The NSC Boxset: Heart of Stone

by D H Sidebottom

  “Oh fuck you!”

  “No thanks.” I retorted.

  “No, same here. Why would I want you when I can fuck your husband?”

  I clenched my teeth as nausea rolled up my throat and attempted to make an appearance. My stomach twisted with jealousy as her hatred speared my chest and made it difficult to breathe through.

  I tried to ignore her as I pulled my legs up and turned my back on her as far as I could but the vision of her words assaulted my mind and all I could visualise was her and Mason, fucking and even worse . . . enjoying it.

  * * *

  “You know,” Rebecca whispered into the darkness that had descended into the room, bringing a chill into the air with it.

  We’d been silent for a long while, both of us imagining how to kill the other as our hatred lay thick in the atmosphere around us.

  “I have far more reason to hate you than you me.”

  I shook my head in bewilderment. “And how do you work that out?”

  She hesitated and I swear I could feel her sadness eat at me. It radiated from her, even in the darkness, even through the chill, its potency thick and rancid as she struggled to find her voice. “Because although you believe I took him from you,” she choked on a sob and I winced at the sound. “You took him from me, Ava.”

  I turned to look at her. She was watching me in the dim light from the moon as it streaked into the room and gave off a faint glow. I remained silent, waiting for her to continue. Her eyes slid to the window, “Six years we’d been together.” She smiled painfully, although not at me, her throat bobbing as she tried to swallow back the lump in it.

  I rolled my head around my neck as I tried to ease the tension and dropped my eyes from her. “We’d been friends for years. I’d had such a crush on him since I was twelve.” She chuckled slightly and smiled wider. “Our families were friends and would always holiday together. I remember one year,” she paused and I turned to look at her. She didn’t return my look; her eyes were still fixed on the moon as she lost herself to her memories. “He took me fishing. He’d have been, what? I was fifteen . . . So he must have been around seventeen.”

  Her expression lightened and she giggled. “He’d caught this tiddly little fish, I mean it was so weak and weeny but it seemed to beg with its large, round eyes for me to help it, free it. So I unhooked it and threw it back in.” She shook her head in humour. “Mason threw me in after it, said if I couldn’t catch any with a rod I should use my teeth.” She slipped her face to mine, “He used to call me a horse.”

  I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  She narrowed her eyes on me and sighed but carried on. “And then on my seventeenth birthday, he kissed me . . . and I fell in love.” A tear rolled down her face and I watched it slide off her chin and drop onto her cream silk shirt, the drop splattering against the dirt that now spoiled the pristine material.

  She smiled then looked at me. “It was my first ever kiss and . . .” she swallowed and shrugged, “ . . . and it was perfect.”

  “Rebecca . . .”

  “No,” she cut me off quietly. “I’m not telling you this to hurt you. I just want you to . . . well to understand.”

  “Why?”

  Her teeth pulled at her bottom lip and a sob made its way out of her. God damn, that was not my heart aching, no it was hatred burning up. “Because I’m tired, Ava. I’m tired of fighting for something . . . someone that was never really mine, but God, I so wanted him to be.”

  I sighed and looked to the floor, her heartache hurtful to watch. “Have you ever wanted something so bad that you would kill for it, Ava? You would humiliate yourself, degrade yourself and do some . . . shameful things just for the slightest bit of attention from someone who held your heart.”

  I nodded, “Yeah, I get that.”

  She nodded and smiled tightly. “But then you always had him. You never had to fight like I did, you never took his disgust. You never had to take the humiliation of grabbing onto the scraps he threw you.”

  “If that’s the case, why didn’t you let go?”

  She scoffed and shook her head as her cries became louder. “Because I love him, Ava. I’ve always loved him. I turned to coke because of him. I let him take whatever he wanted from me. I let him share me with other men and all I wanted . . .”

  I growled as a tear rolled down my face and wiped it away with a lift of my shoulder. “All you wanted?” I urged her on.

