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“Why didn’t you come and see me? In the hospital?”
He looks down at his hands. He plucks a strand of hay from the bale and twists it between his fingers.
“You saved my life,” I urge, willing him to open up to me, to help me. “I wanted to see you…so badly…” My voice trails off.
“It was complicated.”
“I’m sure I can keep up,” I grouse.
“Didn’t you ever wonder where it came from?” he asks.
“Where what came from?” My brow furrows.
“The ring,” he says quietly.
I look at him, aghast. “You?”
“How much do you remember?” he asks gently.
I pause for a moment, reeling back through my memories of the time of the accident as I have so often done. As usual, my mind does not offer much. “I remember getting into my dad’s car, to come to your house. Then after that, it is just a blank, until I woke up in the hospital a few days later.”
“A few days later?” Corran’s brow furrows.
“Yeah, I was out for a few days, wasn’t I?”
“Not quite,” he says slowly. “You were fine after it happened, well not fine as it turned out, but you were up and…er…talking. I visited you. But you collapsed. In my arms. We were talking, then your face went pale and your eyes rolled in your head. Your parents let me stay until the doctors had you stabilised, but then your dad told me to head home for a rest. I did.” Corran pauses. He stares down at the broken piece of hay crumpled between his fingers.
“Go on.” I nudge him gently with my shoulder.
“Well, when I came back the next day, he said you’d suffered a brain injury and it would be better…kinder…for me to leave you alone, so that you wouldn’t relive the trauma when you saw me. He made me promise that I’d stay away.” He raises his eyes to mine. “And I’m breaking that promise right now.”
I don’t know whether to kiss or to clout him. He stayed away because my father told him to. He loved me. He wanted to be with me. Yet he let my father chase him away.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “Why would you let my father shut you out like that?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you. I believed him when he said it was best for you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Victoria.” He looks at me, his blue eyes earnest. “I’ve only ever wanted what is best for you.”
I hold his eyes with mine. “I’m a big girl now. I can make my own decisions. And you are most definitely not traumatising me. Corran, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Even with the memory loss, I wouldn’t have sent you away. You were my best friend. My hero. Seeing you might have helped piece things together. And if not, well, you’ve always been my big, solid, comfort blanket. That’s why I couldn’t understand it when you didn’t show up, when you didn’t write back after I’d moved, why you didn’t come to my mum’s funeral…”
“I gave him my word.”
I budge closer to him. Our thighs stretch out side by side on the prickly top of the hay bale. “I get to choose now, Corran. I’m sure Dad did what he thought was best for me. But I choose to have you in my life. And I choose you.”
He looks at me for a long moment. Then I see the walls of his resolve crumble. “You chose me a long time ago,” he says with a smile.
“What?”
“That night. The night of your accident. We…er…got together. And again the next day. And I asked you to marry me.”
Heat burns through my cheeks.
“We…? Had sex? Where?”
“Um, beside the campfire. And then in the hospital.”
My cheeks burn even harder.
“Oh! How…er…cavalier of us.” I try to sound insouciant but I’m not sure I quite pull it off.
