Page 113 of Safe Hands

“I know.”

“I mean it. I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here, in a car that smells of two different dogs, with a seat that’s trying to impale you.”

Carly huffed out a laugh. “It’s quite close.”

“I warned you.”

“You did.”

The last floodlight went off, and the car was suddenly darker and smaller.

“Are we doing this?” Lauren asked.

She’d meant it to sound casual. It came out shaking.

Carly didn’t look away. She didn’t reach for a joke or a word with no room in it.

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay.”

She leaned across the gearstick, slowly, giving Carly every chance to change her mind. Carly didn’t. She met her halfway.

This kiss was nothing like the first. No grief in it, no flinch. Carly’s mouth was cold for about a second, and then it wasn’t. It was slow and certain and a bit clumsy, because the gearstick was in the way, Carly’s kit bag was still on her lap, and the spring in the passenger seat chose that exact moment to make itself known. Carly laughed against Lauren’s mouth, and Lauren laughed too, and then neither of them was laughing. Carly’s hand came up to Lauren’s cheek, cold enough to make her gasp, and Carly swallowed the sound. Lauren’s fingers found the back of Carly’s neck, where her hair was coming loose and still damp from training. The fan roared uselessly. Lauren could taste salt, and under it, just Carly. They kissed in a leisure centre car park with the windows misted over, fifteen years late and exactly on time.

When they broke apart, Carly rested her forehead against Lauren’s.

“Your windows,” she said, “are completely steamed up.”

“That’s the heater.”

“Is it.”

“Mostly the heater.”

Carly smiled. Not the polite one. The one Lauren had seen once on a cold pitch after a sliding tackle and had been hoping to see again ever since.

“Take me home,” Carly said.

“Yours or mine?”

“Yours.” Carly leaned back, finally, and dropped the crumpled Santa hat on the dashboard. “Berkeley’s there. And I’d quite like to see him.”

“Just Berkeley?”

Carly looked at her.

“No,” she said. “Not just Berkeley.”

34

Carly

Carly’s own car was still sitting in the leisure centre car park, and she didn’t care.

That was new. She’d collect it tomorrow. Or Lauren would drive her. Or she’d walk. Somewhere between the floodlights going off and the Volvo coughing onto the ring road, the logistics had stopped mattering, and she’d let them.

Lauren kept glancing across at every red light, as if checking she was still there.