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understand my luck, but something told me to stop complaining and enjoy.
    Ryan fell asleep about twenty minutes later, but I had to wake him up to know where the hell to go. I stroked the back of my hand over his cheek. “Ry, I need to know where to go. Chauffeur needs direction.”
    He struggled through layers of sleep to rub his fist over his eyes. God, that was way too gorgeous to tally.
    “Know where you are?”
    “Hmm. You need to turn left here, then go straight through.”
    “To Knightsbridge?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You live in Knightsbridge?”
    “’Fraid so.”
    My eyebrows left the stratosphere. “You live with your parents?” I stated on a questioning note. I felt silly for asking; it made me realise just how much I still didn’t know about Ryan. He had no go areas.
    “No,” he said slowly, then yawned.
    “So wait, you live alone in one of the most expensive areas of an already ridiculously expensive city?”
    Ryan looked at me with those jade eyes, and another yawn. “Yeah, I do.” He turned his gaze toward the window. “Guilt gift from said parents.”
    I swore as I missed my turning. Ryan quickly directed me through a shortcut to put me back on track. I turned down the radio. “Can I ask why they bought it for you?”
    Ryan made a sound in his throat, which vibrated annoyance. “Court, I don’t want to have this conversation with you. Turn here.”
    “Why not? I mean it’s come up, so let’s talk about it. I like to think that we’ve been pretty blunt with each other, and I don’t see why that should stop because it’s a little awkward.” I glanced at him briefly.
    “I get your point,” he admitted quietly, then started chewing on his thumb. “Okay, look, my parents have been pretty absent most of my life. I’ve spent more time with friends and relatives than with them. A couple of years ago, I was trying to finish my degree when my granddad died. He didn’t agree with the method of parenting my folks went with, and he was always my backup. When I got a first, to my immense surprise, my parents celebrated on a job well done and bought me the flat in an area they rarely go to.”
    “That could have been somewhere crappy, like Acton,” I muttered.
    Ryan’s smile was weak. “Yeah, but not as fancy. It’s big enough to have decent parties in. Makes up for a complete lack of parental support.”
    He was waiting for me to apologise, but I didn't work like that. “Why didn’t you tell them what you wanted?”
    “To get more guilt gifts?”
    “No, to get the attention you obviously needed. Was it that hard to ask?”
    “Ask them for something? Fuck that.”
    “You know you wouldn’t have degraded yourself by doing that. Asking for something isn’t that difficult, really.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Really.” He drawled, “Then why didn’t you ask Chris out?”
    I so knew that was coming to bitch slap me. It was Ryan’s only defence mechanism against me. “I didn’t want him to say no to me.”
    “He might not have,” he replied carefully.
    “He would have,” I insisted. “And I would have lost his friendship, and I would never have met you. And despite being a secretive bugger, I quite like you.”
    His face brightened with a smile that should have taken all strength from my legs. “Only because you know I’d say yes to you for anything.”
    I lifted my chin regally, until Ryan nodded to a door. “That one.”
    I parked, and Ryan said he would go upstairs and check that the residence permit had arrived so I wouldn’t get a ticket. Clever boy, I thought. He jogged down the stairs and stuck the permit on my window. He then gave me the keys and the smallest case so I could go in ahead of him. I walked inside and tried to keep my jaw level with the rest of my face.
    The flooring was black painted wood, matched with monochromatic furniture and bright white walls. He had a real fireplace in the living room—who needed a real fireplace? I put down the small case and wandered