by Esme Devlin
I struggle for moment or two but it’s like being stuck under a bus. I let my body go limp and he chuckles in my ear.
“When I say go, you’re going to stomp as hard as you can on my foot. You’ll feel my arms loosen just enough for you to inch to the side. As soon as I give you that inch, take it. Use the space you just created to swing your arm down and knock your fist right into my balls. I’ll double over behind you in pain, and the second I do, slam your elbow back and crack me right in the nose.”
I’m breathless and a bit dazed from the exertion. “You want me to swing my fist into your balls?” I start laughing. “You got a fetish? You want me to put my heels on, too?”
He starts laughing. “Don’t fucking hurt me, it’s for demonstration purposes.”
I nod my head but I’m still giggling.
“Alright, go.”
I do what he says, and he helps me. Stamp the foot, inch to the side, slam the balls, elbow the nose.
Easy peasy.
“You shouldn’t have taught me that,” I tell him, spinning around and flicking my eyebrows at him.
“Is that a wee threat I detect there, darlin?” He closes the space instantly, taking my wrists in his hands and pushing against my forehead with his.
I get up on my tiptoes and I kiss him.
I kiss him like I own him, even though I’m the one in his grasp.
And that lasts all of about five seconds before we topple to the floor and he reminds me exactly who owns who.
Chapter 12
SHAUN
“You don’t have to punish yourself forever you know, if that’s what you’re doing.” She turns over in bed to face me and rests her head on her arm, the other one tracing circles across my chest.
The bedside lamp is on, and it’s making her skin glow so she’s looking like some sort of fucking angel. I can’t look at her like this, so instead I look up at the shadows on the ceiling. “He could have died.”
“But he didn’t,” she says, her tone soft.
“I used to have no fear. I told myself that if they got in the ring with me, that was their own chance they were taking. I always got a knockout, or at least a technical, hardly ever won on points.”
“Sorry, a technical?”
I chuckle at her. “When the ref stops the fight because the other guy is fucked.”
She nods and I continue. “None of that bothered me. And then I hit him, and the only way I could deal with that was to switch my conscience off. I didn’t even serve my sentence. I got away with murder, well, attempted. I couldn’t let myself feel guilty because it would have eaten me alive, so I just decided not to feel it anymore.”
“But you said you never felt anything before, either?”
“I said I had no fear before, but I did have a conscience. I knew where the line was. And then I shut that part of me down, and that’s how I was when you met me,” I tell her.
Her hand stops tracing circles, and she sits up on her elbow. I can’t help looking at her now. “That’s why you just followed your dad blindly?”
“Partly. I’m not making excuses, though. I’ve always followed my dad blindly — everyone does,” I explain. “This is the first time I’ve stood up to him in my life.”
“And did you die?”
It takes me a second but I catch on to what she’s getting at. She even mimicked my accent, the wee shite. She misses nothing.
I’m not dead yet, but that’s only because I haven’t failed him yet. If I do fail at taking Liam’s dad down, then I might as well be dead.
I can’t tell her about that, though. Not when we seem to be making progress.
“I didn’t die.”
“You still have a conscience, though, even if you’re not listening to it. You need to feel guilty for what you did and then you need to move on from it. You said yourself you were on drugs… would you have done it if you weren’t?”
I shrug. “Maybe. I wouldn’t have hit him as hard as I did, though.”
I turn around to look at her and see the disappointment in her eyes, and it kills me. I don’t want her to feel that way about me, but I don’t want to lie to her either.
“I think I would have done it then… but not now.”
“Why not now?”
“I’m different now.”
“How?”
She’s not going to let this drop, is she? I take a second to get my thoughts straight in my head. I don’t exactly know how to explain it, but I feel different now.
“Because a part of me died when I heard I had almost killed him? I knew I couldn’t get back in a ring when I couldn’t control my… awareness. So if that happened now, then no, I wouldn’t hit him. I’d find other ways to fuck him up, like I did with you.”
She looks shocked but tries to hide it and fails. She swallows, obviously thinking carefully about her next words. “If your dad told you to do the same again to another girl tomorrow would you do it?”
“No.”
“Why? Why is that any different?”
“It’s different because now… now I care about someone else more than I care about my dad, or myself.”
“If that’s true, then what’s stopping you from going back to it? That’s a conscience. That’s knowing right from wrong… it doesn’t matter why. It’s not wanting to fuck things up because you know it will hurt someone.”
I swallow. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
Her eyes soften for a few seconds and I just lie there watching her.
I used to think I was so strong, this big guy with a well-known name and no fear. That’s what strength was to me; it was measurable. How many kilos you can bench… how many knockouts this year… how many people avert their eyes when you walk down a corridor.
And then I met her. This tiny slip of a girl who looked so fucking lost. And yet to me, she’s the strongest person in the world.
She doesn’t complain; she doesn’t cry; she just deals. She’s had to do it all herself, without a dad to fight her corner or friends in high places to clean up her mess. I was a cunt to her, an absolute fucking bastard and here she is, lying in my bed and trying to believe that I’m better than that.
