* * *
Escaping the mountain with Fen seemed a bigger adventure than it actually was. My heart was thundering like a runaway train before he’d even climbed into my piece-of-shit car with me.
I wondered if his heart was thumping too, considering he was about to endure my terrible driving all the way down the mountain path he didn’t trust me to traverse on foot.In the dark, idiot. It’s daylight now.But still. It was a treacherous road and my car was as temperamental as I was.
At least, it used to be. I turned the key in the ignition and the spluttering groan that usually greeted me was absent.
I shot Fen a dry glance. “Okay, who are you and what have you done with my moody alternator?”
Fen grinned. “They had one lying around at the garage. I swapped it for a six-foot fir and a box of logs.”
“You traded my car for a Christmas tree?”
“Yup.”
“What about labour costs?”
Fen shrugged. “He owed me a favour.”
“And you owe me a bill for the rest of it. And don’t even pretend you didn’t pay it for me, because I know you did.”
He didn’t deny it and I glared at him harder before I decided it didn’t fucking matter. I’d pay him back when we got to Manchester and we could forget all about it.
I eased my car out of Safia’s gate and to the mountain road. Fen kept his gaze on me, but he seemed tense, as if he was forcing himself not to keep tabs on my steering.
Sensing his struggle, I focused on the road, manoeuvring through the narrow twists and turns and trying not to think about the last time I’d driven in the snow and the dark, oblivious to the danger of Christmas Mountain. To the danger I’d put Charlie in.
Despite my best efforts, though, I did think about it, and when we reached the bottom of the fell, Fen rubbed my thigh. “Scared of heights?”
“What do you think?”
“That you’re angsting about something you can’t change.”
He spoke with a smile, a soft one that made his eyes sparkle. I pulled into the lay-by at the bottom of the mountain road and gave in to the urge to touch him.
My fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, and my forehead found a home pressed to his. “I’m trying to figure out what possessed me to drive up there in the dark with Charlie in the back of the car. Knowing I put him in danger is killing me.”
Fen took a breath, slow and deep. My lungs mimicked him of their own accord, as if we were connected on a level that was permanent.
Indelible.
Inevitable.
“You were upset,” he whispered. “Desperate, even. And you didn’t get all that far. Chances are you’d have come to your senses and driven right back down again anyway.”
“What if I hadn’t?”
“What if you had?”
“That’s a crap argument.”
“You can’t argue with something that never happened.”
I knew that. I dealt with offenders battling anxiety all the time and reasoning them out of theoretical catastrophes was a skill I was proud of. “It was so strange, that night. I’ve never felt the urge to come here before, but I was on the road before I knew what I was doing, and it wasn’t even Safia I was thinking about—it was this place and I don’t know why.”
“Do you need to know why?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I just—” Fuck. I had no clue what I was trying to say, or where it was coming from. All I knew for sure was that being here, in this moment, with Fen, was everything I needed.