“What?” he asks.
“Move closer, unless you want me to come over there. And if I do, it’s going to hurt my leg, so you should probably do as you're told.” He doesn’t move. “What’s wrong?”
“He killed you.” Bailey lets out a shuddering breath. “You died, Teddy,twice. If the ambulance hadn’t arrived so quickly, you wouldn’tbe here.”
“There’s no point thinking about what could have happened when it didn’t.”
Bailey sits up and turns to face me. “How can you look at me? I look so much like him that it’s going to haunt me every time I look in a mirror. But you have to see me all the time. A constant reminder that I wear the same face as the man who killed you. It’s not healthy, Teddy!” he chokes.
Despite the throbbing pain in my leg, I drag my body upright so that I can look him in the eye. “You’re nothing alike to me, Bay. My biggest regret is mistaking him for you. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life. We’ve missed so many years because of it.” I slide my hand behind his neck and pull him towards me so his forehead rests against mine. “Thisis not theface of my killer. This is the face of the boy I left behind. The boy I loved, and the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. There’s nothing of Shane in you, Bay.”
A strangled noise comes from him as he shakes his head.
“Yes.” I run my thumb over his bottom lip, wet from both our tears. “Stay with me, mo ghráidh. I’ll show you every day who you are.”
He kisses me gently and breathes against my lips for a moment before he whispers, “I never want to leave.”
BAILEY - ONE WEEK LATER
“So you’reboth going back tomorrow?” I ask, looking between Jake and Noah.
“Yeah, it’s been far too long since I’ve been in the office. Don’t want everyone thinking they can slack off,” Jake says, downing the rest of his pint. He smirks at me.
“What?”
“You don’t want to leave, do you?”
“No,” I mutter, picking at the chipped wood on the pub table.
“What if you didn’t have to?”
I peek up at him to see his green eyes glint in the firelight. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been wanting to expand the company for a while now. I have some money saved up that would allow me to set up in the Highlands and Islands region. Specifically, one island.”
“What are you saying, Jake?”
“I’m going to set up a branch here on Skye, but I’ll need someone to run it, seeing as I’ll be down in Cumbria.”
“Seriously? Shit…” My voice wobbles. “I can stay?”I whisper.
Jake chuckles. “Yeah, kid, you can stay.”
I’m almost bouncing in my seat. I want to go home to tell Teddy, but he’s supposed to be sleeping, and I don’t want to wake him up.
I jump as someone coughs behind me. When I turn around, my eyes go straight to a pair of heavily tattooed arms crossed over a broad chest, then up to a thick ginger beard and blue eyes.
“What’s up, Luke?” Jake asks.
“I, ah, I need to talk before you leave,” he mutters in his deep Scottish burr.
Jake’s fingers go straight to his septum piercing, fiddling with it like he does when he’s nervous, then he looks at me. “Bailey, I’ll talk to you later about the details of everything, but for now concentrate on you and Theo, alright? You’ll still be paid while we set the business up.”
“Alright,” I say, smiling at him. “Thanks, Jake.”
He stands up and tucks his chair under the table, then follows Luke out of the pub.
“What about you? Are you still going?” I ask Noah.
