We Belong Together by Beth Moran

Author:Beth Moran [Moran, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

It was a long night, spent twisting myself up in my duvet. After checking my old phone for the zillionth time, sure that this time I really had heard a notification ping through, I turned it off. I still heard the imaginary pings, but at least the remaining dregs of my rational self could now ignore them.

That wasn’t the only thing keeping my brain whirring. My restless thoughts constantly roamed back to Daniel. To his eyes, his smile, every time he’d ever spoken to me or looked at me or happened to walk down the hallway at the same time…

To where he lay, wearing scruffy lounge pants and a rumpled T-shirt, because even in March the farmhouse was still freezing at night, only a few metres away across the landing.

Most of all, I wondered whether he was thinking about me.

Nights like this, I ached for Charlie.

Hauling myself out of bed while it was still dark, I washed down a fortifying bowl of porridge with extra-strong coffee, stuck my hair in a ponytail, donned my scruffiest clothes, collected the necessary tools and climbed up to the top floor.

Since clearing Charlie’s old room, it had sat there empty of everything but the bare furniture. Some of it would stay – I planned to repurpose an old chest of drawers and a bookcase to put in the side room for Hope, along with her changing table from the study, and the rest would go in the barn in case we wanted to use it somewhere else later on.

But first, the unicorn wallpaper needed to go. I checked the steamer had reached boiling point, grabbed a scraper and got cracking.

I took a brief lunch break to watch Hope while Daniel went for a run. I felt him eyeing me, sensed the trace of concern and questions behind his veneer of normality. Daniel was ready to listen the moment I was prepared to talk.

Re-emerging from the clouds of steam much later, I showered and changed into a sloppy pair of lounge pants and went to rustle up something for dinner. Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table with a newspaper.

‘I cooked a rice thing.’

‘Oh?’ Surprised, I lifted the lid on a pot gently bubbling on the stove, dipping my head to investigate. ‘It smells fabulous.’

‘After working flat out since before dawn I’d imagine beans on toast would smell equally as delicious.’

‘No, I love chorizo and prawns together. And is that feta?’ I straightened up. ‘For a straight down the line cheddar guy, this is impressive.’

He kept his eyes on the newspaper, pretending not to be bothered, but his eyes crinkled up at the corners. ‘Well, your fancy metropolitan cooking ideas seem to have inspired me. And I presume Hope and I are going to benefit from all that bumping and scraping up on the top floor. This is the least I owe you.’

I fetched bowls from the dresser and ladled out two glistening mounds of deliciousness.

‘Well, I can’t start the master bedroom until you’re out of there, so that makes the top floor next on the list.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.