Page 50 of The Fall I Fell

After laughs and tears, I took a break from Granny’s memories for a while to watch the stars from the window. They scattered across the night sky in their silvery clusters. Though there are millions, each one was just as sublime as the last.

‘It’s getting late,’ I remarked absently, noticing the chill of midnight seeping through the gaps in the treehouse. ‘I should head back. Try to get some sleep.’

Jacob looked up from the box of photos. The one in his hand, one of Granny and Grandad’s wedding day where her skirts jutted out so wide that grandad’s short arms had to stretch out just to hold her hand, made him smile as he showed it to me.

‘Just five more minutes?’ he asked, his eyes pleading.

‘It’s cold.’ Though I shivered, I didn’t want to leave, but the longer I stayed, the harder it would be.

‘Come here.’ He opened his arms for me to crawl into. He pulled his suit jacket off and wrapped it round my shoulders as I came closer, then pulled me into him. He was warmblooded to the core, and even in the harshest of cold snaps, he always seemed to throb with heat.

I couldn’t refuse. I tucked myself beside him as he pressed his body to mine. The cold was long forgotten as soon as his body pressed to mine and I flushed with warmth. My heart thronged with an erratic beat in my chest. As he looked down on me, his dark eyes looked almost black in the low light of the camping lantern.

‘Thank you, Jacob.’

‘What for?’ He scanned my face as though I was his night sky, and every last bit of me had to be savoured as there was no one part more worthy of his attention.

‘For today,’ I said simply. ‘For every day. I think you’re more of me than I am. Having you by my side makes me feel whole.’

That smile. The one filled with crooked teeth, and blushed lips. The one he reserved only for me. That smile put the very moon to shame as he beamed at me. When he slid a hand across my cheek and it settled in my hair, our shaking breaths aligned, until we trembled against one another. The other hand found its way to my waist, his usually warm touch sending shivers around my body until I pulsated beneath him.

When he pressed his lips to mine, I was home. They were the only part of his body that felt cool, but their touch set me alight from the inside.

His mouth, his touch, the fire throbbing through me made me realise that until this moment, I had never been complete. I had never known what it is to be whole, until Jacob Thorogood had kissed me.

Chapter 27

Now

‘Are you hiding from me?’ I find Jacob in the barn, clutching both of Hope’s kittens in his hands as their mother slaps a bit of hay across the floor. ‘Your mum invited everyone back for dinner, but we couldn’t find you anywhere.’ ‘You found me,’ he observes.

‘I always do, eventually.’ I meet him in the middle of the room, and he hands me a kitten. The thing is hardly bigger than my palm, and she sits against my chest purring away from the heat. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘I’m not hiding from you.’ He doesn’t look up from the kitten that’s fussing in his hand. ‘Like you say, you always find me, so hiding from you would be pointless.’

I take a few steps towards him, my breath trembling with each passing second. ‘I wanted to thank you, Jacob.’ I say, placing my hand on his arm, and forcing him to meet my eyes.

‘What for?’

‘What for?’ I roll my eyes. ‘For saving the day? For inviting everyone from London? For all of those photos? What you did … I never even thought someone could be so thoughtful. I was so ready to just accept defeat and give it all up, but you gave me a second chance, and that second chance was better than I could have ever hoped for. And those photos, Jacob – so many years of memories that I thought I just had to cling onto in my own mind – they’re the best gift. They’re priceless, and I really don’t know how I could ever repay you.’

Jacob’s eyes find the floor again and he takes a breath before he speaks. ‘You don’t need to thank me. That’s what friends are for.’

The words form a vacuum around us to steal the air from my lungs and stop my heart.

‘Friends?’ The question comes out of me deflated, hardly even voiced at all and full enough of my heartbreak for me to not need any other words.

Surely, we are more than that. There is no way this is all the act of a ‘friend’. What about everything Pen just told me? She said it herself, they’re not together – he ended things with her because of his feelings for me. And what about our late nights and the years of almost confessions? All those times I have fallen asleep in his embrace? What about all of the almost kisses, in the orchard, on the beach, or any place that we’ve been left alone in for long enough? What about that damned kiss in the treehouse that we’ve both pretended never happened? Are those the words and actions of a friend?

‘I’m sure if Freya was here, she’d have done the same. Or Oscar,’ he continues. Why is he continuing? Why isn’t he finally falling into my arms? Why aren’t we getting our happily ever after? Why are we all still pretending?

‘No, they wouldn’t, Jacob. They wouldn’t.’ I can’t summon any strength in my voice. It trembles in a pathetic whisper as I bite back the tears.

I step closer to him, reaching out for him, but he turns away, sets down the kitten, scruffs Hope on the top of her head, and mumbles something about being late for dinner before leaving the barn without looking back.

My own legs, however, have no strength in them to follow him. Collapsing onto a hay bale, I let myself cry freely and sob into the palms of my hands.

‘Mum’s looking for you guys,’ Will’s voice calls. ‘You need to get some food before—oh.’ His interruption comes too late as he finds me alone and breaking.