Mattheo was a splendid scoundrel, and a womaniser besides, and not ashamed of it. The list of girls who'd been in his bed was growing exponentially, and he didn't seem to care. Waving off further tearful pleas to turn it into something serious as something weightlessly stupid or insignificant.
It was certainly easier to dull the tugging and aching in his chest with quick, random pleasures like girls or alcohol than it was to try to deal with them.
His rule sheet, though, was bordered by a single line written in bold red letters that, Merlin, should have been drummed into his head yesterday. Don't sleep with you. It was a mantra stubbornly repeated every day. It would ruin whatever warm relationship you had - he was sure of that more than anything else.
However, last night it all came crashing down at the snap of a finger when the alcohol hit you both in the head too hard to think straight.
Guilt and regret were written all too vividly on his face, the way an expressionist painter expresses his emotions. Your fidgety look made him sober up almost immediately, as if he'd been tipped with ice water.
"It's okay," he murmured, holding out his T-shirt so you could cover your nakedness.
Mattheo turned away meekly, having no desire to ruin things any more than they already were. He'd screwed up, screwed up worse than he'd ever done before.
More importantly, he didn't know how to fix screwed up things. Leaving everything behind, burning all bridges, things stayed the way he'd left them, not really caring. But with you? Merlin, you were his friend - a word he really put a lot of stock in.
"Look, I'm really sorry," he tried, rubbing his face with his palms, not realising whether he wanted to erase that moment from his memory or leave it in the most prominent place. "If you want, we'll just forget the whole thing and leave it as it was, yeah?"
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