Page 25 of A Wedding in a Week

“You okay?”

I can’t formulate an answer. Thinking means wading through mental treacle. Walking does too. I don’t know why each step takes effort when I was fine this morning. I was. I’ve been getting better for weeks now, physically, at least, even with my light duties restriction, and yet I have to stop myself from rubbing my chest as if it’s still bruised from the last time a seat belt caught me.

Marc’s care now feels just as tender. First he guides me away from the sound of wedding-fair crowds, finding a quiet alcove for us. It’s screened by old red-brick walls, and deep pink roses frame an archway view that, at any other time, would be eye-catching. To be honest, all I absorb is that Marc takes care of me all over again—that he holds my shaking hand, and that he has done almost the whole time since I got out of a vehicle that’s in much better shape than I am.

“You’re still scarred,” Marc says, even though my scrapes weren’t deep enough to need glue or stitches. He sums that up much more neatly, repeating what he’s told me once already. “It’s understandable, Stef. You could have died.” That’s blunt, but him saying it aloud gives context to my heart aching—also for its wild pounding. What he says next does too. “But you didn’t die. You’re here. Safe. With me, yeah?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, and I hear a grim and awful rawness. “Which is so much better than what I guessed had happened.”

I shouldn’t ask.

I can’t help myself.

I want to know everything he thinks about me. “What did you guess?”

He meets my gaze, and I’d thought Rex Heligan’s eyes had swum, but that was nothing compared to what Marc shows me. “I thought the hospital must have got the tests wrong.”

“Tests.” And here’s a whole other cliff edge. “What tests?”

“You know. The ones they ran after your dad passed away. The ones to see if you shared his condition? I looked them up as soon as Lukas mentioned ICCs to me. Inherited cardiac conditions, right? There was a fifty-fifty chance of you and Lukas inheriting the same defect.”

I nod. It’s the only time I’ve hated being lucky. Not because I wanted problems but because Lukas shouldn’t have had to face what he did while grieving.

Marc’s brow furrows, and I’m not sure when I dropped a too-young label for him, but this proves it was only ever me clutching straws designed to keep some distance. There’s nothing immature about him, nothing but deadly seriousness in his thought process. “You never spoke about it. Not like Lukas. So I guessed they’d cleared you. Then I guessed they cleared you again at every checkup like they’ve done with Lukas since his procedure. But when he phoned me in a panic, I thought the medics must have got your results wrong. That you’d arrested like your dad did. Out of the blue. With zero warning.”

His gaze flicks to moorland rising in the distance, and I can guess the spot he pictures. It’s one I visit often even though there’s nothing of Dad left there, only a single stone I leave up there for every month without him.

Marc says, “I was so fucking happy when I heard it was a tourist that caused you to swerve.” He chuffs out a low sound that isn’t exactly a laugh, more a mix of frustration mixed with relief. He adds, “Taking a photo of the fucking view,” with the same grumble he accused me of on our way here. He chuffs out another almost-laugh. “But I suppose it’s better than the hospital fucking up, right? Bumps and scrapes are so much better than the other option.”

I’m pretty sure I can’t answer that without my voice shaking. Or breaking. So I only nod, my lips pressed together, because I’m meant to be strong and silent, remember? That means I get busy pulling myself together right up until he lets go of my hand. Then I get verbal in a hurry.

I snatch his hand back, doing more of that rare-for-me blurting.

“I thought about you when…” I look seaward, and these gardens aren’t steep or craggy—they wend downhill gently—but something inside me still lurches, shaking loose more detail. “I thought about you and Mum and Lukas. About John and Jess. And Dad.” Everyone special to me had run on a loop while I’d hung over that cliff. “I could see my phone, but I couldn’t reach it to call you.”

“You would have?”

I’m glad he holds my good hand. It means I get to feel his grip tighten. I’m less happy at his surprise. It’s worse than all of those suspended-over-the-sea moments where I’d faced the worst without him. “Of course I would have called you.” Maybe flashbacks do serve a useful purpose—I let out everything I’ve kept in.

“I regretted every single summer you weren’t here. I knew I fucked up, but I didn’t know how to put it right between us. Not without saying the wrong thing to you again. I couldn’t risk pushing you further away from Mum and Lukas.” Because him staying in touch had mattered so much to them. So, so much. “I hung over that cliff and my life wasn’t all that flashed in front of my eyes.”

“No?”

I shake my head.

“You did.”

There. Two little words summing up what he means to me. “I missed you all over again. Of course I wanted to tell you I was sorry. You weren’t too young to know what you wanted. I didn’t ever know better than you. You were right. We could have given it a shot together. I should have done everything I could to make you happy.”

I don’t know which of us moves first.

Marc’s in my arms and that’s all that matters. He slots where I need him most in the shade of the walls built around this garden, walls that Marc steered me into, sheltering me in this place full of people.

He’d found a hidden corner for me to fall apart in.

His kiss puts me back together.

The wedding fair might as well not be happening only metres away. I don’t hear vendors or happy couples, don’t see an awful ocean reminder now I have my eyes closed. I only feel what I’ve missed slide back into the space I’ve kept vacant for him. Because I have, I realise as our mouths meet again for a third time after three years of distance.

Maybe three is our lucky number.

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