“Uh-huh.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Dunno. Perhaps it was the same person who snuck in and fixed the window.” Gus turned to face me, his expression hard. “I’m really hoping it was you who did that.”
“Did what? Fixed the window or broke into the shop like a creep?”
“Both, to be honest, because I’m pretty sure you’re not a creep, but I’d settle for the window.”
Busted. “It was me, but to be fair, I didn’t sneak in. There was no need when it fell out of the frame with a quick tug.”
“Why did you do it?”
“To save you a job, and to stop something like this happening.” I gestured to the door. “I thought you knew it was me.”
Gus sighed. “I thought I did too, even if I’ve no clue why you’d do something like that, but this morning freaked me out. This is some stalker shit.”
“Is it?”
Gus flushed, like he’d said too much, and shook his head. “Never mind. Listen, is it okay if I stick around until the police come back? I want to get this fixed up as soon as possible, but I can’t do anything until the idiots who turned out earlier come back and take photos.”
Rushmere’s police station had closed down years ago, leaving the town at the mercy of whatever officers were free from neighbouring towns. I didn’t hold out much hope of them being back anytime soon, but there was zero part of me that objected to Gus sticking around to take care of Mia. My only concern was finding a way to see her for myself before I left. “Um—”
“If it’s a problem, I’ll work the weekend.”
“Don’t be daft, mate. It’s not that, I’m just—” Fuck it. “Is Mia okay?”
Gus didn’t seem surprised by the question. He shrugged and moved away from the broken door. “She says she is, but you know what she’s like. Wouldn’t tell me she’d broken her leg until it had fallen off.”
“Can I do anything?”
“Thanks, but I reckon you hanging around will probably piss her off.”
It would’ve hurt less if he’d hit me with the strip of wood he was holding, but I took his point, and he was likely right. Just because she’d taken a fancy to sharing my bed again didn’t mean she’d take kindly to me being all up in her business.
I fetched Gus some tools from the van and left him to it, trying to ignore the creeping anxiety spreading through my veins. Gus was an open kind of guy, and I knew when he wasn’t telling me everything. Christ, in the weeks before Mia had reappeared in my life, I’d fucking known he was hiding something.
This time, it wasn’t hiding so much as it being none of my damn business, but fuck, I wanted to know. Needed to know, for my own damn sanity.
I spent the rest of the day replaying my conversation with Gus and trying to match it with the rare moments Mia had spoken to me like I was anything more than a convenient dick. By six o’clock I was none the wiser, and the temptation to again work into the night was so strong I had to force myself to pack up and go home.
My bed smelled of her, but I didn’t strip the sheets. I took a shower and decamped downstairs until fatigue caught up with me. Her scent tormented me. I lay in bed brimming with a heady mix of concern, frustration and plain old horniness until one a.m. found me reaching for my phone.
Luke: are u okay?
* * *
I parked up a little way down the road from Gus’s house, near enough that I’d be heard, but not so close that someone peeping out the window would see me.
Mia opened the passenger door a moment later.
I gave her a look. “Please tell me you weren’t waiting on the street?”
“So what if I was?” She glared with a defiance I knew all too well. “Weren’t going to keep me waiting, were you?”
As if. I’d scrambled out of bed like a madman, but she didn’t need to know that.
Lacking any better ideas, I put the van in gear and moved off, rolling slowly down the hill. She didn’t ask where we were going, and I didn’t tell her, because I didn’t know, in any sense of the words.
Instinct took me out of town and towards Sandgrove Park. Mia smirked but didn’t comment as I followed the trail to the Christmas tree farm. I wondered if she was remembering the many times we’d snuck out here before we’d realised her mum slept too deeply to notice me crawling through Mia’s bedroom window.
Probably not. She likely just thought I was a desperate idiot trying to score some al fresco nookie, and I couldn’t deny the idiot part.
I parked at the lookout spot and shut the engine off. Silence cloaked us, but it felt good—to me, at least. I sat back in my seat and closed my eyes, absorbing the clean air and fresh pine scents, even in the safe cocoon of the van. This place had always been home.
Mia’s hand slid over my thigh and gripped my wrist, her long fingers ghosting a trail of fire on my skin. “I got married,” she whispered.
I opened my eyes. “When?”
“Four years ago.”
The calculation meant nothing to me. Four years ago I’d been promoted to a role that had kept me busy enough to almost forget about home entirely. Chances were Mia had got married on a day when I hadn’t thought of her in weeks. When life on the destroyer had been so hectic I’d barely had time to blink, and had finally felt at peace on the ocean. “Why?”
She smiled slightly. “Only you would ask me that.”
“Do you know the answer?”
“What do you think?”
I thought a lot of things, but none that were my place to say. I sighed. “I think it was a bonehead question because it’s none of my business, but I’m betting if it was because you loved him, you’d have fucking said so.”
Mia said nothing, and after a beat of silence, opened the van door and slid out.
Alarmed, I followed her, but when I hurried around the front of the van, I found her waiting for me.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s walk.”
We ambled to the lake, both of us easily finding our way in the dark. Beyond the water was a path that led to a tiny pond with stone-carved seats and a break in the tree cover that made the water sparkle in the moonlight, but Mia stopped before we got to it and sank onto a picnic bench.
“I haven’t been here in so long.”
“I saw you here a few weeks ago.”
“That was the other side, smart arse. You know each part of the park is another world.”