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‘You want to race?’
Her eyes gleamed. ‘I am absolutely ready to beat you. Bring it on.’
‘Loser does the washing up,’ he shouted as he sprinted around the tree, laughing at how much he sounded like his teenaged self. He hadn’t been so...daft...for ages. Not since his dad was ill at the very least. Part of him wanted to tell himself that it was being back here, at Upton. But with a glance backwards at Jess, he wasn’t sure how much he believed that now.
He stumbled as his skate caught on an uneven floorboard, but he righted himself and glided across to Jess. No wonder Jess was wobbling. Perhaps they would have been better off on the smooth kitchen tiles. But this was all worth it for the squeal of pleasure he heard from Jess as she crashed into him, narrowly avoiding a much harder meeting with the floor. Any excuse to hold her by the waist, pulling her closer until he could feel her body flush against him, her hips close, her sweet-smelling hair under his chin. He tipped her face up to his, and loved the smile that he found on her lips as he kissed into her mouth.
‘I think I like how uncoordinated you are in these things,’ he said, and laughed when she kicked his shin with the stopper on the front of her skate.
‘I’m not uncoordinated. The floor is uneven,’ she murmured, not bothering to take her mouth off his to talk. Whatever the reason, he was happy for it if it meant having her in his arms. Not that he needed an excuse. They had dispensed with those days ago. Now he could lean in and kiss her. Just like...that. For no reason other than they both wanted him to. Too soon, she was pulling away from him, skating shakily backwards as they made a circuit of the room.
‘Do you know any tricks?’ she asked. ‘I bet you do. I want to learn.’
‘Um, doing tricks your first time on rollerblades on an uneven floor is maybe not our best move,’ he replied, raising his eyebrows.
‘I’ve done so many things this week that were not the best idea that I’ve lost count. Now, show me or I’m just going to make it up myself.’
He heaved out a sigh and skated out backwards around the room, his feet crossing over one another as he spun around.
‘I can definitely do that,’ Jess declared as he came to a stop in front of her.
She pushed away on strong legs, picking up speed as she circled the room. Until she picked up one foot, tried to spin on the other and her front brake caught in a knot hole in the floorboard.
He dived to try and reach her, but he knew even before he started moving that he wasn’t going to make it in time. He winced but didn’t look away as she reached out to break her fall with one hand. Her yelp of pain masked the snap of bone that he was bracing himself for. He dropped to the floor beside her as she cradled her wrist against her chest. Her lower lip had disappeared between her teeth as she bit down on it. Hard.
‘Oh, God, do you think it’s broken?’ she asked, looking up at him, her eyes wide with shock, her face pinched with pain.
He had no idea. But regardless of whether the bone was actually fractured, all he could be sure of right now was that she was in pain, and they were stranded, with no way of getting her to a hospital. All because he’d thought it would be fun to surprise her with a skating rink without properly thinki
ng through the consequences.
‘I don’t know,’ he said gently, putting an arm around her back, breathing out as she let her head rest on his shoulder. ‘I think we should get some ice on it. Try and keep it still until we can get you to a doctor.’
He helped her up onto one of the sofas pushed back against the wall, flinching when she gasped as he helped her to stand. He pulled a blanket around her, and then knelt to unlace her boots, pulling them off and throwing them to one side, then doing the same with his own. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, walking quickly to the kitchen and digging round in the chest freezer for the ice pack he knew was in there somewhere.
This was all his fault. There was no way to sugar-coat it. He had been so keen to impress her that he had created a death trap of a skating rink, all the while knowing that they were trapped here without any reasonable hope of medical care.
He had been kidding himself that he could just walk away from her. He’d known, for longer than he’d admitted to himself, that he wanted more. More of what they’d shared here these past few days. Just more of her. And here was the cosmic payback—the reminder that he couldn’t, shouldn’t, be responsible for anyone but himself. When he was close to people, trying to take care of them, they got hurt. He had been on the brink of asking Jess if they could see one another after they had got out of here. But here was the reminder he needed that he shouldn’t. He had needed to remember that. Remember that the thing he could do for Jess was to put some emotional distance between them. More than anything else, that was what was going to keep her safe.
He found the ice pack at last, and as he pulled it from the freezer the kitchen light flickered and went out.
‘Rufus?’ Jess called from the hall. ‘Did you do that?’
‘Another power cut,’ he called, taking a torch from the pantry before he walked back through. The fire in the grate was casting light and shadow onto Jess’s face, and he sat lightly beside her, careful not to jar her arm.
‘Here,’ he said, pressing the ice pack to her wrist, which was looking worryingly swollen. ‘This will help. And these.’ He handed her a couple of painkillers and a glass of water. ‘How does it feel?’
‘Pretty sore,’ Jess said, her face still tight.
‘I’m going to call 111. See if there’s any chance of getting an ambulance out here.’
‘You said yourself that the lane won’t be passable until tomorrow.’
‘But if it’s broken...’
She gritted her teeth. ‘Then it will still be broken tomorrow. It’s okay; I can wait.’
‘You were happy to call an ambulance for me,’ Rufus reminded her.
