I snorted. “Mind your business, nosey hole.”
Bailey giggled. “I guess a whack to the face serves me right for makin’ ye take salsa lessons and fracturin’ Noah’s leg.”
“Excuse me?”
I squeezed my eyes shut as AJ appeared at my side.
“Salsa lessons? You fractured Noah’s leg?”
“For God’s sake! It was a bastard of an accident!”
I launched into a retelling of how Bailey had tricked me and how I’d wound up paying for salsa lessons that Noah had never even asked for, then got to the part about how we tripped, fell and ended up in the hospital. AJ laughed so loud he woke Noah up.
“Shut it,” I warned him as I went to her side. “Hey, sasanach.”
Her face was contorted with pain. “My leg is burning, Elliot.”
“I know, love.” I brushed her hair back from her eyes. “D’ye remember what happened?”
“Vaguely.” She gulped. “Is it bad? My leg?”
“Ye need surgery.”
Noah’s eyes widened. “Oh, that’s not good.”
“No,” I agreed with a chuckle. “But the worst part is done.”
She wouldn’t look down at her leg.
“It’s reset,” I assured her. “Just really swollen and red.”
She nodded. “Did you ring my parents?”
I paused. “Shite. No. I was so focused on you.”
“I’ll ring them,” Bailey offered.
Noah looked at her with a grateful smile, then gasped.
“Your face, Bails, what happened?”
Bailey looked at me, and I cringed.
“Ye didn’t mean to . . . ye sort of knocked her in the face.”
“Oh, Bailey.” Noah’s lower lip stuck out ever so slightly. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m fine,” Bailey assured her. “Doesn’t even hurt.”
She was lying. I could tell it hurt her, but AJ had got her an icepack from somewhere and that would help. She dipped out of the cubicle to phone Noah’s parents for me.
“Did she admit to anything worth listening to?” AJ quizzed, leaning against the wall. “I love when patients are out of it on gas and morphine.”
He wasn’t taking this seriously at all, but to humour him, I spilled one of the secrets Noah had let slip.
“She said that she’s a member of a secret society of women who knit throw-overs and sell them on the black market.”
“Oh God.” Noah looked at me with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Elliot, I’m a criminal!”
I tried not to laugh at her because she looked absolutely horrified, but when AJ cracked up, I lost it and laughed into my hand. She wasn’t as loopy as earlier, but I could see in her pupils that she was still feeling the effects of the morphine.
“Elliot?”
“Sasanach?”
“I wonder if we can get you a refund on those salsa lessons . . . they were fucking rubbish.”
My laughter mingled with hers as her hold on me tightened. She was okay, and that was all that mattered. I may have been two hundred pounds down . . . but it would always be an anniversary to remember.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ELLIOT
Present day . . .
The walk down the pathway through the cemetery was a long and lonely one even if you were surrounded by people. As I passed by row after row of tombstones, I felt a small sense of comfort in knowing that hundreds of people at some point were feeling pain like I currently was, all because of someone they had to lower into the ground on this very patch of dirt.
I wondered if their pain was still as fresh as mine or if it had faded with time.
I didn’t look up as I neared row twenty-three. I absent-mindedly counted each row I passed by, and when I reached the one I was looking for, I passed by eight graves before I came to a stop. I turned to face forward but kept my eyes on my shoes for a long time before I found my voice.
“Hey, baby,” I whispered, using the nickname my sister had claimed to hate but I knew she’d secretly loved. I crouched down, cleared my throat and clasped my hands together. “I bet my ugly mug isn’t one ye were expectin’ to see today, huh?”
I gnawed on my lower lip, took a few steady breaths and forced myself to look up. I had to touch my hand to the ground to keep myself from falling on to my arse. Just being here felt like I’d taken a hundred punches to the gut.
“I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry I haven’t been by since your first day here, baby, but I . . . I guess I’ve been scared to come and see ye. Comin’ here made things feel permanent, and I didn’t want this to be permanent.”
The wind answered me with a low whistle, as a gust of dead leaves blew by my face.
“In me head I’ve been pretendin’ that nothin’ has happened to ye, that you’re just on holiday or really busy with uni and work. When that hasn’t worked I’ve been tryin’ me hardest not to think of ye at all, and I’m so sorry about that, baby.”
The backs of my eyes burned, but tears didn’t fall.
“I really miss ye, Bailey,” I said, my voice cracking as I exhaled a deep breath. “I miss ye so much, ye annoyin’ little shite.”
I stared at the oak cross with the tiny, polished gold plaque in the centre until I felt my chest burning with pain.
In loving memory of
Bailey McKenna
08.01.1998 – 19.03.2020
The little dash between her birth and death years didn’t look like much, but that small line was her whole entire life. It represented everything about her. Everything she ever thought, said or did. Every smile, laugh, and tear she shed. It was all in that tiny black dash. It was my little sister, my Bailey.
As I stared at her name, I thought back to the time of her first heartbreak, when she was just sixteen and felt like her whole world was ending. It was the first of many puppy-love heartbreaks, and one I would always remember.
“Elliot!”
I jumped when the door of my bedroom opened and slammed against the wall. I had the day off after working four days straight. I’d just come off
