Chapter 19
Eiley didn’t even know where to start. Her limbs still trembled from the fear of losing Sky, and the shock of finding him – laughing .
She cupped her steaming coffee, grabbed from Morag’s stall on their way through Main Street, at least glad to be freed from the pervading pressure of a hundred different bodies and conversations as they crossed the bridge towards the woods.
If she was going to do this, it needed to be somewhere quiet, where she could think properly.
Not that she could ever think properly with Warren around.
“Not going to murder me and bury me in the woods, are you?” Warren muttered through a sip of his own drink, a strong builder’s brew she’d refused to let him pay for. It was the least she could do.
“I won’t pretend I haven’t thought about it,” she admitted, tucking her hair behind her ear. She must have looked like a mess: her face always went so splotchy when she was anxious, and the wind tousled her hair in all directions.
He’d been walking behind her before. Now, he matched her pace, elbow brushing her arm as they fell onto the woodland trail. Her trainers crunched through dried fallen leaves and pine needles, trees casting them in cool shadow. Here, she could just about breathe again.
Warren didn’t laugh like she’d hoped, his glower fixed firmly on a wide tree stump that overlooked the riverbank below.
She decided it was as good a place as any to sit, avoiding flattening the red clover that had sprouted between the cracks in the wood.
He hovered as though he couldn’t stand to join her.
Which she supposed meant there was no more putting it off.
“I’m really sorry, Warren.”
His jaw ticked, the only sign he’d heard her. “For what?”
“For what I called you in the pub the other night.” Shame hung heavy on her neck, try as she did to keep her head up so that he’d know she was sincere. “And for all the times I’ve been unfairly rude to you.”
“I can take a few jabs, Eiley, but you and that brother of yours make me feel like I’m some monster you can’t trust.” He had every right to sound angry, and yet he didn’t.
Didn’t raise his voice at all, the confession instead spoken softly into his tea.
“I get it if we’re just too different to get along, but Jesus, I’ve never said a mean thing about you.
Never insulted you. Not like you have me. ”
“I know. You haven’t deserved it. I think I’m just … too used to not trusting people. It’s not an excuse. It’s my problem.”
He remained silent for a moment before finally sitting down, tugging the zip on his uniform. He shouldn’t have looked good in such a bland non-colour, not to mention the neon stripes, and yet it brought out the lighter browns in his eyes, the warm tint of his pale complexion.
“I would never do wrong by your kids.” Finally, he looked at her. “I don’t care if you hate me, but Sky was safe with me.”
“I know that, too.” She shook her head. “You must think I’m a terrible mum, letting him wander off like that. I thought I had my eye on him, on them both …”
His knee knocked hers, a gentle tap of reassurance. “It happens more often than you’d think. I can’t count the amount of calls we’ve had from distraught parents who looked away for a single second. It’s impossible not to get distracted, especially on a busy day like this.”
“So, no lecture today, then?” She’d expected one. Deserved one, even.
He rolled his eyes. “My expertise doesn’t cover parenting. That’s all you. And you’re doing an excellent job, from what I can tell. They’re great kids. Passionate, kind, funny. You can tell that they’ve only ever known love.”
Meekly, Eiley peeled at the short clover petals in an attempt to keep from welling up. They’d always been loved, but not by Finlay. She’d had to make sure they never felt the loss or the anger he’d left them with.
“Morbid, now, too, thanks to you.” She couldn’t resist casting him a scolding sidelong glance. “Brook came home with some very interesting facts the other day …”
He pinched his mouth to suppress a laugh, which made her want to laugh, too. “If you were hoping to tell me off, most of the other parents in town have beat you to it. They do need to know these things, though.”
“In a few years’ time, maybe.”
“Kids aren’t immune to fire. But I’ll admit, I might have gone in a little strong, and I’ve been plenty disciplined for it. It’s only because I wanted them to know how serious it is if they’re not careful. I’ve seen a lot of kids play with fire and lose.”
Fine. She could admit that maybe he had a point.
Brook hadn’t come home traumatised: just informed.
And more than that, interested. He’d decided in the last few days that he wanted to be a “fireman like Warren” when he grew up.
