Chapter 1
Declan
Iwas deeply regretting coming home. To be clear, ‘home’ in this instance meant my parents’ house and itwasn’tactually home. I hadn’t lived with them for six years, since I’d graduated from university. But now, here I was, back under their roof and feeling like a child again.
My mum hovered around me, anxious and fussing and I knew it was because she loved me but I wished she’d stop.
I’d come out of hospital last week. My stump had healed about as well as it would but I was still adjusting and needed support.
I loved my parents and I was grateful for their support. I didn’t know what I would have done without them the past few months. But it was a lot. To lose my leg and then my apartment and then my independence.
My mum knocked on the door to my childhood bedroom.
“Declan? Are you ready?”
“Yes, mum.”
The words tripped off my tongue, exactly the same as they had years ago, when I’d lived here before starting my own life. I sighed and hauled myself to my feet. Well, my foot.
She was waiting outside the door for me, hovering nearby until I sat in the stairlift. No matter how many times I told her I wasn’t going to fall down the stairs, she never believed me. I gritted my teeth and said nothing. She hadn’t done anything to deserve my short temper, but nonetheless, it was hard to bite my tongue.
Dad drove me to my physiotherapy appointment. It was over in the town, about a fifteen-minute drive from my parents’ village.
We spent the drive in silence, the blustery early winter weather as grey and depressing as our car. God, I wished Sonny were there. I missed him more than I missed my leg. I felt unbalanced without his constant presence in my life but I couldn’t exactly ask him to put his entire life and career on pause to spend time with me in the middle of nowhere while I recovered.
Perhaps it wasn’t the drab countryside that was so grey, after all. Maybe it was just me.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said as I stepped out. It took me a moment to balance, and then I shut the car door.
“I’ll be here to pick you up, son.”
“Thanks,” I said again and began to make my way slowly inside.
I hadn’t realised quite how slow I’d be, actually. I’d given myself plenty of time to get there but I still only had two minutes to spare by the time I got into the reception area. Worse, I was panting with the effort. I felt so weak.
“Declan Yates?” asked the receptionist.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Go straight through. It’s the first door on your right.”
She indicated a corridor and I obediently set off, half annoyed that I hadn’t had a chance to sit down and rest and half grateful that I hadn’t, because getting up again could be tricky.
Just as I reached the door, my phone beeped with an incoming message. I had to lean against the wall and transfer my crutches to one hand and open my phone with the other. It was awkward and I most certainly wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, but that beep? That meant this message was from Sonny. The only one whose messages didn’t get a short vibration and nothing more.
I opened it and read.
SONNY: Good luck with your physio! I’ll call you later to get the gossip.
My heart lifted just a tiny bit. Sonny would call me later. That was a little ray of sunshine to look forward to.
Then my phone beeped again and another message appeared underneath.
SONNY: Hey, if it’s a guy and he’s hot, give him a grope from me.
SONNY: Consensually, of course.
That made me smile even as my chest tightened. Sonny was open about his sexuality and liked to flirt. It was beautiful to see. Mesmerising. That’s what made me smile. He would most definitely feel up a hot physiotherapist.
