Limits Read online

  Millie had looked from him to the shot and frowned. Mark’s reasoning was totally devoid of logic. Nobody could afford to ‘shake up’ their neuronal network.

  ‘Leave her alone, mate,’ Pav said, sliding the shot glass down the bar away from her. He’d managed to extract himself from his male fan club in a surprisingly short space of time. ‘She doesn’t drink. There’s no way she could handle spirits.’

  Millie narrowed her eyes at Pav. His arms were crossed over his chest and his mouth was set in a stubborn line. As far as he was concerned that was the end of it: Millie was not going to be drinking. For some reason his arrogant assumption caused an unfamiliar surge of defiance to sweep its way through her.

  Screw logic.

  Where had logic gotten her anyway? Locked away in her house night after night. Living within her narrow limits. Almost universally disliked by the entire hospital. Slowly she reached forward, leaned across Pav and closed her fingers around the small glass.

  ‘Millie?’ Pav asked, but before he could react she slid the glass over to her, lifted it to her lips and drank it down in one gulp. Surprisingly it was creamy and sweet, with just the hint of a burn. The last alcohol she’d drunk had been at a wine tasting with her parents when she was sixteen. That had made her wince and turn a little green much to her parents’ disgust (they told her it was a three-hundred-pound bottle and that it was just typical that she couldn’t appreciate the quality).

  ‘Woah, babe!’ Tara said from Millie’s side. ‘You could have waited for us.’ Millie watched as the rest of the group downed their own shots together, all except Pav who had ordered a beer and was rolling his eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Kira said, throwing her arm around Millie and giving her a squeeze. ‘We’ll get another round.’

  ‘Look,’ Pav objected as another tray of shots appeared in front of them, ‘I really think this isn’t a very –’

  ‘Here’s to the men we love,’ shouted Kira as everyone raised their glasses. ‘And here’s to the men that love us. But the men we love aren’t the men that love us, so fuck all the men and here’s to us!’

  As if on automatic pilot Millie gripped the small glass again and threw back another lot of the sweet-tasting liquid. She blinked when she was done, a warm feeling spreading out from her stomach. For some reason the environment didn’t seem as intimidating. More of Mark’s friends joined the group. They were all gorgeous, they were all loud and they were all very, very gay. None of them gave Millie the chance to be shy.

  After her fourth Screaming Orgasm Kira and Tara dragged Millie onto the dance floor. She’d never danced in her life. Not once. For some reason Pav came with them, staying close to her the entire time (this did not seem to deter the majority of the men they passed from giving him the eye, occasionally winking, and more than occasionally squeezing his bottom, which seemed to amuse Kira to an extreme degree). Millie didn’t understand why Pav was still there. She thought he would have left ages ago. Maybe he was enjoying the attention? Although, judging by the scowl on his face, that explanation was unlikely.

  Even though Millie had never danced before (and she suspected that without the Screaming Orgasms she wouldn’t have considered it now), it wasn’t as scary as she’d always thought. The dance floor was crowded. They were all pushed together so much that most of her body’s movement was being dictated by other dancers. Pav’s body was right behind hers and his heat was soaking very pleasantly into her back. She felt dizzy a couple of times but there were strong hands on her hips when she started to waver. Kira’s dancing was hilarious. In the restricted space they had available she pulled what she termed as some ‘serious shapes’ including squatting to her knees and doing a kind of Cossack dance, star-jumps and poorly executed head-stands; at one point she even managed a forward roll. With Kira’s antics and the sheer number of people dancing around them, Millie was fairly sure nobody was watching her. She felt free to move, free to laugh, just … free.

  *****

  Pav pulled her soft body into his when he saw her head start to bob about two minutes into the taxi ride. Within seconds she was fast asleep tucked into his side. Her chest was rising and falling in deep, even breaths and her body was totally relaxed against him. It was weird seeing her that way. She was so tense the entire time when she was fully conscious. Her face looked completely different without that tension. Despite the make-up she looked about twelve years old.

