But when she tried to say so, to say it plain, he looked at her with confusion and distaste and that cold, burning anger. Abbie was coming to realise she’d worn her impenetrable mask a little too well before they’d married and taken it off far too eagerly afterward.

She should’ve known she’d be too much for him.

A noise brought her out of her thoughts, and she lifted her head from her hands. Will walked into the room, coloured lights from the Christmas tree slicing into his shadow.

“You should be in bed, Abbie-girl,” he said, soft as a kitten’s paw.

“You’re not my father, Will Reid,” she bit back, as if sharp words would hide the thickness in her throat, the threat of tears.

Sometimes her husband talked about Will—but only after a few beers. “Did you ever fuck him, Abbie, back in the day? Just tell me. You can tell me. I can see you fucked him—you don’t need to lie. And I don’t even blame you. Look at the bastard. But God, just tell me.”

“I hate him, you know,” Will said. “I fucking hate him.”

She blinked back to the present. “Who? Dad?” Will had never met her shiftless father, so that seemed a bit strong.

“No,” he murmured, and then he came to the sofa and bent and kissed—

He kissed her forehead. He kissed her forehead, but not the way concerned lifelong friends or pseudo-brothers usually did. No; this forehead kiss was a quick and desperate press of his lips that seemed to say, Don’t go, or if you have to, come back whole, like she was heading to war.

Maybe she was. But it had occurred to her, as she ghosted through this warm and wonderful Christmas, that no one could make her go back to the war zone.

“Will,” she whispered, and looked up, but his head was still bent down, and their lips were too close. They should never be this close. Yet she must have moved closer because they—

Touched.

Abbie sucked in a breath, slammed herself back against the cushions, as far from that forbidden mouth as she could get. An electrical charge crackled through her veins, fizzed beneath the fine skin of her wrists, but didn’t burn.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Will straightened slowly as if in a dream and stared down at her as he brought one ever-so-slightly shaking hand to his lips. As if she’d hit him and he couldn’t quite believe it. “Abbie—” He sounded like a dying man.

And she felt—she felt—

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “That was an accident. Sorry.” She stood and squeezed past the huge statue he’d become, and went upstairs to lie, stunned, in bed beside her snoring mother.

Abigail Farrell filed for divorce on New Year’s Eve.

Abbie woke up with a snake of panic curled low in her belly.