Chapter 30
30
Fraser felt like he was floating in a dream – or, rather, a nightmare – as he watched the nurses care for Harper. The fluorescent lights and white walls were too bright after driving in the near-dark, and he soon found there was nothing he could do but stand back and watch. In no time, she was hooked up to oxygen and warm IV fluids, which were bringing colour back into her cheeks. The doctor had confirmed it was hypothermia, and everything beyond that had been nothing more than muffled, underwater speech he didn’t understand.
Hypothermia .
He should have been there earlier. He should have made sure she was safe.
“You did the right thing by bringing her in, pet,” one of the nurses said once Harper’s condition improved, squeezing his shoulder. “You should grab a coffee and sit down. Your wife needs to rest now, and so should you.”
He swallowed thickly, not quite able to choke out that she wasn’t his wife. She wasn’t his anything.
Except that wasn’t true. The cavern in his chest wouldn’t be quite so deep if she wasn’t anything . For just a flicker in time, she had felt like everything, and he wasn’t sure what to do with that.
He sank down into the chair beside her bed, refusing to cry even when his eyes seared.
This was his fault. He’d let her walk away last night. If he hadn’t pulled his head out of his ass for long enough to go and talk to her this morning, he wouldn’t have even known that she was in grave danger.
Groggily, Harper’s lids prised open. She was still pale, veins dark under translucent skin, but clarity was returning to her eyes.
Fraser wanted to reach for her hand, buried beneath layers of blankets. He didn’t. Instead, his fists remained firmly in his lap, nails digging into his palms.
Her focus landed on him finally and relief flickered across her face.
“Hi,” she croaked.
He gulped, unable to say anything.
“What? Do I look like a corpse?” Mirth danced in her sleepy voice.
He was in no mood to humour her.
“What were you doing, Harper?” he asked slowly, his voice fracturing as if his throat was filled with sharp, shattered glass. “Why the hell were you swimming at night, on your own, in the freezing cold?”
She shrugged. “I needed to clear my head.”
He fought not to recoil, his own words hitting him like a boomerang. He had told her that he went swimming in the loch when he needed to sort his head out. To reset.
She’d done it because he’d planted that idea, not thinking about the cold. Not thinking she would end up here. Not thinking that if she was seriously hurt, he’d have to carry that unbearable guilt forever. Why had she done that? He was just barely juggling his other responsibilities. He couldn’t bear this burden too.
He scrubbed a hand over his quivering jaw. “You brainless bloody numbskull.”
She flinched at this tone. “I didn’t think…” As she trailed off, se glanced around the hospital room as though only just noticing where she was. “I thought it would be fine.”
“You could have died ,” he snapped. “If I hadn’t found you—”
If he hadn’t found her, he couldn’t even finish that sentence. Whatever happened to her, it would have destroyed him.
This was why, he realised. Why he’d run away, why he’d pushed Harper back, why he’d told her to go for the job in England. He wasn’t capable of taking care of another person. He already had an entire army to work for and protect.
“Fraser…” Harper swallowed, with some difficulty. He sighed, standing up to roughly pour her some water from the bedside table. He handed her the plastic cup without meeting her eye, then sat back down as she sipped.
“I can call your parents,” he said tersely. “They’d probably want to know…”
“No. God, no. I’ll never live it down.” She shook her head, damp layers of hair coiling at the ends and framing her face.
He wanted to call them. He wanted somebody else to take care of her so he wouldn’t have to. So he wouldn’t have to keep worrying too much, keep feeling too much.
Pursing his lips, he steepled his fingers together, glaring at his bitten-down nails.
“Why are you angry?” she asked quietly.
“I’m not.”
“Well then why won’t you look at me?”
He huffed out a long breath. “I can’t.”
“ Why ?” she pressed, exasperated now.
“I just can’t, Harper.” He didn’t know what more to say. His heart thudded, lungs tight. He was drowning, because even though she was okay, that worry wouldn’t just abate. He was still trapped in that moment when he’d found her, barely conscious. Almost gone. Every muscle in his body was still helplessly trying to figure out how to save her, how to stop the worst from happening.
