Chapter Twenty-Eight
Luke
“Let’s do something else.”
I blinked, still caught in a vortex of introspection, even though that was the very thing I’d hassled her up the hill to avoid. “Like what?”
She shrugged, her gaze more focused than it had been the last time I’d checked. “I don’t know. Anything. It’s a beautiful day and we don’t have to work. We should make the most of it.”
In another lifetime, I’d have agreed with her, but despite my best efforts to distract myself—distract both of us—right now, all I wanted was to take her home, lock the doors, and keep her safe.
Mia flicked my cheek. “Don’t be like that.”
“Like what? I didn’t say anything.”
“Exactly. You’ve gone all caveman on me, I can tell.”
Unbidden, heat rippled through me. “Caveman? Doesthat mean I get to throw you over my shoulder and have my wicked way with you?”
“When have I ever stopped you doing that?”
Point to her, though it had been a while. The last few times we’d shared a bed we’d been either too exhausted or rattled to do much more than hold each other, and part of me wasn’t ready to change that. We’d fucked a thousand times. I needed to love her. “All right.What do you want to do? We can ride somewhere else if you like?”
“Can we ride into town and get a monster lunch from the pub?”
I loved that she loved to eat. And I was fucking starving, so any argument I had was eclipsed by our shared enthusiasm for hightailing it home to stuff our faces.
We freewheeled down the beacon and rode back into Rushmere. The pub was closest to Gus’s place,so we ditched the bikes in his garage and walked there. The garden was crowded, and we’d had enough sun, so we set up camp in a quiet corner near the bar and Mia wandered off to order enough food for four people.
She came back with two pints of cider and a bottle of wine. “Don’t judge me,” she said. “I wanna get silly.”
I wasn’t about to complain. I claimed a cider and necked half of itin one long swallow. “What food did you get?”
She smirked. “All of it.”
“Feeder.”
“Makes up for me being a shit cook.”
I laughed. Mia made omelettes almost as good as her mother’s, but I’d seen her burn cereal. It was kind of reassuring to know that hadn’t changed. “I can cook.”
“I know.”
Mia poured wine while I imagined cooking for her in my house again, this time nakedwhile we took a break from a quiet night in. It was peak fantasy, but then my mind returned to the phone call I’d forgotten to tell her about before I’d dragged her on a four-mile bike ride. Old habits told me to leave it alone. To keep my own shit to myself and focus in her. But a resolve to be a better man, for once, won out.
“Billy called me yesterday, after we got back from your flowerruns.”
Mia sipped at her wine, then put her elbows on the table, leaning close. “Is he okay?”
“Um, I think so. He’d just got out of surgery.”
“You never said that was happening.”
“I didn’t know. I mean, I knew he needed it, but he told us the wrong date so we wouldn’t be around when he had it.”
Mia said nothing for a moment, clearly turning it over in her mind and matchingit to what she knew about my dysfunctional but loving family. “Let me guess, he was an arsehole about it, but actually he was trying to do the right thing?”
“That’s my brother, and yeah. He didn’t want me and Fran stressing about him, so he got it done on his own.”