  She stared at the floor whilst she tried to control herself, blowing out lengthily until she had her weeping under control. “All I ever wanted was to hear him say I was beautiful, to whisper in my ear that he loved me.”

  The door opened and this time we welcomed the oblivion that took each of us from our inner tortures.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Waiting

  Mason

  I RAN MY hands over the duvet that decorated Ava’s bed. The teal colour she had chosen was soft and feminine, but still not too girly. I smiled when I realised she would have made that choice to include my tastes without even realising she was doing it.

  I closed my eyes and took another hard breath. I missed her so much. It had been over six months now, six long fucking torturous months without her.

  And yet, as fate goes, just when I was about to put an end to her denial, the cruel twist of life beats me to it and takes her from me again.

  Walking over to her mirrored table, I ran my fingers over the mass of her make-up strewn across the surface of it. Her usual perfume, the one that reminded me of honeysuckle and oranges, sat waiting for her to spritz again. The small comb had replaced the thick brush she’d always used, reminding me of her now honey blonde hair that resembled a baby’s delicate tresses. That made me smile, I knew she liked the colour secretly, she’d always wanted to be slightly blonde, but the deep rich red in her colouring had never taken properly with dyes.

  I chuckled when the memory of her gawping at me with bright orange hair from the bedroom doorway as tears streamed down her face and her hands flapped about reminded me of some our happy times.

  I picked up her pot of anti-aging creamy shit stuff she applied every night religiously and twisted off the cap, dipping my nose near it to pull in the smell of her bedtime scent. I’d never tell her but it had always turned me on. I’m sure the manufacturers of that damn stuff added aphrodisiac extras; they should for the bloody price she always paid. Plastic surgery would have been cheaper in the long run.

  I entered the bathroom and turned on the shower, pre-warming it to the heat I always had it, scowling and shaking my head in frustration when I saw that Ava had it set to lukewarm as always. What was that all about? Who the hell had a lukewarm shower, apart from Ava that was?

  I used her toothbrush. I knew she’d hit me if she found out but stupidly, it took me closer to her, linked her with me.

  The soap looked at me, the £15 bar of soap she always defended was one of her luxuries—one? One? Damn, she was the only woman I knew who couldn’t seem to count past one, even when there were twenty odd . . . it was always just the one. Like just the one bar of chocolate or just one more Agent Provocateur bra and thong set.

  The image of her shoving a bar of soap swiftly into her little mouth when she was pregnant and I’d caught her in my bathroom gave me another smile. There was only my wife who would crave something hideous when pregnant . . . and oh god, the bloody gherkins!

  The shower pounded my back, stimulating every deadened fibre until my pores tingled angrily and my skin pimpled funnily. Ava had always wrinkled up like I’d never seen before, mind you, the three bloody hours she spent in the tub didn’t help, with her glass of wine, her strawberries and the mountain of bloody Ferrero Rocher’s.

  Right then, I’d have given anything to see her wrinkled body slide up and down the tub like she used to just to annoy me, her perfect lithe body gliding up and down on her belly, water sloshing over the rim of the bath and drenching me as I’d sat on the toilet reading he
r the latest Ker Dukey novel she always went crazy for. Mind you, I’d never complain, she was always horny as fuck after reading one of them.

  I squirted her shampoo into my palms, smiling at the baby brand that she would have to use now while her hair was in its fragile period.

  I’ll admit, the day I saw her after her treatment, the day I stupidly hated what my fucking damn mouth had come out with, had been a shock. For over twenty years, Ava had had such beautiful thick healthy hair, her copper curls one of the things I had fell in love with. And then suddenly, it was gone. She had appeared to be a completely different person, someone I hadn’t recognised. However, it hadn’t just been her hair that had stunned me; it had been her whole look. She’d lost shit loads of weight, her face was drawn and pale, her once smooth freckled skin had been covered in blemishes and broken veins and her striking green eyes were dull and lifeless.

