A job on their team?

I cocked an eyebrow, not believing it all. "You've made it very clear that you don't want me in your life, Ed. Don't bullshit me."

"It's Helen's idea. Not mine. She wants you on our PR team."

"And why would she want that?"

He avoided the question, plucking a stray thread from the hem of his t-shirt. "You'll want to take it. The job."

Shaking my head, I ran a hand through my hair. "Sorry. I'm not buying it. Helen has never liked me and never trusted me—"

"Rightfully so."

"—So why the fuck would she offer me a job?"

"It's a six-figure salary. Round-the-clock protection. Plenty of opportunity to flex your writing muscle by sharing positive articles with journalists."

"Wow." I spat out a sarcastic laugh. "Sounds too good to be true. And even if it weren't, six figures? Is that your standard pay-off?"

Ed pursed his lips and threaded his fingers together in his lap, the darkness returning to his eyes as he settled his focus on me.

"Fine. It's five figures, but that includes accommodation, so it effectively works out as six."

"Accommodation?"

"Same hotel as my suite. We own that whole wing of the building for privacy and security. There are bedrooms, offices, kitchens... Fully kitted out. Much better than living with Faye, I'm sure. You'd have your independence back."

As I thought back to the first time Ed had shown me his suite, I vaguely remembered him mentioning that they owned more rooms. I therefore knew he wasn't lying about that part, but I still didn't buy the altruistic motivation behind the offer.

"So, Helen doesn't like me and doesn't trust me, but she's willing to pay me a ridiculous salary to work in her team? She shouldn't want me anywhere near—"

I cut myself off, the penny dropping as a different conversation sprung to mind. Standard procedure for employees.

"Everyone on your team has to sign an NDA, don't they?" I said.

"Correct. But you've screwed us over in the past, so we'll have an extra-special one drawn up for you." His lips quirked, but the smirk lacked humour.

No doubt he was remembering just how much he'd begged me not to sign that NDA the last time and how well that had worked out for him.

I leaned back in my seat, silently seething, just as the partition behind me opened up.

"I put Faye on a train," Mark said. "We'll drop you home, Sophia."

"I don't live in London anymore." I twisted to face the front. "I'm out in Surrey now."

"That's fine," Ed said, drawing my attention back to him. "We still have plenty to discuss back here."

I rolled my eyes as the partition dropped again, leaving us alone.

"Look," I said with a sigh. "I'm pretty much blacklisted as a source. And, even if I wasn't, I have absolutely no interest in telling the world how rough you like it in the bedroom. I'm currently part of an exclusive group of people who know about your kinky tastes, and I quite like how special that makes me."

A muscle in his jaw clenched, his eyes darkening as they swept a scorching path down the length of my body, slow and deliberate. Slick heat pooled between my legs as I squirmed from the intensity of his scrutiny, and when I clamped together my thighs to relieve the burning ache, his gaze dropped to my lap.

He might have been playing with me, trying to disarm me just like I'd tried to do to him, but the thickening air between us sizzled with memories of rough, kinky sex. And the bulge straining against the buttons on his jeans couldn't be faked, either.

Somehow, though, his voice was perfectly calm and cool as he continued his pitch.

"Working for us legitimately would restore your credibility, and then we control the stories that go out and ensure they're accurate."

I mulled that over, trying to slot the pieces together. In another painful testament to how well he knew me, Ed noticed my confusion and pushed ahead.

"You'd be our liaison with the media. We'd give them tip-offs of where I'll be so they can snap photos. They start to trust us. We build up a working relationship. Then, in exchange for them burying any negative press, we offer first refusal on exclusive stories and news."

"So, why do you need me? Sounds very well-thought-out. I'm sure there's someone on your PR team who can handle it."

"Because you're the writer. You've proved you're good at convincing the public, and now we want to harness that to our benefit. You're responsible for making sure I don't screw up. And if I do screw up, you'll be the first to know and can stop people from finding out by spinning the story into something positive. Bending the truth is your speciality, is it not?"

