I shook my head. Stuff it. I’d leavethe hole there. Customers wouldn’t come in the back, and even if they did, I could pretend it had just happened.
Gus caught my arm as I began to back out of the room. “Come on,” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous. If Luke helps, I can get most of it done tonight. Get that soggy board down. Fresh plaster, some paint, and you’ll never know it was there.”
Easy for him to say, but I knew withoutdoubt that if Luke Daley set foot in my shop, it would all be over. The cracked resolve I was clinging to would fall away, and I’d be the messsomeone elsehad always prophesied I would be. “No.”
“Why not?”
Because this is supposed to be my safe space, away from arsehole men who’ve hurt me.But Gus didn’t know about any of that, not yet, and my precious safe space was about to be floodedwith gallons of grotty water if we didn’t act fast. If I didn’t cave and let him bring the only man who could match the damage someone else had done to me ten times over.
Growling, I wrenched myself from his grasp and turned on my heel to walk away. “Fine. But don’t expect me to talk to him.”
Luke
The hole wasn’t that big, but it had a ton of water collected beside it. One wrong move,and the whole thing would cave in.
Brilliant.
I set to work draining the water and shoring up the roof so it was strong enough to support the filled hole, all the while questioning my sanity for letting Gus talk me into helping him out, even though I knew it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d asked me to help him patch up the moon. He was the closest I had to a best friend.
Still, I feltMia’s presence every moment I was up on her fucking roof. Gus said she’d gone out, but I didn’t believe him. How could I, when I couldsmellher, goddamn it?
Right. Because you know how she smells these days—
I cut the thought dead before my mind could treat me to flashbacks of Mia’s soft scent. Laced with the rose shampoo her mother bought in Calais every couple of months, she’d alwayssmelled like spring to me—bright and hopeful. Even in that last winter, when despair had gripped me so strongly I could see nothing else, Mia had always been there, leaving the bullshit platitudes to other people so she could simply hold my fucking hand.
She had slim, delicate fingers, but her grip had been so strong, so tight. She’d never have let me go.
“Luke.”
I blinked. “What?”
Gus was staring up at me from the shop floor. “I said, are you nearly done up there? I need to get this plaster up before it dries up.”
How many times had I ripped him a new one for taking so long with a simple job that I’d had to mix the plaster three times over?
Too many. I finished patching the hole, cutting myself off from Gus so I was alone on the roof.
When I was done, I venturedto the edge and looked out over the town. Rushmere was in rural Buckinghamshire, close to London, but about as far from the sea as you could get in England. I didn’t miss the ocean all that much—I’d spent most of my encounters with it getting cold and wet—but I missed the clean air, the wide open space, and the numbness that came with a stormy expanse that seemed to lead nowhere. Seeing nothingbut blue and grey every day, it had been easier tofeelnothing too. Here, I could see everything. My mum’s house, my father’s grave, and Mia standing by the lake in Sandgrove Park, skimming stones across the water the way I’d taught her in middle school.
My breath hitched. I’d barely caught a glimpse of her when she’d barrelled into me in the chip shop. In the week or so that had passed since,I’d convinced myself I was over it, that I could handle it when I inevitably saw her again, but I was sorely unprepared for the sight of her now. Face turned to the sky, wild blond hair blowing in the wind, she was fucking glorious, even if the slump of her slim shoulders gave away her misery.
“Luke, for fuck’s sake. You look like you’re about to off yourself.”
For the millionth time thatday, I glared down at Gus—as dark as Mia was light, but only on the outside. “So what if I was? I’m still your fucking boss.”
Gus’s easy grin was troubled. “Yeah, yeah, but get your arse down anyway. You’re making me nervous.”
He disappeared again, making me wonder if this was how my life was going to be from now on—Gus pulling me out of angsty daydreams about his long-lost sister, andthen leaving me hanging on a high street rooftop.
Sighing, I slid down the ladder and chucked it on top of the van, securing it before I braved the inside of Mia’s flower shop. It was unrecognisable from the hair salon it had been a month ago. New floors, painted walls, and the biggest fridge I’d ever seen installed in the back room. “Jesus. How the hell did you get this done so quick? You’veonly taken a couple of days off.”
Gus shrugged, barely glancing away from the plaster he was slapping on the ceiling. “You know what Mia’s like when she wants shit done. I don’t think she’s slept in the last three days.”
I could believe that. Mia had always been a force of nature, bending the world to her will. I’d admired it, feared it, and now I missed it, resented it even, because itwas right here—shewas right here—but none of it was mine to witness. “What are you doing about that window?”
“What?” Gus followed my gaze to the shop window. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s bowed—the frame’s rotten. You’re gonna get damp all over this snazzy new paintwork, if someone doesn’t peel it back and rob the place first.”
