Page 83 of The Damaged Hearts Bargain

“Excuse me, sorry, but I’m really in quite a hurry,” said a woman that Cal didn’t recognize.

Without missing a beat, Cal stepped behind the bakery, wrapped up the loaf of bread the woman wanted and took her money. “What were you going to say?” she asked George, handing the woman her change and moving onto the next one.

“I should give you a job.”

“Not funny,” said Cal, putting two sandwiches into a bag and accepting a five pound note.

“I think I might have ruined your happy ending, is what I was going to say,” said George. “And then I’m going to have to resign from working at a romance bookstore because I’ve defied romance, I’ve canceled the happy ending, I’ve thwarted true love.”

“Thank you very much,” Cal said to the teenager that wanted a croissant. She wiped her hands on her pants and came back around the counter, all out of customers. “Alright, stop having a break down. What exactly have you done? And I mean that in the literal sense, not the over-dramatic whatever it is that you’re doing kind of way.”

George blew out a breath. “We bought her a train ticket,” he said miserably.

“A train ticket.”

He nodded. “Billy and I thought it’d be good for her to get away and practice being in London for a weekend. We didn’t think… I didn’t think, that we’d be ruining her grand gesture moment. I mean, how was I to know that you’d finally come to your senses and decide that Lucy is the greatest woman on earth?”

Cal thought about this for a millisecond. “London. A train to London. What time did it leave? Where is she staying?” Because this wasn’t going to wait.

“Um, she’s staying at that art institute place and the train left at…” He checked his watch. “Actually, it’s going in ten minutes.”

Cal didn’t have time to say anything else, she just dashed out of the bakery and jumped into the van. “To the train station,” she said to Syd.

“Um, I don’t know where that is.”

“I’ll direct you, get a move on.”

???

It wasn’t that she was afraid exactly. She’d lived on the streets. She’d spent plenty of time alone. It was more that she was… anxious perhaps. Going all the way to London, being in a big city, and doing it all alone. She was definitely prepared to do it, she definitely wanted to do it, but equally she was just slightly terrified of doing it alone.

Of course, a week ago she wasn’t going to do it alone. Cal was going to come, was going to help, was going to support her, and that had seemed so right at the time. So perfect.

Lucy heaved the suitcase she’d borrowed from Billy up onto the rack above her head. The train was half empty.

She wasn’t blaming Cal. Not at all. She just wished things could have turned out differently. She wished that for them both. And now that she knew the truth, or as close as she was likely to get to the truth, she genuinely hoped that Cal would… what? Feel better? Live differently? Maybe she wished that Cal would see herself a little more like others did.

The mural had been a snap idea, something that she’d put little thought into but had known she needed to do. People needed to know that Cal wasn’t who they thought she was. She hoped that Cal would see it, that she might even go into the pub and talk to Rosalee about it.

Rosalee knew the truth and could fill her in on the details. And maybe, when Lucy came back, maybe Cal might still be around. Not that she was expecting a grand reunion. But she’d like to explain things to her.

As for right now, well, she was fancy free and on her way to London. The future awaited wide and open. Oh, and scary. That too.

She settled into her seat, the material scratchy against the back of her head.

This was just a weekend, she reminded herself. She’d be back. And even when she left for her residency, she’d still be back. Tetherington was home. And home meant a lot to her, even the word meant a lot. It made her joyous and warm inside and she wasn’t going to give that up now she’d found it.

She just hoped that one day she’d find a person to go with that home.

She checked her phone. Five minutes until the train left.

???

“Bloody, bloody, bloody traffic,” moaned Cal. “This is why I ride a bike.”

“So you can slide through side streets like a leather-clad James Bond?” Syd said.

“So that I can avoid the stupid traffic. We’re never going to make it.”

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