Chapter 8 I'll Slap This Bastard Anytime Of The Day

Twenty-two minutes.

That's how long it takes the bastard to show up.

I hear his footsteps in that familiar rhythm, confident and unhurried, the walk of a man who has decided my life should pause for his.

Callum Weston comes through the door in a grey shirt with his brow arranged into annoyance hidden under a layer of concern.

"Sera." Both hands take mine in his.

"God, I got here as fast as I could. Are you okay? What happened? Did someone—"

"I walked into a car," I say, yanking my hands back in a hurry.

"You ---" He blinks. "You walked into a car."

"I was looking at my phone."

He stares at me. Then he does something I don't expect -- he laughs.

"Sera. Only you will do such a clumsy thing and still be fine."

Six years ago, even six months ago, that laugh would have warmed my chest and made me lean toward him.

I look at his face now and I see the seams.

I see the half-second before the laugh where he calculated it. The way his eyes moved across the room before they settled on me.

The undertone bite of him calling me clumsy masked by his laughter because I’ll eat it up like the fool I’ve always been.

The performance of relief so smooth and practiced that you'd have to have been married to it for six years to spot the machinery underneath.

Still, I’m ashamed for being so blind to him treating me like a guard dog, giving me meat just enough to keep me around but tossing me out when the dog became useless.

"She listed you as her emergency contact," the nurse offers helpfully.

Callum turns a smile on her that I have seen move grown men to cooperation. "Of course, she did."

The man who hit me has put his phone away. He looks at Callum the way he looked at me earlier ---- assessing, but blank revealing nothing.

Then he picks up his jacket.

"She's been cleared," he says. "Minor abrasions. No concussion."

Callum turns before taking him in. The hand goes out immediately--the handshake of a man who has never met someone he didn't immediately try to win.

"Callum Weston. Really appreciate you bringing her in."

My eyes roll themselves on their own accord.

The man looks at the hand.

Shakes it once.

"Daniel Ashford."

A surprised expression moves across Callum's face fast and involuntary.

I automatically read Callum’s expression as the micro-expression of a man who has just heard a name that rearranges the room's hierarchy and is rapidly recalculating his position in it.

He recovers in under a minute--and the smile comes back perfectly intact.

"I'll take it from here," Callum clears his throat.

Daniel Ashford looks at me.

Those unreadable grey eyes move across my face for one more moment, then he nods once and walks toward the door.

No goodbye.

No backward glance.

At the door he pauses for just one second and then he is gone and the door swings shut behind him and the waiting room feels, inexplicably, slightly less pressurised.

For someone who pressured me to go to the hospital, the non-existent goodbye feels like a bipolar standing.

Callum puts his arm around my shoulders.

"Come on," he says warmly.

With the complete confidence of a man who has never once considered that the woman beside him might be watching him the way you watch something you already know the ending of.

"Let's get you home."

I let him guide me toward the door.

I am already thinking about my revenge steps. I've never had to revenge on someone before .

The nurse who discharges me is cheerful in that particular way of people who genuinely like their jobs with quick smile, efficient hands, the kind of person who makes small talk feel like actual conversation rather than obligation.

“All done,” she says, sliding the paperwork across the counter. “Keep the dressings dry for at least twenty-four hours and if there’s any swelling—”

“She’ll come running immediately,” Callum says beside me.

I nod, a stiff smile appearing on my face.

It doesn’t reach anything.

“Actually —” The nurse pauses, frowning slightly at her screen. She types something. Frowns again.

“Oh. Hm.”

"Is something wrong?” Callum looks down at my face.

“No, nothing wrong, it’s just -- ” She looks up. “The bill’s been settled already.”

I blink. “Sorry?”

“Cleared. About twenty minutes ago.” She turns the screen slightly, like showing us will explain it. “A Mr. Ashford’s office called it in.”

The name lands in the middle of the room like something dropped from a height.

I feel Callum go still beside me.

Not in any way a stranger would catch, however I have spent six years standing next to this man and I know the particular quality of his stillness when something has caught him off guard and he is deciding how to react to it.

“Ashford paid the hospital bill,” Callum says. His voice is stiff. “For a stranger.”

“Apparently so.” The nurse smiles helpfully. “Lucky you, right?”

“Right,” I say, rolling my eyes inwardly.

I’m not one damsel in distress needing Daniel Ashford to pay my hospital bill, but boy, does it fill good to see embarrassment splayed across Callum’s face.

Not that the Bastard would have offered to pay my bill anyway.

Callum looks at me.

I look at the paperwork and shrug.

Daniel Ashford drove away without a backward glance and then called in a bill for a woman he doesn’t know.

Why?

Who the hell uses their office to pay a bill and not their credit card or insurance!?

“Well.” Callum puts his hand on the small of my back. “That was generous of him.”

I’ll take Callum Weston sounding pained anytime of the day.

Outside the hospital the afternoon has warmed slightly with thin sunlight pushing through cloud cover, the city going about its business with complete indifference to the fact that my entire understanding of reality rearranged itself this morning.

Callum walks beside me with his hands in his coat pockets and I can feel him thinking. I have always been able to feel him thinking, there’s a particular quality to his silence when something is occupying him, a slight distance, like part of him has left the room to go handle something and left his body running on autopilot.

I can tell he is thinking about Daniel Ashford.

This stranger seems to have wounded Callum’s ego.

If this was any other time, I would have sought to fill the silence by yapping. I’d say anything that came to mind so he’d think of me when he got home.

Looking back now, my foolishness started from a young age.

“There’s a place on Mercer Street,” he says eventually.

"I’ve been meaning to take you. It’s got good food, good atmosphere, you’d love it.” He glances at me sideways with that particular smile, the one that used to make me feel like the only person in a room.

"We could go now. Make an afternoon of it.”

Mercer Street.

The coffee shop on Mercer Street where a twenty-four year old version of me smiled at this man and handed him the next six years of her life on a plate she didn’t know she was carrying.

He is taking me to the scene of my regret.

The old Sera would have said yes before he finished the sentence. Would have spent the walk there quietly glowing, believing this was the beginning of something finally.

I look at him shock colouring my face.

The practiced warmth of his expression. The hand that is now moving to my elbow, light, guiding, the very first note in a symphony I have already heard performed to its deathly conclusion.

Callum gives me an easy smile, “You don’t need to look so shocked, after all, you’ve been asking for this for a long time.”

I’ll tell you what?

I’ll slap this bastard anytime of the day!