‘He’s in recovery and he’ll be there all night. Well, what’s left of the night,’ said the doctor, glancing at her watch. ‘I’ll clear you to see him tomorrow, but we’ll be needing some time with him first. Rehab starts early with this sort of injury and we’ll not be calling you until he’s managed a walking lap of the ward, so get some sleep.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Are you planning on spending the whole night in here?’
Hannah stared at herself in the mirror: tired eyes, tear-tracks of mascara, a crumpled daggy dress puffing out around her hips. ‘Not anymore, I’m not.’
She stayed in the cheap motel the hospital doorman had recommended. Warm sunlight floated across her when she woke to the sound of her phone. It chirruped again and she lunged for it, pulling it off the charger so wildly the bedside lamp tottered to the floor with a crash.
A number she didn’t know.
‘Miss Cody?’
‘Yes?’
‘This is Samuel from the hospital. There’s a certain patient in Room 308 who’s wondering where you are.’
‘He’s awake?’
‘Awake and filled with attitude.’
A muffled voice came through the receiver. ‘Hang on a sec, Miss Cody. He’s snapping out orders from his bed again.’
She put the phone on speaker then ripped open her duffle bag and started pulling on clean jeans, listening to the half-heard conversation.
‘Everything okay?’ she said when Samuel came back on the line.
‘Tom wants me to tell you to get your arse over here and bring decent coffee, or you can look forward to finding a frog in your boot some day real soon.’
She grinned. Tom really was feeling okay. ‘Tell him I’ll put it on his tab.’
He was standing in that same sunlight, a square shaft of it that turned his hair into pale flame. The hospital issue gown of yesterday was gone, replaced with jeans older than hers, a navy sweater that looked homemade. Mrs LaBrooy’s work, she thought fondly. Taking care of her boy, as always.
She stood in the crack of the door for a moment and rested her eyes on him.
Tom.
She hadn’t known she was running away from fate that day all those months ago, when he’d kissed her in Buttercup’s stable and she’d panicked. She’d been damaged, still. Raw where it mattered, down deep where her emotions lived. Tom had helped soothe the wound.
Being loved—even in his sneaky, I-don’t-love-you way—had helped to do that.
Because that’s what he’d been doing, even when he was saying differently, even when he was driving her nuts. It was love he’d shown her when he dragged her off the guy she walloped. Love when he came calling with an apple pie in a box. It had been love when he’d held her in the gutter so she could cry away her humiliation. Love when he’d gently suggested her baby plan was bonkers.
And now it was her turn to show him how good she could be at loving someone.
She stepped into the sunlight. ‘Looking good, sailor. Although, I’m not sure who let you get out of bed.’
He turned to face her and all the worry and rush and heartache of the last few days—well, months and bloodyyears, really, but who was counting—blinked out.
‘Hannah.’
‘I managed to get my arse here, as you can see. Coffee, too,’ she said.
‘Come closer so I can check it out.’
‘Milk, no sugar, right?’
‘I wasn’t talking about the coffee,’ he said, and that grin that he so rarely wore was there, just how she liked to see it, aimed right at her.
