Sticks and Stones

by Susie Tate

  ‘You must be Frankie,’ he guessed, softening his tone and earning a small smile from her, unfortunately her shyness had yet again overtaken her and she was unable to actually voice a greeting. As always, Lou was there to rescue the situation. Dylan’s father might not have been what she was used to but, being Lou, she was not in the least intimidated.

  ‘Mr Griffiths,’ she semi-shouted over the noise around them in her ultra posh crisp accent, leaping forward to press a kiss to his cheek and distracting him from Frankie’s fearful regard, ‘fabulous to meet you. May I say you’re so much more attractive than your son.’ Her eyes were twinkling as she winked up at him, and Dylan’s dad looked very much like he had fallen in love on the spot.

  Dylan had to admit that when he had suggested they all go and stay at his family’s pub for the Easter break he hadn’t expected Lou to enjoy it quite as much as she did. It didn’t seem to matter how English or how upper class she was, his entire family and, it seemed, everyone in his town absolutely adored her.

  His mam, who had visited Dylan frequently over the preceding year and was well aware of how much Lou was looking after him, was already a huge fan of hers, and it didn’t take his father and even his sister long to fall well and truly under her spell. His sister had been sixteen at the time and very into hero-worshipping her big brother. Much to Dylan’s disgust Lou attempted to put a stop to that ‘rubbish’ as she called it, asking instead about Bethan’s hopes and dreams. Having a beautiful, intelligent woman take her plan to own her own beauty salon in the future seriously was a turning point for Bethan, who being the less academic sibling, had always felt like a bit of failure up until that point.

  So, after those few days at home, Dylan’s parents not only credited Lou with their son’s successful start to medical school, but also their daughter’s newfound confidence. For his part Dylan had never seen Lou as happy. She was in her element in the pub atmosphere, joking and setting up a darts championships with the regulars, winning them over despite the differences in their backgrounds, and effortlessly drawing a shy Frankie and an amused Mike into the fun.

  At the time Dylan didn’t fully understand the tears in Lou’s eyes as she was enveloped in the hugs from each member of his family before they left. He understood a little more when he learned about her own cold upbringing, but it was only after another eleven years had passed that he could truly comprehend what she was yearning for, and by that stage he was more than determined to see that she got it.

  .

  Present day…

  ‘Yup, there’s no need for you to pay for a nurse, when Mum can do it just as well.’

  ‘I can afford it Dylan,’ Lou sighed and rested back on the bed. ‘I can more than afford it. You know that.’

  ‘Right, yes, I do know that,’ he said and, unusually for easygoing Dylan, his voice was laced with steel. ‘What I also know is that I’ll not let you be looked after by ffwcin* strangers who don’t know what you like to eat, what dvds you want to watch, what magazines you read, that you always have to have a box of Bendicks mints in the house and you try to hide it but you feel physically violent towards anyone who eats the gold ones, that you like you feet rubbed but not your toes, that you still have a blanky under your pillow and you don’t like it to be washed very often (rank by the way but each to their own). You might have enough money to hire an entire fleet of nurses, cooks, cleaners, whatever, but you are going to be looked after by people who care about you.’

  ‘Dylan, we’ve barely spoken for over a year.’

  ‘That was your decision Lou, not mine.’

  ‘I – ‘

  ‘And I understand why you did it. I was a complete prat; I know that. But you’ve had your time to be pissed off with me. It was a long freaking time as well, but that’s over now.’

  ‘You don’t get to tell me when it’s over Dylan Griffiths,’ Lou said, crossing her arms across her chest. ‘It’s up to me whether I forgive you or not.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Dylan shrugged. ‘You decide when to forgive me, but in the meantime I’m not going anywhere.’

  Lou was so frustrated she actually growled. ‘You are the most irritating, stubborn, annoying…Ugh…how do you even still have a key? I made you give me back yours before I left for Africa.’

  ‘I…well I…’ Dylan shifted uncomfortably for a minute then stared straight at her, totally unashamed as he said, ‘I made a copy.’