No one deserves Lacey. Not her dad, not Liam, and not me. But one day, I hope I will deserve her.
“You should go back to it, if it’s what you love.”
I shrug. “Maybe. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be — getting back in the ring.”
She laughs then, changing the tone in an instant and I wonder what’s so funny? Then I realize what I’ve just said and remember that Lacey doesn’t miss fuck-all. “Well, it wouldn’t be, would it? You were hardly well matched. I’d like to have seen you up against a 6 foot eight, 250lbs Russian.”
This is why I could happily spend the rest of my days with this one girl. She takes me at my lowest, listens to me, and then it’s over. She just pulls me back up like that. She doesn’t dwell on shit and let it eat away at us.
“You’d like to see me get my arse handed to me?” I tease, sitting up on my elbow to face her and pushing her. Just gently, but enough to send her toppling back into the mattress. “Does that turn you on?”
She’s giggling, her eyes dancing in the glow of the lamp. “Imagine the state of you. Imagine what he’d do to your handsome little face. How would you cope — not being able to get whatever the hell you want with just a single look?”
I slide on top of her, taking some weight on my elbows so she can still breathe. “I can get whatever I want with a single look? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me before?”
“I kinda like seeing you suffer.” Her nails run circles over my shoulders but I feel it in places nowhere near her fingers.
I bend down close to her and whisper, “Sadistic little shit.”
She giggles, turning her face towards mine so she can whisper in my ear right back. “Takes one to know one.”
Sunday. Best day of the week, in my opinion. Only bettered by Saturday, and actually probably Frid
ay. Which makes it not the best… but whatever.
I park the car on the street around the corner from my gran’s house, and Calvin and I head on foot. He twisted my arm for an invitation, the prick. My gran’s dinners are legendary, and one year she did Christmas for the whole family, plus the 4 of my mates, plus Heather’s two friends. I think Calvin and Doeboy’s dads came in at one point too for a second dinner. We were borrowing chairs from the pub around the corner but her food is seriously THAT GOOD.
I wonder if it’s the seriously good food or the fact that he heard Stevie was coming. He’s mad about her, even if he doesn’t admit it.
We walk in the house without knocking and the sound of a ruckus floats to my ears. I turn the corner in the hall and stop dead in the living room while I take in the sight. The pub chairs are back, for one thing.
My gran’s living room isn’t small by any measure, but right now it’s full to fucking bursting.
“Surprise, prick,” Calvin says behind me.
If I had turned around, I know I would have seen a smug as fuck look on his face, but I’m not capable of that at the moment.
“What the fuck is this?”
I don’t ask anyone in particular; I just direct the question at the now silent room.
My dad stands up from his chair, his eyes taunting. “You said you would marry her, you’re going to fucking marry her.”
“Not like this, Da.” I say the words so fucking fast they come out as a single word, and I look around the room for added effect. On one couch sits Doeboy, Scoot and Tony, there faces somewhere between wary and a smirk, like they’re watching a potential car crash about to play out before there eyes. My mum sits on a chair where my dad is standing, my gran behind them in her apron with a tray of tea in her hands. Frank — Calvin’s dad — is over next to John the pastor (the fucking pastor!), and Lorenzo. Fucking Lorenzo? His wife is with him. And Heather is here, standing in the door that leads to the kitchen.
“What did you want?” It was a question, but he said it like a threat.
“How about not to be wearing a fucking tracksuit for starters?”
The boys on the sofa laugh but it wasn’t supposed to be funny. I’m not laughing. Lacey is going to shit — absolutely shit.
“Well, you can fire home, get changed and come back for the photos. You sat in my office like the fucking big man and told me you would deal with it. I don’t see you dealing with it.”
He’s not given me any time? What did he expect?
“I’m not doing this,” I tell him.
My dad sniggers and flicks his head towards the door I just walked through. “Move,” he tells me, shouldering me as he barges through.
I take a look around and catch my mum urging me with her eyes to follow him. It’s the same look she used to give me when I was five years old and he was taking his belt off. It worked then and I wish I could say it didn’t work now, but no one would have stood there. The whole fucking room is begging me to listen to him.
I follow him up the stairs, swallowing the lump in my throat. I still listen to him, but I’m not as scared as I was back then.
He’s standing in a guest bedroom, the same one I used to sleep in when I was little. I’m not even through the door and he’s pushing me up against the wall. “I approved of the wee lassie because I thought she gave you a backbone… but there’s a fine fucking line between a swagger and disrespect.”
He has the collar of my t-shirt twisted around his fist and he eyes me up, breath hot in my face.
I stare down at him, jaw clenched tight and breathing through my nose.
We stand there for a second, both of us eyeing each other up, I’m thinking it’s been a hell of a long time since I was five and I’m wondering if he’s thinking the same thing too.
“No disrespect from me. I just know she won’t do it. I need more time.”
He looks at me for a few more seconds and then he drops my collar and turns away. “You’ve had enough time. You either marry that girl and get the shit we need, or else I do what you couldn’t.”
