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Grace chuckled. “Yeah, I like that idea.”

“We’ve got all the time in the world. You already married me. So you can’t escape.” Caz smiled and pressed her lips against Grace’s forehead.

“I like it when you do that.”

“Kiss your head?” Caz questioned.

Grace nodded again. “My forehead, head…mouth,” she said, looking up into Caz’s eyes. “I think that time when you were drunk and kissed me…it was more than nice, but I just put it to one side and figured…” She laughed. “Oh, I dunno what I thought, but I knew I wasn’t gay and so I didn’t think about it again.”

Caz drew her fingertip down Grace’s cheek. “It’s good to hear you laugh. See, I told you I wouldn’t let you stay sad for long.”

Eyes welled up instantly. “I know, and I know my emotions are all over the place.”

“All totally normal under the circumstances.”

“Yeah. Will you stay in here tonight?”

Caz chuckled. “You threw me out.”

“I know, that was so mean, I didn’t want to…I just…I couldn’t see how we moved forward, and I didn’t want to hold you back.”

“You could never do that.”

“And I took my anger out on you and I’m ashamed of myself for doing that.” Grace looked away.

With one finger under Grace’s chin, Caz brought her back, face to face. “It’s okay, don’t carry that…”

“Does that mean…will you move back in here?”

“I’m already here.” She kissed her forehead again. “And I told you before, I’m not leaving.”

Chapter Forty-Five

“Do you think this is weird?” Grace asked Caz over breakfast.

“Gonna have to enlighten me…I’ve not had a cup of tea yet.”

Grace smiled at her. It was something she’d been managing more often these past few days, locked away from the world outside where it was just the two of them.

“Okay…we’re…backwards.”

Caz lifted the teapot and poured a cup for herself and then topped up Grace’s mug. “In what way?”

“Most people meet someone, find them attractive enough to start seeing them, then they sleep together, and then they fall in love and possibly get married.”

“I see where you’re going with this.” Caz grinned and blew across the top of her cup of tea to cool it.

“Exactly, we’re backwards. We got married, realised we love each other, and now we understand we’re attracted to each other in a way neither of us thought about before.”

“Let’s go on a date, then. An official one. When you feel up to it, of course.”

“I’d like that actually, I just feel…guilty, I suppose. I’m still so sad about the…baby, and I’m trying to keep a ‘what wasmeant to be’ mindset, and then there’s this part of me trying to be happy about…whatever we are now, but in here…” She pressed her palm against her chest. “It still feels like an eruption could hit at any moment.”

There had been less crying than yesterday, and Caz hoped it was a turning point, but Grace’s eyes soon became watery again as she looked across the table at Caz.

“I think everything you’re feeling is completely natural. And I also think…maybe we should tell people, a select few, but people like your mum and dad, Dani—they all think we’re arguing and on the verge of divorce, especially after me having to get you from work and then neither of us leaving the house for days.”

Grace smiled sadly. “If only they did know the truth…maybe we can tell them about the baby, I’m just not sure I can do it…or that I want to be there and have to deal with the fuss they’ll make. You know what my mum’s like.”