  With that, Lou’s temper, which had been hanging on by a thread, snapped. She grabbed the closest thing to her and threw it at his head. Seeing as the closest thing had been a pillow, this action didn’t have quite the impact she was hoping for as it hit Dylan in the chest with a soft thump. Looking at his smirking face Lou could feel the red mist descending. How dare he push her around and think he knew what’s best for her? She snatched up the water glass from her bedside table and hurled it at Dylan’s face. He ducked and the glass smashed on the wall behind him.

  They looked at each other in stunned silence for a moment before Dylan’s face broke into a huge grin. He stalked towards her saying, ‘Knew she was still in there. Knew that a bit of pain and major surgery couldn’t take all the fight out of you.’

  Lou was too shocked by her own behaviour to speak. What was she thinking? She could have seriously hurt him. So when Dylan bent and kissed her on the lips for the third time that day, she was too distracted to do anything but kiss him back.

  ‘Hello there? Kids?’ They heard shouted from the living room, causing Lou to come to her senses and pull back from him. His hands were framing her face and hers were buried in his hair as she stared into his green eyes, watching as they flashed with irritation, and then closed slowly before he rested his forehead on hers.

  ‘Dylan Griffiths, get out here and help me with this shopping.’ There was a lot of rustling followed by an alarming amount of crashing coming from Lou’s kitchen.

  ‘Perfect bloody timing Mum,’ Dylan muttered as he reluctantly moved back from Lou, but not before kissing her briefly once more, then smiling at her stunned expression.

  Lou lay back into the bed and listened to Dylan and his mother banging about, putting what sounded like a colossal amount of food away whilst bantering affectionately back and forth. She sighed, with Bronwen in the mix it was unlikely that she was going to be able to revert to the nursing agency plan in a hurry.

  She’d come up with it in hospital after realizing she was going to need a fair amount of help to get through the first couple of weeks at home. Most people would have family to care for them, but with Jimbo in Africa and her mother a complete non-starter in the caring stakes, she was out of options. Frankie and Sarah were at first adamant that they could look after her, but they had their own children to think of, and Lou just didn’t want to impose. Anyway after the first day of arguing with her they both seemed to back off completely, and, with the benefit of hindsight Lou could see that that was more than a little suspicious. The question was why they would be happy to let Dylan look after her, given the way they knew she felt about him since last year? It didn’t make any sense. Gingerly pushing herself up onto her feet she made it to the mirror and barely recognized the pale, haunted face staring back at her. Grabbing a hair band from her dresser she tied the blonde tangled mass up into a messy knot, wincing as the move pulled on her scars. She reached for her makeup bag but her hand froze; no amount of makeup was going to do her any good at the moment.

  ‘Hey Mother Teresa,’ Lou called from across the living room, having decided that now was as good a time as any for a showdown with Bronwen. Bronwen whipped around to see Lou standing in the doorway of her room and smiled.

  ‘Beautiful Lou,’ she said moving across the living room to get to her, the tiny bells on her skirt jingling as she went. Bronwen was one of the most eccentric, kind and extremely Welsh people Lou had ever met. She had dark hair and sparkling green eyes like her son, but that was where the similarities ended. Bronwen had a petite well-rounded figure and she dressed lik
e some sort of crazy Welsh gypsy with long flowing skirts and an overabundance of scarves. As she drew up in front of Lou her expression changed from excitement to shock, then settled on concern.

  ‘Oh cariad,’ she muttered, searching Lou’s face, and no doubt taking in the dark circles under her eyes and her sunken cheeks. Lou watched in fascination as Bronwen’s expressive eyes filled with tears as she reached up to tuck a stray strand of Lou’s blonde hair behind her ear. The sight of Bronwen’s uncensored reaction was enough to tip Lou over the edge and she felt her nose sting with the effort of holding back the emotion. Bronwen reached out and pulled Lou in for a tight hug. Maternal affection had been in short supply in Lou’s life and the feeling of being engulfed in Bronwen’s softness was almost too much. Lou’s body bucked with a sob as she held on for dear life. ‘Ah cariad, you give it all to Bronwen now. There’s nothing a good cwtch can’t solve.’