“Fraser… It was an accident.”
“I know.”
She rubbed her face wearily. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”
He said nothing, only clenched his fingers around the arms of his chair. You did worry me , he wanted to say. You worried me so much I can’t fucking breathe.
“Maybe it’s good that I’m leaving,” she whispered finally. “I won’t keep getting myself into trouble. Won’t keep causing you problems.”
“Aye, maybe.” His words were harsh, unfairly so, and he knew he would regret them later. Now, he could only think about getting through this moment.
Harper’s chin wobbled. She looked down at the thick blankets encasing her. “You don’t have to stay.”
He did, actually. If she thought he was going to leave her here alone, she was mad. “The nurses say you’ll be discharged once your temperature is back to normal. You should be home by tonight. I may as well wait.”
“Well, if you may as well…” Sarcasm laced her voice, but she slumped into the pillow as though she was already defeated. “Why were you even at the cabin?”
He closed his eyes. He couldn’t tell her now that he’d wanted to make amends. What was the point when their separation was more inevitable than ever? The best thing he could do was leave things as they were. Distant. “Work.”
“It’s a Sunday,” she pointed out, because of course he could never fool her. She was too sharp to believe his excuses even after this.
“I wanted to spend some quiet time in the shed,” he lied. What he wouldn’t give to lock himself away now – but even in there, he wouldn’t be free of her. She’d tainted that, too, by needling into his most personal hobby and thrusting it out of the shadows. She’d refused to leave his simple little life the same way she had found it.
She nodded just once. “Then I’m sorry I stopped you.”
Silence engulfed them after that. There was nothing left to say, and even if there was, he was too tired, too trapped inside his own mind to articulate it. She rolled over, turning her back to him, and stayed that way until the nurses came in to check on her later that morning.
Fraser barely spoke on the drive home, except to ask if she was warm enough. The answer was yes, she was fairly sweltering against the heat blasting through his truck vent, thank you very much. He bid her farewell inside the car, not bothering to escort her into the cabin, despite having tried to convince her to use a wheelchair on their way out of the hospital. On that short walk from the truck to the door, it dawned on her: it was really over. No more kissing. No more falling asleep in one another’s arms.
What had happened? One moment, he’d been the closest person in her life. But on that hospital ward, he’d been a stranger. Talking to her like he blamed her for getting hypothermia. Unable to so much as look at her. What had she done to deserve that? Fine, bathing in an icy loch in November hadn’t been her smartest move, but she hadn’t meant to make herself ill.
She hadn’t meant to make him hate her.
She collapsed onto the couch, bone-tired and raw. The emptiness of the cabin crawled across her skin, and she knew she couldn’t stay here if this was how it would be. Tomorrow, she would leave. She didn’t want to feel like a burden to him anymore, and he clearly didn’t want that either.
Had she been silly to even wonder if she should stay? Had Fraser really fooled her with charm and kindness and dry humour, weaselling his way into her heart and her body until she hadn’t been able to see sense? Well, she saw it now. He was just like everybody else in her life. He’d grown bored of her. Annoyed by her.
She wasn’t good enough for him.
More than anything else in the world, she just wanted to go home. She stood on stiff legs, grabbing her laptop from her writing desk. Her manuscript remained open on the screen, the one she’d rushed to finish. Badly. So much of Fraser and her experiences with him had bled through into the story and characters, and he didn’t deserve to take up that space if he could wipe her away so easily.
She left the tab open and opened a new one to search for train tickets. It would mean a long and exhausting day of travelling while inhabiting a body that still felt strange and not hers, but anything would be better than sitting in a cabin where things had once felt magical.
So, she booked a train for ten a.m. the next morning, shoved her laptop under the couch cushion where the sight of it wouldn’t haunt her, and began packing.
Fraser had been right. Wild swimming had provided a reset, just not in the way she’d predicted.