Trust (London Love #5)

“Hey,” he said, like this was normal.

I felt like a frustrated housewife, demanding to know where he’d been. Not that I actually did that.

Or maybe I did.

“Things are really weird,” he continued.

“How?” I asked. Like this was a normal conversation to have.

“Everything has…stopped. Management are completely silent. No messages. All numbers go to voicemail. There’s just nothing. Silence. Flatline.”

“Okay?” I wasn’t following.

“But at the same time? Things are moving,” he said quietly, now sitting at the kitchen table, then getting up and flicking the kettle on, while I just stood there with the frigging tea towel in my hand.

“And?” I didn’t know why I was asking when I had no idea what was going on.

“I sat down with your dad yesterday when you were out shopping. Went through my income and outgoings and things that I need to get on top of. I don’t know why I haven’t done it before. Perhaps because it felt really frightening to actually crunch the numbers.”

“Dad’s good at that,” I said.

“He’s really good. Explained it all to me in simple terms. Small steps. So most of my income in the next two months will have to go to this new law firm that we’ve taken on. We’re suing for breach of contract, and…lots of big words. We also need to stop this shitty new album that’s due out. It’s not even me singing on it, even if it sounds like me. It’s all session singers and AI. Total bullshit. If we win, we get some kind of compensation for the past ten years of working for peanuts. Then, hopefully…we can all move on.”

“And if you lose?”

“We’re not going to lose. We have people for that. And we’re filming our interviews with these financial people, and all our meetings are recorded, like some messed-up reality show. In fact, there are people making that documentary at the same time, so if we lose, well…” The kettle boiled. He added teabags to two mugs and filled them with water. “The way that Michelle explained it, it’s about us getting it angled right. We don’t want to come across as whinging children who didn’t understand what we were doing. We always knew they were screwing us over. We just didn’t realise how much. I trusted them. We all did…up to a point.”

“Of course you did. I mean, it’s a job at the end of the day. You trust that your contract is solid and if you do the job, you get paid accordingly.”

“Yeah,” he said, dunking the teabags. “I just feel so stupid. Like I was the last one to do something about it. Turns out Lee has been working behind the scenes to get us a better deal. He’s been right in their faces, all this time, and now he’s terrified he did more damage than good. At least he was doing something. I just sat in my bloody ugly house moaning about some idiot stalker. It was all my fault anyway because I was the one who befriended him. I let him hang out and invited him in and gave him the keycode. Then when things got weird, I was the one who forgot to change it. How stupid was I?”

“Stupid,” I agreed. “But he still got convicted, didn’t he? Wasn’t your fault that he was a bit of a psycho.”

“Psycho, and psycho.” He grabbed a piece of kitchen towel. Blew his nose. “I’m one to talk. I just barged in here and decided you were my boyfriend. How messed up is that? I know how to be a decent person, I just don’t…do very well at it.”

“You are a decent person,” I said softly, walking up to him and wrapping him up a hug. “You’re decent and kind and very generous. Even though you don’t pay any rent.”

He snorted. He had tried to pay rent, but my dad had yelled at him not to be so bloody stupid with money and reversed the payment, seeing as he was barely here anyway.

Dad made me pay rent.

“Idiot,” I murmured into Gray’s neck. No wonder my dad loved him. “He’d let you get away with murder, d’you know that?”

“Yep. You still love him, though.”

“I do,” I agreed. “Almost as much as…” I stopped myself saying it.

“I love you too,” he whispered, stroking up and down my back, slow, comforting movements. “I actually do. And you don’t have to say it because I know. We just…you know?”

“I know.” I wasn’t sure what I knew, other than that we needed to have a talk about the boring stuff. “Can we still pay the bills on the house if you have no income?”

“I’d rather talk about how much I love you,” he complained with a snuffle. “But I’m not completely bonkers. I have savings and some income. I was hoping that one day, I could just stop working, walk away from it. Turns out that I could quit now, and you and I could live in that house, happily ever after. Well, I have enough to not work for a year—two if we don’t actually spend any money on things like food.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“The rest is tied up in this lawsuit. And Blitz industries will have had all their assets frozen next week while they’re being investigated. It’s a big thing. A lot of money. Asif—that’s Musa’s cousin—he’s a super bright guy. He was headhunted into the law firm he’s with before he’d even passed his exams, and he doesn’t come cheap.”

I still didn’t understand what was going on. Neither did Gray, it seemed, as he once again threw his hands in the air and shook his head. Blew air out of his nose.