Horrifying, yes, because she didn’t want her son running into burning buildings, but also heartwarming that he wanted to help people.
“How did you know how to act with Sky?” she questioned.
“What d’you mean?”
Another clover head plucked from the weeds. “You must have noticed that he’s autistic and non-verbal. Not many people know how to react around him. What to do when he stims, how to talk to him, sometimes even whether he’s happy or sad.”
“He might not speak much, but it’s still easy to listen to him. He told me what he wanted in his own way.”
Eiley blinked back her shock. Of course, she knew this, but not many people outside of her family did.
Finlay had thought that forcing touch and noise upon Sky would help him “grow out of it”, that Sky chose to be difficult, when really, he just communicated differently and thrived in quieter environments.
She’d always encouraged him to cope however he needed to, even if it meant screaming or hitting a pillow until he felt calm again.
Anything as long as he wasn’t hurting himself; as long as he felt safe enough to express his feelings.
Suppressing it only made life more difficult for him, and god, she wanted him to be happy. Free. Loved.
He had been that today in the fire engine. At ease. Laughing.
Because of Warren.
She’d been wrong about him. Not all of him: he was still too big for his boots, literally and metaphorically, and he clearly was a flirt she couldn’t trust with her heart, but she could trust him at least with the rest.
And with the afternoon sunlight dappling his features, the world amber and gold around them, it was difficult to remember why she’d ever been so angry.
Her lips pulsed with the memory of kisses he’d once put there, goosebumps rising beneath the wool of her cardigan.
She placed the coffee cup down beside her, crossing her legs when thoughts of doing it again, better this time – finishing , this time – lit up her mind without permission.
“What? Surprised I actually have a heart?” His laughter line sunk deeper into his cheek as he looked at her through hooded, honey-gold eyes and thick lashes.
“Yes,” she admitted, gulping. “Maybe.”
“I wish you didn’t think so little of me.”
“I’m working on it.”
He angled his body to better face her, their knees clashing. The warmth of his hard thigh burned through her denim jeans, stoking that already tingling yearning inside her.
Blair , she reminded herself. He’s interested in Blair, now. Probably another woman next week, and another the week after that.
And yet Harper’s slurring voice argued, You don’t actually have to like Hercules. You just have to like how he makes you feel.
She wasn’t sure if she liked it. He made her feel unsteady, like her mind was in freefall.
But he also made her body feel like a body again, not just a deadweight she had to lug around day in, day out.
He reminded her that she could still feel desire, and that meant she was capable of more than just surviving by the skin of her teeth.
His hand slid over the knots of the stump, towards her, fingertips brushing along the seam of her trousers so lightly that she shouldn’t have felt it.
But she did.
She leaned closer, both afraid of what waited for her, and what didn’t if she walked away now. It didn’t make sense. They didn’t make sense. Yet they kept ending up here, ravenous and so, so close.
“You … You don’t want me, Warren,” she said shakily.
“I thought it was the other way around, actually.” His brows scrunched. “You don’t want me.”
“I …” She stood in an attempt to relieve the restlessness flipping through her, every chafe of her jeans and brush of her thighs only making her core pulse harder. She tried to find her rational voice, fixed her eyes on a safe point in the middle distance. “Maybe we should just be friends.”
He scoffed. “With our track record, we’d make pretty terrible friends, Eiley. If you want something, you’re going to have to tell me, because I can’t read your mind. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“I heard you flirting with Blair at school.”
“Do you want me to stop?” He rose to meet her. “I will. If it means tasting you, having you, I won’t talk to her again.”
“No. No .” She couldn’t ask him to do that, not when she was so unsure. She shook the anxiety from her hands, but then his fingers were curled around her wrist, and she couldn’t avoid him any longer.
“Then what do you want?” he whispered. “Do you want to finish what we started in the bookshop?”
She licked her lips, marvelling at his bravery. His directness. His ability to say what he meant. She kept trying to convince herself that she didn’t know him at all, yet he was embroidered into every thought she had, every colour she saw, every page she read.
So, she answered, “Yes.”