Gritting my teeth, raging at myself for reading the messages again – something I’ve done a billion times while off my head on drugs or drowning myself in booze – I do the unthinkable.
I unblock her number.
My blood is roaring in my ears, fingers trembling as I change her contact name and type a message to her.
Me: I’m outside.
There. Simple and straight to the point. No need to overcomplicate it. After two years of keeping my distance, I broke my rules by following her to the front gate, by watching her dance, by approaching her and letting her touch me, by letting myself remember every sound she’d ever made for me.
When her hand wrapped around my cock – the lie that wasn’t a lie – I forgot what she’d done. But I remember now. And I refuse to let her fuck with my head again.
My heart races as soon as my phone vibrates in my hand, nerves shattering into fragments at her three-word response. I’m a pathetic piece of shit.
Stacey: Well hello, stranger.
I stop my lips from tugging up into a smirk, my chest tightening as I swallow. “Waste Love” begins playing, and I turn it up slightly, but not loud enough to wake her family. I remember her saying her stepmother hated visitors, hated anyone in the house, which is why I was always climbing through her window.
Me: Move or I’ll drive away.
She types, deletes, types, deletes. I nearly send another message when she responds.
Stacey: I’m rolling my eyes at you. Be 5 mins.
Her bedroom light turns on, the curtains opening to reveal her glancing down at me in only her bra. My skin prickles with goosebumps at the fresh memory of my mouth on her tit, heat rushing up my spine and making my dick twitch.
After a longer second of our eyes clashing without looking away, she gives me the middle finger and vanishes from my view.
Little shit.
I don’t block her again, but I do swipe up on the chat box and instantly despise myself as I read all our older messages. Mostly flirty and teasing, telling the other that they’re fuckably hot while in the same room as my family. Pictures from trips that we’d secretly taken. I want to scrap them all, but when my finger hovers over the delete-all button, I decide not to.
After I was dared to kiss her years ago, I lasted all but a few days before cornering her in my kitchen and daring her to kiss me again while no one was around. I pulled her onto the countertop and let my hands roam her body, close to having a panic attack from thinking I would do something wrong.
That version of myself doesn’t exist now. I don’t get anxiety around her because she’s pretty and I have no idea what to do with her. No, I reckon if I fucked her now, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from strangling her to death.
The anchor who broke me.
Fucking ridiculous.
She appears nearly fifteen minutes later, rushing out with a suitcase rolling behind her and a bag over her shoulder. I should get out and help her, but I pop the boot and relax into my seat instead.
I shouldn’t be nervous. I shouldn’t be wondering what to say to her. I definitely shouldn’t be thinking about her words to me last night.
Relax. It means nothing.
I guess it never had. Not to her.
I gulp down air as she drops into the passenger seat in a band top and jeans. Her perfume and shampoo take over all my senses, and I have to roll down my window more and light up a cigarette to block them out.
Stacey leans forward, looking up at her window. When I follow her eyes, I see a shadow standing there, but whoever it is quickly shuts her curtains.
Must be her stepbrother Kyle. I never met him because he was always away studying, but she spoke highly about him often.
She doesn’t say anything as she clips in her belt, or when she pulls out her phone and starts scrolling social media, ignoring whatever messages keep popping up on her screen.
Not a hello. Not a hey, what happened last night was a mistake, not a fucking word about it. Fine. I won’t bring it up either.
It shouldn’t annoy me this much.
As I drive out of her estate, I turn up the music. But when I go to press the accelerator, I chance a look at her as if I’m looking for traffic, and my eyes drop to her neck.
My brows furrow, and I almost stop the car to inspect the bruises she’s tried to hide with make-up.
My first instinct is to hunt down whoever hurt her and kill them, but then I remember the way I grabbed her at the studio, and I grip the steering wheel tighter.
Surely I didn’t cause those bruises? I didn’t… Fuck. No, I wouldn’t hurt her. She wanted me to hold her firmly.
I should pull over and apologise right now. I should tell her that I never meant to mark her. I’m not a psychopath that hurts the people I care about. Yeah, I’ve shot people in the head or disfigured them, and I’ve tortured people for information to help Bernadette, but never have I lifted a hand to Stacey.
Fuck. Maybe I did do that. Maybe the hold I had on her throat last night was tighter than I thought. Maybe everyone’s right, and I am like my dad and out of touch with reality.
A lump sticks in my throat, and I run through every possible way to say sorry.
But then my sister calls her, and she turns off my music to speak. She tells her we’re on our way, groans and asks her to stop shouting, then huffs and hangs up.
“They’re leaving now. They don’t want to be late. They’ll get us at the airport.”
She trains her gaze on the scratch on my cheek; the obvious bite marks on the side of my neck. I probably smell like sex too. If any of it bothers her, she doesn’t show it as she goes back to typing on her phone .
Why would she care? She’s heartless.
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear then leans down to grab something from her handbag at her feet. My eyes fall on our initials woven together on the exposed part of her back. I shake my head and look away.
I light another cigarette and turn up the rock music.
When we get to the manor, she walks my dogs while I shower and dress. She chats with the staff; I glare at them. We don’t talk on the way to the airport, or while we’re stuck in a traffic jam that doesn’t seem to be moving.
I keep looking at her throat, noticing that she’s touched up her make-up and the bruises are barely visible now. Maybe it wasn’t from the studio, and like me, she was fucking someone else last night.
The thought irks me enough to clench my jaw. I’m a walking, talking contradiction.
You don’t hate her, son. You’re just mad at her, my dad had said when I last visited.
But he’s a liar. I do hate her. I’m not trembling with anxiety because I’m mad at her – I’m fucking losing it because all I can think about is her with him.
“Shit,” she blurts out. “The motorway got closed off from a bad crash. That’s why we’re stuck here.”
I frown. “Does it say how long until it’s cleared?”
“Could be hours,” she replies, slouching. “We’ll definitely miss our flight. I’ll tell Lu.”
And to make things even better, we do miss our flight, and the next one from Glasgow isn’t for two days. Instead, we have to drive to Edinburgh, book the only hotel near the airport with any availability and wait until tomorrow to fly out.
Base wishes me good luck, and I swipe away from Bernadette’s message regarding a contract. She tracks my every move – the ones I allow her to track anyway – so she knows where I’m heading.