Chapter 13: The Breakfast Blush
The rain had softened to a mist by morning, clinging to the windowpane in pearls of grey light. Freya woke slowly, a luxury in itself, to the solid warmth of Aidan’s chest against her back, his arm a heavy weight across her ribs.His breathing was deep and even against her hair. She lay perfectly still, listening to it, feeling the beat of his heart through her shoulder blades. A profound, uncomplicated peace settled in her bones.There was no schedule, no urgency, no performance.Just this.
He stirred, his hand sliding sleepily up to cup her breast, his thumb grazing her nipple through the thin cotton of her—his—t-shirt.A soft, contented hum vibrated in his throat. “Morning,” he murmured, his voice gravelly with sleep.
She twisted in his arms to face him.In the flat, grey daylight, the lines of his face were softened, younger. “Morning,” she whispered back, and kissed him. It was slow, tasting of sleep and shared skin, a continuation rather than a start.They disentangled themselves from the warm cave of sheets. The floorboards were cold underfoot. She pulled on the wool socks he’d given her and watched him button his jeans, the lean muscle of his back flexing. It was a domestic intimacy more striking than any they’d shared in her sterile penthouse. He caught her looking and smirked, tossing her a worn hoodie.“You’ll need that. Dad keeps the heat at ‘Arctic austerity’ levels.”
The scent of frying bacon and brewing tea guided them downstairs. The pub was quiet, cloaked in the calm after yesterday’s storm. Voices drifted from the kitchen, Sarah’s quick laugh, the low murmur of the radio.
They walked in holding hands, a fact that felt both thrilling and natural.The kitchen was a hub of warm chaos. Sarah was at the table, textbooks spread like a fortification around a mug.Emily was scrolling on her phone, her hair a dark tumble. Maureen stood at the stove, her back to them, wielding a spatula like a scepter.“Look what the cat dragged in,” Emily said, not looking up. “If it isn’t the lovebirds.”
“Shut up, Em,” Sarah said fondly. She smiled at them.“You both look… rested.”
Maureen turned, her face brightening. “Just in time.I’m doing a full fry-up. Build up your strength.” Her eyes, kind and assessing, landed on Freya. “How did you sleep, love?”
The question was simple, maternal, tossed into the warm, grease-scented air. Freya, still wrapped in the drowsy, unguarded peace of the morning, answered without a single synaptic filter engaging. Her brain was still in his bed, with the sound of the rain and the feel of him moving inside her.“Amazing,” she said, her voice clear and sincere. “I always do in Aidan’s arms. It’s so easy after we make love to drift off, especially last night as we were at it for hours trying to be quiet, but I still wanted to pleasure him as completely as I always do.”
The words hung in the air, distinct as the clatter of the spatula dropping onto the stovetop.Silence.
Absolute, consuming, deafening silence.The radio chatter suddenly seemed obscenely loud. Freya’s own words echoed in her ears, each syllable landing with the finality of a hammer blow. Her stomach dropped through the cold floor.The cozy kitchen telescoped away, leaving her exposed on a stark, endless plain. She could feel the blood draining from her face, a cold sweat prickling at her hairline. Her hand went limp in Aidan’s.Sarah’s medical textbooks were forgotten. Her eyes, wide as saucers, flicked from Freya’s horrified expression to her brother’s. A slow, incredulous grin spread across her face, and she lifted her teacup, hiding behind it completely, her shoulders beginning to shake.Emily’s head snapped up from her phone. Her eyebrows shot towards her hairline.She let out a low, deliberate whistle that cut through the quiet. “Well,” she drawled.“There’s a visual.”
Maureen blinked.Once. Twice. She looked at Freya’s stricken face, then at her son, whose own cheeks were flushing a deep, unmistakable scarlet. A complicated series of emotions played across her features: surprise, maternal shock, a deeply ingrained British need to avoid any and all awkwardness. Then, with a practicality that bordered on the heroic, she simply turned back to the sizzling pan. She picked up the fallen spatula, gave the bacon a firm, decisive poke.
“Well,” she said to the frying pan, her voice carefully neutral. “At least someone’s getting a good night’s sleep.”
The spell broke. Sarah snorted into her tea, the sound erupting into full, helpless laughter.Emily cackled, dropping her phone onto the table.“Trying to be quiet! In this house! You must have been truly… dedicated.”