I let the information sink in, but I didn't fall for the bullshit. This was about an NDA, no matter how they tried to position it. By waiting until the concert to speak to me about it, they at least maintained the illusion that the job offer wasn't part of a greater scheme. Because that was their speciality: staying one step ahead.

Despite all that, I tried to find a flaw in what he was offering. Other than my pride, I had no logical reason to turn down the job. He'd know that. How many times had I told him that being unemployed caused me nearly as much stress as working for a faceless corporation?

The time we'd spent together in Europe had taken away so many of my worries. The security detail, despite their excessiveness, relieved me of some of the responsibility issues that plagued my head. My main stress had been the secrecy of the articles, but that would go away with this job. Everything would be above board.

But could I work with him? Could I ignore how much he'd hurt me? How much he'd angered me? How much he still turned me on?

And that was without the very obvious fact that he felt the same about me on all three counts. As I took my time replying, I watched his reflection in the window of the car. Body tense and guarded, his heated gaze drifted over me again, lingering on my chest, thighs, and calves. His thumb grazed his bottom lip as he shuffled in his seat, his other hand darting to his lap to hurriedly rearrange his erection.

He apparently didn't realise I was watching him, and knowing this was his authentic reaction to me—not just a power play to disarm me—offered a strange sense of reassurance. Our friendship might be broken beyond repair, but at least something remained intact. The chemistry had been the one thing we couldn't deny was real. It had been too explosive to fake. Too intense. We'd done things to each other that we'd never have done if we weren't fully into it.

Catching my own mind starting a descent down that rabbit hole again, I transitioned back to the topic at hand, still determined to force a confession that this job offer was about nothing more than my silence.

"Have you fucked up or something?" I tore my stare from the window, and he swiftly broke away from his appraisal of me. "And it's made you realise you need someone on board who can clean up your mess?"

He raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "No," he said, voice clipped. "Not since I fucked up by trusting you, anyway."

I flinched at his language, so misplaced outside the bedroom where I'd only ever heard it before.

"I wasn't the only one at fault, Ed," I said through gritted teeth, not wanting to raise my voice and be heard by our fellow passengers.

Bending forwards again, he clasped his hands around his knees, knuckles brushing the bare skin of my calves. This time, I knew for sure it was a power move, orchestrated to earn the upper hand.

And to a certain extent, it worked. Sex had already been lingering in my mind, so I couldn't stop the tingle that snaked up my legs and pulsed between my thighs. Refusing to be the only one affected, though, I played him back at it, leaning closer until only inches of air separated our faces.

"What if I had proved myself trustworthy? Would you have still gone to all those extreme measures behind my back, just to see if your instincts were right? How long would you have carried on trying to catch me out? Months? Years? What kind of friendship is based on that?"

"You tell me." His humid breath tickled my lips, a challenging glint in his eyes.

"No. Because we know what I did. We know I lied and deceived you. But you only know that because of the last article. Everything else was speculation. So up until that point, you had no reason not to trust me. Yet you didn't."

"I guess I trust my instincts."

"Hm. So, you knew I couldn't be trusted, and you still built up a friendship with me? You don't form genuine relationships with people you don't trust."

He quirked an eyebrow. "Don't you?" he asked, voice low.

We were going round in circles. He would never admit that his own deception equalled mine, and I couldn't work with someone who clearly resented me so much that he refused to meet me halfway.

"Fuck your job offer," I said, leaning back in the seat and folding my arms. "And fuck you if you think I'm going to sign an NDA. You want my silence, you need to fucking earn it."

A muscle in his jaw tightened—the only indicator that my harsh words had ruffled him.

"Take the job offer, Sophia." His voice was cold but firm.

"No." I stood my ground. "You take the job offer and shove it up your arse."

With a deep sigh, he dragged a hand through his hair, his gaze roaming over my body—this time with mild curiosity rather than lust.

"Look, can we start this conversation over?" he asked.

"Sure, but my answer will be the same."

He pinched his eyes shut, pressing his lips together. Good, I was pissing him off. He used to like that I was one of the few girls who didn't fall prey to his charm, and now it was biting him in the arse.

"Don't make me do this." His eyes lost their hostility as they pleaded with me.

