not to tell his story, but this time the little whisper from his subconscious seemed to be cheering him on. ‘The reason I am here and not still living on the street. The reason I have a reason to get up in the mornings is because… I met a girl.’
*
Keeley felt her heart plummet and she was back in that bedroom picking up a photograph from the carpet. Was this the moment she was going to find out what she was undoubtedly the most terrified of? She tried to calm her inner turmoil and not let it show on the outside. How did you do that when everything itched and pulsed?
‘That girl, she made me realise that the world is a complicated place, but that at the heart of everything is the simple knowledge that no matter what our background, or our beliefs, or our status… we are all the same,’ Ethan said with true conviction. ‘We are all in this world together and she showed me that I counted exactly as much as the next person. And she taught me never to apologise for being who I am.’
‘She sounds like a wonderful person.’ Keeley knew her lips were trembling. She should ask the question now. She should ask Ethan the name of the girl, and pray she was wrong. But the raging fear that she wasn’t wrong, that she already knew the answer, was overpowering everything. She wanted so much to be wrong. She didn’t want confirmation. Because if she had confirmation it would open up a whole different avenue of discussion that once travelled down could not be retraced.
‘She is,’ he answered softly.
‘Were you in love?’ Keeley asked. Say no. Please say no. Say the grey eyes in that photo weren’t yours. She was holding her fingertips together, crushing the pads against each other.
‘No,’ Ethan breathed, his lips forming a smile. ‘No, never in love. Not like that. The best of friends. She… has a piece of my heart, and everything she has given to me is something I can never repay.’
He looked so sad now, so lost. All Keeley ached to do was reach out to him, to let him know how special she thought he was. But if she did that, if she made that deepest of statements now, here by the cosiest of fires in the most comfortable of places, full of Ethan’s eclectic personality and sizzling masculinity, there might be no going back.
‘I do not think I have ever been in love the way it is described in books or in TV shows,’ Ethan admitted. ‘Have you… ever been in love?’
Keeley was finding it increasingly difficult not to show everything she was feeling in her body language now. She knew she had never felt with anyone else the way she felt here next to him. Could she admit that out loud? Erica invaded her thoughts then and the promise she had made her friend. All in. Every time.
And then there was Bea. Forthright and pragmatic even in love. You liked someone, you told them. You got on with it. Bea had never been afraid to live her truth. It felt like Bea and Erica were both staring hard at her now, pleading with her to say what she felt.
‘I think love might be what’s happening to me now,’ Keeley breathed. She looked into Ethan’s eyes, breath catching in her throat. ‘I think it’s frightening… and uncontrollable and it… doesn’t discriminate between people who are ready for it and people who had no idea it was going to happen.’ She took a harried breath. ‘I think it might be meeting someone unexpectedly and… chasing a penguin… and finding hidden Paris and raising a dog from the dead…or maybe even… riding extinct animals on a carousel…’
‘Could it be… showing someone your very favourite café without worrying they will not see it the same way as you do?’ Ethan asked. ‘Or, maybe, feeling more in tune with someone than you have ever felt your whole life as you look through trunks and shelves and baskets at a flea market.’
He had edged closer to her. Keeley could feel his knees pressing so lightly against hers, the sofa no bigger than a not-very-generous loveseat. ‘Is it thinking about making postcards?’ she asked him. ‘Of places that don’t usually have postcards?’
‘I think perhaps it could be all of those things,’ Ethan whispered. ‘And maybe so much more.’
Nothing else mattered, did it? Nothing except the delicious sugar-coated sensations that were caramelising