Page 112 of One Day Like This (Excess All Areas 1)

When they were done, Matt stepped away and Izabel moved into Luke’s embrace. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

His arms held her securely. “You’re right. It’s not my place to decide for you. I guess I thought I was filling a gap Dad left. Looking out for you and shit.”

“Nobody could replace Dad. And that wasn’t what I needed. I just needed my brother. We’re all we’ve got, right?”

Luke stepped back. “I’m not all you’ve got anymore. You have Matt.”

“I’ll only ever have one brother. You know it’s not the same. I love you.”

“I love you too, Sis.”

“Are you okay if I go?” Izabel asked, looking towards the door where Matt waited for her.

“I’ll be fine. We’ll get through this.”

She smiled at Luke and then headed for Matt. He was watching her brother as he placed his hands on the windowsill to look out to the street below. When he pulled her close, he kissed the side of her neck chastely. “You want to hang out with your brother tonight, Iz?”

How could he tell? “You don’t mind?”

Matt cupped her face and ran a thumb along her cheek. “No. I think it’ll do you both good. I’ll go grab something healthier than takeout and drop it outside the door. I’ll text you when it’s there. He needs you more than I do right now.”

“This is reason two thousand and three hundred why I love you.”

Matt smiled softly. “I love you more.”

She watched the door click shut before grabbing a black bin bag from the kitchen. Quietly, she started to toss all the rubbish into the bag.

“You’re still here?” Luke asked.

“Yeah. I’m still here. Somebody’s got to dig you out of this environmental hazard.”

“Why didn’t you leave with Matt?”

She placed the half-filled bag on the coffee table. “Because I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours worried you’d never speak to me again. And now that you are, I don’t want to leave right now.”

Luke shoved his hands into his jeans. “Want me to order something for dinner?”

“Matt’s getting us something and will leave it outside.”

Luke flinched. “I don’t need Matt to buy us—”

“I know you don’t need it,” she said. “But let him. We need to navigate our way through this. Me being here with you now is my way of doing that. You forgiving me is yours. Matt’s is to give us space and feed us while we fix what’s broken.”

Luke was silent for a moment. “Want to carry-on watchingGreat Canal Journeys?”

Izabel smiled. “Yeah. I feel like a dose of Pru and Tim is just what we need right now.”

And when they finally sat down to a dinner of precooked chicken and salad as Tim and Pru steered their canal boat over the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal, Izabel realised everything was going to be okay.

* * *

Matt rolled over in bed and reached for Izabel, only to feel her side of the bed was cold. For a moment, he wondered where she was, rubbing his hands over his face and through his hair as memories of the previous evening flooded him.

His chest cracked open in relief.

The relationship he had with Luke wasn’t broken irrevocably. Sure, it was a long way from being fixed, but he’d do the work to put it back together.

Keys rattled in the lock of his apartment door, and his pulse kicked up a notch. Izabel was back. He placed his arm over his eyes so she wouldn’t see his lids flicker. First came the thud of her shoes as she kicked them off, then the clatter of her keys in the dish, followed by her footsteps on the wooden flooring and the creak of his bedroom door. A whisper of her clothes hitting the floor got him hard. Naked Iz was a joy.

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