Forgiven

by Garrett Leigh

  Boredom had me swiping through the rest of my texts, a task that took approximately ten seconds as the only messages I had were two-word grunts from my brother, and essays from my mother that I deleted without reading. I really didn’t give a shit that she was having the time of her life in Spain with her ex-pat new fella. That she was happy was enough—I didn’t need the details.

  A crash from the yard brought me back to the present. I glanced out of the window just in time to see Comb-over jump back as a water pump fell from the precarious stack he’d built from his rummaging. My boss—Dench—had warned me a hundred times not to let customers fuck around on their own, but I didn’t give a shit about that either. As far as I was concerned, if they dropped something on their head, it was natural selection.

  You’re an arsehole.

  Yep.

  Comb-over finally found what he was looking for without killing himself. Curious as ever, Grey sauntered out of the shadows to investigate the gap left by the collection of parts scattered around the yard. My little pal was a ninja, silent and sharp. Comb-over didn’t see him. He stepped back and tripped. A laugh bubbled in my chest, but before it made it out of my mouth, dude bro stuck his foot out and kicked Grey with the toe of his clown shoes.

  Grey screeched and disappeared under the wreckage of a written-off car. I burst from the cabin to check he was okay, but fury consumed me, and I was on Comb-over before I truly knew what I was doing.

  I barrelled into him. He went flying and landed on his arse in the mud. For a moment he sat there, stunned, then his expression morphed into a rage that matched mine, and he sprang to his feet. “What the hell are you playing at?”

  “You kicked my cat.”

  “So? It was in my way.”

  “And now you’re in mine.” I pulled my arm back and struck hard. My fist hit his face with a satisfying crack, and he staggered back where he’d come from, hands flying to his cheekbone as if he expected to find his entire face caved in. Drama queen. I could’ve hit him harder. I damn well wanted to. “Get the fuck out of here before I kick your teeth in.”

  He didn’t need telling twice, but as he scrambled into his knobhead truck and sped away, instinct—and experience—told me I hadn’t heard the last of him. That one way or another, punching his lights out was going to come back to haunt me.

  I tried real hard to give a shit.

  Failed, and crawled under the battered Astra to check on Grey.

  He was crouching behind the damaged exhaust pipe, eyes wide and spooked. I held my hand out and whistled, but he looked at me like I’d shit in his shoes and asked him to dance.

  Worse than that, he was afraid of me.

  Anger rattled me again. I wriggled out from under the car and considered tracking Comb-over to whatever branch of JD Sports had thrown up on him, but there was a clear obstacle stopping me: I didn’t have a car. Fuck, man, I barely had shoes. Despite the cut I was taking from my boss’s cash transactions, I was broke.

  That pissed me off even more. Ignoring the fact that the yard was open for business for another hour, I shut the gate and locked up. If that dicksplash came back, I didn’t trust myself not to brain him. The safest place for me was the pub.

  I left Grey to simmer down and hoofed it down the road to the Gordon Arms.

  The bar was busy enough for me to slip in unnoticed, but quiet enough that I didn’t have to wait to get a beer. I gulped half of it down in one long swallow and settled into my favourite stool, pondering if I had enough change in my pocket to scrape three pints together before I went home with a bag of chips and a buttered roll. Fuck it. If I didn’t, I’d scrap the chips. A liquid diet had never done me any harm.

  Liar.

  My attention-seeking shoulder throbbed on cue. I rubbed at it and drank more beer. After slugging the cat kicker, I wasn’t in the mood for an ibuprofen and an early night—

  “There you are.”

  A large hand clapped me on the back, sending cheap lager up my nose. I coughed and glanced up. Dench loomed over me, making good use of his local nickname: Hench Dench. And by his expression, he wasn’t about to buy the next round.

  I shrugged his hand off me. “Congrats. You found me. Is it my turn to count rusty nails again?”

  “Shut the fuck up. Why’s the yard closed?”

  “Cos it’s ten past five.”

  “Don’t get tricky with me. You shut up shop an hour ago, leaving me to deal with the coppers and that boy racer you decked.”

  Shit. “I didn’t deck him. And he kicked the cat. What was I supposed to do?”

