Messy by Katie Porter

Author:Katie Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary, british, english, england, rockstar, rockstars, millionaire, forbidden, sexy, spicy, musician, naughty, happy ending
Publisher: Lorelie Brown
Published: 2020-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Alec

“WHERE ARE WE?”

They are the first words Harlow speaks in close to three hours. I squeeze her knee. She lifts her head from the seat, where she’s been blankly staring out the side window. Her hands lay limp in her lap. Palms up and still, she’s never seemed quite so vulnerable before.

“Brixton. In London, but south of the Thames.” I pull down a side street and snag a rare parking space.

“I thought we were going home.”

Home. An interesting word to call my townhouse. I should retreat from that claim and recoil in fear. I have this damaged, impossible girl and her father, my complicated ex-friend, calling my territory their home. I don’t know if keeping the third floor to myself will be enough distance.

Harlow’s gravity keeps me returning to her. She has a pull that keeps me in her orbit and complication I want to unravel.

I let myself out of the car and round it to open her door. “I want to show you some places.”

Her face clouds with confusion. She puts her hand in mine, her fingers cold as ice, as she stands. Once we’re on the pavement, she tries to pull away but I don’t let her. I hold her hand and tuck it into the crook of my arm, so her body comes nearer to mine. The weight of my wool coat and her thick cable sweater means I can’t feel her heat, but I want her close by. I want to feel her every flinch or strum of tension. Sometimes it’s all that gives away her truth. I want every one of her truths.

“Show me what?” She casts a look about us. “Doesn’t look very touristy.”

“That’s because it’s not.” I pull us to a halt beside a shop that has a window filled with trainers. Hard to believe what people will pay for shoes lately. “It’s a neighborhood that people actually live in. Mixed use, much of it. Stores and flats and warehouses as well. It’s become more expensive over the years though, same as the rest of London. Gentrified, some people would say.”

She looks up at me, wary. “Would you say?”

“I would call it boring. And unfortunately I was part of it.” I point across the road, at a fourth-floor window. “I lived up there. I shared the flat with Ian and three other blokes, and that was an improvement on the place before.”

Her breath catches. She squeezes my arm. Underneath it all, she’s pretty fucking easy to please. She only wants to know what came before. Why does Silas do this to her? Why does he break her like this?

I tap on the glass behind us. “This was a thrift shop. A lot of them were about. If I had a quid or two left at the end of the week, after I’d spent my dole check, I’d pick up a new shirt. That’s how your father and I ended up dressing alike at first. Shared clothes. When he showed up to audition with us, he had only his guitar and the clothes on his back.

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