  But you could still see the shadows under her eyes, and her cheekbones were still way more hollowed-out than they should be. Just like the usual no-alcohol rule, Pav had only ever seen Millie eat the most disgustingly healthy stuff. No, scratch that: he’d never actually seen her eat. He was guessing she was too nervous for that when he was hanging around her office. But he did see the various salads and green juices she had on her desk at lunchtime. A girl her size should not, in Pav’s opinion, be firing down terrifyingly healthy food like ‘quinoa’ (he wasn’t entirely sure what that was but it was on the label of most of her sad-looking offerings).

  She shifted and slung a slim arm over his stomach. A sober Millie would be horrified by the position they were in, but at the moment she was far from sober. If it had just been the shots she did before the dancing, maybe Pav wouldn’t have had to half-carry her out of the club. It was after the dancing and when they settled into one of the booths that things really got hairy.

  Kira (who was pretty hyper when sober – drunk, she was bouncing off the walls) declared loudly that they were going to play ‘I Have Never’. As it turned out Millie had never done anything. Between them and the rest of the table, most sexual acts, some of which even Pav hadn’t heard of, were covered, and all manner of other things besides. If you hadn’t done what was described, you drank. If nobody had done it, the speaker drank. Millie drank every time. Pav suspected that if someone had said ‘I have never eaten without cutlery’ she would have drunk. So from being a complete teetotaller, Millie had become the biggest pisshead at the table.

  Some of this Pav liked very much. It meant he had the opportunity to see her giggle. She was smiling and giggling most of the evening: Mark and Kira were funny fuckers, Tara and Claire were just plain outrageous and El and Libby were live wires in their own slightly less obvious ways. Millie didn’t say much but when she did speak it was quite often hilarious – whether she intended it to be or not:

  ‘It was his fault!’ shouted a drunken Tara, referring to the fact she had conceived a boy four years ago. A lovely boy whom Tara adored, although he was a little wild and difficult to contain in her small flat. ‘His balls were full of boy sperm. That’s the problem.’

  ‘Actually,’ Millie interrupted, slurring a little and with her tiny grin on her face. ‘Your vagina was probably hostile. It’s all to do with the viscosity of your mucus and how easy the male or female sperm can penetrate through it.’

  The whole table erupted at that. Eventually Tara managed to ask, through her tears of laughter: ‘Are you really calling my vagina hostile? I’m not sure whether she’s insulted or pleased. Not every day you hear that your fanny’s a badass.’

  So yes, hearing Millie laugh and seeing her relax her guard a little was definitely a plus. But Pav was not so keen on the nearly-passing-out-in-the-club section of the evening, or the bouncers looking at him like he was a rapist as he carried her out to a taxi (Kira, El and Libby had managed to convince them that this was not the case, but not before they’d attracted a fair amount of attention on the street outside). And now Millie wasn’t just semi-conscious, she was completely out for the count.

  The cab pulled up outside her house and Pav gave her a gentle shake.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Millie, we’re here, love.’ He thought back to the last time he was at her house and remembered the sizable alarm system he saw her programme before they left earlier. He was going to need that code from her. She gave a small groan and then burrowed herself further into his side, her body relaxing deeper into sleep.

  Pav sighed and
told the driver his address instead.

  Chapter 16

  Pathetic

  ‘Where am I?’

  Pav opened his eyes to see Millie standing by the bed. He’d wrestled her unconscious body out of the car and carried her up to his flat earlier, having to grapple with his keys whilst still supporting her next to the door. After a few attempts at waking her up on the sofa in the living room in order to get some fluids down her, he’d carried her to his bed, taken her shoes off, put her in the recovery position, and pulled the duvet over her small curled-up body. Now she was up and out of the bed, looking confused and swaying slightly on her feet.

  ‘I don’t feel very well,’ she whispered, and Pav sat up to turn the beside light on. He felt bad that he’d slept in the bed with her now, but he’d been too worried that she would vomit in her sleep to leave her.

  ‘Right,’ he said, sliding out of the covers and walking around to her side slowly. Her face was a little green and her wide eyes were fixed on his chest.

