Page 102 of Safe Hands

Drive safe, mate. And she’d taken it as the answer.

She pushed the door open.

Lauren looked up and tugged out an earbud, and her face rearranged itself before the door had swung shut. “Alright? I’ll be out of your way in five.”

“You’re fine.” Carly sat on the end of the bench.

After a moment, Lauren came and sat on the other end, a careful foot of padded vinyl between them.

“I was rude earlier,” Carly said.

“You weren’t.” Lauren pulled out the other earbud and turned it over in her fingers. “It was a lot to put on you. I shouldn’t have—”

“You should.” She made herself slow down. “If the offer still stands, I’d like you to take Berkeley.”

Lauren stopped turning the earbud. “Really? You don’t have to say yes to make me feel better.”

“I’m not. I’m saying yes because you moved the armchair.”

Lauren frowned. Then it cleared. “That was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing to him.” Carly looked at her hands. “I’m sorry I couldn’t answer you earlier.”

“That’s okay.”

Lauren was waiting for an explanation, and Carly couldn’t find the words. It came down on her as it had on her dad’s doorstep last night, heavy enough that she worried it would bury her if she let it come all at once.

“He’s my dad’s dog,” she said. “If he leaves Dad’s house…”

Her dad had said goodbye to Berkeley dozens of times lately, every time they shunted him somewhere else. This would be the last. Whatever Lauren said about just until things settle, nothing was going to settle. Berkeley wasn’t going home, and once her dad went into care, neither was he.

“This is the bit I’ve been dreading,” she said, looking at their feet side by side on the rubber matting. “Letting someone else have him means it’s really happening.”

Lauren didn’t answer straight away. When she did, all she said was, “I’ll take good care of him.”

“I know you will.” Carly’s hands were trembling. She sat still and let them, listening to the hum of the strip lights. She’d never heard them before. The gym was always too loud.

Lauren shifted beside her. “You don’t have to do everything on your own, you know.”

Carly huffed. “It’s been my entire strategy so far.”

“Maybe it’s not a great one.”

Lauren looked at Carly’s hands, still trembling in her lap. For a moment she seemed to be deciding something. Then she reached across the gap and laid her own hand over them, warm and steady, the way she rested a hand on a client before she started, so they knew where she was.

Carly didn’t pull away. She turned her hand over and held on.

When she looked up, Lauren was already watching her.

“I’m glad it’s you,” Carly said. “Looking after him.”

Lauren searched her face as if checking she’d heard right.

Then she leaned in, slowly enough that Carly could have turned away.

Carly didn’t. The kiss was cautious at first, barely more than a brush of Lauren’s mouth against hers, warm and tasting faintly of salt, and she leaned into it, her free hand closing in the fabric of Lauren’s shirt before she quite knew she was doing it. The cotton was damp under her knuckles.

The kiss changed before she could stop it. Lauren made a small sound against her mouth, half surprise and half something else, and the caution went out of it. Carly answered because her body had decided before her brain was anywhere near the room. She could smell rubber matting and chalk and Lauren’s shampoo, and she could hear her own pulse.