Page 62 of The Black Trilogy

He turned his back on me and pulled the duvet up to his chin. “Fine.”

I thumped the wall on my way back to the guest room. Why couldn’t my subconscious behave? I longed to return to Luke’s side, but I’d be risking his life if I did.

The incident with Nick happened almost a decade ago, but when I closed my eyes, I still saw his bruised and bloodied face as if it were yesterday. One touch, that’s all it had taken. He’d tried to comfort me as I writhed in the throes of a nightmare, and I’d attacked him. It took two people to pull me off, but not before I’d broken his nose and three of his ribs. One of the people who’d dragged me away was my husband.

Embarrassing much? I’d never even contemplated sleeping in the same bed as a man since.

Other, more disturbing, episodes had followed, and it was more by luck than judgement that I hadn’t damaged anyone else. My house had borne the brunt of my night-time rampages, and I didn’t want Luke to be next.

Breakfast on Saturday started off frosty, but Luke thawed out over coffee.

“Are you taking Tia to the stables today?” I asked.

“I’m due to pick her up in half an hour, but I can make an excuse if you want?”

“She hates me quite enough already without me monopolising your time.”

“I could drop her off and come back. It’s not as if she talks to me while we’re there.”

“She won’t see it like that, trust me.”

Trust me? I almost choked on those words. I barely trusted myself anymore.

Luke called me mid-morning from his hiding place in the feed room. “George’s hired a replacement girl already.”

“At least he hasn’t shafted Susie and Hayley. What’s she called?”

“No idea. I said hello, and she flipped out. Just kept staring at me. I thought she might be having one of those petit-mal seizures, and I nearly called an ambulance, but Susie came past and told her to snap out of it.”

“Try looking less hot. That would solve the problem.”

“You think I’m hot?”

“I wouldn’t have done what I did last night otherwise.”

It was his turn to lose his train of thought. When he located his vocabulary again, he asked if I fancied going to the cinema when he got back.

“Why not? We can make out in the back row like teenagers.”

Not that I’d ever done that—I’d be making up for lost time.

“It’s a date.”

Except that plan got scuppered when the first fat flakes of snow fell after lunch. When it snowed in the US, people hauled their big ol’ trucks out of the garage, stuck snow chains on, and kept driving. In the UK, panic set in and the whole country ground to a halt.

Not wanting to break that great British tradition, we stayed at home. I started to make lunch, but Luke’s appetite was for something else, and he led me upstairs.

“You can finish lunch after,” he said.

“If I can still walk to the kitchen after, you don’t deserve lunch.”

“Challenge accepted.”

Luke aced it, and it was him who ended up making the sandwiches. We ate cuddled in bed, watching the snow fall over his garden through the floor-to-ceiling windows. By mid-afternoon, a thick blanket of white covered the ground. On a hill in the distance, kids dragged their sleds up to the top before riding down, arms and legs flying.

I envied their freedom. I’d been trapped my whole life—first by circumstances, then finances, and finally by work. Living with Luke, my responsibilities got shoved on the back burner, and I had no commitments, just the company of a wonderful man who cared about me. Or at least, cared about the person he thought I was. But I was still shackled to my mind.

What direction would my life have taken if I’d been born into a family with loving parents, a brother or sister, and maybe a dog, instead of having a mother who treated me like the spawn of Satan and spent her days pretending I didn’t exist? I’d never have met my husband, the man who taught me life was about living rather than merely existing, but I might have avoided a world of heartache.

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