Page 186 of Double or Nothing

Our emotional vulnerability drained down the plughole in the shower.

So, yes. We’re a happy family right now, but the real family is waiting for Alice far beyond these walls, and they’ve already chosen the shape of her future.

“I should get ready,” she says finally, and disappears into Jack’s bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Jack takes a sip of his latest cup of coffee and looks at me, dead in the eye. I look at him right back, wanting something. Anything. I just don’t know what that is.

“What?” he says. “I can hear the cogs churning.”

“Nothing,” I say, with a shrug.

“That face doesn’t mean nothing. You’re holding a private funeral inside your skull.”

“I guess I am.”

“Soul Girl will be wearing a white dress when she lands in her emotional coffin. How beautiful.”

I stare into my coffee. I have no words.

Neither does he.

For once, playboy Jack keeps his smart assed mouth shut and doesn’t say a thing.

When Alice appears back in the kitchen, every thought in my head disappears.

She’s in a dark green dress that follows the graceful lines of her body like a second skin. Her hair falls neatly around her shoulders, and her makeup is understated, elegant and completely at home in the world she’s heading back to.

No trace remains of the woman who woke beside me in Jack’s bed. Soul Girl has stepped back, and Alice Rose Parker is standing in her place.

Beautiful.

Immaculate.

Untouchable.

I rise from my stool before I realise I’m moving.

Alice gives me an uncertain smile. “Do I look ok?”

Does she look ok? To me?

The question is absurd.

She’s so far above the ok mark that it only drives the stake of truth even deeper. She’s always been so out of my league, I’ve never even been on the scoreboard.

She was out of my league when we were teenagers hanging out in the summer house, laughing for whole afternoons when I was foolish enough to imagine it might continue for ever. She was out of my league when I finally confessed and told her I loved her.

She’s even further beyond me now, composed and luminous, preparing to return to a world built expressly for people like her.

People like Christopher Otley.

“You look absolutely beautiful,” I say.

Her smile becomes real.

“Thank you.”

Jack leans against the island and surveys her. “Very convincing.”