Page 103 of Only Ever You

Agony.

Last night had been the best kiss of his life all because of Faye, and now the chances were slim that it’d ever happen again.

They’d gotten carried away in the moment.

End of story.

Did Bash know for certain though? No. Because he’d hardly spoken to her all day.

They’d manoeuvred around each other after waking up, like always. Had breakfast with his family, like always. Gone on one last final ramble through the fields like they’d done every day. All of it in a near total silence that was—What was the word he was feeling?Agony.

He’d tried to smile and make normal conversation, but at breakfast he’d decided to hang around his nieces and soak up their attention, since he didn’t know if he’d see them again soon, and on the walk he’d stayed beside Matt for the same reason.

Only now … he was stuck with Faye.

Literally.

The radio of his car finally announced the cause of the motorway backlog: an upturned lorry that’d skidded in the slush of melted snow. Three hours of driving and they’d been sitting idle for one of them. Miraculously no one was hurt, but itwasgoing to take a while to pick up twenty thousand chocolate biscuits – and an eighteen-wheeler – off of the road.

“Oh my god,” Faye said, somewhere between a gasp and an irritated moan.

Bash cut off the engine once more and slumped back. “I guess we’re stuck.”

One hour since they’d last travelled at any speed, and they’d not even moved half a mile.

The sky turned black with its early sunset. Bash was hungry and grouchy and still in a hungover state of horniness from having his hands on the woman less than three feet away to his left, last night.

He should never be allowed to act on his stupid impulses again.

“There’s a junction not far ahead,” he said, rubbing at his temples to try andlessen the headache that came on from wondering how long they’d have to sit here. “I think we should get off. Find another route home.” Though everyone else in this three-lane crawling traffic probably wanted to veer off at that junction too.

“How?” Faye sounded just as irritated, and for a reason which made no sense to Bash, it turned him on even more.

She looked pretty today – she was always beautiful – but today her shoulder-length blonde hair was a little wild from wearing a beanie on the walk, her nose permanently pink.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Could you look onMaps?”

Faye pulled up the app on her phone, typed, then moved her fingers around the screen.

Bash chose to close his eyes and rest his head back. Nothing in front of them moved anyway so it didn’t really matter if he looked at the road or not. The ignition wasn’t even turned on.

“Oh!Wait—wait—wait!”

“Waiting,” he mumbled. “It’s not like I’ve got anything else to?—”

“I have the best idea.”

“—Do.” Bash peeled open an eye.

That pissed off look on Faye’s face like she’d contemplated getting out of the car and walking the rest of the way back to London had gone. She held up her phone and, intrigued, Bash listened to the beep of the dial tone.

“Darling! Hello!” Came a bright and masculine voice on the other end.

“Hi Dad.”

Morris Whittaker.Bash had met the stereotypical Englishman more times than he could count over the years. Now grey, he looked a lot like Faye – or Faye looked a lot like him. He’d never seen Morris and Faye’s biological mother in the same room to be able to differentiate the resemblance.

The man was a golden retriever on steroids. It was so strange to Bash to try and reconcile the person he knew, who always had a smile and a story to tell him, with Faye’s recollections of arguing and fighting with her mother from when she was a child.

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