Page 54 of Only Ever You

Bash’s pinched gaze darted between her and watching where he walked. “Spoons! Have you never heard that?”

“No.” She definitely hadn’t. Where did he come up with this stuff?

“Spoon Theory?”

Faye’s brows shot up, the expression saying she still didn’t understand.

“It’s like a metaphor for how much energy you have to give.” Bash shifted the back of his beanie, elaborating, “Though I think it’s more appropriate to people with chronic illnesses and such. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a term I should be using or not. It’s something I learned from Doctor Palmer” –his therapist– “but I like the idea of it.” He tossed her an unbothered shrug. “Spoons.”

Faye stared at him for a few more steps, because somehow that completely made sense.

“Do I need to buy you some spoons for Christmas?” she asked to keep things light.

Bash looked at her with a soft earnest in his eyes, the frost-touched field blurring behind him. “I always have all of my spoons when I’m with you, Peanut.”

Heartbeats all blended into one as a thread unwound itself from Faye’s heart and sent out to Bash’s. She didn’t completely understand what his confession meant, but a fragile, warm feeling at the show of his vulnerability simmered beneath all of her layers. It felt more significant than anything else he’d said to her recently.

Then her boot caught in a dip and her ankle snapped.

Bash’s hand shot out. “Woah—you okay?”

Faye caught her step before any damage was done. “Yeah. Just clumsy.”

What was it with the both of them and nearly breaking their ankles around one another these days?

“Faye? You good?” Matt called from the rear.

“Yes!” Though that’d teach her to not look at Bash and instead at where she walked when the ground was this frosty and uneven. The solid, earth indent of a tyre track wasnotthe same as a London pavement.

“You’re surrounded by a family of doctors if you weren’t.” Bash’s hand still hovered near her, his attempt at joviality failing to hide his concern.

“I’m okay, really.” Apart from a little breathless from the shock, she was fine.

The train of Phillips-Dumonts and their honorary plus one caught up to each other at the end of the track, where a gate connected the field with the next; locked with a chain, unsurprisingly. Their only way through was upand over a wooden stile which looked older than Faye. On the other side, the continuing track was muddied from where the frost started to melt.

Bash’s parents went first, then Saira. Matt lifted the girls up and over the stile one at a time.

“It’s a little slippery, Faye,” Arthur warned as the others began to walk on through the next field. “Take your time.”

Faye hesitated before even taking a step. The next thing she knew, a hand hovered at her waist.

“Here,” Bash said from behind her. “Let me go first? I’ll help you over.”

She was capable on her own, but Faye eyed the thin sheet of white frost on every surface of the rickety stile and decided she didn’t mind accepting Bash’s chivalry. Intrigued more than anything of how he would ‘help’.

“Okay, thanks.” Rambling wasn’t in her nature, and no matter how much she loved the views, Bash was more used to navigating these wooden things than her.

He stepped over the stile in a swift rotating move, hiking one leg up and over, followed by the next. Legs which were considerably longer than Faye’s and had no right to make that action more attractive to her than the thought of hot chocolate and warm marshmallows right then.

On solid ground, he offered out his hand which gave her something steady to grip onto.

She stood up on the first narrow step, twisted, and lifted her other leg over so she straddled the fence, though not quite tall enough to clear it without having it press up uncomfortably between her legs. No one had touched her there for a while and she was far too sensitive to pressure for it.

Bash’s eyes thankfully remained on her feet until both were on the step on the other side.

Arthur was right: the foot-long plank of frosted-over woodwasslippery. Faye’s boots moved even if the rest of her didn’t.

She went to dip one foot to step down, but the one she still stood on slipped, and the distance was further to the ground than she’d thought.

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