Look Back at Me (Fleckney Fields Series, Book 1)

Hey Babe!

2/2 <3

She always loved driving with Rhys. She might have been the only one, though. He had no respect for speed limits and no patience for other drivers. Nonetheless, she felt safe in his massive pickup trucks, knowing he was in full control of his vehicle, his long-fingers hands relaxed on the wheel. Just as before, the inside of his truck was clean- he kept his car much tidier than his home - and smelled of his cologne. She climbed up and in, and heard a quiet chuckle behind her.

"If you ask me if I need a ladder, I'll buy crisps at a petrol station and will drop crumbs all over your truck," she grumbled.

She could see he was still laughing, walking around his truck after he closed the door behind her. She buckled the seat belt and looked outside. By lunch time, everyone in Fleckney Woulds would know she left in his car. On her birthday. With flowers. It probably would look like they were from him. Viola pressed her forehead to the cold window glass. Somehow she couldn't care less. Somehow it just didn't hurt as much as it always did on this day - and she was grateful for his presence.

He got in and started the car. She assumed he remembered where to go. He'd been at both their funerals.

When her Da had passed away, peacefully, in his sleep, in the nursing home, she'd gotten a call from Rhys. She'd been in contact with Maisie, and allowed Maisie to disclose it. He'd asked if she wanted to see him at the funeral - and she'd been surprised to say 'yes.' At the time she'd been still married to Hani. Rhys had approached them once at the cemetery and hadn't stayed for the wake.

When her Mum had died two years later, she'd already divorced Hani. He'd been in Yemen then, with MSF, and she'd once again allowed Maisie to tell Rhys. He'd come - and had held her while she'd cried into his jacket at the cemetery. He'd driven her to her flat after the wake - and that was the last time she'd seen him before he'd walked onto her in her lingerie in Nana's kitchen.

"Rhys, why are you taking me to my parents' graves?" she asked, without turning away from the window. The landscape outside was grey and joyless.

"Because you asked me to," he said in a confused tone. "What do you mean?"

"Why show up at my door? On my birthday? You surely didn't expect me to be in a welcoming mood," she said, still without facing him.

"I thought you'd want to get away," he repeated what he'd said earlier.

"It's always so simple in your mind," she grumbled.

"It never is in yours," he quipped back.

She threw him a side glance and saw a small smile on his lips.

"You aren't answering my questions," she said.

"I am," he said. "You just don't like the answers."

She remembered that! He tended to answer questions directly, and she'd thought then, ten and more years ago, that he'd been purposefully obtuse, evasive, ignoring the subtext. And now she suddenly thought that perhaps, it was just that simple in his mind.

She glanced at her watch. It was only nine o'clock, but she already felt tired. The day weighed on her, and she let it, watching villages and bare Winter groves rush by.

"Do you want to stop somewhere?" he asked in about half an hour. "For coffee? Or food?"

"Yeah, sure," she said bleakly.

"I know just the place," he answered.

They drove in silence for another twenty minutes, and then he got off the motorway, into a small village, and parked his truck in front of cosy looking tearooms. She waited for him to open the door for her and hopped out.