can we.”
He turned away.
“Fine,” he said into the phone. “Fine. Yes. One of them. No—two if you stop using the phrase controlled re-entry. I am not a spacecraft.”
Luka, colouring on the floor, looked up.
“You’re going to space?”
Tom stared at the ceiling.
“No.”
Luka looked disappointed.
Sarah got her two photoshoots.
Tom complained for three days.
Then went.
Then looked annoyingly good in the photographs.
You tried very hard not to say this because he was already unbearable enough, but unfortunately one of the images came through while you were at the library and Mabel saw it over your shoulder.
“Oh,” she said.
You locked your phone immediately.
Too late.
Irene appeared beside her.
“What?”
Mabel looked at you.
“That man is wasted in cardigans.”
You nearly knocked over the stamp pad.
**********
Then Luka’s fifth birthday arrived in a storm of balloons, wrapping paper, overexcited children, and Tom losing all sense of proportion.
You had agreed to a small party.
Small.
That had been the word.
Tom had nodded seriously when you said it.
Then he had gone completely mad.
By ten in the morning, his house looked like a soft-play centre had exploded inside a tasteful adult residence. There were balloons in the hallway. A cardboard castle in the living room. A hired bubble machine in the garden. Three different types of cake because Tom had panicked over whether chocolate was too obvious, vanilla too boring, and rainbow too structurally unstable. There were party bags lined up on the dining table like military supplies.
You stood in the kitchen doorway and stared.
“Tom.”
He was attempting to assemble a dinosaur-themed sandwich platter with the concentration of a surgeon.
“Yes?”
“What happened to small?”
“This is small.”
You looked around.
A helium dinosaur drifted past the doorway.
“Is it?”
He followed your gaze.
“That was unavoidable.”
“A floating dinosaur was unavoidable?”
“He’s five.”
“That does not answer the question.”
Tom placed a cucumber slice on a sandwich.
“It answers the emotional question.”
Maddy arrived first with Byron, who was one year older than Luka and already carrying the expression of a child prepared to dominate proceedings. Sam arrived five minutes later with a present that was too large and a coffee for Maddy, because those two had reached the stage of not calling anything a thing while behaving very much like it was a thing. Suki came with Rob, their toddler, and a gift wrapped so beautifully it made all your wrapping look like you had done it during an evacuation.
Luka’s kinder friends came too.
Small shoes filled the hallway.
Small voices filled the rooms.
Luka wore a party hat for six minutes, then put it on Tom instead and declared him “Birthday King Helper.”
Tom accepted this role with grave dignity.
Mia and Ellie took command of the party games with the weary authority of girls who considered themselves above such things but still wanted to win. Byron and Luka formed an alliance over the cardboard castle, then immediately betrayed each other over a foam sword. Rob’s toddler sat inside an empty box for twenty minutes and refused all cake.
At one point, you found Tom in the garden surrounded by five children while operating the bubble machine like it required dramatic technique.
“More bubbles!” Luka shouted.
Tom adjusted a dial.
“I am giving you more bubbles.”
“More more!”
“There are only so many bubbles this machine can produce.”
Byron yelled, “More!”
Tom looked at Sam, who was leaning against the fence with a drink.
“Your influence?”
Sam lifted both hands.
“He’s Maddy’s child. I’m just here for snacks.”
Maddy, passing with a plate of crisps, said, “Coward.”
The cake was the emotional climax.
Or disaster.
Possibly both.
Tom carried it out himself, which immediately made you nervous because it had three tiers, plastic dinosaurs, edible glitter, and a volcano in the centre that he insisted was “tasteful.”
It was not tasteful.
It was magnificent.
Luka saw it and screamed.
Not cried.
Screamed.
A pure, wild sound of birthday ecstasy.
Every adult in the garden flinched.
Tom looked delighted.
“See?” he said to you. “Tasteful.”
“He screamed like he saw God.”
“Exactly.”
Everyone sang.
Luka stood on a chair between you and Tom, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, one hand gripping your sleeve and the other gripping Tom’s. When the candles were lit, his face glowed gold and soft in the little flames.
For one moment, the garden blurred.
Not from fear.
From memory.
His fourth birthday had been smaller. Harder. You had still been counting money in your head, still checking your phone too often, still carrying dread like a second body. You had bought a cake from the supermarket and apologised for it, though Luka had not cared. You had sung too brightly. Mia had watched you too carefully. No one had taken photos because you had not wanted evidence of the life you were barely managing to hold together.
Now Luka stood in a garden full of people who loved him.
Safe.
Loud.
Five.
Tom looked at you across his head.
He saw it.
Of course he did.
His smile changed.
Softened.
You squeezed Luka’s hand.
“Make a wish, sweetheart.”
Luka shut his eyes very tightly.