I shake my head at him, even though he can’t see me. “Her dad won’t leave, even if she begs him. He doesn’t give a fuck about her.”
I watch him as he shrugs and turns around. “Thank fuck you do then, eh?”
Chapter 13
LACEY
Stevie drives. Even after hearing Shaun’s directions three times, I still didn’t have a clue where I was going.
The road is busy with it being a Sunday, but she slides her little Fiat 500 into a space expertly. “Number 27, right?”
“I’m sure that’s what he said,” I tell her.
She shrugs, unclipping her seatbelt and opening the door. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
The pair of us walk up the driveway and I try to stop the butterflies in my stomach. It’s not a big deal. It feels like the formal meeting the family moment, but I remind myself it’s not. I’ve met his gran before… even though I didn’t know it at the time.
I ring the doorbell and Shaun answers almost immediately. I smile up at him, but that drops quickly when he doesn’t return it.
“Calvin’s ben the living room,” he says, looking at Stevie and nodding his head to the right. He steps aside just enough to let her through.
I assume he wants to give me a pep-talk or something like that, so I smile at her to go on.
She ducks in the house and my eyes go back to Shaun’s. He watches me for a moment before pushing off the wall. “Lace, upstairs.”
I don’t like his tone; in fact, it puts me in mind of the way he used to speak to me. He doesn’t ask; he just orders.
But I follow him anyway, intending to remind him that he no longer gets to speak to me that way as soon as we’re upstairs and out of earshot.
He’s already taking them two at a time before I’ve closed the front door.
I enter the bedroom and he doesn’t even give me a second to take in the surroundings. He has me pushed up against a wall, his lips on mine and his fingers in my hair before I can blink.
Is this his gran’s bedroom?!
That’s all I can think about.
I tap his shoulder but he doesn’t stop.
“Shaun!” I barely get the word out without it catching in his mouth. When my taps don’t work, I shove him, and he finally backs the fuck up. “What was that?”
He shrugs, breathless and looking at me with hard eyes. “Figured we probably won’t be doing that for a while.”
“What are you talking about?”
Pausing for a long moment, he stands there staring at me the same way you would if you were going away for a long, long time.
“What’s wrong?”
He swallows and comes out of the daze he was in, straightening himself. “The pastor is downstairs.”
He’s joking.
That’s the first thought that rolls through my head, but it’s followed almost immediately by the voice of reason.
He’s not fucking joking.
“Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t. My dad did.”
I turn away from him because I can’t look at him.
It hurts.
I wish we could be perfect. There are moments with us… when it’s just the two of us, just a boy and just a girl. Those moments I think that if he wasn’t who he was, I could probably fall in love with him. And then just when I start to get comfortable with that, the whole thing turns upside down again.
“And what did you tell him?”
His hand goes to his neck, showing off his prominent pecs and every tight muscle in his bastard chest and I want to slap him for being so…
“What did you want me to say? He only agreed to this because I told him I’d make sure you wouldn’t be marrying Liam.”
“Agreed to what?”
“That you could stay.”
He says it so casually, like his dad is the CEO of the company and I’m just the low-paid help. We’re not in a company. Real
life doesn’t work like that.
“So whatever your dad says, we have to listen to? What are we, his puppets?”
He sighs and shakes his head, practically rolling his eyes at me. I hate him when he does this. “Everyone in this town is my dad’s puppet. The quicker you learn that the better you’ll fare.”
“This is nuts. You do realize that, right?”
Shaun shrugs, as if it’s just another day for him. As if it’s nothing. “You said you would trust me. I’m asking you to trust me now.”
I said I would join his team. I said I would try trusting him. Hell, I even said I would go through with the stupid hand-whatever thing he wanted.
But not like this.
Not because his dad woke up this morning and decided this was the way it had to be. I lived my whole life with a dad who would send me to school one morning and announce on the way home that we were moving continents. It feels like I’m running from smoke towards a raging fire.
“I said I would try. I don’t even know you.” He keeps saying that I do, but I don’t. “I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know why your Dad must always be obeyed. I don’t know why this whatever-it’s-called has to be today. I don’t even know your favourite fucking color.”
“Black. Yours?”
I give him a snort that ends in an eye roll. “White. See?”
Complete fucking opposites.
“Favourite food?”
I shrug. This is stupid. “Sushi.”
He screws his face up. “My gran’s stew. Song?”
I think about it for a second. I’m not really sure, so I go for the most obscure thing (to him) I can think of that I half-like. “Dolly Parton, Jolene.”
He barely misses a beat before replying, “Kenny Rogers, The Gambler. See? His and hers.”
“You’re just saying that because of what I said.”
He flicks his eyebrows at me. “Fine. Johnny Cash, The Gambler. Same fucking thing.”
“Do you have a point?”
“I do.”
“Then make it.”
“I just did. My point was, how easy was that? I’ve got fucking years to work out if you like white chocolate or dark chocolate better. I don’t have years to wait while you fanny about trying to work out if you want to marry a rapist. Do you want to marry a rapist?” He spits the words at me and his eyes grow dark.
