The Aftermath

by R. J. Prescott

  “That’s so fantastic! Well done, love. I’m so proud of you,” Em told him. I hugged him and squeezed his shoulder as Em jumped on him and hugged him even harder than I had.

  Danny and Earnshaw walked out of the office together, and even Danny raised a half smile, half smirk when Tommy told him the news. “You did good, kid. You did real good.” Tommy looked at Danny like he hung the moon. Danny didn’t give praise very often. So when he did, he fucking meant it.

  “What does it mean now?” Em asked him.

  “It means I get through to the interview stage next. It’s like a tier system, I guess. They start off with thousands of applications, and at each stage, they get rid of a load. If you can make it through the interview, the next stage is the medical and optical. If you can pass those, you’ve got the job.”

  “Firefighter Rierdan. Who’d have thought?” I said to no one in particular.

  “Don’t jinx me,” he warned me. “There’s a long way to go so I ain’t getting my hopes up yet.”

  “Probably sensible,” I told him, as though we hadn’t just seen him jumping around with excitement and screaming like a girl. Earnshaw congratulated Tommy and asked all the right questions about his future with the fire service. By the time he left to share the news with Mary and his da, he looked like he was king of the world.

  “Now he’s gone, I can show you this,” said Earnshaw excitedly, pulling his own piece of paper from out of his pocket.

  “Why d’you need to wait for Tommy to leave before sharing it?” I asked suspiciously, my tone making him pause.

  “Because it’s good news and I didn’t want to steal his thunder,” he answered. That shit right there had my respect.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You’ve got ESPN talking about you. Dan Rafael’s written an article about how you’re going back to basics for the Temple fight.” He read it to us excitedly.

  I admit it was pretty cool to hear my name in the same article as so many of my boxing heroes but I did frown as a thought occurred to me. “How does Rafael know about my training techniques all the way from the US?” I asked.

  “Because I told him,” Earnshaw said. “It will do Temple’s camp some good to worry about just how serious a contender you are. And if I want to start securing you sponsorship deals, then it’s not a bad thing to get you on ESPN’s radar.”

  Danny didn’t give a shit about any of this stuff but he knew it was important, which is why he’d hired Earnshaw in the first place. As they got into a lively debate about who was the all-time heavyweight great, I used the opportunity to snag my girl and drag her back into the office. Shutting the door gently behind me, I whipped her around and had her back against it as she wrapped her legs tightly around my waist. Hiking her cute little arse higher so that my hard cock was pressed tightly up against her core, I kissed her hard and groaned as her sweet little tongue touched tentatively against mine, instantly sending darts of pleasure straight to my dick.

  “I’m gonna miss you so badly,” I confessed, as I stopped kissing to rest my forehead against hers.

  “Me too,” she replied breathlessly.

  “You okay to stay with Nikki while I’m gone?” I asked, still really reluctant to leave her behind, despite my precautions and her constant reassurances that she’d be fine.

  “I’m good, baby. Her roommate Lauren is practically living with her boyfriend anyway so I’m going to have her bed and study with Nikki until the exams are over. Between Nikki, Albie, Ryan, and Max I’ll never need to go anywhere alone, and we’ll see each other again before you know it. Besides I know you’ll be calling me every day,” she reasoned.

  “That reminds me, I’ve got something for you,” I told her. Letting her down gently, I reached behind the filing cabinet and pulled out a box I’d wrapped in red paper. Well mostly; wrapping wasn’t really my thing.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Open it,” I urged her. She drove me nuts when she opened gifts. The delicate gentle way she teased it open showed just how few gifts she’d ever had. She almost dropped it, covering her mouth in shock when she realized what was inside. Smoothing her hand over the box of the laptop reverently, she whispered

  “We can’t afford this.”

  “Listen, I know we used most of our savings on the house, and because we borrowed that money from Danny, I checked this was okay with him, but we need this. You know I fucking hate talking on the phone. If I’m gonna talk to you, I need to see you and see that you’re safe and doing okay. I can borrow Kier’s laptop while we’re away, and he says we can Skype each other if you’ve got one too. Nikki said she had Wi-Fi and we can get it installed at the house when it’s done so we can always see each other when I have to go away.”