  “That grey rat you’ve been feeding?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Dench’s glower deepened. “I don’t give a toss about that stinking cat. All I know is I’ve had to give that greaseball a free water pump and a cam belt to stop the coppers taking a proper look round my yard, and it’s all your fault. I’m done with you, kid. You’re out of strikes.”

  Truth be told, I’d been out of strikes months ago when I’d put diesel in his petrol van on purpose, but his righteous malevolence still stung. Dench was well known for lumping anyone that got on his nerves. Who the hell was he to tell me I shouldn’t?

  Your boss, remember?

  Yeah, well. Not anymore. “Stick your strikes up your arse, mate. Dickhead had it coming. Pay me through the end of the month, though, yeah? I know my statutory rights.”

  “You ain’t got no rights. Show me a contract.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Dench sniggered. “That’s what I thought. Rights to nothing is still nothing. You’ve got to the end of the week to sling your hook, you little scumbag.”

  “Whatever.” I dropped my empty glass on the bar. It clattered dully on the damp beer mats, then toppled to the floor.

  Shame it didn’t smash.

  I gave Dench the finger and bowled out of the pub. I spent my last coins on a bottle of dodgy cider and drifted back to the yard. Fuck the chips.

  Grey joined me at the end of the lane, unhurt and sashaying in front of me like the furry toss bag who’d just cost me my job and my home. Drunk me wasn’t unduly alarmed. Sober me probably wouldn’t be either. That part of me had died a long time ago.

  I drank warm cider all night, tracking Dench as he stayed in the pub till after the regular lock-in, then trailing after him as he meandered home to be sure he wouldn’t go back to the yard. Then, with the arse crack of dawn on my sore shoulder, I stumbled into the caravan and found the backpack I’d arrived with six months ago. My belongings only half filled it. Laughing, I did a sweep for anything worth nicking, then rejoined Grey outside. He rubbed his face on my shinbone and the reality that I had to leave him behind hit home. I scooped him up. He pranced along my arm and onto the shoulder that kept me up at night when I didn’t have a belly full of beer. His tiny paws were fire to my damaged nerves, but I didn’t shake him off. Couldn’t, cos the little guy was my pal.

  You can’t leave him.

  My gaze fell on an abandoned tackle box, upended next to a push bike that had seen better days.

  Dench’s tools were in his old Transit van. I dug a screwdriver out of my bag, jimmied the lock, and helped myself to his cordless drill. The yard was a gold mine of scrap metal and plastic. I pinched what I needed, drilled air holes in the tackle box, and attached it to the front of the bike. Even as a resident yard cat, it wouldn’t be the most comfortable bed Grey had ever had, but it would keep him safe while I got the fuck out of Dodge.

  My cider-addled legs, not so much. But I was committed now. I stuffed a stolen pillow into the box and retrieved Grey from where he’d perched on the back of a dilapidated bench to watch me work.

  I eased him into the box and secured the lid. His emerald green eyes blinked up at me, trusting and pure, no hint of surprise at the strange turn his night was taking. “That’s right,” I whispered. �
�You’re safe now.”

  Safe from dipshit petrolheads, at least. I strapped my bag to my back and straddled the rusty bike. It creaked, and the front wheel wobbled as I pushed off the ground and started to pedal.

  Or maybe it was me. I’d developed quite the stomach for drinking in recent years, but out in the cool early-morning drizzle soaking the air, and once again all alone in the world, I felt drunker than I had when I’d left the pub.

  Dazed and confused.

  Stupid, and once again unemployed. Oh, and homeless.

  Fuck.

  I was half a mile down the unlit road when it dawned on me that I had nowhere to go.

  Gus

  “He’s not staying with us.” My brother-in-law faced my sister down, arms folded across his chest, looking every inch the angry lumberjack. “I can’t deal with his bullshit every damn day.”

  “You have to deal with him,” Mia shot back. “He’s your brother.”

  Luke’s scowl deepened. “He’s annoying. I’ll murder him.”

  “Or he’ll murder you. You’re pretty annoying too.”

  The conversation went on and on while I watched them over the top of the cereal box. Why they’d come to my house to have their argument, I had no idea, but it was definitely more entertaining than a solitary bowl of cornflakes.

  Three bowls of cornflakes.

