‘Is Walker okay?’ Gabi whispered to Alex, sitting next to her. ‘He looked a bit overwhelmed.’
Alex considered for a moment, then nodded. ‘Probably just the shock of winning. He was a bit surprised to even be nominated to be honest. I’ll go check.’ He pushed his chair back to stand and accidentally jogged Amber’s elbow, tipping a full glass of wine straight down her front.
‘OMIGOD,’ Amber gasped, and Gabi remembered she always added ice cubes to her wine, liking it extra chilled.
Sure enough, Amber delved her hand deep into her cleavage and plucked out an ice cube, while Alex grabbed a napkin and started frantically patting her down.
‘I’ll go,’ Gabi said, not wanting to leave it any longer. The panic on Walker’s face was bothering her. She grabbed her crutches and set off, bumping into Fox coming out of the men’s room as she rounded the corner.
‘Is Walker in there?’ she asked.
‘Didn’t see him,’ Fox replied, signalling he was off for a drink.
Gabi checked the foyer, and the side room, and finally the cloakroom, but Walker was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised, maybe it was classic Walker: to run whenever things got hard, or scary. It’s what he’d done to her the other night. And now it just looked like he’d done it again. She sighed, really wanting to be angry with him. To be furious, in fact. But she couldn’t shake the look on his face, and that tremor she’d noticed when he raised his hand. He wasn’t just panicked. He was scared. And however big of an arsehole he was, she didn’t want him to be scared and on his own.
Leaning against the wall in the foyer, Gabi pulled out her phone and rang him, not even really knowing what she was going to say. Turned out, that didn’t matter, because Walker wasn’t picking up. She heard it ring three times, four times, five, in the handset and then she heard something else. A phone ringing in the room next to her, in time with the ringtone in her ear. She shuffled to the glass door, the one with a notice on it that read:The Old Library. And beneath it:Closed to the Public. She ended her call. The ringing inside stopped. She counted to twenty and then rang Walker again. Immediately, she heard the phone inside again. She had him.
She checked nobody was looking, opened the door and slipped inside, letting it swing quietly shut behind her. The room was covered floor to ceiling with books, row upon row lining the walls. With a soft carpet and some small round tables for two, it looked like a cosy reading room. The lighting from the foyer only reached so far, and the rest of the room was in shadows. Following the ringtone, and using her phone as a light, she rounded the corner. There he was, slumped on one end of a window seat, head in his hands, silhouetted by the street lights outside. The award glinted, discarded on the floor beside him.
‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ she asked. His head snapped up and he glanced at the phone and then at her, but his face was blank. He was lost. Her stomach fell at the sheer look of horror on his face.
Walker let his head drop back into his hands and it was then that she noticed his irregular breathing, his fluttering hands. He was having a panic attack. She’d seen co-workers before on set a couple of times when stage fright turned into something much worse. Gabi hobbled towards him as fast as she could, bent to him and took his hands in hers to reach him. He wouldn’t look at her.
‘Breathe with me, Walker,’ she said gently. ‘Follow my count. In, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, out, two, three, four. . .’ She gripped his hands tighter until he began to listen, but it was only after she’d repeated her instructions three more times that he finally raised his eyes to hers. He was back.
‘You should go, Gabi.’ His voice was tight with emotion, his back rigid as he pulled his hands from hers. She hopped to the other end of the window seat and sat, no intention of going anywhere.
‘I’m worried about you.’
Walker groaned and loosened his bow tie, letting it hang in his collar.
‘Why are you even here?’ he growled.
‘You looked upset on the stage. I thought you might want to talk.’ She lifted her boot onto the window seat, and it stretched out towards him. He moved his legs over to make space. ‘And you know I’m a good listener,’ she carried on. ‘I’ve got over eight hours of practice of listening to you, even if you weren’t saying much at the time.’
She smiled but he didn’t return it, turning instead to look out the window, down onto the empty Honeybridge high street.
‘Okay, enough with the jokes,’ she said. ‘You’ve just won an award for being a hero. I don’t understand why you aren’t happy? I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’
His eyes flashed dangerously at her then in the shadows. His jaw could cut glass.
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘It’s not just me that’s calling you that,’ Gabi said softly. ‘It’s official.’ She held up the award as though in acceptance. It was engraved,Walker McBridescrawled across it. ‘You even have the shiny piece of glass to prove it.’
‘Not for long,’ he ground out between clenched teeth. ‘I’m going to give that back.’
‘What on earth for?’ Gabi asked, pressing it against her chest as though to keep it safe.
‘Because I don’t deserve it,’ Walker said. ‘I shouldn’t even have been nominated, let alone won. I’m not a hero. I never have been.’ He rubbed his hands across his eyes.
‘Well, even if you wanted to, you can’t give it back now,’ she said decisively. Their eyes met and held. ‘The mayor’s gone home.’
A moment passed as he questioned her silently with his gaze. Then he sighed, defeated.
‘I could keep it for you,’ Gabi said. ‘Then you could give it back tomorrow.’ She tucked the glass trophy into her bag.
‘I won’t change my mind if that’s what you’re thinking,’ he said, as if he could, in fact, read her mind. ‘I can’t keep it. It wouldn’t be right.’
