I swallowed, and found I couldn’t finish the sentence. In the silence of the room, it was like I was there on that footpath all over again, with the screech of tyres trying to brake. A woman had shouted a split second before, but in the moment itself there had been nothing. Or perhaps everything – too much for individual sensations, only shock. And then silence. And then pain.
Miles linked his fingers together, holding me to him. “Hey, we don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, it’s fine, it’s just . . . so hard to describe without sounding like I’m trying to be dramatic. Hard to describe at all really.”
Behind me, Miles’s chest started to shake and I looked up over my shoulder to find him suppressing a grin, his dark eyes laughing down at me. “What?”
“You!” he cried. “You are the only person I know who would ever worry that the description of theircar accidentwas going to come across too try-hard. Idiot.”
“Well it’s true! It’s all ‘I was so scared’ and ‘It felt like I’d broken every bone in my body’ and ‘I thought I was going to die’, but I didn’t, so . . .”
“That doesn’t mean those things weren’t true.”
I shook my head and leaned back against his shoulder. “You always have a reply. One that makes me feel like an idiot.”
“You are an idiot,” he said, kissing my hair. “But don’t worry, it’s one of your most charming qualities.”
“God that’s depressing.” I laughed, though it soon faded, dragged down by the day’s strange sadness and the knowledge that I hadn’t yet answered his question. “Well, the short version,” I said, glad I could look at the shadows inking his flowers rather than athim. “Is that a car came out of nowhere, mounted the curb and . . . hit me. The driver, she hadn’t been drinking, wasn’t speeding – there was literally nothing anyone did wrong. The road was wet, the car was old, she lost control and that was that. I don’t know how long I was in hospital because I couldn’t bear to count the days, but it was a long time. Mum and Dad came every day after work. Friends came when they could, but it was often just me and my thoughts. I couldn’t even watch tennis. It hurt too much, not being the one on the court. Knowing what I’d lost.”
For a few long seconds there was just the gentle rise and fall of his chest at my back. Then, “I thought about messaging you, you know, probably a dozen times. But everything I thought to say sounded trite and stupid, so I was a coward and told myself you didn’t want to hear from me anyway.”
He’d had my number. Hard to imagine what I might have thought hadScrunchieshown up on my phone. Perhaps back then I might have remembered what it meant.
“Was I wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was desperately lonely. Heartbroken, not just broken-broken. But I was also angry all the time, so I might have hated you for it. Or I might have clung to you in a way that would have been very embarrassing later.” I shrugged. “Maybe for the best that you didn’t.”
Silence stretched again. Around us, his bedroom was slowly darkening as the day disappeared. Soon, there would be nothing but the weak shreds of streetlight creeping up from the road below.
“So,” he said at last. “You don’t overthink to stop bad things happening, because you know literally right down in your bones that sometimes accidents happen anyway. You overthink to gain some control you can hold like a shield. To help keep that frightening truth at bay.”
He was always so insightful, able to slice me open with nothing but words, and see me in ways I couldn’t. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, because to try to thank him for it would catch in my throat. The air in the room already felt too thin.
Needing to change the mood, or at least shift the spotlight, I sat up and turned to face him. “What about you?”
“Whataboutme?” he said, an amused frown twitching his brows close.
“What are you afraid of?”
“The usual things.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I just spilled a bunch of trauma here, you’ve got to give me something.”
“Give you something?” With the ease of too much muscle, he shoved me onto my back and climbed atop me to rub our soft cocks together. “I can give you something.”
“Not what I meant!”
He grinned, the sight barely a shifting of shadows in the gloom. “Maybe not, but it has been ten minutes. And itwashot.”
It had been. It always was, but I wasn’t going to let him wriggle out of this just yet. “Come on,” I said as he ran his hand down to cup my balls. “Tell me something about yourself andthenwe can go again.”
With a sigh, he withdrew his hand. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Tell me something you never thought you’d tell me.”
He still held himself over me, the growing darkness leaving his face a collection of increasingly familiar lines in shadow. “All right,” he said, and shifted his weight slightly. “I booked that practice court after you in Paris on purpose. After I saw your press conference.”
“What? Why?” I asked.
