Page 75 of A Wedding in a Week

“Give me your phone?” Marc slowly blinks before cooperating. I turn it to face him, my brother right there on its lock screen, his arm across Marc’s shoulders. “This is who you’ve left Noah with. He couldn’t have a better minder, could he?”

A streetlight shows Marc’s conflict. He nods, but he can’t help looking over his shoulder one last time, and there’s nothing too soon about what I tell him. It’s the perfect moment.

“I love you so much.”

His gaze swings back, and it’s brighter. He’s definitely more present, so I keep going.

“And loving you this much means I’d walk you back to that ward right now if I didn’t think you need to hear this first.” I tell him what I carried for so long until this all happened. I don’t want him to carry it for anywhere as long as I did when doing that isn’t helpful or even needed. “You think he’ll die without you right there with him.”

Marc doesn’t exhale. He deflates, which tells me what I guessed already, because I’ve been here more than once. Now I stand in shoes that aren’t too big for me, like Dad’s were. They’re sized for older siblings, and I don’t stumble in them.

“I get it,” I promise. “It doesn’t matter what anyone tells you, you can’t stop looking back, convinced you could have made a difference. You and only you, yes?”

He shakes his head at first but soon nods, his brow creasing.

“Marc, I still spend half my life looking back. Or I did.”

“Until?”

“You.” This part is so simple. “Now I can’t help looking forward.”

I unlock a door, an alarm panel bleeping until I key in the code Jack gave me. I turn to find Marc’s followed me into the hallway. The front door closes behind him, and maybe this is easier to hear in almost complete darkness. It still isn’t easy to verbalise when I’m a farmer who is good with his hands, not at voicing what love looks and feels like to me. “I don’t know how it’s going to work out for us, but I can’t hang onto the past and you at the same time, can I?”

“That’s what you want?” Marc virtually sighs out the rest. “To hold onto me?”

I nod and hope he sees me. “Even when I go home.”

We’re in a hallway belonging to people who might own this mansion and an island but who’ve also lived through loss and done something constructive with it. That’s how letting go of pointless guilt over Dad and fear for Lukas feels then—constructive.

I don’t mean that I say a final goodbye to my father, not when I can almost feel his hand on my shoulder, firm and heavy, but he doesn’t hold me back. He pushes me to my future, and I step into Marc’s space, both hands finally free to hold him.

“I can’t keep looking back,” I tell him. “Not if I want a future with you and Noah.”

He kisses me then, and it doesn’t matter that neither of us know what that future looks like—he still didn’t get to interview for the job he needed, I still have no cash and a farm teetering on a financial seesaw, but here’s the thing about life and death—none of that matters.

None of it.

Only love does, so I kiss Marc back with no idea of what’s ahead like I have no clue what’s behind any of the closed doors in this building. I back him against one that swings open onto a study. Or maybe it’s where Heligans keep their treasure.

I glimpse shelves dotted with objects overlooked by a huge painting of a castle, but it’s a person I notice on that canvas.

It can’t be Rex, too fair and broad of shoulder. No, that’s a younger version of the duke rowing across a harbour, and he’s yelling, I think. I can almost hear him booming. He’s also determined, powering his craft forward and I send him silent, moonlit thanks for the example. For all the help that he and Rex have given—a ride to Noah’s bedside, a PA to organise us and lift our spirits, this home they’ve opened to us.

There’s also a leather sofa long and wide enough for two men in this room, and I’m tempted to pull Marc down to sleep on it forever, but Jack promised there’s a bed for us here somewhere, so I lead Marc up flights of stairs, and keep looking.

We kiss at the top of each flight, then search, which might be easier if either of us flicked on a light switch, but this dimness is a familiar blanket Marc must also remember. He stops beside another door and his stubble is a tingling scrape until our lips meet. It’s rough under both of my palms, his mouth warm and wet, his tongue as electric as ever against mine. Then he breaks off to knock on the doorframe, and this house has taller ceilings than the hallway outside my farmhouse bedroom, so his raps echo.

I pay attention to his whisper. “You said you’d always let me in if I knocked.”

I nod. I did say that. I will again if I can find a way to swing it.

Marc wets his lips. That sheen glints in the low light. So do his eyes, as if they glisten. “You’re really telling me you’d let me in if there were two of us for the farm to carry?”

That’s a different question. I answer the only part I have any control over. “I’ll always let you both in.” Marc wanting to be independent—to fund his brother’s future single-handed—is tomorrow’s battle.

His hand skims an arm that doesn’t need a sling now. He doesn’t need to take its weight, but maybe that’s another way we’re matched. He wants to. He also tells me, “You called Carl.”

“For you. I knew you’d ask him about Noah the moment you had headspace to think of it. I just asked the fostering questions.”

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