Page 90 of Lipstick Kiss

Luke ignored Jason speaking and stepped closer to Jennifer, lowering his voice.

“You guarded that door while Daisy was hammering on it, bawling her eyes out while I was screaming at Cynthia to stop. You allowed that to happen. Dad was on the rigs, Mum had gone, and Jason and Archer were at school. I dared to ask her why she didn’t try to convince mum to stay. I told her she was selfish. I got beaten for it. I was a child unaware of the levity of what I was saying. Looking back, I can see it may have been rude to ask or mean to comment. Do you think I should’ve been beaten?”

“I’m sorry,” Jennifer whispered. “You’ve got to understand—”

“I have to understand nothing. I was nine,” Luke hissed. “Nine years old and having no idea what I was asking apart from being heartbroken my mum didn’t love us enough to stay.”

“Luke, that’s not what happened,” Jennifer said.

Luke watched as her expression changed from compassion to guilt to something completely foreign to him. He didn’t know what to make of her pale face and shaking hand. Jennifer lifted her cane, and Luke immediately felt sick and stepped back. Jason and Archer stepped in front of him.

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” Jennifer said, her eyes welling up again.

Luke didn’t answer her. He swiped up his t-shirt and bunched it up in his hand. Then thinking better of it, he tossed it aside.

“You should go Jennifer. You just told Luke that Cynthia may have had a heart attack. He’s a medic. Our Dad died of a heart attack. He died in front of Luke’s eyes, dead before he hit the floor. What you just did was cruel. And I swear to god if her suspected heart attack was heartburn…”

Luke didn’t hear any more Archer said as he strode across the lawn towards Sabrina lodge. He didn’t look in Freya’s direction, who was still standing next to Erica, and he held out his hand. He heard her run full pelt towards him, and as soon as she was in reaching distance, he swept her up into his arms and carried her the rest of the way to his home.

“I love you,” Freya whispered against his cheek as she pressed her mouth to his skin.

“I don’t think I would’ve been brave enough to admit I was beaten if I didn’t know you’d be here to hold me.”

“Luke,” she sniffed.

“Don’t cry, Peaches. I’m just about holding on here. Let me get inside the house.”

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

She held onto his neck with both arms and pressed her mouth against his neck until they were in his bedroom. She undressed him as soon as her feet touched the floor because he was shaking too much to undo his trousers button. Then she removed her clothes. Luke pulled back the covers for her to slide under, and he joined her there. A moment or two later, he was inside her. Not moving. Covering her body with his. She took his weight as they sank into the memory foam mattress. When she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, he let out a sob he felt come from his toes. All the grief he felt for his dad came out, his sorrow for not having his mum around to console him. Every bone in his body ached like he’d run a marathon.

Freya was there, wrapping him in a cocoon and keeping him safe.

“I love you more than you can possibly imagine, Freya Riley,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Daisy

She hadn’t remembered that day hammering on the study door until Luke had just yelled it at Jennifer. That was the day she’d had to stay home because the junior school she and Luke attended was flooded. The high school wasn’t affected, and Jason and Archer had to go to school.

Luke and Daisy were skidding around the foyer when Cynthia called him into the study. He was taking too long, and she’d grown bored waiting. Daisy was just about to knock on the door when she heard her brother scream out and then heard something whack against something and then another scream.

She didn’t know why she hadn’t said anything. It was like she’d been brainwashed to forget until she watched the scene play out a month ago.

She’d never felt more lonely with her brothers now married or engaged. With no friends on the island, she wasat a loss for what to do. That was why she’d slipped away that day a month ago when Luke had an argument with Jennifer. She still had her bag packed from arriving. She snuck away, boarded the ferry she’d arrived on, and sailed back to the mainland. She travelled by train and then by plane to a hotel in the Pacific and drank cocktails.

But now she was back and had chosen the worst weather to fly in. When she’d left the mainland, it was a cloudy afternoon with light rain. When the helicopter landed with twenty terrified-looking passengers and her gripping the nearest object, it was nasty.

It was the kind of summer storm she’d seen many times while living on the island as a teenager. Driving rain, fierce winds and the waves crashing against the rocks. Climbing out of the helicopter, she grabbed her case on wheels and ran across the tarmac to the cover of the terminal building. It had seen better days, but it was dry.

Her brothers knew she was flying in and which flight, so when she came out of the front of the one-storey white building, she was disappointed to find no one waiting for her. No sign of Heidi, Erica or Freya either. Not that she expected Erica. She was near her due date and had elected to stay at Emma Lodge, their cottage, for the last couple of weeks. Apart from Saturdays, she was setting up for her charity when she went to the warehouse. Daisy didn’t know if she was at home or the warehouse as it was a Saturday. It wasn’t far. She could make a run for it there and catch a lift up in one of the buggies.

Daisy waited in an alcove sheltering from the storm, clutching at her skirts and attempting to keep her hair in a ponytail, using her hand for a band. After five minutes, she checked her phone. In the family messaging group, there was a message all in capitals.

Luke: SOS, WAREHOUSE, ALL THOSE WHO CAN GET HER SAFELY, GET HERE. ERICA IS IN LABOUR.

“Shit,” Daisy muttered as she tucked her phone away in her cross-body cloth bag.

---