Fifteen
TWELVE MONTHS LATER
Bel’s little flat above the bookshop had become both her sanctuary and her workplace. A few times she’d thought to find a bigger place, but there really wasn’t any need. She could set up with her laptop comfortably at her kitchen table and the location was convenient to everything she needed.
The bookshop, although it paid well for retail, wasn’t the highest earning job in the world and it had made her more than a little uncomfortable that she didn’t have spare cash or an emergency fund.
The cost of living was a lot higher here than in Wessex, so she’d turned her attention to researching ways to make extra income. Then she’d remembered Fiona, the authorwhose event they’d held, and what she’d said about freelance work.
She’d taken the plunge and enrolled in a course for copyediting and proofreading, then put out a call to her wider romance writers contacts and registered herself for content writing and editing on an outsourcing site. Within weeks, the work started trickling in. She felt a huge sense of achievement when she received heartfelt praise from her clients, and as their reviews came in, so too did the bookings. Some of the work wasn’t exactly stimulating, since it was more business-related, writing articles and social media content, but she also picked up the odd fiction-editing project and that was where her heart truly lay. It gave her an incredible sense of fulfilment.
The night she’d left Tate, she’d made a tearful call to Emma. She’d felt bad for worrying her friend, waking her up in the very early hours due to the time difference and sobbing incoherently. But, in true best friend spirit, Emma had let her cry before stepping in to get to the bottom of it. Then she’d instantly switched to lioness mode. ‘What a creep. No, that was definitely not overreacting. The camera stuff was without a doubt red flag material. Thank God you got out of there.’
Bel had gone on to break the news to Emma that she still wasn’t planning on returning to Wessex.
‘Staying? But … why? There’s nothing to keep you there anymore.’
‘I know it sounds a bit strange, but I don’t want to come back like a dog with its tail between its legs. I feel like a complete idiot.’
‘You’re not an idiot. You certainly aren’t the first one to have fallen for a handsome face and run off into the sunset,’ Emma had said.
‘Yeah, well … it’s too soon. And as much as I hate to admit it, you were right to try and push me to leave town all those times. I should have done this sooner, without the possibly narcissistic control freak of a boyfriend,’ Bel had added wryly. ‘I like it over here. I really love my job. I get to talk about books all day to people whose eyes don’t glaze over.’
‘If you come home, I promise I’ll hang on every word you say,’ Emma had said, and Bel had imagined the playful pout on her friend’s face.
Emma had shown her support by finding an elderly tenant for her house, Bert, who had been searching for somewhere to live. Even little Wessex hadn’t escaped the rental crisis, and accommodation was scarce.
Bel still missed her best friend terribly and had the odd bout of homesickness, but she honestly believed she’d made the right decision.
Within four months, she’d cut back to only a few days a week in the bookshop, and by eight months she was working in her own business full-time. She rarely thought of Wessex as home anymore. She was a different person to the one who’d left town, lovestruck and stupid.
She tried not to think too much about that either. ‘Tate wasn’t the guy I thought he was.’ The minute she had said the words out loud on the phone to Emma that night, the truth had dawned on her. He wasn’t the guy he’d presented himself as, but he wasn’t the man she’d made herself believe he was either. He wasn’t Jax Lexington. She’d been so caught up in trying to escape reality that, at the first glimpse of something remotely out of the ordinary, she’d blindly convinced herself he wasthe one.
Terry had encouraged her to go out and meet new people, but after trying the dating scene a few times, she really couldn’t find anything exciting in the nervous first dates and men who were never quite right for her. There’d been the odd weirdo—including one guy who’d had a strange obsession with her feet—but the majority of the men appeared to be perfectly normal. Nevertheless, her heart wasn’t in it. Maybe it was still too soon. None of them gave her the same tingles as Tate had. Certainly none of them had possessed his fiction-hero good looks and confidence, although she could freely admit now that this was not necessarily a bad thing. Looks were certainly unimportant when they hid a controlling personality. No, she’d learned her lesson—romance was for books, not real life. Never would she allow herself to be swept away like that again.
Taking her cup of hot chocolate to bed after a late night editing, Bel switched on the soothing music she listened toin the evenings to wind down and finished her drink before snuggling into her comfy bed. She was content, living a new life in an exciting place with unlimited possibilities. She wasn’t limited to town gossip or a job with nowhere to go. Her business had been steadily growing and she couldn’t be prouder of everything she’d achieved. Who would have thought? A small-town girl from Wessex was doing okay in the big city.
Bel blinked uncertainly in the dark room, disoriented. Then the ringing of her phone registered.
She scrambled across the bed to answer it, a tightness in the pit of her stomach.No good news ever comes at this hour.
‘Bel?’ Emma’s voice shook. ‘Craig’s had an accident. They don’t think he’s going to make it.’
It felt strange watching the scenery begin to transform as they got closer to Wessex. Nothing had really changed in the last fifteen or so months. It was the same paddocks, an endless patchwork of greens and browns and yellows stretching out forever, crops in some and flocks of cloud-like sheep grazing in others. Yet everything felt different. The place hadn’t changed, but she had.
Bel glanced as inconspicuously as she could at the man driving, pondering the changes she saw there too. Somethingabout him seemed different, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what.
Dean Preston wouldn’t have been her first choice for a lift from the airport, but she wasn’t about to add to Emma’s problems by being picky. Her friend had more than her share of worries right now. She’d been a mess during that panicked call. Craig had somehow fallen from his tractor and hit his head, and that split-second, Bel knew, had changed life for everyone. He’d been flown to Sydney in a vegetative state, which often came with traumatic brain injuries, and they’d been unable to assess what degree of cognitive or physical damage he had sustained.
Bel had wanted to book a ticket home immediately, but once Emma had calmed down, she’d told her to hold off until they knew more.
Bel hadn’t been able to go back to sleep and had spent the night worried for her friends. Early the next morning, Emma had called; Craig had made it through surgery, but he was a long way from being out of the woods.
Emma would be shouldering the burden of not only the property, which was their business, but also four young children and a household that would still need her undivided attention. This wouldn’t be over in a week or two, either. They were potentially looking at a year—probably more—ifhe even recovered. They simply had no way of knowing the extent of the brain injury yet.
Bel had made her decision then and there—she was going home.
She’d spent a frantic few days packing and organising. The size of her flat had stopped her buying much, so apart from a few things that she’d get shipped to follow her, she only had two more suitcases than when she’d first arrived. She left the flat furnished—the furniture had all been second-hand anyway—and hoped that Terry could make some use of it.
