I’m not sure when I’ll be discharged from the hospital, but you’re welcome to come by Rosie’s house to visit Hope once we get home. I owe you at least a cup of tea for whisking me off to the hospital when I needed help, and we never got to drink your fizzy apple juice to celebrate you finishing your new book.
She wavered before pressing send, but pressed it anyway. A few seconds later, the phone flashed again with a reply.
Would’ve loved to see you and Hope once you get home, but I’m leaving Hamblehurst today and heading back to my flat in London. The owners of the house where I’ve been staying are returning tomorrow, and I’m catching the train in a few hours once I’ve packed up. But I hope we can keep in touch—it’s been great meeting you, Courtney. Send me photos of Hope so I can see her progress! Take care, Travis x
Courtney read the message a second time as an empty, deflated feeling settled around her. She’d always known Travis was only staying temporarily in Hamblehurst and that he’d leave once his book was finished and the owners of the Foxglove Street house returned from their travels. But realising he was leavingtodaycame as a shock.
She was sorry she wouldn’t get to see him before he left, sorry she wouldn’t get the chance to thank him properly for being there yesterday when she’d needed someone by her side.
But she wondered if maybe this was for the best. Until she’d gone into labour, she’d spent most of her time since their last get-together cringing about her mistake in almost kissing Travis during their picnic in the park. Although that embarrassing moment seemed like a lifetime ago, and her concerns about it had long since been replaced now that her new baby was here, she couldn’t help but think it would’ve been good to clear the air with Travis about the awkward incident.
They’d become good friends over these past weeks, after all. That she’d stupidly imagined there might have been more than just a casual friendship between them was no good reason for them to part with things left unsaid.
But there was nothing that could be done about it now. Apologising in person and smoothing things over wasn’t an option if Travis was soon leaving for London.
He was returning to his life, and she was beginning hers as a new mother. Their paths were always destined to diverge.
Perhaps they’d keep in touch, as Travis suggested. A few text messages now and then, a few updates about their lives. But after knowing one another for just a few short weeks, Courtney couldn’t help but think that was… unlikely.
And so she tapped out a simple response to serve as the farewell she couldn’t deliver face-to-face.
Safe journey home, Travis. And thanks again for everything! Take care.
She pressed send, then set the phone aside. Her eyelids were closing as fatigue settled on her bruised and battered body. With one last glance at the cot to check Hope was okay, she smiled at her beautiful sleeping baby before allowing sleep to claim her, too.
21
SIX WEEKS LATER
Courtney hadno idea babies grew so much in just six short weeks.
“You’re already too big for this gorgeous little duck onesie I got for you, Hope,” Courtney muttered, laughing as she tried, and failed, to fit her daughter’s wriggling legs into the tiny outfit as she lay on the changing mat. “I can’t believe you won’t be able to wear this anymore.”
She folded the little onesie, running her fingers over the pretty embroidered ducks that decorated the soft fabric. Although Hope had no shortage of clothes to wear thanks to her doting extended family, Courtney loved the whimsical duck onesie and was sorry it no longer fitted.
How could her tiny child already be too big for clothes that had swamped her only a few weeks ago? It was a mystery. In the past three days, Courtney had already set aside several of the outfits that were sized for newborns because they were now too small for her growing daughter. She’d known to expect this and had known her baby wouldn’t stay tiny forever. And yet it stillcame as a surprise when those cute little legs no longer fit inside those cute little onesies.
Courtney returned the duck onesie to the drawer, remembering the day she bought it from the baby shop on the high street. It had only been a couple of months ago, but it felt like another life. Already, she could hardly remember what it had been like not to have Hope to love and care for.
That day when she’d bought the duck onesie, she remembered she’d run into Travis Stone on her way back to Foxglove Street, when they’d bumped into one another as he exited the deli and knocked the shopping bag from her hands. She remembered how mortified and apologetic he’d been, and how he’d invited her to share dinner with him.
Courtney had enjoyed every minute of that lovely evening as they’d eaten dinner together… but that, too, felt like a memory from another life.
And Travis, too, was already slipping away into the past.
After his return to London, they’d exchanged occasional text messages, but in the last few weeks those had become less regular. They both led busy lives, and Courtney hadn’t really expected them to stay in touch once Travis left Hamblehurst and went back to his own life and his own flat. Travis had his busy writing career to get on with, and she had new motherhood to learn all about.
In the past week, she’d also begun working some agreed trial hours for Jacquie Edmund’s marketing company, fitting the tasks in around caring for Hope, and she had a good feeling that things would work out for her with the new job, and was thrilled that Jacquie understood and accommodated the demands of being a single parent to a new baby.
Courtney felt she had so much to look forward to—raising her new daughter, finding her way into a new job, and becoming a proper part of the Austin family, a family she adored. With somuch going on, she shouldn’t really have had time to think about Travis Stone.
And yet, shedidthink about him. Worse, she missed him, too.
Part of her wondered what might have happened if things had been different, if their lives weren’t on such diverging paths, and if their brief moment of friendship might have had a chance to blossom into something more.
Whenever those daydreaming notions filled her head, Courtney pushed them down again. Thinking about what might have been was pointless. Travis never had the slightest interest in her beyond appreciating her help with his author marketing tasks. That she could imagine there might have been more to their brief time together simply told her that her post-pregnancy hormones weren’t quite back to normal yet.
And anyway, she thought as she chose another onesie from the chest of drawers, with a beautiful new baby keeping her busy twenty-four hours a day, she didn’t exactly have time for daydreaming about romantic interludes that never even happened.
