Two months after their first date, fate dealt a trump card, and Daisy discovered she was pregnant. Though they were both happy about the news, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Callan had not long found out he had to head back to the Middle East, which meant she would have to go through most of the pregnancy and labour alone.
“It’ll be fine,” he’d assured her as they sat in the lounge, attempting to assemble a cot flatpack. “It’s just a few months, and then I’ll never have to be away from you again.”
It seemed simple. He would go, and she would stay, but it had begun to eat at her.
She refrained from telling him, for fear of sounding irrational, that she’d been having recurring dreams about his departure, dreams that felt more like a warning over genuine anxiety,
They didn’t discuss it much after that night. Callan had avoided the topic as best he could, and then, to her surprise, a week before Christmas, he proposed. “Daisy, I know we haven’t been together for even a full year yet,” he said, lowering himself onto one knee. “But I love you. I’m helplessly and irreversibly in love with you. Marry me, please.”
She’d just arrived home from work and was peeling potatoes when she turned, peeler in hand, and froze. “Callan, you know we don’t have to do this. It’s just a piece of paper. I love you, and you love me. We don’t need a ring to prove it or anyone else to prove it.”
“I know we don’t. The thing is, I want you to be my wife. I want you to have the same surname as our child. I want you to be Daisy Thomas, not Jenkins. Is it so wrong that I want you to be mine, for the whole world to know it?”
She loved Callan; there was no doubt about that. But at the time, they had only been together for a few months. There had been no certainty to soothe her nerves or assure her it wouldn’t be a mistake. How could there have been? That was something only time could teach, and time had never been on their side.
In the end, though, she still said yes.
XIV
LOGAN
It wasn’t how he’d have liked to find out. A mutual friend had commented on the post, and it had shown up in his feed. Daisy was engaged to a soldier she’d met in the Middle East. But he wasn’t just any soldier. Callan Thomas had been one of the poster boys from his high school, tapped to join West Ham if he hadn’t ruptured his Achilles during a game. They’d met a few times, exchanging a couple of polite words at house parties and the like. He was an upgrade from Idris, but if his history was anything to go by, Callan had built a name for himself for not adhering to monogamy.
He stared at the photo of them both. Her hair had grown out and now settled at the breastbone. She was wearing a pale-yellow sun dress, and it didn’t hit him at first until he did a double-take. She wasn’t just engaged; she was pregnant.
Logan knew he had no right to be bitter, but it was impossible not to be. His breath hitched, shallow and sharp like a blade piercing the skin under his ribs. He shut off his phone, tossed it to the far end of the couch, and sighed. She was just a girl, a fleeting page in the book of his life. So why did it matter?
After trying to remove the thought from his mind, he decided to go for a drink. Not his usual, and not anywhere someone might recognise him and ask how he was doing, because he didn’t know how to answer that. Instead, he went to a little dive bar he knew nobody would visit, one that he hadn’t visited since his university days.
He walked through the doors and looked around. It hadn’t changed much from the dimly lit, questionable establishment it once was. Even the bartender hadn’t changed, with Darren, the tattooed and foul-mouthed patriarch of his youth, still pouring whisky behind the bar.
“Look who it is,” he said, meeting Logan’s gaze as he approached. “Never thought I’d see you back here.”
Logan laughed. “And I didn’t think you’d still be doing this all these years later.”
Darren shrugged and reached for a glass. “It’s a simple life, and what can I say? I like simple. What are you drinking?”
Logan thought for a moment, scanning the line of spirits. “A whisky will do.”
“Straight, or do you want to mix it?”
“What kind of question is that?”
Darren shook his head and smirked. “I had to ask.”
He poured the whisky without another word, and Logan took a sip, savouring the burn as it hit the back of his throat. It was warm, numbing, and exactly what he needed.
“So, what is someone like you doing here?” Darren asked, wiping down the bar. “I’ve seen you in the papers. You’ve made quite a name for yourself.”
“Which is exactly why I came here. You’re the only one here who knows me.”
“Are you sure about that?” He gestured to the left of them, and Logan turned. There was a woman standing a few stools away, swirling the stem of her martini glass, her eyes flicking towards him every so often.
“Someone’s noticed you.”
Logan knew her type. From her figure-hugging dress, the practiced tilt of her head to the careful calculation in her gaze, she wasn’t looking for love; she was looking for a distraction.
He could walk over there, offer a drink and some idle conversation. She’d smile, maybe laugh at something he said, and by the end of the night, they’d end up tangled in the sheets of some unfamiliar bed. But he knew better than anyone that when you feed off others for sustenance, it isn’t without cost. Still, when she approached, he couldn’t deny the temptation.
