Page 101 of All We Want for Christmas
‘Yes to the first and I bloody hope not to the second. Can you help me up? My arse is getting soaked.’
‘I’ll try, but you’re not some elf, you know.’
‘Ha ha. Ouch.’
Somehow, breathing heavily, Lara helped him to his feet and handed over the crutches.
‘Thanks,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Where were you going?’
‘To the party at Carlos’s.’
‘I thought you were coming to mine?’
‘I saw you had a visitor and – well, I didn’t know what was happening.’
He sighed. ‘Neither did I – please come back to the cottage and give me a chance to explain. Then, if you don’t like what you hear, by all means go to the party. Though—’ he added with such hope in his voice that it made her melt. ‘I very much don’t want you to leave.’
‘Molly set me and Imogen up,’ Flynn explained, after he’d changed into dry shorts and a jumper in his bedroom. ‘She told her mum that I wanted to have a family party and asked Imogen to meet us here. You didn’t think I’d invite her when I’d already asked you?’
‘No, not really, but what could I do? I wasn’t going to intrude. There could have been an emergency or something. I don’t know. I waited a while then decided to go to Carlos’s party.’
‘You still can,’ he said, with a grin. ‘Though if you do, I’ll cancel the Uber Eats order and my flower arranging course will have been in vain.’
Lara noticed the table set for two and the greenery stuck in a vase with a couple of fading roses. She realised what a huge effort he’d gone to and was near tears.
‘Oh, Flynn.’
He took her hand and looked serious. ‘Please, sit down. Stay. At least until you hear what I have to say anyway.’
She sat next to him and he kept hold of her hand. ‘That day at the hospital … why didn’t you come into the HDU to see me?’
‘How did you know I was there?’
‘Mum and Dad mentioned they’d seen you. You must have known they would eventually.’
‘I … suppose so. I thought they might have been too worried to have recognised me or too busy to say anything to you.’
‘You should have told them who you were.’ He squeezed her hand.
Told them who she was? She daren’t let on she’d lied about being his fiancée when, in reality, she wasn’t technically anything to Flynn. Yet now she knew he was the man she’d fallen in love with, despite her vain attempts not to. The man who’d coaxed her out of her self-imposed exile.
‘Why didn’t you come and see me?’ he asked.
‘I saw Molly and Brenda by your bed – and a woman I guessed was Imogen. And afterwards your parents saw me waiting outside and they had enough to worry about and you had enough visitors. Nurses wouldn’t have let another one in. It wasn’t a party.’
Flynn shook his head. ‘God, I wish you’d come in to see me.’
‘You looked out of it and I’d seen that you were OK – alive at least – and so I went home.’
‘Do you know that, even though I was half-delirious,I did know one thing: I wanted to seeyou. I wanted you to be there by my bed to hold my hand and tell me everything would be OK.’ He lifted his fingers to her face and rested them there, making every nerve cell spring into life. ‘You’ve seen me at my lowest, heard me struggle, and stood by while I tried to sort my life out. It’s time that everything was all about you, Lara. It’s time I made it all about you.’
‘All aboutme?’ she murmured.
‘Yes. I want you to tell me what you’re really feeling. The stuff you’ve been too afraid to say.’
‘It’s too soon for that deep, intense stuff. We’ve known each other less than two months.’
He laughed. ‘Onlytwo months. I feel more has happened to me in those two months than in my whole life.’ He stroked her hand tenderly. ‘And it’s plenty long enough for two people to decide to be honest with each other.’
