Bliss should be held on to with both hands.

Some time later, Chloe was clean and dry and neatly outfitted in a tea dress and matching jumper—though her jumpers were all designed to look like cardigans. She liked the little buttons, but her fingers couldn’t always handle slipping them in and out of holes. Her glasses were freshly polished and her hair was in a sleek bun. She’d taken her anti-inflammatories, her weakest painkillers, and the pills that protected her stomach lining from the damage caused by her other pills.

Then she’d returned to the living room, largely ignored her bickering sisters, and written several lists: people to email, jobs to catch up on, mood and diet diaries to fill in. Last of all, she’d put a note in her journal, under the weekly to-do section. It was a single word.

Red.

She hadn’t been sure what else to put. What did one write about a man with hair like a fall of fire and silver rings on his fingers, a man who smiled at everyone and didn’t feel awkward about it, a man who was the exact opposite of boring Chloe Brown?

Apparently, just his name.

She drifted back to reality to find her sisters arguing about Lady Gaga, because of course they were.

“It was a stepping stone. Everyone stumbles during a period of growth.”

“It was ruinous, Evie. I mean!” Dani threw up her hands. “After the majesty of Born This Way—”

“You only like Born This Way because it’s all dark and evil and rah-rah-rah.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I like it because it’s unapologetically sexual and ironically German.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Says the woman who prefers ‘Paper Gangsta’ to ‘Judas.’”

“Oh, please,” Eve scoffed, clearly disgusted. “That track is the biggest waste of vocal talent ever created.”

Dani arched an eyebrow. “Darling. You act as though you’ve never heard a Miley Cyrus song.”

Eve’s scowl wavered, then disappeared. She giggled. Dani laughed.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “If you two are quite finished …”

Truthfully, they shouldn’t be here at all. Dani had a never-ending list of Ph.D. things to accomplish, and Eve was always embroiled in some favor or other for one of her many friends. But they’d come anyway, because they were her parents’ agents in the secret war to Monitor Poor Chloe’s Health—and because they wanted to make sure that she didn’t pass out in the shower and crack her head open. Chloe wanted to make sure of that, too, so their presence was always appreciated on days like these. But they had other places to be, lives to live, et cetera.

And Chloe had an item to check off her Get a Life list. All she had to do was get the ball rolling.

So she shooed her sisters out of the flat, kissing cheeks and arranging a film night, vowing to visit Gigi soon—Eve would pass on the message—and showering them in sarcastic remarks because she’d rather die than actually say Thank you. She hadn’t always been like this, a tongue with the tip bitten off, her feelings squashed into a box. But help and concern, even from the people she loved—even when she needed it—had a way of grating. Of building up, or rather, grinding down. Truthfully, guiltily, sometimes simple gratitude tasted like barely sweetened resentment in her mouth. So she didn’t express it at all.

When they were gone, she felt deflated and unusually alone, even though Smudge had reappeared from his hiding place. She stood in her empty living room, which was now tidier, thanks to Dani, and stared at the window across the courtyard.

She’d googled Redford, of course. She’d even used her proper computer, the dual-monitor desktop in her bedroom, despite the fact that her touchscreen laptop and a small mountain of pillows were far more comfortable. She’d simply needed as much visual detail as possible. It had been a purely professional exercise: she’d wanted to find out if he already had an online presence, and if she was right in assuming that the website he needed had something to do with his art. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, exactly—but what she’d found were images of his work, images beautiful enough to take her breath away, shared on multiple sites and social media accounts by fans who asked each other where Redford Morgan had gone.

He’s busy charming tenants in a block of flats in South Nottinghamshire. And yes, to answer your countless questions, he is indeed still creating.

She’d also found tabloid photographs, ones that surprised her far more than his talent and popularity. They’d shown big, rough Redford Morgan exiting glittering events on the arm of some society blonde with huge teeth. The woman was pretty and well-dressed, with glossy hair and designer shoes. She looked at Red the way a wolf eyed a sheep.

That was when Chloe had stopped googling. Something about that look sent a shiver creeping down her spine. Something about witnessing that look felt like … snooping. Which she had vowed to stop doing. For that very reason, she’d decided to forget all about her research, to act as though she knew nothing of Red’s life. She would be the picture of ignorance, and therefore innocence, at their website consultation.

She hoped.

CHAPTER SIX

When Red was six or seven, he’d had a babysitter named Mandy. Mandy was only about thirteen herself, but she’d watched him in the evenings for a tenner a week, which in those days was enough money to keep her rolling in snacks and the occasional sneaky cigarette. She was a proper bookworm, but she’d wanted to do a good job watching him and all. She’d compromised by shoving him into bed early and reading aloud from her book of the moment for an hour or two. He blamed Mandy, to this day, for the strange quality of his dreams.

Thanks to her copies of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, Red’s nights were always a bit too vivid. He had Technicolor dreams, through-the-looking-glass dreams, down-the-rabbit-hole dreams. Dreams where shooting stars streaked fuchsia across bruised, sunset skies, and people didn’t move so much as swirl into existence toward him, and music lived under his skin. It wasn’t exactly normal, but it was what he’d grown used to. Which was why last night’s dream had disturbed him so much.

Last night’s dream had been different.

Dark, for one thing, pitch black, as if the lights were off inside his mind. Hot, hot like a midsummer evening, the air sultry and rich. And he’d been with a woman. Touched her, kissed her, woken up with his own come painting his belly and her name on his lips.

Chloe.

Suffice it to say, he wasn’t too happy about the implications. His wet dreams were few and far between because he was a grown man, and when they did happen, they involved cheerful, faceless women who didn’t mind getting come on their tits. Maybe Chloe wouldn’t mind getting come on her tits, either—Dream Chloe certainly hadn’t—but she definitely wasn’t cheerful or faceless. She also wasn’t orgasm safe.

He couldn’t stop reliving that dream, though. That fantastic fucking dream.

After a morning of mucking up basic maintenance, and an afternoon of struggling to bleed 3B’s radiator—which was impressive, since it should be categorically impossible to fail at bleeding a radiator—he’d given up and gone home. He was now sitting in his bedroom like a lemon, as if returning to the scene of the crime would render him able to focus again. Un-bloody-likely, but Christ, something had to give.