“Rebecca?” The codeine I’d swallowed before we’d passed out had left my already disorganised brain slow and stuffy. It took a moment to place the name with the policewoman handling Mia’s case. “What does she want?”
“Hopefully to tell us Morgan Benson has been charged. They arrested him, remember?”
Perspective hit me like a truck. I sat down heavily on the edge of my bed, dizzy, sick—all the things they’d warned me about when we’d left the hospital.
Mia knelt in front of me. “It’s her, I promise. I can see the police car out of the window.”
The window. Fuck, my life would be a damn sight easier right now if I possessed an ounce of common sense. “You sure?”
“Yes. I’m going to run down and get the door, okay? Stay up here if you’re not up to seeing anyone. I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”
Her promises would always be enough for me, but there was no way in hell I was hearing whatever Rebecca had to say second-hand. I let her go ahead, then made my best attempt to put myself back together. Sleep, though it had been fleeting, had stiffened the muscles contracting around my broken ribs, and it hurt to breathe.
By the time I’d plastered a bland expression on my face and manoeuvred downstairs, Mia had apparently heard enough to set her temper alight.
She paced my small living room like a lioness. “How can someone be convicted of this shit twice and still be free to reoffend?”
Rebecca spread her hands. “It’s never been this serious, and even if it had, no one gets locked up forever anymore.”
I was missing something, but the sight of Mia bubbling with rage, face flushed, fists clenched was comforting. For days she’d seemed so apathetic about her own safety.
There was tea on the coffee table. I snagged one and gingerly lowered myself into the armchair. Mia came straight to me, her stare searching, like she was checking me for cracks.
I tried for a reassuring smile, but her frown remained. Confused, I turned to Rebecca. “What have I missed?”
Rebecca closed the folder in front of her. “I’ve been explaining to Mia what’s happened since we last spoke at the hospital. How are you feeling, by the way? Pretty sore, I’d imagine.”
“I’ll live,” I said flatly. “Tell me what’s happened.”
If Fran had been there, she’d have flicked my ear for being rude, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in discussing my health. I needed to know this was over.
Rebecca darted a glance at Mia, then finally held my gaze. “As you know, we arrested Morgan Benson this morning. Our enquiries have led us to search his house and other properties, and we’re now fairly certain that he was not only responsible for hitting you with a vehicle yesterday, but also for the recent incidents of harassment you and Mia have reported to us.”
I nodded. It made sense, though I couldn’t begin to understand why.
“There’s more,” Mia said when I didn’t speak. “He’s inflicted this on other people—twice, that he’s been done for.”
“He has a history of stalking and harassment,” Rebecca supplied. “Though he’s never been violent before, that we know of.”
“So what’s different about this time? Were the women he harassed single? Because that’s why he ran me down, right? Because I’m with Mia?”
“We think so. When we searched his house, we found pictures of her, both recent and from many years ago. There were other local women too, and some photographs of you, but it was mainly Mia. We think her return to the area ignited an old obsession.”
I sat back in the armchair, stunned, dazed, and weirdly relieved that it was all real.
Mia touched my face. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Are you?”
Her lips twisted into a snarl. “I want to kill him for hurting you.”
“Probably best keep that to yourself while we’ve got a house full of coppers, babe.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No, but he’s locked up now, and I’d take his car hitting me a thousand times if it ended this shit.”
It wasn’t as simple as that. Nothing ever was. But I was glad it was me who’d been hit by that car. Perhaps I deserved it for everything I’d put her through.
Rebecca said more words, but I zoned out, drifting instead further forward to what life could be like when this was all over, when our days went back to our brand of normal. I studied my cool, stark living room and wondered what it would look like if Mia got her hands on it. If the colour she brought to my life became literal. Someone—Billy, perhaps—had once asked me if the barren style I’d brought home from the navy was deliberate, if the military had drained my imagination. I’d denied it, but fuck, I’d been wrong.
I’d been wrong about a lot of things, including my assumption that Morgan Benson was unimportant all those years ago when he’d been in our lives enough to become obsessed with Mia, and yet I’d never seen him enough to even remember his name. What did that say about me? Would we be in a different place right now if I’d shut this shit down ten years ago? Warned him off? Punched him in the face? Would that have been enough? Or would he have simply turned his attention to someone else? A woman without a bear of a brother and a lover who’d die for her. What had happened to us was shitty, but it could’ve been so much worse.
Rebecca stood. Apparently the conversation was over. “I’ll be in touch,” she said. “But I do think it’s unlikely he’ll get bail even if the CPS only goes for the lighter charge.”
Mia nodded, jaw set grimly, so I mirrored her and walked Rebecca and her colleague to the door. As she turned to leave, she put her hand on my arm. “It’s okay to be upset, Luke.”
“I’m not upset.”
“Fair enough. I’m just saying it would be a normal reaction if you were.”
She left. I shut the door behind her and returned to the living room where Mia was still pacing.
I leaned on the door frame. “Still plotting a murder?”
“No.” She stopped and turned to face me. “I’m trying to absorb some of your freakish calm.”
“Freakish?”
“Yeah. I thought you’d be more upset that I really did have a fucking stalker.”
Upset. It was the second time that word had been thrown at me in as many minutes. I turned it over and tried to match it to the emotions running through me, but nothing quite made sense. I shrugged. “I’m livid that it came to this. If it had been you mowed down by that car, I—fuck, I couldn’t be responsible for my actions, but—” I stopped and ran a hand over my aching head. “I don’t know. If this bloke’s done it before, it’s obvious he’s really fucking ill. Maybe him hitting me was the best thing to happen for everyone. Even him.”