Aidan, his face still burning, squeezed Freya’s lifeless hand. The smirk he’d been fighting won, tilting the corner of his mouth. He pulled out a chair for her, guiding her gently into it as if she were made of glass. He leaned down, his lips close to her ear, his voice a warm, private rumble just for her.
“Well,” he whispered, the laugh vibrating in his chest. “That’s one way to break the ice.”
Freya stared at the checked oilcloth tabletop.Mortification, hot and total, washed over her. She wanted to vanish, to teleport back to California, to any place where she hadn’t just detailed her sexual enthusiasm to her boyfriend’s mother and sisters over breakfast.But under the horror, something else bubbled. Sarah’s laughter wasn’t cruel.It was infectious. Emily’s jab was edged with a strange, approving respect. Maureen was calmly plating up bacon and eggs, the crisis already filed away under ‘Things Not To Dwell On.’
“I am so, so sorry,” Freya managed, her voice a thin thread.“I don’t know why I said that. I was half-asleep, and I just…”
“Stop,” Maureen said, placing a heaping plate in front of her.“No apologies for honesty at my table.Eat. You’ll need your energy.” The faintest, driest hint of a smile touched her lips.“Apparently.”
Sarah wiped her eyes. “Freya, it’s fine. Honestly, it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened at this breakfast table since Dad found that weird mushroom in the back garden.”
The meal proceeded, the initial shock dissolving into a raucous, teasing normalcy. Emily demanded to know the “acoustic challenges” of the old house. Sarah, with a medic’s clinical curiosity, asked if sexual endurance correlated with better sleep hygiene. Aidan fielded the questions with a soldier’s stoic grace, deflecting with one-word answers and well-aimed roll of his eyes, his foot resting against Freya’s calf under the table, a steady, grounding pressure.
Freya ate, the flavor of the food slowly returning as her heartbeat settled. The humiliation began to morph into something else—a bizarre, warm inclusion.They weren’t tiptoeing around her. They were ripping the absolute piss out of her, and by extension, Aidan. It was, she realized, a form of acceptance.A violent, hilarious baptism into the family.
Later, while helping Maureen load the dishwasher, Freya braced for a quiet, stern word. Instead, Maureen handed her a greasy plate, their shoulders almost touching.
“He’s different, you know,” Maureen said quietly, not looking at her.“Since he came back from… over there.Closed off. Like he’s living in a room with the door locked. Always observing, never quite in the room.” She slid a rack into the machine, closed it with a solid thunk. “He’s in the room with you.”
Freya didn’t know what to say. She nodded, her throat tight.“Good,” Maureen said, finally meeting her eyes. Her gaze was sharp, loving, and fiercely protective all at once.“Now, go on. He’s waiting for you in the bar. And for God’s sake, try not to announce your business to the entire street on the way.”
Aidan was indeed in the empty pub, wiping down the bar. The quiet was different now, comfortable.He looked up as she approached.
“I think I’ve officially lost all mystery,” she said, leaning on the bar.
“You never had any with me,” he replied, tossing the cloth aside.“And they’ll have forgotten it by Tuesday. They’re too busy memorizing drug dosages and criticizing my draft ale taps.”
He came around the bar, stopping close to her. The air between them still hummed with the morning’s revelation, but it was a warm hum now, a shared secret amplified.
His phone, lying on the bar, buzzed.Then buzzed again.And again.Not a call. A relentless, sequential string of notifications.The sound was foreign here, an invasive, digital insect.
Aidan’s eyes flicked towards it, his professional instinct overriding the moment. He picked it up, glanced at the screen.His expression, so relaxed a second before, hardened instantly. The muscles in his jaw tightened.“What?” Freya asked, the warmth leaching away.
“Your phone’s off,” he said, his voice flat.“My secondary work line is blowing up.Your agent. Your publicist.” He looked at her, his eyes the sharp, assessing grey of the intelligence officer he’d been.“A photographer just sold a shot to the Sun. Taken two days ago, at King’s Cross.”
Freya’s blood went cold. The peace of the last day shattered, the walls of the snug pub feeling suddenly thin and fragile. “What shot?”
Aidan handed her the phone.On the screen was a grainy, zoomed-in image. It was them, emerging from the station into the London rain.Her, head down, hood up. Him, guiding her with a hand at the small of her back. The caption was bold, ugly, and final: “Freya’s Mystery Man: Who is the hunk whisking our favourite supermodel away from the spotlight?”
The real world, with all its hungry, grinding machinery, had just found the key to the locked door.