What a Girl Wants. Lindsey Kelk

with a shrug. ‘To be honest, I was hoping you’d take over halfway through anyway.’

      ‘Because I’m such a domestic goddess?’ I stood when he stood, leaning into a kiss that still felt strange. Lovely, but strange. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

      ‘Will you though?’ Charlie pulled his Oyster card out of his bag and stuck it in his back pocket. ‘Because I’ve heard that one before.’

      ‘Odds are good,’ I confirmed. ‘I’d say better than fifty per cent.’

      ‘OK. Tess?’ He stopped halfway down the stairs and looked back up at me, all pale skin and big eyes and wide, happy mouth.

      ‘Charlie?’ I sat back down on the settee, happily stroking my camera. I was probably overreacting. He wasn’t trying to force me into a decision I wasn’t ready to make. That wasn’t Charlie at all. He wouldn’t do something like that.

      ‘I love you.’

      My eyebrows shot up so high I assumed they were forever lost in orbit around the earth.

      It was hardly the first time the ‘L’ word had left Charlie’s lips and found my ears but this was different. This wasn’t the same as when I brought him an Egg McMuffin because he had a hangover or called him an Addison Lee because he was too lazy to get the night bus from mine. This was a legitimate ‘I Love You’. This was my first ever ‘I Love You’. I had no idea what to do.

      ‘OK,’ I replied, nodding and trying not to be sick. ‘That’s brilliant.’

      Charlie scratched his head and I knew he was waiting for me to say something else but my mind was completely blank. Charlie Wilder had told me he loved me and I had no words. None of them.

      ‘OK,’ I said again.

      And then it was happening again. I felt myself leaving my body and floating up into the corner of the room, watching as I stared blankly at the first man to tell me he loved me.

      This is where you’re meant to say ‘I love you too,’ my brain whispered.

      And I knew that. I’d been waiting for this moment forever. But I didn’t say it. Instead, I smiled brightly and gave him a double thumbs up.

      ‘That’s brilliant,’ I said.

      ‘OK,’ he echoed, staring at me from the top of the stairs. ‘Brilliant.’

      And then he was gone.