Page 23 of A Wedding in a Week

He doesn’t look at me now, gaze fixed on the road ahead, his profile as familiar as the landmarks I’ve grown up with. It’s tighter though, as if his jaw clenches again, and I hate that I’m the reason. Boy, do I ever. Perhaps it leaves me sounding as rough around the edges as this drive leaves me feeling. At least that’s what I hear as soon as I speak.

“I didn’t mean the ‘don’t look at me’ part. I actually like you looking at me. Just not while you’re driving.”

That tightness shifts as I watch.

“You like me looking at you?”

Christ, Lukas would laugh himself stupid at what I just let slip, but I’ll take the half smile I see next as proof that it would be worth it. That means I keep going, loosening reins on something else I’ve held in. “I, uh. I always did. You looked at me like I was as strong as Dad when you and Lukas were kids. You were cute, you know, and so interested in everything?” I still have no idea how his parents didn’t see it. “I looked at you too that last summer. All the years before, you were the same old Marc, just a bit taller each year, then boom, you grew up for real. So it wasn’t only you doing the looking.”

“No?”

“No. That last year? I couldn’t take my eyes off you. Kept trying to figure out what was different. Why I hadn’t noticed before. It crept up on me, like sea mist does.”

“Like on the headland.”

Us picturing the same thing gets to me. It also keeps me talking when part of me is dying at what pours out.

“Exactly like that, Marc. You know how it gets at dawn, right? Shrouded. I know the lay of that land so it shouldn’t be surprising—but wow. Seeing the headland once that mist clears? It’s always stunning. Wow,” I say again, more quietly this time, because he’s stunning when he smiles too. “So no, Marc. You looking at me hasn’t ever been a problem. It’s only what I did before...” I blow out a breath, unable to find words for the disaster that struck our last summer. I switch it for another. “It’s just that I haven’t been here since, that’s all.”

“Since?” Marc does glance my way again then. Just as quickly, he snaps his focus back to the coast road. “Oh, shit. You mean you haven’t been here since your accident?”

“Yep.”

Marc has to hear the grit in my tone—grit that I haven’t a hope of keeping covered, not when the sea flashes by in shades of jade that look soft instead of deadly. He must do because that half smile slips, and I don’t want that. It makes me speak even faster.

“Now that I think about it, Mum must have driven the long way to take me to my checkups. Fuck, that would have added miles and miles to each journey. Remind me to thank her again, yeah?”

Marc nods. “I can go the long way too, if that helps?” He doesn’t look my way now, his focus locked on the tarmac.

I focus too, only on him instead of the point in the road where the Land Rover left it. On the sharp line of a clean-shaven jaw rather than the gaping space where the Land Rover tore through bushes. And on the way you’d never know there was fire in Marc’s hair while it’s damp and he’s in shadow, like now.

Sunlight slants through the windscreen, setting alight the hair on his forearms, and somewhere there has to be a list of shades to describe it, but I’m a farmer, not a wordsmith, so all I know is that I like the way he’s burnished. I like his offer to go out of his way as well, because doesn’t that sum up everything about his return here?

I also can’t accept it, not when this needs to be faced. “No.” I have to swallow, and that’s hard around what feels like a throat full of gravel. “Don’t turn back. Keep going.” I swallow again, and this time it’s easier. “Got to face it sometime, right? No point getting the jitters every time I leave the farm, or adding an extra twenty miles to each journey just to avoid it. I’m fine.” Or I think I am until Marc points at something ahead of us.

I don’t see what.

All I register is that he only has one hand on the wheel.

I find something of my own to clutch pretty fast then, my free hand locking around my seat belt. My eyes close on instinct, only this time, I don’t hear the engine scream or the screech of metal against tarmac. This time, I hear Marc’s bitten-off curse. Then he’s quiet for what feels like forever until we stop and he turns off the engine.

That’s when I hear my breathing hitching and catching. He must do too. I also hear that Marc doesn’t bite off his next curse.

There’s a click next—his seat belt unfastening, I guess, which I’d know for sure if I could force my eyes to open. But I can’t. Not yet. Not while my brain insists that all I’ll see are rocks a hundred feet below me.

“Stef?” Marc unfastens my seat belt. “You can let go.”

No fucking way.

I still clutch it, the stiff edge of the fabric biting into my palm. Then his hand covers mine, squeezing for a moment. “It’s okay,” he promises. “Look, Stef. Look. We’re here.”

Here?

Once I do force my eyes open, I can’t process why I’m staring at a helicopter with the words Safe Harbour etched across its paintwork. Then I register that it’s on the far side of a field serving as a car park.

I also see a sign.

Sculpture Garden and Wedding Fair This Way. Proceeds to the Safe Harbour Project.

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