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“Then I’ll carry you to the toilet, wait for you and carry you straight back here afterward.”
“Sheesh, why don’t you just get me a potty?”
“I could do that. If that’s what you want.”
Was he being serious? He wasn’t, right?
Damn it. Why did he have to have such a good poker face?
“I don’t want that.”
“Hmm. We’ll see. Well?” he asked as he cleaned up their ruined dinner. He was very good at all this domestic stuff.
She wasn’t. It wasn’t that she was a slob . . . just a bit untidy.
“I don’t know . . . I was driving along, and out of nowhere, these headlights appeared, coming up fast behind me. I thought the driver would pass me. But they just stayed behind me for a while before moving out beside me. I tried to get my phone out of my bag, but I knocked it off and everything went flying.
He chopped some vegetables and added them to the thinly cut-up chicken he’d already fried. “Then what happened?”
“Well, I thought they’d get past me, but when they cut in front of me, it was really sharp. They didn’t leave enough space, although I don’t know why since there was no-one else out there. So I yanked my steering wheel to the side and ended up crashing into that tree.”
“Fuck. What if there had been a ditch? Or you’d hit the tree faster? You could have flipped. You could have been seriously hurt.”
“Whoa, buddy, those veggies are about to go flying.”
He looked down at the pan as though he hadn’t seen it before. Then he sighed and eased up on his vicious stirring.
“I got out of the car to see how bad the damage was. And I needed to look for my phone. But I felt a bit off, so I sat down. That’s when the headlights started to approach.”
“Which was me.”
“Oh no, before you got there.”
A strange silence filled the room, and she studied him as he carefully turned off the stove and turned to her. “What? What headlights are you talking about? Did someone else stop first? Why didn’t they help you? I thought that you weren’t there long before I arrived.”
“Whoa, chatterbox. Chill out. One question at a time.”
He rubbed at his forehead as though he had a headache.
“I don’t know who it was. They came from the opposite direction as you. They slowed down and then sped off as soon as you arrived.”
“Wait. I remember that car. They were going fast. Fuck, was it the same vehicle that ran you off the road?”
A chill filled her and she barely stopped herself from shuddering. “I don’t know. Surely it wouldn’t be, right? Why would they come back?” She rubbed her tummy as nerves made her feel nauseous.
“Hey.” He walked over and picked her up, holding her against his chest like a baby.
She felt the tension leave her, a feeling of safety filling her instead.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Jesus. She latched onto those words, let them settle inside her. She desperately wanted to let him keep her safe. But it wasn’t his job. And he couldn’t really make a promise like that.
“I’m not scared.” Maybe if she said the words, she’d start to believe them. But she didn’t have any real reason to be afraid. It was likely a random occurrence.
“Remember what I said about lying.”
“I was terrified last night. But there’s no reason to think that that other driver was purposefully trying to run me off the road. Or that they knew who I was. It was likely random. Something that happened by chance. So there’s no reason for me to be afraid.”