His lips moved.
Mia shouted, “You’re not supposed to say it out loud!”
Luka opened one eye.
“I’m not.”
Then he blew out the candles with so much force that one dinosaur toppled sideways into the icing.
Everyone cheered.
Tom leaned close to you, voice low beneath the noise.
“Are you all right?”
You looked at Luka, who was now trying to rescue the fallen dinosaur by licking its head.
You looked at Mia laughing with Ellie.
At Maddy taking photos.
At Sam holding Byron upside down because apparently that was necessary.
At Suki wiping icing off Rob’s toddler’s elbow while Rob tried to negotiate with the child in the box.
At Tom beside you, ridiculous and beautiful and still wearing the party hat Luka had given him.
You nodded.
“Yes.”
Tom’s eyes searched yours.
“Really?”
You slipped your hand into his.
In front of everyone.
Without thinking.
Without flinching.
“Really.”
His fingers closed around yours.
Later, after the children had eaten too much sugar and cried over leaving and lost three party bag whistles under the sofa, after Maddy helped clean despite claiming she was “morally opposed to domestic labour at children’s parties,” after Sam carried sleeping Byron to the car, after Rob retrieved his toddler from the box with minimal cooperation, after Suki kissed your cheek and told you the party had been perfect, the house finally quieted.
Luka fell asleep on Tom’s lap halfway through opening his last present.
Mia sat on the floor beside Ellie, both of them sorting through wrapping paper and pretending not to be exhausted.
You stood in the doorway and watched Tom look down at Luka.
He had one hand spread carefully over Luka’s back.
The party hat was still on his head, crooked now.
He looked tired.
Happy.
A little overwhelmed.
You walked over and gently lifted the hat off.
Tom looked up at you.
“I think I may have overdone it.”
You looked around at the wreckage of balloons, cake crumbs, wrapping paper, bubble solution, and one suspicious smear of blue icing on the wall.
“A bit.”
He winced.
“Was it too much?”
You looked at Luka asleep against him, mouth open, one hand still clutching a tiny plastic dinosaur.
“No.”
Tom’s face softened.
“No?”
You bent and kissed him.
Just once.
Gentle.
Domestic.
In a living room destroyed by a five-year-old’s birthday party.
“No.”
You kissed him again.
Not quite as quickly this time.
Still gentle, still careful because Luka was asleep between you in a living room full of wrapping paper and cake crumbs, because Mia and Ellie were only a few feet away pretending not to notice, because there were balloons slowly dying against the ceiling and a plastic dinosaur lying face-down in a smear of blue icing on the coffee table.
But it lingered.
Long enough for Tom’s eyes to close.
Long enough for his hand, the one not holding Luka safely against him, to rise and rest lightly against your waist.
Long enough that when you drew back, he looked a little stunned.
Tired.
Soft.
Yours.
You brushed your thumb over the place where the elastic from the party hat had left a faint red line near his temple.
“Thank you.”
His brow furrowed.
“For what?”
You looked at the room again.
At the wreckage.
The excess.
The ridiculousness of it.
The cardboard castle sagging slightly in the corner. The bubble machine abandoned by the garden doors. The party bags that had been opened, emptied, swapped, fought over, and partially destroyed. The half-collapsed volcano cake. The wrapping paper Mia had tried to fold neatly before giving up because Luka had torn through everything like an animal.
Then you looked back at Tom.
“For this.”
His face changed, faintly embarrassed.
“This was mostly me being unable to behave sensibly in a party supply shop.”
You smiled.
“Yes.”
“And online.”
“Clearly.”
“And then again at the bakery.”
“Tom.”
He stopped.
You kept your hand on his face, thumb moving gently along his cheekbone.
“Thank you.”
He swallowed.
His eyes flicked down to Luka.
“He deserved a good birthday.”
That nearly broke you.
Not because it was grand.
Because it was simple.
Because Tom said it as though there had never been any other option. As though Luka deserving joy was a fact as obvious as weather. As though giving him too many balloons and three cakes and a floating dinosaur was not indulgence, but correction. A small, absurd repair offered to the world.
Your throat tightened.
“Yes,” you whispered. “He did.”
Tom looked back at you.
There was a question in his face, though he did not ask it. He was still learning not to apologise for loving too much. Still learning that excess did not always mean danger. That joy could be loud. That safety could be silly. That a five-year-old’s birthday could be overdone and still not be too much.
You bent and kissed his forehead.
Then his cheek.
Then the corner of his mouth.
He closed his eyes again.
“I love you,” you said softly.
His face stilled.
Not because you had never said it.
Because every time still seemed to land in him somewhere deep.
We are awash in Tom-tent after a long drought! Also, typical Tom to go with a graphic tee under a very nice double breasted suit. And I don't even care because god, he's so handsome...