  I hated how my thoughtlessness and lack of compassion had caused her to run and break. And how she’d turned to Steed after.

  I stepped out of the shower, dried off and climbed into her bed, pulling the duvet up to my face and inhaling her sweet scent, consuming her, filling my soul with her essence.

  I didn’t know what to do. For once there was absolutely nothing to go on. There had been no contact in two days . . . nothing.

  Initially, I hadn’t been too concerned. Occurrences like this, something usually happened to give me a lead, or a contact would be made to tell me why this was happening. But as yet, nothing. And now I was starting to panic. Now I was struggling to take another breath in case Ava was taking her last.

  After everything; after what the cancer had put her through, and how she had fought like my warrior always did, I prayed to god that she would get through this final battle.

  I needed her. My heart needed her. My soul needed her.

  Her glorious bastard would follow her into hell if need be.

  I once told her that she would never leave me, even in death.

  And I would keep that promise.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Revelations

  Ava

  “CAN I ASK you a question?”

  I shifted round to face Rebecca. The dampness in my jeans was cold and irritating. Every time it dried out, I had to wee again. We’d been here around two days by the coming and going of light, but that two days had given me more of an idea about my surroundings. However, now my brain was starting to shut down with dehydration, my stomach hurt so badly with pangs of hunger and I was exhausted. I knew I wouldn’t get out of here unaided now; I was too weak and vulnerable.

  “Go for it,” Rebecca slurred. She was losing the fight too. She no longer cried, she was too frail and in as much pain as me. Her fingers had gone blue from being elevated for so long, her bottom was as sore as mine after sitting in our own urine for so long and her spirit had evaporated into the dust particles that refused to stop floating around us.

  “If Mason means that much to you, why did you bribe him to marry you? Wouldn’t you have just wanted him to be happy?”

  She sighed and rolled her lips, her gaze slipping from me to a random spot of dirt on the floor. “It was all so hard at first. I got pregnant and daddy did something I had no idea about at first.”

  “You didn’t know he was blackmailing Mason?”

  She shook her head and looked at me, “Not at first, no. He’d asked who the father was, I told him Mason but I knew he wouldn’t want anything to do with it and daddy took it from there. But then it was so easy to go along with.”

  I frowned and tipped my head in confusion. “But it wasn’t Mason’s baby, was it?”

  She shook her head, her teeth gnawing on her sore lips as her heartache took her to a place I knew all too well. “No it wasn’t. At first I thought it was. The dates fit, even though I’d had sex with another.”

  “No Rebecca, the dates didn’t fit.”

  She turned to me, her eyes so sad and watery. “I . . . I lost it.”

  “What?” None of it was making sense.

  She blew out hard and shifted until she was looking at me without a twist in her neck. “I was six weeks pregnant when you came on the scene.”

  “Oh my god . . .”

  She nodded slowly. “I knew he didn’t love me, Ava. I knew it in my bones and I selfishly hoped the baby was his but then as soon as I found out, I lost it.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “Yeah, nothing more to say really is there. Anyway, it had been my only hope of . . . of holding onto him. I knew he would never turn his back on a child so . . .”

  “So?” I urged her on.

  “So, I slept with someone, became pregnant again and told Mason it was his.”

  Silence descended. Rebecca never removed her eyes from me as she gauged my reaction.

  “I loved him so much Ava, I need you to understand that. I needed him with an ache that was physical. It tore at me daily, and it broke me down so much until there was nothing of me left. I turned into the crazy woman who would do anything to get the man she loved. He turned me into that woman.”

  “I . . .”

  “He knew though.” She smiled sadly. “He knew it wasn’t his even before you threw that paternity test at us. He’d known long before that . . .”

  “Rebecca . . .”

  She continued, whether she hadn’t heard me or whether she chose to ignore me, I would never know . . . but her next words blew my world apart.

