That was so much better than my initial assessment, but still different to what I’d enjoyed before. I gave the dogs one last scratch under the chin and stood.
‘Do you mind if I come back another day?’ Everything inside of me was too raw to stroll around Oscar’s farm, every animal running from me in terror until they were coaxed near and realised I wasn’t going to take a bite out of them.
‘That’s fine, lad.’ Oscar reached over the fence and squeezed my shoulder. ‘You’ve got a lot to adjust to. Don’t rush back to work before you’re ready.’
I nodded and stepped back despite the temptation to lean into his touch and collapse across the gate in tears. Anyone being too nice to me right now was dangerous.
I kept to a jog while I was in his eyeline, then pounded across the grass towards the loch. I’d rejected sitting by the still water earlier, had been sure that a day spent caring for animals who loved me just as much as I loved them would be the cure to my confusion around Kit.
But animals didn’t love me anymore. At least, not as unquestioningly as they had before. People had always been a challenge, I said the wrong thing and they lost patience with me, but animals had been my easy friends.
I blinked hard against the tears threatening to fall as I ran. I wouldn’t let everything be lost today. I couldn’t.
My chest hitched as I stumbled to a halt beside the loch and fell to my already grass-stained knees.
I only had so much say in what was lost today. An essential part of me was gone, changed. And as much as I wanted to be normal with Kit, maybe he would decide I was too much of a handful.
I leant forward and pressed my forehead to the sandy shore. I’d cry this out, then find a solution. There had to be a way I could crawl into Kit’s arms tonight and he’d tell me everything would be okay.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
KIT
Avolley of sharp knocks on the cottage’s back door snapped me from a tearful doze. Kat hissed when my fingers dug a millimetre further into her fur than was permitted, then leapt off my lap.
I tucked my knees into my chest and rested my head on the cat hair covered blanket. Lucas wouldn’t knock. That meant whoever was at the door was someone I wasn’t interested in interacting with. Whether Lucas returned with a viable explanation for his long absence, which felt like a dwindling possibility as each minute passed, or to ditch me just like everyone else I’d been intimate with, he was the only person I wanted to talk to. I needed to know what was going on between us before I bared myself to the world once more.
In my sad state, I forgot there was a small group of people on the island who would knock but then barge into my cottage.
‘Kit?’ Louisa called up the stairs.
I rubbed my face on the blanket as she thumped towards me, attempting to make myself look marginally less pathetic. Judging by the expression on her perfectly made-up face whenshe caught sight of me, I was pretty sure that all I’d done was redistribute hours of tears and cat hair across my skin.
‘What’s happened?’ Louisa rushed over to the sofa. Uncaring about the fur and snot that would smear across her navy-blue jumpsuit if she came too close, she hauled back the blankets and tucked into my side.
I didn’t fight the fresh surge of tears that toppled over my lashes as I wound my arms around her. Nothing was magically solved, but I felt better curled up with her.
‘I’ve messed everything up, Lou.’
‘Oh, Kitten.’ She tightened her arms. ‘That’s not true. I still fucking love you to teeny tiny bits, so at least one thing is alright.’
I snorted, my nose too blocked for any other expression of reluctant mirth. ‘That’s true.’
Louisa held me while she waited for me to find the words to explain. They didn’t flow quite as easily as they would have with Lucas, but before he arrived on the island I’d made do with struggling. I could do it again, if that was all I was left with.
‘Lucas came down from the mountains yesterday.’
Louisa stilled, then leant back to frown at me. ‘But he’s not here anymore?’
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. I would be embarrassed when she raised her head and sniffed, but her scenting out the mingled smells of me and Lucas and everything we’d done was better than trying to tell her.
Her eyes widened. ‘His homecoming was well celebrated?’
I wondered if she was involved in the betting pool. Maybe it was just Bonnie. Without Joshua’s twin on the island, she had precious few people who would go along with her arsehole antics.
‘Everything was perfect.’ I looked down at the lumpy blanket, not sure which of the soft mounds was caused by myself orLouisa. ‘But then I woke up this morning.’ I closed my eyes to avoid the pity splashed across her face. ‘He was gone.’
I didn’t need to share the nitty gritty details for her to understand that waking up alone was less than ideal. I didn’t want to unpack how many times this had happened before, how often I’d allowed myself to believe meaningless pillow talk, that Lucas was at the end of a long line of people who’d proven time and time again that I was only ever the guy people fucked once, not the one they ended up with.