  ‘Woah,’ she breathed, her pupils dilating as she swayed on the spot again. Pav glanced at his bedside clock; it was two in the morning and he was willing to bet Millie was still as drunk as a skunk.

  After a moment she slapped a hand over her mouth and her eyes went even wider. Pav covered the distance between them in two long strides, picked her up by her hips and lifted her quickly into the bathroom to bend her over the toilet. She heaved and then was violently ill. Pav remembered every detail of his first encounter with alcohol and he felt her pain. She continued retching a few more times as he held her hair at the back of her neck with one hand and then wetted a cloth with the other, which he passed to her when she was finished. She sat back onto the cold tiles, blinking rapidly and looking in danger of passing out again. Pav sat down next to her and pulled her onto his lap, handing her the cloth. She allowed this, a testament to her less than sober state, as she wiped her face and neck.

  ‘Pathetic,’ Millie mumbled as she let the cloth fall to the floor, seeming to lose even the strength in her arm to hold it.

  ‘What, love?’

  ‘I’m pathetic,’ she said. ‘Can’t even drink like a normal person.’

  ‘You’re not pathetic. All of us have gone through this.’

  ‘Pathetic, weak, over-emotional,’ she continued, as if she hadn’t heard him.

  ‘Er …’ Pav frowned down at her face. Over-emotional? She was way off base with that one. Her head was resting on his chest and she was staring off into the distance with unfocused eyes. ‘Millie, that is a load of bollocks. What makes you –’

  ‘Weakness, that the trouble with me. Weak, weak, weak, all the time. No backbone.’ Her words were trailing off as she relaxed against his body. All this was stated with absolute conviction; she believed every word and she had done for a long, long time. It was all so far from the truth that Pav struggled to think how she could have come up with it, unless …

  ‘Millie, baby, who told you that? You know that none of what you’re saying makes any sense.’

  Millie let out a small humourless laugh, so hollow that it sent a weird shiver up Pav’s spine.

  ‘If you knew me better, you’d agree with them, I promise,’ she told him, again with absolute conviction.

  ‘But who are “they”, honey?’

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ she told him, ignoring his question and her voice fading as her body became heavier with sleep. ‘Everything about you is so bright, so … magnetic.’ She gave another of those little humourless laughs. ‘Your charisma and mine are off the scale, just in different directions.’

  ‘Baby –’

  ‘I like it when you call me that,’ she whispered.

  ‘I know,’ he said pulling her closer.

  ‘I could go my whole life with just that. Just that word. One word from a man like you …’ She trailed off and he watched her eyelids flutter closed. He sat there for a moment, oblivious to the cold tiles, with her small, warm body curled up in his lap. His chest tightened as he replayed her words. One thing he knew for sure as he sat there was that he would be the one who found out who had made Millie believe those things as absolutes. And he would be the one who made her see them for the lies they were. Her guard would be up again tomorrow. Those shields would be firmly back in place. But Pav had experienced that small window of insight now and there was no going back as far as he was concerned.

  *****

  Millie was lying on something warm and firm. Her head was banging and her mouth was so dry her tongue felt like sandpaper. With great effort she opened one eye and then the other. What she saw wrenched her straight out of her drowsy state and into immediate panic mode. She was lying on a chest and staring at a tanned column of throat. To her horror her arm was slung over the six-pack of a man’s abdomen in an almost territorial way and her leg was hitched over his muscled thigh. She jerked back, making a noise halfway between a grunt and a squeak from her dry throat and sat up. Looking down, she was horrified to see that she still had on the dress from last night and that it was a crumpled mess. Her eyes felt scratchy and when she rubbed them her hands came away with telltale black smudges on them. She reached up to her head, and the bird’s nest of hair she could feel sitting there caused another involuntary squeak.

  ‘Hey there,’ a low, rumbly voice said from her side, and she jumped in reaction. When she turned and looked down she saw his beautiful dark brown eyes staring up at her; his stubble was thicker than she’d ever seen it before and the sleepy smile on his face made him even sexier than normal.

