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This was Ollie she was talking to, and Mia had nothing to prove, so she took a breath and let her laughter out.
Once that seal was broken and her laughter bubbled free, she found she couldn’t stop… until her hip decided it was a good time to act out and she found herself twisting her fingers in Ollie’s shirtfront again, trying desperately to breathe through the pain.
Big, warm hands gripped her forearms, and panic stained his deep voice. “Mia, what’s wrong?”
“I’m okay,” she lied. “It’s just my hip. Well, my back and my hip. Well, my back, my hip, and my knee.” She tilted her forehead against Oliver’s chest and breathed deeply, sucking his deliciously masculine scent into her lungs. “I just need a minute for the muscle spasms to pass.”
He swore quietly. “You didn’t fall down because you were drinking, did you?”
She shook her head. “No, I—” Another violent spasm cut her words short. She rolled her lips between her teeth to silence her cries, but nothing could stop the tears from leaking down her cheeks and dripping onto Ollie’s shirt.
His grip tightened on her arms. “Tell me what to do. Tell me what you need.”
Taking another deep breath, Mia lifted her head and stared at his chest. A few more breaths and she could ignore enough of the pain that she lifted her gaze to his.
Swallowing hard, she said, “I need to walk it off, and then I need a heat pack.” Seeing the panic in Ollie’s eyes forced her to grin and make light of the situation. No sense in both of them suffering. “And painkillers. A big fistful of painkillers.” But eighteen years apart had done nothing to quash Oliver’s ability to see right through her, and admittedly, her attempt at humour had fallen flat even to her ears.
Scowling, Oliver hooked his arm around Mia’s back and tucked his hand under her arm, then pulled her close to his side and started moving them in the direction of her house.
“Lean on me,” he said, his familiar scent and gentle touch doing more to ease her anguish than her therapist ever could.
“Thanks, Ollie,” she said quietly. “I appreciate this.” A grunt was his only reply, which made her smile—a genuine smile—despite her discomfort. “And, Ollie?”
“Hmm?”
“I missed you.”
For the briefest of moments, his arm tightened around her. “I missed you too, sweetling.”
Sweetling. The endearment made her heartbeat quicken, but it wouldn’t stop her from telling him a hard truth. “And, Ollie?”
He shifted her against his side as he helped her step over the curb. “Yes?”
Mia reached up and cupped his cheek, made him look at her. ”I hate your hair.”
Ten minutes—and one contentious discussion about man-buns—later, they approached Mia’s childhood home. Walking unaided was no longer an issue, but her back and hip still ached from the severity of the muscle spasms. At least she could walk again without fear of falling flat on her face.
That was until they reached the front steps.
Her family home was an old Queenslander, a large weatherboard box set on stumps and surrounded on all sides by a deep timber veranda. As Mia stared at the ten steps leading up to the latticework gate and the front door beyond that, her shoulders slumped and her stomach filled with acid. The railing had long since rotted away, leaving her with nothing to lean on as she climbed to the top.
If she’d been on her own, she would have crawled up the stairs on her hands and knees or sat on her arse and gone up them backwards. But with Oliver standing beside her, watching her with his careful gaze, she’d rather face the lesser of two evils and beg for more of his help than humiliate herself further by crawling.
Gritting her teeth, she said, “Can you—” She cut herself off and shook her head, angry that something so simple felt so utterly insurmountable.
“What do you need?” he asked, his words spoken so gently it brought tears to her eyes.
Mia was—had been—a major in the Royal Australian Army. She’d held company records for running, swimming, and shooting. She’d commanded troops in a war zone, for fuck’s sake. She would not be defeated by a flight of fucking stairs.
One hand balled into a fist at her side, the other fell to grip her leg just below her hip. “I… I can’t lift my leg high enough to walk up the stairs unaided.” She’d whispered the words, but in the still of the summer night, she may as well have yelled them. “If the railing was still here, I—”
“Say it.”
Her brow pinched. “Say what?”
“You know what,” he said, smirking. “Say it.”
Helplessness replaced by frustration, Mia let loose an irritated sigh. “Seriously?”
