That slips out before I can stop it.
He huffs a laugh. “She’s not exactly… outdoorsy.”
There’s no bitterness in it. Just fact. The coach hits a bump and our shoulders knock together harder this time.
“Sorry,” we say at the same time. We both laugh. It’s small. It’s easy.
Theo twists around in his seat. “Mum! We’re playing cards! You and Rory can play too!”
I blink. “We’re supervising.”
“You can supervise cards.”
Rory leans forward. “What’s the game?”
“Cheat!” Isla announces proudly.
We end up half-twisted in our seats, passing cards back and forth across the aisle while Theo attempts to bluff with the subtlety of a foghorn. Rory is terrible at hiding a smile. Isla is ruthless. Theo is indignant when caught. At one point Rory accuses me of cheating.
“I would never,” I say, scandalised.
“You absolutely would.”
“I am a pillar of integrity.”
“You always cheated at Monopoly, Frey.”
“That is not evidence. I was a kid.”
We are laughing properly now. The kind that makes your stomach ache a little. The kind that feels unguarded. And for a short while, it doesn’t feel complicated. It just feels… familiar.
Somewhere after the third round and a particularly dramatic accusation from Isla, the rhythm of the coach becomes heavier. The road smooths out. The children’s volume dips from feral to drowsy. Theo and Isla turn back around to face forward, heads bent together over something in a book. I lean back in my seat, meaning only to close my eyes for a second. I am not entirely sure when sleep finds me, but it does. It’s the warmth. The steady hum of the engine. The fact that I have been running on emotional fumes since Christmas. I drift. And when the coach hits another small bump, my head tips sideways. Onto something solid, warm and broad. There is a moment where my brain hasn’t caught up. And then I realise I am asleep on Rory’s shoulder. Mortifying. I jolt slightly, but he shifts just enough to steady me.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, low enough that only I hear it. “You can stay.”
I should move. But I don’t. Because his shoulder is solid and warm and smells faintly of clean soap and something deeper underneath, and for the first time in weeks, I feel… held.
My cheek presses more fully into him before I can stop myself. And if he notices, if his breathing changes even slightly, he doesn’t say.
The coach rolls on, children dozing and teachers whispering over paperwork, and I let myself exist there for a little while longer. Just friends. Except my body does not seem to have signed that agreement.
CHAPTER thirty-six
RORY
The coach smells like crisps, damp coats and whatever industrial cleaner the school uses that never quite manages to disguise the fact that thirty children are breathing the same air.
I drop into the seat beside Freya and immediately become aware of approximately every part of my body.
Fantastic. Four hours. Four hours sitting next to the woman I have spent the last few months very deliberately not looking at for too long, not standing too close to, not letting my hand brush by accident and definitely not thinking about while I… Freya’s leg brushes against mine, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Plenty of room,” I say, shifting slightly toward the window, because the seats are narrow and our thighs are already touching.
“Loads,” she replies, equally unconvincing.
The coach pulls away from the school and the noise rises immediately. Children shouting across aisles. Crisp packets crackling open. Someone already asking if we are nearly there despite the fact we have been moving for approximately twelve seconds.
Freya has a clipboard in her lap, looking down at it with the intense concentration of someone who would rather study laminated paper than acknowledge the situation she is currentlyin. Which is sitting beside me. I recognise that expression because I am wearing a version of it myself.
“So,” I say after a few minutes, keeping my tone deliberately casual, deliberately easy, the tone of a man who is absolutely not aware of the warmth of her leg against his. “Did you check the register to see if I was coming?”
