Page 40 of While I’m Still Here

“Buy me dinner first, at least. I’m a classy woman, not some cheap whore,” he clutches his imaginary pearls. “What would society say?”

I turn to glare at him, but he’s already grinning, and something inside of me unclenches because he doesn’t know.

That’s what this feeling is. Danny Clarke doesn’t know, and for the first time since I walked into the breast clinic yesterday, I’m standing in front of someone who has absolutely no idea that there’s anything wrong with me. To Danny, I’m still the woman who’s completely incapable of keeping a plant alive and apparently so sexually inept that even her computer has lost interest.

He doesn’t know about the cancer, or that I spent last night in bed with Colin after discovering my best friend has been secretly in love with me for seven years. Danny Clarke doesn’t look at me and see cancer—he looks at me and sees Bea.

I didn’t realise how desperately I needed that until now.

So when Danny eventually gets out of his chair to help me, I let him make the increasingly inappropriate suggestions about turning things on while I crawl underneath my desk and check the cables. When he tells me that my skirt has ridden up, I threaten to report him to HR, while he reminds me that we don’t have an HR department. I threaten to establish one for the sole purpose of getting him fired, and he, of course, offers to help me draft the complaint because my computer hates me.

For ten whole minutes, I forget, and it almost feels miraculous.

Eventually, my computer decides to turn itself on despite neither of us doing anything that could be considered a repair, but Danny takes full credit.

“Prick.”

He bows. “That’s Sir Prick to you, and you’re welcome. I expect my knighthood by lunch.”

Then he returns to his desk, and I open my inbox to discover thirty-seven unread emails.

Beautiful.

Susan from accounts wants something. The Butler account has been marked as URGENT despite the fact that his definition of urgent usually means I forgot to ask you for this last week, as if it’s my problem that he forgot. Someone has replied all to a company-wide email with Thanks!

I could fucking kiss every one of them. A filthy kiss too, not a peck.

I make it through eleven emails before a mug appears beside my keyboard. I look at the tea, and then at the hand placing it there, then up to Danny. I narrow my eyes. “What do you want?”

He has the balls to look offended. “Can’t a man perform a simple act of kindness?”

“Not you, Clarke. Never you.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“You charged me fifty pence for using your milk!”

“You used the last of it. I deserved compensation.”

“It was a splash at most. Get a grip.”

“It was theft. You’re lucky I didn’t report you to the police, or worse, or non-existent HR,” he jokes, but it feels flat.

He moves to leave, but something about him is different. It’s small enough that I almost miss it, but he isn’t looking at my chest, which is unusual enough that I feel like it’s a medical emergency. He’s studying my face, and I immediately look back to my screen. “What?”

“Nothing,” he says too fast.

“Then stop fucking looking at me.”

Danny pauses before asking. “Have you been crying?”

My fingers stop over the keyboard. Fuck. “No.”

“You have.”

“Maybe I watched something sad.”

“Before work?”