  “He always knew, Ava. We’d never in six years used a condom, and I’d never got pregnant before, so he knew.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  She frowned at me. “Well he would never be the dad to my baby if he can’t have kids, would he?”

  I stared at her, my mouth open, each particle of air in that room whooshing towards me as my vision tunnelled and I struggled to remain conscious.

  “W. .what, but . . . George . . . Katie . . .”

  Her eyes widened on me and her own mouth fell open. “Oh my God, he never told you.”

  I shook my head at her. The last twenty years now became a nightmare, a hole in my life where memories now became lies and family moments teetered on the edge of my sanity.

  “Ava . . . shit. Why did he never tell you? I thought you knew. I thought . . . I thought . . .”

  “Are you saying he knows?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “He had an inkling at the beginning, when I never got pregnant. And when I told him I was pregnant he went and got tested. His swimmers don’t swim Ava. Mason is infertile.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Despair

  Mason

  NATE AND GREG grabbed an arm each and tackled me to the floor. I had broken, finally, after three days of hell, my sanity had ruptured and brought on my wrath with no limits.

  The arsehole in the club should have taken my mood into consideration before he had slammed my sister up against the wall and stuck his hand under her dress.

  What the fuck was wrong with some people? Arseholes! The lot of them.

  “Get the fuck off me!” I roared at my friends as I struggled to slip from their grip.

  “Calm the fuck down, Mase. Then we’ll let go. You were gonna kill him.”

  “Good!”

  Kerrie shook her head at me, “For Christ’s sake Mason, go and cool off. I can handle things myself.”

  “He had the whole of his damn arm up your dress!”

  “Yes,” she huffed. “And if you had given me a moment, it would’ve been wrapped around his throat. Go back to the warehouse; kick the shit out of something in there. But don’t ruin the club in your breakdown!”

  So I did just that.

  * * *

  “How do you think Ava’s coping with Rebecca?” Greg asked when he passed me a bottle of water. I kicked at some of the corrugated walling I had pulled off, moving it to one side and sank down next to him in a clear space on the floor.

  I laughed loudly, “Well, I would have thought by now she’s killed her.
” I answered openly and honestly.

  Greg nodded in agreement. “But aren’t you a little worried?” I shook my head and frowned at him, not understanding his question. “Well, your ex and your wife in the same room. An ex who I may remind you was hell bent on splitting you and Ava up in the first place.”

  “It’s crossed my mind.” I rolled my lips and turned to him, “But really, there’s nothing Bec can say or do that Ava isn’t already aware of. She found me with Rebecca in the Panther. She saw the lines of coke on the table. She knows.”

  We both drank and lost ourselves to our thoughts for a while before Greg turned to me. “Well now we know that it isn’t Etta doing this, have you any fresh ideas?”

  I shook my head and rubbed at my chin as I stretched my knuckles to alleviate some of the soreness from my destruction. “No, and that’s what scares the shit out of me. Not how Ava is coping, cos’ I know my wife, I know her limits. It’s the unknown that I fear. Hope, everyone says is a wonderful thing, hell we even gave it Katie as a middle name, but hope right now is the epitome of evil to me, because what if it’s false, what if hope is a lie, an illusion of what could be when the reality is hopeless?”

  “You know,” Greg sighed. “When you both gave up, when Ava pushed you away and you pushed yourself further away, there was one thing that was always there, was always ready and waiting for you to find it.”

  “Yeah,” I questioned, “what was that?”

  He smiled at me softly as he tapped my cheek then pushed himself up, holding out his hand to me. I gripped it and let him pull me up. “Hope, Mason. Hope.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Reconcile

  Ava

  THE DOOR SWUNG open and I frowned as panic started to set in. Rebecca and I weren’t greeted with the single man this time, there were three that walked in. All three were tall, built like brick shithouses and curiously each one sported blonde hair and square chins, making them almost identical. They each ignored us. Two stood either side of the door as one big guy pulled out a phone from the pocket of his jacket.