Chapter Five
Luke
Fran plucked the invitation from my hands and held it up to the light. “You should go.”
“To the council’s local businesses gala? What the fuck for?”
“Because you’re a local business owner. You can network.”
“Do you think I’m someone else?”
Fran gave me the look she reserved for when she was actually trying to be my mother. “What harm could it do? Iknow living around here is boring for you.”
“It’s not boring. Besides, it’s not like I’m a hermit. I spend all day with other people.”
“Working isn’t the same as living.”
Easy for her to say, she hadn’t spent nine years working a job thathadbeen my life. Working, eating, and sleeping with a hundred other men all up in my shit. Until a few weeks ago, being alone every night had beena blessing. I wondered when that feeling would come back.
“So...” Fran dropped the invitation on my coffee table and turned to me, her rare parenting frown still in place. “Have you seen her?”
“Seen who?”
“Mia. Her shop is open now.”
I knew Mia’s shop was open. I drove past it every damn day. “I’ve seen her a few times,” I said blandly. “She’s Gus’s sister.”
“Have you talked?”
“About what?”
Fran’s frown deepened. “About anything, Luke. Don’t forget that the rest of us stayed here when you left. I know she missed you.”
You know nothing.Mia and I had openly dated on and off for years, but we’d been apart when my father’s illness had become terminal, only for me to be drawn back to her, desperate for comfort only she could give. With no energy left for gossipybullshit, only Gus had known that we’d rekindled our relationship, and that it had grown beyond teenage infatuation to something that had ultimately scarred us both. No one knew how much I’d loved Mia.
Not even her.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said. “She’s got her life, I’ve got mine.”
“But—”
“Mum, stop. There’s nothing there, okay?”
Eventually Fran’s badgering pissedme off. I took her home, abandoned my van on her driveway, and decamped to the pub. There were enough familiar faces in there to keep me busy until I was halfway to being pretty fucking wasted on a Wednesday night. Drinking on an empty stomach had never done me any favours.
I was playing darts with some dude-bro of my dad’s when Gus walked in. An automatic grin spread across my face, but hewasn’t alone. Mia flitted in behind him and went straight to the bar without looking my way.
Gus shrugged and followed her.
It stung. I had plenty of old schoolmates knocking around Rushmere, but Gus got me. His easy company had made the transition to civilian life seem almost normal. Perhaps I’d become too reliant on him. Too demanding, and Mia was right. He was her brother, not mine.
I turned my back on them and focussed on flinging darts at the board. My aim had always been good, and I won several times over, but still the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and no matter how much I drank, my skin tingled with her imagined gaze all over me—imagined, because I reckoned I still knew her well enough to be certain she was stubbornly refusing to face me.
Callingtime on my darts marathon, I drained my drink, bid my opponents goodbye, and left the pub without glancing in the direction I’d last seen Gus and Mia. It was a mile walk back to my house, but I was glad of it; at least I would be come the morning.
I fished my phone from my pocket and checked that my alarm was set, even though military life had left me incapable of sleeping more than four hoursat a time. An Instagram notification from my brother caught my attention. I swiped it and immediately wished I hadn’t. Wasted and trashing whatever shithole town he lived in now, treating them to the same havoc he’d wrecked my mum’s life with after our dad died. Not that I could judge him right now for being wasted, but I’d go home, fall asleep in my own bed, and wake up in time to keep my lifemoving forward, even if I had no idea where I wanted it to go. Billy was destructive to himself and everyone around him. I loved him, but sometimes I just couldn’t fucking look at him.
A muttered curse behind me spun me around.
