Page 78 of Carry Me Home

‘We make a good team.’

The words sit in the car. I keep my eyes on the road.

‘We do,’ I say, and it’s true. We really do. But the part of today that was Cara and me, working together, saving an animal – that was real and good and uncomplicated, and I just wish the rest of it were that simple.

I sigh, letting it drift out of the open window, up into the Cornish sky.

‘I meant what I said. About the practice.’ She’s watching me. ‘I think we could build something that matters, and this is nothing about what happened at the wedding, who we used to be to one another, back in the day.’ She flashes me a smile. ‘This is about today and the future.’

‘Cara—’

‘You don’t have to answer now.’

I pull into the surgery car park, around the back from the harbour.

Cara unbuckles her seatbelt but doesn’t move to get out.

‘Tom.’

‘Yeah?’

She leans across the console and kisses me.

Her mouth is warm. Certain. Her hand comes up to cup my jaw, fingers along my cheekbone, her thumb at the corner of my mouth. She kisses me directly, without apology, with the full weight of a woman who has decided what she wants.

I don’t kiss her back.

But my body takes a breath, an involuntary lean, the mechanical response of a man whose nerve endings don’t care about the difference between wanted and needed. For three seconds, maybe four, I am just a body responding to warmth and pressure and the simple human fact of being chosen.

Then my brain catches up.

I pull back. Not sharply, but just enough. My hand on the gear stick. My breath unsteady.

Cara reads my face. She doesn’t look surprised. She looks like a woman who has planned for every outcome and is working with the one she expected.

‘Just think about it,’ she says. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’

She gets out of the car and walks into the surgery. I sit with my hands on the steering wheel and the warmth of her mouth fading from mine, along with the specific, unbearable knowledge that I felt nothing.

Not nothing. Warmth. Comfort. The pleasant pressure of being wanted by someone good. But underneath the warmth, underneath the comfort – the same hollow I’ve been carrying.

I wipe my mouth. I go inside. I shower. I don’t look out the window at the café.

Brynn and Jude’s place is the old Trelawney cottage, up and away from the village, which they are slowly rebuilding – low ceilings, mismatched furniture, the permanent smell of whatever Jude is attempting for dinner. Tonight it’s garlic. A lot of garlic. The windows are steamed.

Nina’s already there when we arrive.

She’s in the kitchen helping Brynn, laughing at whatever Brynn’s just said, sleeves pushed up, bangles sliding down her wrists. She looks up when I walk in and smiles.

Then her eyes move past me to Cara, and the smile stays but the warmth leaves it. A fractional shift. A door closing behind a window that’s still lit.

I see it. I file it.

‘There they are,’ Brynn says, waving a wooden spoon. ‘The heroes of Penrose Farm. Jack’s been calling everyone. You two saved his prize mare.’

‘Tom did the hard work,’ Cara says. ‘I just held things steady.’

‘Teamwork,’ Brynn says. ‘Love it. Sit. Jude’s made sangria and it’s either delicious or a health risk.’