  Lou looked over Browen’s shoulder as she cried. She saw a box of Bendicks mints on the counter, along with diet, cherry cokes and all her favourite magazines. She tried to fight it but she knew the warm feeling in the pit of her stomach was spreading, and despite everything, she did not have the strength to fight anymore. There was no way she could resist this, and for the moment she was going to give in. For once in her life she was going to let herself be taken care of.

  Chapter 28

  Slwtens

  Dylan listened as Lou made another of those weird hairball noises in the back of her throat. She lay sprawled across the bed and him, completely unguarded and uninhibited. This was why he always made sure to wake a good hour before he knew she would; it was the only opportunity he had to catch her with her guard down, and definitely the only opportunity to feel her soft body pressed against his.

  She’d gone back to wearing her skimpy pyjama sets, which he took as a good sign. But then again he had been enjoying seeing her in his t-shirts; it had felt like he was a step closer to her actually belonging to him. Sheets of her thick, shining, wavy hair were spread loose down her back and over his arm at her waist, her long eyelashes casting shadows over her cheeks, which already had a much healthier glow. Her graceful jaw jutted out as she ground her teeth, still making the weird noises in the back of her throat, and Dylan didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so beautiful. She was starting to stir and after a few minutes she flopped away from him in the bed, her arms going above her head as she lay on her back. The movement exposed the lower half of her abdomen, and Dylan’s jaw clenched as he saw the vivid red line down the centre from the laparotomy, and the smaller inch long scar next to it from one of the stab wounds. He’d become used to the sight of her scars by now, having slept in bed with her for the last two weeks. Even though the laparotomy scar was the longest, running the entire length of her stomach down the midline, he found that he actually loved it; it represented the saving of her life and for that reason he hoped it never faded. In contrast the smaller scars from the stab wounds he absolutely hated, and had to tamp down the familiar anger he felt every time he caught sight of them.

  That evil son of a bitch was recovering on the ward now. There was still some minor brain damage from the beating he took, but the bastard was having rehab. Rehab. As if he deserved to be rehabilitated after what he’d done. If it wasn’t for the fact that the evidence against him was so compelling that he was guaranteed a lengthy prison stay, Dylan would consider finishing the job that Alun had started. She shifted again and Dylan carefully moved forward, burying his face in her neck and thick hair, and inhaling deeply. He knew from experience that he only had a few more minutes until she was fully awake and back on her guard, and he wanted to make the most of what time he had left.

  It was two weeks since he’d brought her back to the flat and essentially moved himself and his mum in with her. After that first argument when she had hilariously thrown the glass at him, she had been surprisingly compliant with the situation. Dylan suspected it had something to do with his mum’s arrival. He wasn’t above playing dirty to get what he wanted, and he knew that she wouldn’t say no to Bronwen. At this point he was fully prepared to use every weapon he had to wear her down. There was no way a bloody stranger was looking after his Lou.

  When Frankie had told him that plan it felt like it was he that had the knife plunged into his gut. Of course Frankie and Sarah weren’t going to let her use the agency, but Dylan decided that it was time to make sure everyone knew where he stood when it came to Lou. Frankie was sceptical, but when Dylan took her aside and told her what he’d found in Lou’s wardrobe she reluctantly gave in, after promising to put him in the hospital if he hurt her again. He had never heard Frankie threaten anyone with violence before, and despite her size and angelic appearance, the gleam in her eye and the stony expression she wore as she issued it made her sound surprisingly menacing.

  He had managed to get two weeks off work, and even though everyone had agreed to back off and let him look after her, that did not mean they trusted him. The flat was like Charing Cross with the amount of visitors Lou had every day (thankfully none of whom included her actual family) and Dylan had had to lay down the law on more than one occasion when he could see Lou was flagging.

