Josh was still in the hinterland between receding panic and ‘normal service has been resumed’, but there was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he offered me his hand to sit up. I needed it more than I realised, for the clearing immediately began to spin like a carousel as he tugged me upright.
With his eyes trained on me, Josh instantly saw my wince of pain as the colour drained from my face.
‘Where does it hurt?’ he asked, the humour in his voice gone as fast as it had arrived.
‘I think I bumped my head when I fell,’ I admitted cautiously, sucking in a huge gulp of air as his hand reached out and gently swept the hair back from my temple. There was an old snapshot memory in the vaults of the past from when he’d done that in an entirely different situation.
Did he remember it too, because he certainly sounded shocked as he cried out, ‘Fuck, Lily! You have an enormous bruise on the side of your head.’
Tentatively I touched the area with my fingertips, flinching the way I’d done that morning when I’d spotted the dark purple mark in the mirror.
‘Oh, that’s nothing. I got that yesterday when my car went into the ditch.’
Josh narrowed his eyes. ‘When you told me you weren’t injured at all?’
I attempted a shrug that I couldn’t quite pull off because it made the new injury at the back of my head too painful.
‘Damn it, Lily. You’re a bloody liability. Is there anything else that hurts before I attempt to get you back inside the cabin?’
I bit my lower lip. ‘Erm ... I think I’ve done something to my left ankle.’ I was trying to play down the severity, which was pointless when we both looked down at my foot. Even through the soft leather boots, it was starting to swell.
‘Anything else?’ Josh sounded almost angry, as though I had deliberately fallen over to screw up his day.
‘No, that’s it.’
‘Okay. Then hold still and I’ll try to be as gentle as possible.’
Before I could argue or suggest that I hopped to the cabin, Josh slid one arm beneath my knees and the other behind my back.
‘Put your arms around my neck,’ he instructed. It was an awful lot of touching for a man who couldn’t seem to bear the feel of my skin against his anymore. But there was something in his voice that told me this wasn’t the time to object. I did as he asked, and in a movement that he made look surprisingly easy, I was carefully lifted off the mattress of snow and squashed cake and was being held firmly against him as he carried me into his cabin.
His gentleness confounded me, and it really shouldn’t have done. Because for as long as I’d known him, almost everything Josh Metcalf did surprised me.
Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen Years Earlier
I could hear their car engine ticking over, even from here. I glanced at the upper branches wondering if I dared climb even higher up the sycamore tree to escape the sound. It was bad enough that he was leaving, I didn’t need to hear the final slam of their car door or witness the moment when the Bakers drove away.
I’d spent the last six weeks trying to pretend this day wasn’t coming, but it just kept creeping inexorably closer.
‘But why do you have to leave?’ I’d asked Josh when he’d first broken the news to me. His face had been paler than usual and there had been a resigned expression in his eyes that I’d never seen before.
‘Janette’s mum has had a really bad fall. The doctors say she can’t live alone anymore, and she has this big old house up in Yorkshire, so ...’ He gave a shrug that was probably supposed to be nonchalant, but his shoulders looked bowed down by the weight of events he couldn’t control. ‘So, it looks like we’re moving to Yorkshire.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I retorted, trying to hide my despair beneath a cloak of indignation. ‘Why can’t her mum move down here?That would work,’ I said, nodding enthusiastically at my own idea. ‘Perhaps I could offer to help look after her? Do you think that would make them change their minds?’
Josh’s smile was gentle, taking the sting out of the way he sadly shook his head. ‘I think it’s a done deal.’
Panic clutched at my stomach, making me feel physically sick as I realised that in less than two months Josh was going to move away.
‘I guess now Gordon has retired, they don’t have anything that ties them to this area,’ Josh said on a sigh.
But you do, I silently screamed.You have me. You just don’t know it.But that one was down to me, not him, because despite a thousand opportunities, I’d never once told Josh how I felt about him. It had always been easier to let everyone – including him – believe my feelings had never ventured any deeper than teenage friendship. But they had ... for a long, long time.
‘Can’t you just tell them you don’t want to go?’
Josh’s smile was heartbreaking. ‘Tried that. It didn’t work.’
