Max eyed the building with confusion. “Er… whatever you say. All I remember about it was Mrs Tenby sucking cough sweets and the history section smelling of socks. But each to their own.”
“V?” Heath’s voice sounded from a few feet away and I turned to him. He looked uncharacteristically unsure of himself, more how he was as a child than the man he’d become. “You…” He swallowed and Yaz moved back from us to stand next to him and hold his hand. “Are you okay?”
This time, when I wriggled to get down, Harry did set me back on my feet but stayed close to my side with his hand in mine as I walked over to Heath. “No,” I whispered when I was a foot away from him. “But I will be, Heathy. We both will.” Heath swallowed again before giving a short nod. Then in a sudden movement, he sprang forward and swept me up in a bone-crushing hug.
“We will, won’t we,” he whispered in my ear as I squeezed him back. “I think I can believe that now.”
“Heath,” Harry said softly. “Watch her face, mate.”
“Oh, right,” Heath said, setting me away from him slightly so he could look at the cut on my cheek. “Shit, V. That’s going to need stitches. If we head back, I’ll call Mark on the way. He’s plastics and he can…”
“I want you to stitch it for me,” I said, and he frowned.
“V, it’s on your face. It’d be better if plastics did the–”
I closed the distance between us in one step and placed my fingers lightly over his mouth to cut off his words. “I wantyouto fix me up. Just like when we were children. I want it to be you.”
“But it’s your face and–”
“I don’t care. Harry, do you care about a scar?”
“I care that you’re happy.”
I shrugged. “That settles it. Heath, you can get the supplies and stitch me up.”
“V, I–”
“We’llsort it,” I said in a fierce tone now. “We’ll sort the mess those monsters made. You and me. Just like we always have.”
He blinked then cleared his throat “Okay, V,” he said, his voice cracking on the words. “Just like always.”
Epilogue
One we made for ourselves
Verity
“So, you’re sure about this, are you?” Heath asked. “We can still turn the car around.”
“What are you on about?”
“Well, this Harry fellow seems like a stand-up guy, but if you don’t want to go through with this then–”
I turned in my seat to face him, my eyebrows in my hairline. “I’m seven months pregnant with his baby, Heath!”
He shrugged. “So?”
“So, I’m madly in love with him, pregnant with his baby, am already living with him and have adopted his cat. I’m not exactly marrying him on a whim.”
“I just want you to be happy.”
“He makes me happy.”
He smiled at me across the backseat of the car and took my hand in his, resting them both between us on the white lace of my dress, which was taking up the whole of the adjacent seat. My bump was so huge that it translated to a vast amount of material dress-wise.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“What?”
