Chapter Thirty-Five
I came to lying on my stomach with my face pressed against a cold wooden floor.
I stayed where I was for several seconds, my eyes shut as I waited for the rolling nausea to subside.
As it did, I became aware of a dull, throbbing ache in my right arm.
I tried to move it and gasped in pain. Shit, had I broken my wrist when I fell?
I groaned as I opened my eyes, and then the complaint died in my throat when I saw where I was.
“I did it!” I said, the words coming out as a relieved gasp. “Nick, we’re back at the shop; I did it!”
I pushed my head up from the floor, wincing as pain shot through my arm, and looked around.
Where was he? I must have been unconscious for a while, and he’d gone to get help.
I stood up, holding the desk to support myself as the room swayed around me.
Once I felt a bit steadier, I limped toward the door, cradling my right arm against my body as I pulled it open and stepped out onto the shop floor.
The space was dark, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. At first, I assumed it must be the middle of the night, but as I moved into the room, I realized that the shutters over the front windows were down, cutting out all light. They also blocked out all noise, so the place was eerily quiet.
“Nick?” I called, because maybe there was another room I didn’t know about, one where he was sitting right now, waiting impatiently for me to wake up. But my words were met with dead silence.
I crossed to the desk and looked for a note Nick might have left me, but there was nothing.
I felt a small bubble of irritation rise in my chest; he could at least have left the lights on for me while he went to get help.
I limped to the front door, pulling on the handle with my good arm, but it didn’t budge.
It seemed Nick had locked me in, so all I could do was sit and wait for him to return.
I’m not sure how long it took me to realize the truth.
I’d like to say it happened quickly, that within a few minutes, I’d worked out what was going on and begun to deal with it.
But I think that anyone who loves romance novels as much as I do has to be an optimist at heart—why else would we be so obsessed with our happy-ever-afters?
—and so it wasn’t until I could sense that night had fallen outside, and I felt weak with hunger and pain, that I got the slightest inkling of what might have happened.
Even then, my first thoughts were practical ones: How the hell was I going to get out of the shop, seeing as I was locked inside, didn’t have my mobile phone, and didn’t know anyone’s number to call them from the shop phone?
In the end, I came up with a sensible, mature plan, which was to bang on the shop window and scream until someone heard me.
Eventually, a neighboring shop owner who had a spare key was located, and I heard the rattle of the shutters being lifted and the front door was unlocked.
At this point, as people asked me how I’d managed to get myself locked inside a shop that had been closed for almost two weeks, you might think that the truth of my situation would hit home.
But you’d be wrong, because either the pain or the exhaustion or the shock meant that I allowed myself to be taken to hospital, have my sprained wrist x-rayed and bandaged in a sling, and then put in a taxi back to Kentish Town without admitting what had happened.
In fact, it was only when I climbed up the front steps, weariness making every step feel like a marathon, and the front door flew open and a screeching blur of crimson velour came charging out, that it finally hit me.
“You’re alive!” Mrs. Atallah roared, squeezing me so tightly that I thought she might injure my other arm. “I thought I’d never see your funny little face again! Where have you been? Were you really stuck in Pride and Prejudice?”
I nodded, unable to speak as my brain began to clunkily process the truth.
“Oh, you have no idea how worried I’ve been! To lose you and Fitz at the same time was too much to bear; I thought my heart might break again. And Nick said he’d get you back, but I’ll be honest, I had no faith in that man. I never trust anyone who’s that handsome. But I was wrong!”
“Mrs. Atallah,” I moaned, because now there was a new pain in my body, one more intense than reading myself out of a book and hurting my arm combined.
“Where is he now? I tell you, I want to give that Nick a kiss for bringing my Zoe back to me. I’ll cook a feast for him! I’ll even allow you to date him, despite the fact my—”
“Mrs. Atallah, stop!”
I must have shouted it, because she ground to a halt. “What is it?”
“It’s Nick,” I croaked. “He’s not here. I left him behind.”
I blinked, only truly comprehending the words as I said them out loud. I had read myself out of Pride and Prejudice, but not Nick. The man who had sacrificed himself to save me. The man who I loved.
At which point, I leaned against Mrs. Atallah and began to howl.