loved. But then something strange happened. Even as she ran forward, the world seemed to slow down. Everything moved like beads of oil floating through water—except for Samir.
So she watched with perfect clarity as he cocked his head, assessed the threat with a flicker of a glance, and stepped aside. So neatly, so simply. Then she watched as he thrust out one foot, and swept Daniel’s legs out from under him.
And then she watched as her greatest fear went down like a sack of potatoes, landing in a huge heap on the driveway.
Samir’s feet were bare. She noticed because he put his heel against Daniel’s throat, directly over his windpipe, and exerted enough pressure to have her husband writhing and gasping for air.
“When I get off you,” Samir said, “you will have thirty seconds to get up, get in your car, and get the fuck out of my town. Do you understand me?”
Strangled, wheezing screeches were accompanied by weak shudders.
Then Samir lifted his foot slightly and said, “Say yes.”
And Daniel actually choked out, “Yes.”
“Remember what I said,” Laura added. “Stay away from Hayley. Stay away from me. From us. Or I promise you, I will take everything you have. And you know your father will help me.”
That familiar green glare found her, but for once, it didn’t send a chill down her spine. Maybe because it came from the ground.
“Hey,” Samir snapped, pushing his heel into Daniel’s throat. “Don’t look at her like that. Don’t look at her at all.”
And, miracle of miracles, Daniel’s eyes slithered away.
The miracles didn’t stop there, either. They just kept coming. When Samir released Daniel? He dragged himself up and got in his car. Miracle.
He reversed out of the drive so fast his tires screeched. Miracle.
And he didn’t come back. Even though she spent hours tense and waiting for retribution, nothing happened. Samir held her, soothed her, made her eat, and spent all day and night distracting her. And nothing bad happened. Not once. Miracle.
And then, in the early hours of the next morning, after he told her for the hundredth time how brave she was, and how well she’d done, and how much he loved her, she managed to tell him the truth.
“I love you too. So much.”
Miracle.
17
Three months later, the date when Hayley should’ve arrived came and went. Hayley did not appear. But then, Laura hadn’t wanted her to.
Truthfully, Laura barely even noticed her sister’s absence, or their mother’s, and not just because Samir grew even more attentive as her due date drew near. She barely noticed because, the day after Hayley failed to arrive, Ruth came.
Laura was in the kitchen at the time, stuffing her face with bacon-wrapped dates. Samir was thinking about diversifying the menu at Bianchi’s even further—since the pizza had been so successful during the season—and she had graciously agreed to be his test subject. So there she was, nobly and selflessly ingesting her own bodyweight in bacon, when someone knocked at the front door.
Samir went to answer it while Laura continued eating—or rather, shoveling food down her throat at a dangerously high speed. Turned out, he really was a damned good cook. And God, she was always hungry now.
But a familiar voice, bold and blunt, floated into the house and captured her attention. “Ah. You must be the new man. Excuse me.”
Then came another voice, less familiar but just as welcome. “Alright, mate? Evan Miller. Nice to meet you. And this is—”
But Laura was already lumbering into the hallway, dates abandoned. She took in the scene all at once: Samir holding the door open, slightly confused but mostly amused. Evan, Ruth’s boyfriend, filling the doorway like some big, tattooed, teddy bear of a Viking.
And in front of him, looking tiny between the two men: Ruth. Her dark hair a soft halo, her face predictably unimpressed, her brown skin glowing even more than usual. She was always pretty—it was one of the reasons Laura had once hated her. But since meeting Evan, she’d become fairytale-beautiful through the power of sheer contentment.
“Ruth!” Laura cried, sounding so overjoyed she was almost embarrassed. But she hadn’t realised until that very moment how badly she needed a friend. Even if that friend was relatively new, highly unorthodox, and had once been the victim of a Laura-led, town-wide hate campaign.
Ruth wasn’t one for emotional displays, so she didn’t run into Laura’s outstretched arms or anything like that. Instead, she pursed her lips in one of her odd, almost-smiles and said, “Oh, I’ve mucked up