"Do what? Beg? Then don't, because it won't make a difference. Nothing you say will make me change my mind."

Clearing his throat, he sat up straighter in his seat. Something in his demeanour shifted, like I was looking at an impersonator and not the guy I'd known for the past few months.

When he spoke, his voice had returned to formal and detached. But it wasn't the style of delivery that stunned me the most. It was the words themselves.

"Take the job, or we sue you for defamation."

A chill hurtled down my spine as I stared at him, searching for a sign that this was a joke. But he couldn't meet my eye, and his body bristled with tension.

"Defamation?" I repeated.

"Your last article," he said, still not looking at me. "Helen has already contacted a lawyer."

My mouth dropped open. "But it wasn't published!"

His gaze flickered in my direction for the briefest of seconds. "But you still shared it with someone, and you did so expecting that it would be published."

All my anger from earlier dissolved, replaced only by hurt. It proved one thing: no matter how much we were supposedly playing each other, I had never expected it to come to this. My feelings towards our friendship overpowered anything else.

"Ed," I said, fighting to keep the quiver from my voice. "How could you do this to me?"

His eyes snapped onto mine, defensive and angry, and his cool shell cracked. "How could you do this to me?"

I flinched, shrinking back into the seat, but his outburst only demonstrated that despite the circles we found ourselves chasing, something about our charade had been real for us both.

He took a breath. "Helen was supposed to have this conversation with you. She didn't think I could handle it, and obviously I can't. But please, Soph, do not let them file a lawsuit against you. You won't win, and it would kill me. As much as I am angry and hurt and bitter... I would never want to see your life torn apart like that."

"So don't do it, then!"

"You think this is my idea? It's Helen. All Helen."

"So this is blackmail? A job offer wrapped up in a pretty bow to disguise its true meaning?" I asked. "Work for you, or get sued?"

"This job is hardly a prison sentence."

"No, but it may as well be. You're only offering it to me in exchange for what? A tracking bracelet? My silence?"

"Your expertise," he said, but it lacked conviction. A rehearsed answer that he no longer bothered trying to sell.

As the car left London, it picked up speed and powered down the motorway. Mark asked for my address, and I used the interruption to press pause on our conversation, tilting my head towards the window and watching the outside world fly by.

Ed didn't push it, but his eyes did keep darting over to me. When the roads became familiar and I knew the journey was near its end, I set my attention on him again.

"You wouldn't be able to stand working with me. You said it would be a long time before you forgave me. And I'm not your biggest fan at the moment, either. How could we possibly work together?"

He didn't seem to have a rehearsed answer for that as he cleared his throat and scratched at the back of his neck.

"Time heals everything," he said. "We'd have to find some common ground, learn to co-exist. This would be a business relationship. We don't need to force it into being anything other than professional."

That would have been fine if we didn't have such an intimate past. Could he honestly sit there and claim that professionalism would be easy?

"Look, I'll email you the contract and you can have a read over it. If you're nervous about us screwing you over, then ask a lawyer to review it. In fact, I'd encourage that anyway. I want this whole thing above board."

"One of my uni flatmates did a law degree," I said, in case he was bluffing. "I can speak to him."

Ed bobbed his head in a curt nod. "Please do."

The car eased to a stop, and I unclipped my belt. Despite the hostility between us, I wanted to end the night on a better note. The lack of closure last time had tortured me.

"Good performance tonight. You were amazing."

For the first time that evening, a genuine smile crossed his lips, tinged with sadness. "Thanks."

I reached for the door handle. "I'll let you know my decision."

He nodded but then called after me as I slipped out of the car. "Soph? You're right. You weren't the only one at fault. I'm really sorry for the part I played. I mean that."

Although he looked genuine, it could have been a last-ditch attempt to win me over so I'd accept the job.

Nevertheless, I met him halfway. "I'm sorry, too."

Because while we both might regret how things had turned out, the damage had been done. Trust was far harder to fix.

***

Thank you for reading :) xx

***

I would love to hear your thoughts! I've been over the moon with how many comments have been left on the recent chapters, so thank you for all the support and engagement <3