Page 73 of A Wedding in a Week

She sobers up in a hurry, and I see shades of Marc in the worry that leeches her of colour. She’s the same bone-white he’s been since taking a phone call in Cornwall. Her eyes glisten like his, her tears finally spilling, and Marc’s voice shakes.

“This can’t happen again, Mum. It can’t. He’s staying with me so it won’t.” He rephrases what Carl Lawson has promised to help him navigate. “It’s called kinship care, and you can make it hard or make it easy on him, but he needs to be safe, so I’ve started the ball rolling.”

And he’s got me. “Noah will be safe on my farm.”

Marc’s gaze shoots to mine, another new dawn breaking, and at some point, we need to have a conversation about my home being his for real, not only during summers, because he shouldn’t look surprised or grateful. I wasn’t kidding about sheltering him in a tent on the headland or under an oak in the woods. He can choose from any of my acres, but Marc’s stare only dampens as I promise, “He’s welcome, Marc. He’ll be safe there like—”

I don’t get to say like you were.

Marc’s mum must hear it. Her face creases. I think she nods, but Marc’s stepdad gets between us, still playing the big man. He rants like Marc is the problem, not Noah’s best solution, and for a moment, Marc shrinks.

I see red then.

No. I see fucking scarlet.

I see this wanker looming over someone he should have sheltered, and I’ll make sure to spill more of his blood than I’ve watched drain from Noah. It’ll be my fucking pleasure. Fuck a pale pink rosé. Fuck a bright red pinot noir. I won’t stop until he’s unconscious in a deep burgundy puddle.

I square up, making a fist again.

Marc does too, only his is around his phone, aiming it at his stepfather as if he’s recording. “Go ahead. Add assault to those child abandonment charges.”

His stepdad backs off, but my fist must still curl because Lukas arrives and gets between us. “Unclench, Stef. Help’s coming.”

I can’t unclench yet. Or I can’t until Noah blinks awake.

He’s been conscious before, but for a first time he’s fully with us, seeing his parents first, his gaze dull and hazy. His gaze skims me, but he sees Marc next, and Noah lights up.

Don’t I know that feeling—that spark? Similar hot ones blaze in Marc’s gaze when Noah’s eyes close again, sinking back into a sleep I hope is healing.

Marc sounds cool, but anyone who knows him also knows what this sudden flush means. He’s a man on a mission for a whole new reason when destiny arrives in the form of a cardiac consultant who has three police officers with her.

Two of them shuffle Marc’s stepdad away, meek when confronted by warrant cards and the threat of handcuffs.

Marc breathes in slowly, ready to face what he’s kept to himself for too long. “I want to make a statement.” His gaze flicks my way before landing on his mother. “About previous assaults. On me, by him.” He also says, “And assaults on her.” It’s hard to believe he’s got space in his heart for someone who shut him out, but it’s also a glimpse I’m not prepared for—perhaps shutting him out was a safer option for him.

Marc’s tone turns gravelly. “Give us a few minutes, yeah, Stef? Maybe call your mum. Send her my love, will you?”

I don’t want to leave, but I do what he asks, ending up outside the hospital with Lukas beside me, both of us straining to hear Mum over the rumble of cars and double-deckers, above chatter in languages from the world’s four corners.

All of these people standing close by call home with news of loved ones, I guess, and that’s what Marc is. Noah too, by extension. “He was conscious, Mum. He looks so much like Marc it’s unreal.”

“How’s he doing, love?”

“He’s…” Noah is alive, if not yet kicking. “He recognised Marc.” It hits me then, and Lukas must feel this hammer-blow strike.

But he might not have made it.

My brother shores me as I choke out a different sentence. “He can’t stay here.”

“Then bring him home, love,” Mum says. “Bring them both home as soon as you can.”

I’ve been here for close to a week. My eyes well for a first time.

London is a blur of passing black cabs and complete strangers, but I’m not alone.

I’ve got my family with me.

26

---