Chapter Twenty-Five
LUCAS
Ijolted awake when a goat used my chest as a launchpad to leap over one of their buddies. The darkness around me was absolute, the world leached of discernible sound by pounding rain on the tin roof.
My breathing came in shallow pants. When I tried to fill my lungs, my ribs seemed to press tight against them. I couldn’t tell if my face was burning up or if the transition from the freezing storm to the warmth of the goat-filled hut made my skin feel like I was sat next to an open fire.
I flinched at a flash of lightning that juddered beyond the rough entrance to the hut, then cried out despite the bands constricting my chest.
I’d jostled my leg. Despite how agonising the backwards crab-crawl over to the hut had been, things had gotten worse while I’d slept. I could no longer feel my left foot. It wasn’t because of the cold. My right foot was chilly but made itself known when I wiggled my toes.
The section of my left leg I could feel, starting somewhere above my knee, tingled. Tentatively, I unhooked my arm from around a slumbering goat and prodded the part of my upper thigh I could reach without crunching my stomach muscles. The flesh was bloated, pressing against my damp jeans.
Despite the weariness it would have been far too easy to submit to, panic reared. I’d hoped the break had been simple, but something else was going on.
I closed my eyes, steeling myself. I needed to retrieve my backpack from under my injured leg.
My mind was dragging, so I couldn’t quite remember what was inside, but there would be helpful supplies.
Maybe my phone would have signal. If not, I’d be able to use the torch to assess what was going on with my leg.
I edged my shoulders into a helpful position, then pushed upwards.
My previously numb leg exploded with pain. My chest spasmed. The unformed greys around me descended to inky blacks.
I was wheezing when I woke again. My eyes were gummy, my lips dry. My arms were splayed helplessly.
The top of my left leg throbbed. My pelvis ached. My head felt leaden.
‘Fuck,’ I whispered.
I’d denied it before this moment, had tried to be positive when the storm rolled in and when I couldn’t find shelter and even after I broke my leg, but I was in real trouble.
I wasn’t a doctor so couldn’t officially diagnose myself, but if I came across an animal with the symptoms I could discern across my aching body, I would immediately rush it into the surgery.
Even though I’d squeezed Aster extra hard with a mixture of fondness and exasperation when he’d told me he’d cried when he was stuck under a boulder and had no way to replenish the water he had been needlessly wasting, I couldn’t stop the tears sinking down the sides of my overheated face and tickling my ears.
I had a vague idea that I could wipe them away, but the effort of lifting my arms was too much. I was scared it would plunge me into another bout of involuntary unconsciousness.
The darkness around me didn’t let up. I blinked against my tears, but no light broke into the hut. The rain was relentless outside, thunder rumbling in random spurts.
I was so fucking alone. Hurt and desperate and in need of rescue.
‘Kit?’ I breathed his name, like saying it might summon him from the village. He wasn’t a doctor, I wasn’t sure he would be any help in this situation, but I wanted him here.
I wished I’d kissed him this morning. More tears trickled into my hair as I thought of how horribly I’d left things. I wished I hadn’t been so fearful, that I’d chosen that moment to be braver than at any other time in my life.
Every touch I’d ever shared with Kit had been wonderful. Snuggling on his sofa or nudging shoulders behind the counter of the bookshop. Our fingers tangling over a puzzle or his hair against my cheek or our feet rubbing under the dining table.
Touching Kit wasn’t like touching anyone else in the world.
He thought he wanted to touch those he cared for more than they did, but I couldn’t see how his need for my touch could be any more than mine.
I used every excuse to crowd closer to him, to breathe in his bookish scent and close my eyes wrapped in his warmth.
If kissing could be good with anyone, then it would be good with Kit.
I didn’t feel what everyone else did before they kissed someone, but maybe that was okay.
I wasn’t pulled to Kit like I was caught in some irresistible riptide, but I’d slowly bobbed closer to him.
That didn’t sound as romantic or dramatic, but that didn’t mean kissing him wouldn’t be good.
I blinked despite the view remaining as unchanged nothingness.
I wished that it was Kit pressed to my side right now, not snoozing goats.
I wished my fingers curled into his hair, rather than rasped against harsh strands of straw.
