I smiled. That made mesohappy to hear.
“What happens now?” I whispered, settling my body fully over his on the sofa.
He shuffled down a little, bringing his arm around my waist. “Well,” he said, in that soft, shiver-inducing voice of his, “accommodation’s sorted. I’m suddenly very open-minded about sharing this place with you. Job, though…” He chuckled—I felt the rumble of it through his chest against mine. “I’ve been fired. I’m pretty sure you have, too.”
“Oh, Charlie’ll hire you back again,” I said. “And I’m going to put together a case for an island midwife. Put it to the medical board, to Doc Laurry. If they say no, I’ll find some work I can do remotely, but it’ll have to be something to do with midwifery, whatever it is. It’s what I was born to do.”
“Why did you leave midwifery? If you don’t mind me asking?”
“You can ask me anything.” I chose my words carefully. “I realized my personal life was affecting my ability to do the job. I wanted a baby very badly, and I was pretending I didn’t, so thatwas…difficult. I think I needed to work through processing that, and being honest with myself. I’m ready to go back now.”
His hand tightened on my waist. “There’s so much I want to talk about. Especially when it comes to you becoming a mother.”
Didn’t think I reacted, but I must’ve stiffened or something, because he lifted a hand to my hair, nudging my face up to look at him.
“Hey,” he said gently. “I don’t mean I need to talk about whether, or when. I don’t want to hold anything up. But I’d like to know where you see me.”
He glanced toward the catalog of donors, which had slid to the floor beside the sofa.
“Well…Where doyousee you?”
His hand stroked my back. “You don’t know much of my story yet,” he said, “but you should know I’ve always been a dreamer. Very ambitious. Always overreaching. I was a downhill racer, you know? Mountain biking, fast, downhill.Verycompetitive.”
I was fascinated. “No way! I thought you worked in a pub?”
“Oh, I did—I temped in all kinds of jobs, because you can’t make much money in downhill racing, even if you’re at the top of the game.”
I bit back a smile. “And you were?”
“I was.” His face was serious. “Until Fearne died.”
“It was…a biking accident?”
He nodded. “It should have been me,” he whispered. “I’d had some wine the night before—just dinner out with Charlie, but it had been enough. I was hungover. If I hadn’t been, I’d have taken the lead. It would have been me that hit that root first.”
“Oliver”—I brushed his hair back, kissed his forehead, then his cheeks, then his sad, soft eyes—“it wasn’t your fault.”
“You helped me believe that, actually. Now, whenever I start to feel guilty about Fearne’s death, I think about my intentions, insteadof blaming myself. It helps me see that I couldn’t control what happened to Fearne. You can only do what you can do, and the fact is, I couldn’t save her. If I could have, I would have, a hundred times over, but I couldn’t.”
I pressed my forehead to his chest for a moment, thinking of my dad. I hadn’t even known about his struggles with addiction over in LA, let alone tried to help him with them. I’d idolized my dad, but he’d always kept me at a distance no matter what I did. It had been a shock to learn that the drugs were probably the reason for that distance. That maybe he had been protecting me by keeping me away. I wish he hadn’t. If I could have helped him, I would have—a hundred times over, as Oliver put it—but I’ve had to let go of that guilt. You can only do what you can do.
I wish Dad and I had gotten a chance to truly know each other—his full self and mine. But the money he left me is allowing me to become a mother, and I knew him enough to be sure he’d have found joy in that.
I know I need to call my mum soon. I owe her an apology for the way I behaved after Dad’s death, but I’d just wanted some time to grieve without always thinking about what she needed from me.Is doing something for you such a crime?Oliver had said at the dance, and I’d thought,Well, yeah. Until I came here, pretty much everything I did was in service to other people, and not in a good, selfless, I’m-a-great-midwife way—I mean everything I did was either to impress someone else or make them happy. I’d completely lost touch with myself, so much so that I couldn’t even acknowledge the one thing I wanted more than anything.
But still—should call Mum. Bridget Denby is needy, chaotic, codependent and all the things I don’t want to be as a mother, but she’s still my mum, and I love her.
“The racing was a good outlet for the competitive spirit,” Oliver said, bringing me back to him. “I stopped riding after Fearne died.”
“And channeled your competitive spirit into trying to see me off the island?”
“I was never…”
He trailed off as I laughed, then slid his hand down to my hip. My skirt was ruched up, and I shivered. He was tantalizingly close to bare skin. But I didn’t want to stop talking—it felt so good to be uncovering all his layers at last.
“You know I don’t get on with the woo-woo stuff,” Oliver went on wryly, “but I don’t drive, and I ended up on an island where people can pretty much only get about on a bike, so…I got back in the saddle again. It’s been so good for me.”
I resettled on top of him, delighting in every inch of us that was touching. It seemed slightly miraculous—all those weeks obsessing over moments when his shoulder touched mine, and here he was, mine to touch.