  But, however tired she was, Lou never allowed him to turn away the children, especially Benji who was one of the most frequent visitors. Despite all his bravado it seemed that Benji was having a few problems since the attack. When he was over at the flat he stayed close to Lou the entire time, shadowing her movements in a way that was almost disturbing. When Dylan asked Sarah about it she’d told him that Benji had been having nightmares so extreme that he would wake the entire house with his screaming. The only uninterrupted nights he had were those after he’d seen Lou in the day; hence frequent visits that included not only Benji, but also his three brothers and often Lucy thrown into the mix. In Dylan’s opinion this was not restful, but Lou seemed to almost draw strength from cuddling the toddlers or talking to the boys, almost as though their sheer life force was healing her.

  The fact that she had been letting Dylan sleep in her bed, and in her sleep had proceeded to wrap herself around his body, had been encouraging. She had also seemed to accept his sustained assault of regular and casual affection, which he had embarked on since she left hospital. He reasoned that the sooner she got used to it the better. He wasn’t going anywhere, and eventually he was going to wear her down. But over the last couple of days the colour had slowly been coming back to Lou’s face, and along with it he could see her building up her strength to pull away from him.

  The year he’d spent without her had been the worst of his life, and seeing her hurt had definitely been one of his worst experiences. She could push him away all wanted; he was staying put. Ever since he’d found that box in her wardrobe he was convinced that he could win her over, but recently that conviction had been wavering. He could feel her slipping through his fingers, and, other than at night when she wrapped herself around him in sleep, he felt like he was losing the little ground he had gained.

  He felt her shift again and pulled back from her neck to see her beautiful sky-blue eyes staring up at him. As with every morning, when she woke up a look of pure wonder passed across her face before she masked it and withdrew behind her shield again. Yes, he thought to himself, definitely making progress.

  ‘You two keen on a cooked breakfast?’ he heard from behind the bedroom door, then closed his eyes in frustration as it was pushed open and his mum peered her head round. ‘It’s your first day back today isn’t it cariad? Need to make sure you’re on top form for saving lives and all that.’

  His mum had actually moved out a week ago when Lou had stopped needing any help with showers and the like. She had told them that, now Lou could do everything for herself in the bathroom, that she wanted to give them some time alone together before Dylan had to go back to work. Lou had rolled her eyes and told her that she could take Dylan with her, but to Lou’s obvious exasperation his mum just laughed her off, as she had done all Lou’s
attempts to put her straight about the nature of their relationship over the last two weeks.

  His mum might have moved out but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still making full use of the key Dylan foolishly gave her, along with his dad and sister.

  ‘Mam,’ Dylan said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve told you not to just burst in here this early. It’s weird and it freaks me out.’

  ‘Pah! Fiddlesticks. You’ve never been a shy boy and it’s not the first time I’ve seen you in bed with a girlfriend. And at least this girlfriend I actually love like a daughter; not like some of the slwtens* you’ve presented me with.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she said, holding her hands up in mock surrender. ‘I’ll go, but I’ll come back in if you’re not out here in five minutes for your breakfast. Your father might skip the odd breakfast, but he only serves drinks and fixes what needs fixing around the pub. You fix human beings and you can’t do that on an empty stomach.’

  *****

  Lou thought it was cute that Dylan’s mum always made it sound like he was the one singlehandedly keeping the NHS afloat, and the lives of the Welsh people firmly in the saved category whenever she talked about his career. It was the antithesis of how her parents referred to her work and she found it refreshing. She knew that although Dylan hated it, and his face would always cloud with irritation when she did it, that he would never say anything to make her stop. He adored his mum, as well he should, and Lou knew there was a lot he would tolerate from her before he called her out. She pressed her lips together to stop herself laughing, and Dylan’s irritated green eyes narrowed at her as she tried to contain her amusement. She finally snorted a giggle after she heard the door click behind his mum. At the sound of her suppressed laughter Dylan’s face cleared of irritation and his eyes dropped to her mouth.

  ‘Christ you’re beautiful,’ he breathed.

  Lou sucked in a shocked breath and started pushing on his shoulders in an attempt to dislodge him.