  “Thank you so much,” she said, still stroking it as her eyes began to well up with tears.

  “No, baby, don’t cry. It kills me when you cry. This was supposed to be a good surprise.”

  “It was, O’Connell. It really was. I’m just a bit run-down and emotional with the exams coming up, and the thought of you being half a world away tomorrow is hard.”

  “I know, baby. But next time I have to go for a fight, I promise you’ll be with me the whole time.”

  She’d be graduating next summer, and we hadn’t discussed what she wanted to do after. I didn’t put any pressure on her because, with how hard she worked, I wanted her to know she could do anything she wanted. After one last big hug, she told me to get my arse back to training so she could study, and I left, knowing that leaving her behind would always be the hardest thing I ever had to do.

  Chapter 23

  Leaving to get on that flight was the worst fucking feeling ever. Em clung to me like I was never going to see her again, and I could barely breathe thinking that I was trusting her safekeeping in someone else’s hands. We stood in Nikki’s doorway for at least five minutes, our arms wrapped around each other, while I memorized everything that was already imprinted on my heart. The smell of her skin, the hitch in her breath as she tried not to cry, the way her tiny body curled into mine, even the way she held on with a grip stronger than steel. The back of my throat burned as I swallowed hard and pulled away from her. Water pooled in those big eyes of hers, and she looked so beautiful and heartbreakingly vulnerable that my chest hurt at the idea of leaving her behind.

  “You’re going to miss your flight,” she told me.

  “I don’t want to go,” I admitted.

  “And I don’t want to stay,” she replied.

  I closed my eyes, touched my forehead to hers, and held my breath one last time. Opening up my backpack, I handed her a letter and kissed her gently on the lips.

  “Love you, Mrs. O’Connell,” I told her.

  “Love you too, Mr. O’Connell.” she replied and clutched the letter to her as I left. Waving Nikki good-bye on my way out, I climbed into Liam’s truck, and we drove away. She couldn’t see me looking back so I didn’t. “Here, I forgot to give you this. Some guy from Balaam Leisure Center dropped it off for you, said the kids made it,” Kieran said. Liam had picked him and Tommy up on the way to mine. I opened up the large white envelope and smiled broadly. Each kid had drawn a picture of themselves and cut them out to place around a hand-drawn picture of a boxing ring. Inside I was fighting Temple. I could tell which one was me because of the shorts, though Temple appeared to be a dwarf in the picture.

  Inside they had written: “Good luck, Hurricane! We hope you knock his block off. Love…” They all signed the card that I knew I’d have framed as soon as I got home. Aside from my cross, this was the best present I’d ever had. I looked up to see Kieran watching me. I knew he worried I wouldn’t handle it without Em. Knowing him he probably even held back on the card deliberately, just for this moment. The longer we drove, the whiter the scenery became. Winter had arrived, and although a heavy frost was predicted overnight, snow fell thick and fast.

  “I don’t like the look of this,” Liam said, looking up at the
sky. He pulled into a space in the long-term parking lot and switched off the engine. When Liam had a bad feeling about something, he was usually right.

  As soon as he said it, I felt it too. We waited for six hours in the airport for conditions to improve before finally finding out that our flight had been canceled. Weather permitting, the airline had rescheduled us on another flight tomorrow. Even with all that sorted, and the joy of knowing I’d have one more night with Em, something was still wrong. It was like the weather was a bad omen, and I could see by the look on everyone’s faces that they felt it too.

  We drove slowly down the motorway on the way back into city. Cars backed up as the snow worsened, and the weight on my chest grew heavier and heavier. We were fifteen minutes from Nikki’s flat when something just felt wrong.

  “Kier, can you call Nikki? Make sure Em’s okay?” I asked him.

  “You don’t want to wait and surprise her?” he asked me.

