Galen doesn’t need a translation. He nods, understanding, a sombre thoughtfulness cloaking his features. But it doesn’t last. Esme remembers he’s here and dances into his arms, and I take a moment to check on whatever Tam’s started in the kitchen. Slice the potatoes for the gratin and shell some walnuts, all the while ruminating how natural it feels to have him here, even if I fucking hate he’s had to survive something so awful to know for sure that he wants to be. Even thoughI knowthat’s what our existence is all about: a series of catastrophes that bring us the best days of our lives.
Even at Christmas.
Especially at Christmas.
By the time I go back to the living room, Galen is up and about, embracing Esme’s tour of her stocking presents with the seriousness it deserves.
He has magic sand in his hair and more light in his eyes than I’ve seen from him in a while.
Light that gives me the nerve to ask him something else. “The message you sent me before you went to the crash scene. I think it got cut off before you finished it, but I have to know…did you mean it?”
Galen turns his head. By now, Esme has switched on every festive light in the house and the garden, and of course, the gold and pink flares catch the copper tones in Galen’s hair, the bright green of his eyes. He’s still tired, I can tell, but has he ever looked hotter? In the loaded second it takes him to answer, every encounter we’ve ever shared flashes through my head. A reel of heat and angst. Of red hot connection, warm, unfurling friendship, and terrible, man-flavoured communication.
Was it love at first sight?
At the second?
Is it love now?
For me…I’ve been certain for longer than I likely know, and waiting for Galen’s answer is a beautiful and terrible thing until he smiles and reaches for me with his bruised hand.
“Boy, I meant every fecking word.”
Galen
Something inside me has given way.
Like that bastard river when it finally cracks every spring.
I should feel worse—Idofeel like shit. My shoulder throbs, my muscles ache, and my chest burns if I breathe too deep.
But it’s superficial.
Physical.
Because everything else?
Everything else is as perfect as it can be, and after a shaky turn in Sab’s shower, I let myself become one with his cosy couch while his family Christmas unfolds around me. While I surrender to the laughter. The love. The scent of good food, and Esme’s soft chatter as she brings me wild and random things all day.
I eat a lot.
Nap even more.
I let myself belong, and it’s evening when I rouse myself to the news pinging through from the station that the last coach crash victim has been discharged from ICU. That somehow, against all odds, a Christmas miracle has occurred and there are no fatalities.
“It’s not a miracle.” Bhodi glances up from a similar message on his phone, cute as a pretty button, as if he’s just woken up too. “You and D’Marco pulled eighteen people from that wreck.”
D’Marco.
Sonny.
Conflicting emotions hit me, a full-on heart stomp and a soul-healing balm all rolled into one.
I still see him thrashing in that black water, panic tearing his face apart. Feel the weight of him clinging to me. But he didn’t die. No one did, and I’m fecking proud of him.
The need to tell him consumes me.
So I do.