I wished I could turn my head and brush my lips over his, find out if kissing him was exactly as perfect as every other touch between us had been.
Nothing warned me I was slipping into an uneasy sleep, but I woke at a shout.
‘Lucas?’ Pounding footsteps, louder than the rain hurling itself at the hut. ‘Lucas? Can you hear me?’
Kit. He’d found me.
Despite the pain crisscrossing my body, lightness flooded my chest. Kit was here. Everything would be okay.
I blinked open my eyes. Or tried to. My eyelids wouldn’t lift to more than halfway. It didn’t matter anyway. I couldn’t see anything.
‘Are you really here?’ I rasped. I had to ask. My need for Kit was overwhelming. Perhaps my throbbing brain had conjured him.
I flinched when a hand gripped my shoulder, and my cry of pain as my leg twitched was far louder than my words had been. Instantly, the stabbing aches across my body receded.
I didn’t have the energy to frown, but it wasn’t good that the pain had faded so quickly. Pain was an indicator of wrongness. Nothing had changed about my leg, it was as messed up as when I’d dragged myself out of the storm, so the pain emanating from it in sharp spikes shouldn’t have left.
‘I’m here.’ Another hand cradled the side of my face. After nothing but stinging rain and brittle straw and wiry goat’s fur, the palm of Kit’s hand was blissfully soft.
‘I wish I could see you,’ I whispered.
Another set of hands rested across my stomach, then a large palm spread across the centre of my chest.
My eyes fluttered closed as the pain ebbed away even more. Maybe it dulling wasn’t a sign of something terrible going on. Maybe before I’d had nothing to think about but the pain, whereas now there was Kit’s hands on me. Plus those of whoever he’d brought with him.
‘Errol, what’s wrong with him?’
I didn’t like the harsh edge to Kit’s voice. I wished I could see his face, could lift my hand and trace my thumbs over the lines across his perfect skin. Watch them disappear.
‘We need to get him to Callum. Now.’ Errol didn’t answer Kit’s question. He had to be helpless in the dark to figure out what was wrong. ‘I’ll carry him.’
‘Let’s get clothes on him first.’ It must have been Louisa’s hands on my belly.
‘You two keep draining.’ Errol’s voice was a deep growl. I must have misheard the last word in the battering rain. ‘I’ll get him sat up.’
The hand on my chest lifted and the pain in my leg re-awakened with a dull throb. Before I had a chance to beg Errol to touch me again, firm fingers gripped the backs of my shoulders and levered my body upwards.
My scream matched a screech of thunder. Whimpering, I leant heavily into the hands braced against my back. Pain lashed over me, then swept away in a great swoop.
‘Don’t take too much,’ Louisa hissed.
Kit’s soft hand was still on my cheek. My head lolled into the cradle of his fingers. My nose brushed his skin. It was damp, but under the wetness was a hint of vanilla.
I tried not to cry out again as clothes eased up my arms and settled over my chest, but a few gasps escaped.
Even in my helpless state, I recognised that my saviours were hurting me to help me.
They couldn’t clothe me without moving me, and they couldn’t sort out my deeper hurts without taking me from the hut.
‘The best way to lift him will be over my shoulder,’ Errol rumbled. ‘That way, I don’t need to hold his leg. We can zip it inside my coat to limit its movement.’
‘Are you ready, Lucas?’ Kit’s nose pressed into my cheek.
‘Stay with me?’ I pleaded. I couldn’t clutch at him, but my words were like hooks.
He didn’t seem to mind them snagging him. ‘I’ll be right here,’ he promised.
‘Lucas, I’m going to lift you now,’ Errol warned.
His hands hooked under my armpits. Agony seared through me as I was hoisted into the air.
I was floating when I next woke. My chin pressed into soft fabric, my stomach supported by something firm. Both my hands were held, the skin warm as rain drenched the clothing I’d been helped into.
The fingers around my right hand were slender, topped by long nails. Those around my left were wonderfully familiar.
I breathed deep and my eyes dipped closed, but the rush of unconsciousness didn’t feel as unwelcome as it had before. It was easy to sleep with all the pain gone. I drifted through the storm, held and safe and rescued.
I wished I could grip Kit’s hand, but the connection between my desires and actions had been severed. It was okay. He held my hand tight enough for the both of us.