  “No. I just want to know she’s okay,” I told him. Nodding, Kieran dialed the number, and it rang and rang.

  “Don’t worry. They’ll be expecting us to be on a plane right now so they’ve probably gone for food or something,” he reassured me. It didn’t work. Despite what he said, I knew something was wrong. Liam drove faster as soon as the traffic started thinning out. We skidded to a stop outside Nikki’s place, and I jumped out, slammed the door, and raced upstairs. I can’t describe how I felt seeing the flat door slightly ajar. Fuck! I was a fucking idiot to think Em would be safe as long as she wasn’t alone. Looking at Nikki’s prostrate form lying on the carpet unconscious, I knew Frank had Em. If he’d hurt her again after I had the opportunity to kill him and I let him go, I was gonna drive a motherfucking knife straight through his heart.

  Tommy and Liam were hot on my heels. Kier checked on Nikki while Tom and I searched the flat unsuccessfully. Em wasn’t there.

  “I’ve called the police and an ambulance. I think she’ll be fine but he must have given her a fair smack to the head,” Kier said.

  “Shit, Kier. I’m too late again” I said, pacing as I ran my hands through my hair.

  “Hey, ain’t that them down there?” Tommy said, looking out of the window into the flat’s parking lot at the back of the building. Sure enough, Frank had an arm around Em’s neck, a knife in his hand, and he was dragging her toward the cars. My girl wasn’t going down without a fight though. She was biting, kicking, scratching, anything she could do to get away. If I wasn’t careful, he’d knife her before I got there out of sheer desperation.

  Kieran stayed with Nikki while Tommy and I raced down to the parking lot. By the time we burst through the door, the sound of sirens was wailing in the distance. As soon as Frank caught sight of us, the knife went up under Em’s chin, and she froze. We all did.

  “The police are nearly here, Frank. Run while you still have the chance,” I said. I didn’t give a shit about him. I just wanted my wife back alive. I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. She looked like an angel, with the snow settling on her beautiful blond hair, but one quick jerk of the knife and she’d be gone forever. If anything happened to her, he might as well stick a knife in my motherfucking black heart. I was done.

  “Fuck you, O’Connell,” Frank spat at me. “You’re supposed to be on a plane right now. Everything is fucked! But I’m not going without Emily. I’ve had enough of waiting. This ends tonight.”

  This wasn’t the calm, slick arsehole we’d seen in court. It was like he was losing his grip. Something had pushed him over edge, maybe even me.

  “You can’t take her,” I told him calmly. “It’s too late now, the police are nearly here. Let her go before it’s too late.”

  “Why couldn’t you just let her go? Why the fuck did you have to come back?” he screamed.

  “Because she’s mine. She’s always been mine, and I will love her till the day I die. There is no one else for me, and there never will be.” I wasn’t telling that to Frank; I was telling it to Em. I was so proud of my girl. She was absolutely petrified, anyone could see that, but the fear was secondary to her hatred for the animal at her throat. I didn’t want to anger Frank any more, but there was no way I was letting him leave with Em.

  “She was never fucking yours!” he screamed. “We were meant to be together, and if it wasn’t for the rest of you, she’d have been with me this whole time.”

  I heard a slight shuffling noise and the obvious click of a loaded gun. Looking around, I could see the police surround us, even looking down from the window I’d been standing in a few minutes ago.

  “Armed police!” They called out. “Stay where you are and slowly raise your hands.” This was not fucking good. Finally there were police witnesses to Frank’s psycho behavior but, by the way his eyes panned across the parking lot, I could practically see his mind working. He wasn’t getting away with it this time. When it was just me, I might have let him go to keep Em alive, but he knew the police wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t shoot Frank unless he went through with it and killed Em. But there was no way they’d let him walk away either.

