His hands shook as he pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of the laptop, opening their short text thread. They hadn’t needed to message one another much, seeing as they were usually together.
You left something,he typed quickly.
He sent the picture, laying his hand atop the lid as though it was a living, breathing thing. A tangible piece of her he could hold onto until she came back.
The three dots indicating that she was typing appeared. Stopped. Started.
Stopped.
He waited like a fool for minutes, expecting them to return, but they didn’t.
In the end, the reply never came.
“You’re late. Again,” Andy said, offering a reproachful glance as Fraser walked into Flockhart’s. Andy stood behind the brand-new front desk, which Jack and Fraser had built together but not yet painted. To Andy’s left, Jack hammered away at the frame of the new arched doorway to the dining room. The reception area might not have been finished quite yet, but it already felt much brighter and airier, drawing light from the dining room windows and giving a view of the old tree swing in the garden.
“Slacker,” Jack muttered, winking at Fraser before stepping down the ladder.
“Got caught up with something.” Fraser’s jaw ticked with a tension he couldn’t dissolve. He unfastened Bernard’s lead so the dog could roam freely, then set down his toolbox on the desk. On top of it lay Harper’s laptop.He hadn’t been able to just leave it. She didn’t have a key to the cabin, and what if she was on her way back for it now?
Deep down, he knew this was unlikely. Knew that he was just grasping for hope where it didn’t exist. He didn’t even know what he’d say to her if she did come back. “Sorry that your near-death experience sent me spiralling into a pit of self-loathing”? “Sorry that I care so much that I’m too afraid to be with you, too afraid to get my heart broken”? “Sorry I’m a fucking prick who doesn’t know what to do with all the things you make me feel”?
Nothing he said would change the truth: that he was a coward.
“Something, or someone?” Andy asked, their hazel eyes sparkling.
He ignored them. “Where do you want me?”
“Uh oh. He’s cocked up. I can tell.” Jack rubbed his hands together as though he quite enjoyed the idea. “First fight already? That must be a record.”
Fraser’s nostrils flared as he tried to keep his breathing even. He didn’t need this today. He just wanted to work so he wouldn’t spend hours, days, weeks thinking about her. He just wanted this weight on his chest to be lifted.
“Oh, shite,” Andy whispered, ducking their head to look up at him properly. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fraser—”
“Idon’twant to talk about it,” he uttered sharply, cutting them off.
Jack raised his brows in surprise. Andy stepped back, surrendering.
The uncomfortable silence soon grew stifling, and Fraser almost wanted to shout it out then and there.She’s gone. She’s left me. It’s all my fault.
Instead, he gripped his tape measure, snapping it open to figure out how long the skirting boards would need to be across the newly constructed staircase.
Working didn’t help any. In no time, he was reimagining that last interaction they’d shared. He’d dropped her off outside the cabin, hospital band still wrapped around her wrist. They’d barely spoken – because of him. Because he’d pulled away.
“Goodbye, Fraser,” she’d murmured.
He’d only grunted out a “See you”, relieved when she’d disappeared inside. He’d wondered what was wrong with him to react so drastically to what he knew was an accident. Why couldn’t he just suck it up, take the good with the bad the way most people did? Why was he so unbearably afraid of what he felt?
“Fuck!” A searing pain bit into his finger. In his distraction, he’d placed his hand too close to the bloody saw, and now blood gushed from the tip. “Fucking eejit.Stupidfucking eejit!” Anger rushed through him without warning, and he kicked the closest thing he could find: Jack’s box of tools.
Clutching his hand to his chest, he let out a guttural shout, no longer knowing if it was the pain in his finger driving him, or the one in his chest. He was just tired of this day. Tired of himself. Tired of everything. A week ago, he’d been happier than he’d ever known possible. Now, he was broken.
“Jesus, Fraser, stay still.” Andy rushed to him, grabbing his wrist firmly. “Let me look.” Their brows knitted in worry as they prised his hand away from his shirt,where already rusty blood stained the fabric. It trickled down his knuckles, and he stared at it without really seeing it, his breaths reduced to shallow gasps.
“Jack, get us a cloth or something,” Andy demanded.
