she said. There was a sadness in her eyes that looked centuries old, and he could feel her pulling away from him, like she was water squeezed between his grasping palms.
“Abbie—”
Bright headlights cutting through the snow, the low purr of an engine rising over the howling wind. He stopped, looked over Abbie’s shoulder as a car prowled onto Ms Tricia’s drive. Really, he knew who it was after a second of squinting, yet he held out hope that he was mistaken and this was a confused, midnight traveller who would soon realise his mistake and turn the fuck around again and leave Will to fix this, to fix the devastation in her eyes and that hopelessness in her voice that sounded like a crumbling heart.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go the way Will wanted. The car found a space, parked, and its engine cut out. Then the door opened, and Jason Farrell unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and peered over at them in the scarlet light.
“Oi,” he called cheerfully. “Are you groping my sister on the lawn? That’s a bit much, Will.”
“Oh my fucking God,” Abbie said.
Will really couldn’t agree more.
Seven
Grandma was thrilled by Jason’s late-night arrival. Abbie had a feeling she should be thrilled too. After all, he’d saved her from blurting more embarrassing, emotional truths at Will, whose new name should be The Human Wrecking Ball of Protective Emotional Walls. She half-suspected she’d been about to confess her aeons of overwhelming love to the man, at which point he’d either be appropriately alarmed and throw it back in her face or—
Or worse. Worse, he’d like it—she was starting to suspect he’d love it—and things would be perfect, so perfect, until she forgot how to quiet her bad thoughts again and she’d flinch away from him or lash out and he’d be horrified and everything would collapse.
Things, in Abbie’s experience, always collapsed.
So, yes. She should be grateful for Jase’s interruption. Which did not explain why, the following morning, she found herself glaring daggers at him over the breakfast table.
“I’d no idea you were coming so soon,” Grandma trilled as she dumped an extra seven thousand rashers of bacon on his plate.
“Ah, well. Abbie wanted me here.” Jase slid her a look that said Clearly you changed your mind, though? before continuing. “So I got away as soon as work allowed.”
On the other side of the table, Will snorted into his sausages. He’d already been for a morning run—followed by a series of very impressive burpees on the frosty lawn, not that Abbie had been peeking through the window or anything—so he was glowing with sweat and looked more fresh and gorgeous than hungover.
The freak.
“You do know,” Will was saying, “that you can leave work whenever you want, right? You work for yourself.”
“And I’m the world’s worst boss,” Jase twinkled.
“Oh, he’s such a good boy, aren’t you, my darling?” was Grandma’s predictable response to that tripe. She popped a kiss on Jase’s smug forehead.
Abbie stuck out her tongue. “You’re only her favourite because you went into the family business.”
“I don’t have favourites,” Grandma said, turning toward the Aga. “Oh, Jason, your extra hash brown is ready.”
“Outrageous,” Will muttered.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Abbie muttered back. Then she remembered that she was in turmoil over last night, over whether or not Will even remembered last night, and therefore shouldn’t be sharing mumbled discontent and knowing looks with him across the table.
Too late. Their eyes met, and his were like a shot of espresso: dark and delicious and dangerously invigorating. She felt a bit jittery. Shit. Abbie dragged her gaze away and found herself staring at Jase instead. Her twin was currently watching her with that infuriating smirk he got when he thought he knew something she didn’t. The dick. She stuck her tongue out at him again, then yelped at the familiar whack of a wooden spoon on her shoulder.
“Behave yourself,” Grandma said sternly.
“Yeah, Abbie,” Jase snickered. There was a thud under the table, and his smirk was replaced by a wince. “Ow.” He turned to glare at Will, who was looking pointedly in the other direction.
Abbie felt herself smile.
“So, Will,” Jase began, sitting back in his chair and adjusting the cuffs on his black silk shirt. (Jason had told her, when they were fourteen, that he intended to dress like a sexy pirate for the rest of his life, and he had taken that very seriously.) “How is it, being back home?”
Will rolled his eyes and stabbed another sausage. “Same as it always