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“I wasnotsmiling like an seven-year-old, thank you very much. Do you want to know the surprise or not?”
She grins. Just like an seven-year-old. “I’ll find out who’s liable.”
I close my eyes and curse under my breath. “You spend far too much time with your uncle Charlie.”
Pride glows across her cheeks. “How’s my dad’s leg?”
My phone vibrates on the table.
I lift my coffee and take a heavy gulp. “It’s doing better, I think.”
“You think.” She frowns. “Are you not… helping him?”
My cheeks redden as images of us in the shower last night come barrelling to the forefront of my mind. “I’ve been trying, Ave.” I pluck up the shop’s laminated menu and lightly fan my face. “It’s hot in here, isn’t it.”
“Not even a little bit.” She giggles, giving me a cheeky look. “But we can pretend it is.”
I roll my eyes and pick up my phone when she goes back to drinking her hot chocolate.
Lance: Because I remember vividly the feel of you sliding over
I don’t read the whole text, slamming my phone back to my chest. I close my eyes in mortification.
When I left Lance in bed this morning, I had no idea how everything would pan out. After changing the sheets last night, he climbed into the bed and told me to get in with him.
He didn’t ask me like every other time.
He told me.
I climbed in next to him, my heart a puddle in his hands and my head a scrambled cloud of thoughts.
“It means whatever you need it to mean, Scarlet,”he told me, smoothing my hair back from my face.
What he didn’t—doesn’t—realise is that I know exactly what it means. I’m just terrified of the consequences of it being true.
Scarlet: I’m out with Ave
Lance: Is she as beautiful as I remember?
I glance past my phone at Ave, her big eyes roaming the café.
Scarlet: What do you think?
Lance: When can I kiss you again?
God, the way he can make my stomach twist up in knots after all this time.
Lance: I’ll earn every single one of them.
I bite my lip, staring at the message. Did I give in too easily? Too soon? I couldn’t control myself being wrapped in his arms. The second he pulled me to him I was done for. In the moment, I needed him as much as he needed me.
Now it feels like there’s no way back.
“Mum…”
I lift my head up to look at Ave.
Guilt spears me when I find her sweet face now confused and waiting on me. Guilt because this little girl has been with me through every second of pain I’ve faced, from the moment Lance left me to the moment he rode back in the lane. Ave knows it broke me. I didn’t ever want that. I tried to hide it, hated that she witnessed it, but she did see. And she’s the one who put me back together again when no one else knew how. Wordlessly, never complaining or questioning me.