  Whatever.

  They looked like a super-angry couple that had amazing sex every single day to make up for Mia’s sharp tongue and Luke’s surly reticence, and it was true, on both counts. I knew, because I’d walked in on them doing it in my kitchen about twenty-five thousand times, a super-fun experience when one party was your sister and the other was your boss.

  Whatever.

  I kept eating to cover the fact that I was hanging on every word, beyond curious of the outcome. It had been years since I’d last seen Billy Daley, but since Luke had given up pretending his brother didn’t exist, and had rekindled with his long-lost true love—again, my sister—Billy had come up in conversation a lot. I wondered if he still had the same hair: scruffy, soft, and just long enough to hang over his collar. I—

  “Where is he now?” Mia snapped.

  “He didn’t say, and he sounded off his nut.”

  “Don’t make assumptions. He’s been sober every time you’ve seen him since the accident.”

  “I’ve seen him twice.”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  I winced and averted my gaze as Luke let out a heavy sigh. God, why were families so complicated? The Daleys made mine look like the Waltons, and we’d been reunited for less than a year.

  A year that had changed my life for the better. Mia was a royal pain even when she was trying to be nice, but despite the years we’d spent hurting and apart, I couldn’t imagine her not being more than a phone call away, or turning her back if I was the one down on my luck.

  Saying all that, Luke was right: him and Billy would murder each other in the first ten minutes of cohabitation. With their ma decamped to Spain, if Billy wanted to come home to Rushmere, there was only one option. “He can stay here.”

  Mia and Luke swivelled their collective attention to me, eyes wide, as if they’d forgotten I was there, in my own kitchen. Nice. I pushed my cereal bowl away and wiped my mouth. “I have a spare room, remember? Not doing anything with it now you two are shacked up at Luke’s place, so...”

  They were still staring. I switched between them. Comprehension was starting to dawn in Mia’s gaze, but Luke was looking at me like I was an alien.

  “But...” He scrubbed a hand through his hair and darted a glance at Mia.

  Oh lord, this was going to be funny. The bloke was the coolest I’d ever known, and surprisingly open-minded given his military background and the fact that he spoke about three whole sentences a day, but I didn’t need him to speak to know what was making him squirm, and I couldn’t contain my amusement.

  A laugh bubbled out of me. “Jesus, man. Please tell me you’re not still hung up on what I told you over the summer? It really wasn’t a big deal.”

  Luke slow blinked. “You hooked up with my brother. How is that not a big deal?”

  “Please,” I scoffed. “It wasn’t a hook-up, it didn’t get that far. And we were both bladdered. He’s probably forgotten about it.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not your brother, am I? Besides, it was years ago. I don’t even know why I told you. And in case you’ve forgotten, you’ve been hooking up with my sister my entire life and I’ve never complained.”

  Luke said nothing, his standard MO.

  I let him be and looked at Mia.

  She shrugged. “I think it’s a good idea, if Billy’s up for it. Gus is boring as hell, and better than that, he’s never home, so you won’t have to worry about a repeat performance.”

  “As if I’m worried about that.” Luke’s frown deepened. “I’m more concerned that Billy will fuck up Gus’s life like he has his own. My brother is a shitshow of chaos.”

  “So am I,” Mia countered. “And you both deal with that just fine.”

  “Yeah, but—” Luke caught himself before the conversation strayed into a zone I was definitely not comfortable playing in. These days, dude was my BFF whether he’d admit it or not, but I wasn’t down with bearing witness to whatever dirty words had been about to come out of his mouth to my sister.

  To distract myself from the smouldering smirk he sent her way instead, I let my mind drift to his brother. With his dirty blond hair and chiselled jaw, Luke had long been the hottest dude in town, if the graffiti on lampposts and toilet doors was to be believed. But for me, it had always been Billy. He was darker than Luke, in more ways than one. Wild. More hooligan than lovable rogue.

  Even if I never saw him again, I’d remember his kiss forever.

  Don’t miss Unforgotten by Garrett Leigh, available February 2021 wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.

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  Copyright © 2021 by Garrett Leigh

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  ISBN-13: 9780369700100

  Forgiven

  Copyright © 2021 by Garrett Leigh

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