Chapter Thirty-Five
Mia
Luke came slowly back into himself. By the afternoon, his bewilderment had faded, leaving his usual grumpy self with a hell of a headache.
“I’m going home.” He slid gingerly off the bed. “Where’s my boots?”
“Over there.” I made no move to fetch them, though. The ward doctor wanted to keep him in another night, and I hadn’t argued. The hospital had becomea sanctuary of sorts, and I wasn’t quite ready to face the real world.
Luke had other ideas. He shuffled around the bed, coming to a stop by his work boots. He stared at them for a long moment before looking over his shoulder. “Any chance you could pick them up for me?”
“None at all. Get back on your bed.”
He glowered, but I loved it. The empty expression he’d worn for most of theprevious night haunted me, and I’d take pissed-off Luke over that any day of the week.
After a beat of stubborn silence, he sighed and returned to the bed. He didn’t sit beside me, though. He sat on the chair and rested his head on my thigh. I rubbed the back of his neck, absently humming, until I remembered something I’d intended to tell him the moment he’d woken up from his last concussion-fuellednap. “Rebecca called. She’s going home for a few hours, then she wants to come and see us this evening.”
Luke raised his head. “What for?”
“She didn’t say, but she seemed to think it was safe for Gus to go home, so...” I realised there wasn’t much point to what I was saying. “Anyway. That’s later on, so maybe you could try and eat something and come back to bed?”
“The only bed I’mgoing back to is my own, and you’re coming with me.”
Put like that, it was hard to resist him, but with pain still creasing his earnest eyes, I held firm until a doctor came by and took Luke’s side.
“If you’re keeping food down and steady on your feet, there’s no reason you can’t go home, though I do recommend you have someone with you for the next forty-eight hours.”
I was going tobe with Luke for the rest of his life, so that wasn’t really an issue. “Are you sure he’s okay? You scanned him, didn’t you?”
“Twice,” she said. “There’s no bruising or bleeding on the brain. He will feel the effects of the concussion for a week or so, but he’ll recover, and the best place to do that is at home.”
Luke was already halfway back to his boots. The doctor vanished, taking withher another portion of the black cloud hanging over me.He’s okay.Well, he wasn’t, but he was going to be.
I helped Luke into his boots, then took his arm as we left the ward and made our way out of the hospital. In the car park, I was glad the police officer who’d pulled me over had insisted I follow him, and that Gus had parked close to the entrance. I got Luke into my car, paid an eye-wateringamount for parking, then got the hell out of Dodge.
Mindful of the shit state of Buckinghamshire’s roads, I drove carefully back to Rushmere, avoiding the potholes and cracks. Beside me Luke was silent, staring out the window. I squeezed his unyielding thigh. “What are you thinking?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re miles away,” I said. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere. I was remembering how much Ihate Aylesbury.”
I laughed. “Still? You haven’t warmed to it at all after all these years?”
“Nope.”
I shook my head. Aylesbury was the closest big town to Rushmere—the place we had to go if we wanted a big supermarket or a branded store that wasn’t DIY related—but Luke had always detested it. I’d never quite figured out why.
Thankfully, Rushmere wasn’t too far away, and consciousof Luke’s desire for his own bed, I drove straight to his house. A car I didn’t recognise was on the driveway. Panic seized my chest, but Luke found my hand before it took hold.
“It’s Fran,” he said. “Park next to her.”
I did as I was told and hurried around the car to help Luke up, though he beat me to it, obviously, and was upright and waiting for me in the split second it took me toget there. “Dick.”
“You know that’s not actually my name, don’t you?”
“Prove it.”