  Millie’s face paled and she flew off the bed, running for the bathroom, and slamming the door in her wake. Once there she stared at her reflection in horror. Her eyes were ringed with black and her hair was matted on one side of her head. She sat down heavily on the edge of the bath and screwed her face up; embarrassment, acute and painful, washed over her. The feel of her nails digging into her fingers helped keep a check on the anxiety, and she tried to slow her breathing down. A knock sounded at the door and her eyes flew wide, one hand going to her chest and the other going up to ward off any intrusion.

  ‘Millie?’ Pav’s voice sounded from behind the door, no longer edged with sleep. ‘Babe? You okay in there?’

  Millie’s throat worked as she tried to get some form of word out, but the anxiety was too much.

  ‘Okay, I’m gonna come in now. I just –’

  ‘No!’ she screamed, then covered her mouth with her hand. She closed her eyes again. If he didn’t already, after this Pav would know that she was truly nuts. He had pushed the handle down but released it at her scream. Millie dug her nails into her forearm, pinching as hard as she could this time, and forced herself to speak. ‘I mean. No, sorry. I’m … I’m going to have a shower.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Pav, sounding uncharacteristically unsure. ‘I’ll be right outside though, yeah?’

  Millie managed to shower. She scrubbed away all the make-up and she washed her hair with Pav’s shampoo. That in itself was not easy. She’d used the same shampoo and conditioner for years. She never varied her routine. It took her an hour and a half to get ready in the morning and she always had all of her products around her to achieve it. She needed her things. Pav didn’t even have conditioner. When she was done she found a huge dressing gown and put it on, rolling up the sleeves so that her hands could grab toothpaste and search for a spare toothbrush. She stood in front of the door for a full minute after she had finished, working up the courage to push the handle down.

  ‘Hey,’ Pav said softly when she finally emerged. He was sitting on the bed, facing the door, and she had the feeling he’d been there for a while. Thankfully he was wearing jeans and his chest was now covered in a worn T-shirt – but he still looked unfairly perfect. His lips twitched as Millie tried to walk in the dressing gown and nearly tripped over the long towelling material, but his smile died as he focused on her face. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Flashes of last night had been flicking through Milli
e’s mind since she’d woken up. She remembered feeling so comfortable on the car journey from the club. God, some of the snippets of what she’d said whilst curled up on a bed of Pav were making her cringe. She had vomited! She, Camilla Morrison, had actually experienced an ethanol-induced emesis.

  ‘Hey.’ She flinched when she realised Pav was now standing right in front of her. He reached up and enclosed both her hands in his warm ones, then slowly prised them apart. ‘What the hell?’ he said, concern adding an edge to his voice. ‘What’s this?’ Millie blinked, then looked down at her inner forearm. Some of the bruises had come out from last night and there were fresh marks that she’d given herself just now.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she muttered, trying to pull them away, but he kept hold gently but firmly.

  ‘It’s not fine,’ he told her. He moved her back to sit on the bed and forced her arms to stretch out in front of her for him to inspect. ‘What on earth – ?’

  Millie felt her face flush and she jerked her hands away again before getting up in a sudden movement and backing away from him.

  ‘You … you don’t understand,’ she said, her voice annoyingly shaky. ‘I get s-stressed and then …’ She trailed off, acutely embarrassed. It was weakness. She knew that. She had been told that since she was a child. But the bruises always faded, they never left any scars so her parents had tried to ignore it.

  ‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry,’ Pav said, his voice back to soft as he walked towards her slowly with his hands held up in front of him like he was approaching a wild animal. ‘But … what’s got you so stressed now?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Millie asked, her voice rising with disbelief. ‘Of course I’m stressed. I don’t have my clothes. I washed my hair with your shampoo. I don’t have any make-up with me. I’m wearing your dressing gown. I … I … of course I’m stressed.’

  Pav looked confused and honestly Millie understood his pain. To a man like him, who actually looked more attractive tousled after sleep, her concerns over her appearance must seem bonkers.