  “If I’m going down, she’s coming with me. None of you will ever know how much I love her. She doesn’t even know because you all keep getting in the way. You won’t let me show her—”

  He never got to finish his sentence before he screamed out and his face contorted with pain. He let go of the knife, and Em dropped to her knees coughing. She scrambled through the shallow snow to get as far away from him as possible, and I raced toward her the minute she hit the ground. Lifting her up as soon as I reached her, I carried her to safety. There was a very thin red line around her neck where Frank had nicked her slightly, but other than that, she was safe in my arms.

  “What the fuck did you do?” Frank screamed out. I turned to see him with his hands raised. Em’s mum stood behind with a bloody knife in her hand.

  “It was all lies, wasn’t it? You told me you loved me. Time and time again you said it was all for me. For us,” Sylvia said, in a tone that was eerily calm.

  “What are you talking about, you stupid delusional bitch?” Frank said. He held his hands in the air, as Em’s mum walked around to stand in front of him.

  “You swore to me the time you had sex with her was a mistake. You said that she’d been flirting with you and you gave in to temptation, and I believed you! I’m not stupid. I could see how young and beautiful she was and how you looked at her but that was just temptation. It was just sex. It was me you were in love with. Me and you forever, that’s what you told me. Everything I ever did, I did for you.”

  “I do love you,” he reassured her, like you would a child. “I’ve always loved you.”

  “Shut up,” she screamed, waving the knife wildly. The police hovered expectantly but seemed less inclined to engage now that Em was safe. Her mum was unhinged, and they were obviously nervous about intervening until she’d said her piece.

  “It’s lies all of it. I heard you when O’Connell came over. But I thought you wouldn’t have stayed after Emily left if you didn’t love me. So I drove you here because you said we were saying good-bye. Going somewhere to start a new life. I waited in the car like you told me to. I’ve always done everything you’ve ever told me to. But you brought her with you. It wasn’t me you wanted to start a new life with, it was her.”

  She was as fucked-up and obsessive about Frank as he was about Em. The pair of them fucking deserved each other.

  “Did you ever love me, Mum?” Emily asked. Her mum turned with a jolt to face her, and it was almost like she’d forgotten Em was there.

  “Of course I loved you,” she replied. “I struggled when you were born for a long time. They call it post-natal depression now, but your dad took care of you when I couldn’t. By the time I started to feel better, you and he had a bond I couldn’t share. Maybe I shouldn’t have let Frank knock you around as much as much as I did, but you don’t understand how much I needed him. I couldn’t risk losing him, and when you found O’C
onnell, I saw a chance for me to have it all. I could be your mum again and still keep Frank. I know that you were upset when I lied in court but I knew you’d be okay. You had O’Connell to look after you.”

  “Oh Mum, why didn’t you choose me? I needed you so badly when dad died. You let Frank beat and rape me and then let him get away with it. How could you?”

  “You never needed me, Emily. And you never will now. I just want what you two have together. Is that too much to ask?” she looked at us both longingly but I felt nothing but revulsion.

  “We do have that,” Frank told her. “We can still have it.”

  “No, Frank. I can see what you really want now. It’s too late for me, and I know Emily won’t ever be able to forgive me, but at least I can do this one last thing for her.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid. Now put the fucking knife down,” Frank shouted angrily.

  Chapter 24

  “Two twenty-three Brecan Road, Canning Town,” her mum told Em.

  “Margaret, no!” screamed Frank. I frowned, having no idea what she was talking about.

  “It’s the flat he took Em to. He wanted somewhere close to you, I guess. He rents it under my maiden name. He’s been running a scam with some of his mates from the police there. They skim evidence from drug busts and seizures. Frank fences it through his probation clients.”

  “You stupid fucking bitch. After everything I’ve fucking done for you, you fucking betray me now?” he said, and she recoiled slightly.

  “After everything you’ve done for me? You don’t scare me, Frank. What have done that was so great?” she asked.

  “You think anyone else would have stuck with you as many years as I have? You were always fucking jealous of Emily. You’re right, it was always her.”

  With a wild animalist scream like nothing I’ve ever heard before, Margaret pulled her arms up over her head and plunged her knife into Frank’s chest as a shot from one of the police officers cracked and echoed in the open space.