I feel a strong hand close over my mouth and an arm band around my middle while Pax is dragged away from me by his collar.
“Hello, Corey,” a familiar voice croons in my ear. “You’ve been a very naughty boy. I think I’m going to have to punish you with my belt when we get home.” Thick and sweet, the smell of cigarettes is cloying as Dominic leans over me before forcing me down onto the sofa. I look up, trying to see where Pax went, and see Dan inject something into his neck. I lurch forward, trying to get to the dog who is looking at me with glassy eyes, before he goes floppy.
Dominic sits next to me, taking Pax’s collar from his brother.
“Sit there and don’t move,” he whispers, menacingly, “or this,” he holds up a kitchen knife, “will go straight through the dog’s throat. Understand, bitch?” I nod frantically, terrified for Pax, tears streaming down my face.
I’m paralysed with fear. I don’t know what to do, and the return to the state of mind I thought I had escaped hits me like a tonne of bricks. Terror and acceptance.
I was so close. So close to a happy ending. So close to building something completely my own.
I hear Rain coming down the stairs and strain my neck to try and warn him. He’s wearing one of Aidan’s hoodies, and the domesticityof it is heartbreaking, knowing that his world – our worlds – are about to be turned upside down.
“Cor, do you want a cuppa?” he says, and the simple question has tears spilling over my cheeks. He comes into the room and stops abruptly, taking in the scene before him. I look at him with desperation on my face.
He was always the braver one. The one who found a way to escape this life even after being put through so much pain. I need him to figure out a way to get us out of this, because I can’t. I’m frozen.
Every fear, every insecurity, every moment of my life that forced me to start afresh somewhere new. Every sunrise full of opportunity that never came to fruition weighs down on me in that moment, and I feel a sickening sense of acceptance fill me.
I was foolish to think I could ever truly escape this. To think that I deserved something better. No. It was a pipe dream. This was always inevitable, I see that now.
I try to look on the positive side of everything, to see the best in people and the opportunity in every new day. But the reality of my life to this point finally hits me. I’m not theperson who gets the happy ending.
I’m the person who relives the same toxic cycles over and over again until I die or am so jaded by life that I don’t care anymore.
As I watch Dan slide up behind Rain and, in an act so vile I thought it was only ever the stuff of nightmares and horror films, he licks a wet trail up Rain’s neck.
In that moment, I know we’re going to be taken. Rain can’t think of a way out. He’s frozen, too. But there’s a look of such determination in his eyes that I just hope he has a plan in mind. But for now? I just accept the hand life has dealt me and make my way to Dan’s car with a knife pressed against my back.
Eighteen
Nash
Standing on the doorstep of Drew and Caitlin’s home to collect Nancy for our day together is nerve-wracking. I haven’t slept very well, too many hours spent going over and over my conversation with Corey and questioning whether I’m making the right choice.
Every rational bone in my body knows that I am going through an incredibly challenging and exciting life change, and that my focus is, and rightly should be, fully on my daughter. On settling her into her new home, our relationship as father and daughter, and her new routines, as well as a new location, new family… the list of things to help Nancy acclimatise to is endless, and as her dad, the responsibility for supporting her with all of it falls to me. And I wouldn’t want it to be any other way. This is exactly what I’ve wanted my whole life.
The inconvenience of meeting Corey right at this point in my life is, however, a bitter pill to swallow. When Nancy and I are more settled, and I can start to contemplate dating or beginning a relationship, who knows where he’ll be in his life. He could meet someone tomorrow who sweeps him off his feet. He could go back to teaching or back to studying a new path. He could build a whole new future for himself that won’t leave time for a single dad who wants to be with him.
He could leave.
But part of being a parent – an adult, really – is knowing that sometimes life isn’t fair, and we don’t always get the fairy tale ending. Now would be a truly disastrous time to try to start something. Not least because Corey needs to work through some of his own trauma so he can be sure that a relationship is even something he truly wants. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if, with some space and distance, he decided that he wanted to be on his own for some time while he figures out his future.
No matter how attracted I am to Corey, physically and emotionally, it’s bad timing.Right guy, wrong time, just like he said. It doesn’t mean I can’t curse the universe a little.
These were the thoughts I wrestled back and forth with all night that left me in desperate need of coffee and pastry this morning. I stopped at Poppy’s on my way out of the village for a large Americano and an even larger almond croissant I ate on the drive here. I had an embarrassing amount of icing sugar, flaked almonds, and pastry crumbs to brush off my clothing when I climbed out of the car.
Drew pulls the door open, and I am immediately engulfed in a strawberry-scented whirlwind of legs and arms as Nancy races past his legs and leaps up for a hug. We’re both laughing as I head inside, my daughter wrapped around me like a barnacle as she tells me all about her morning so far.
“I had toast,” she says as I set her down in the kitchen.
“Did you? What did you have on it?”
“Nella,” she says, as though I should know what that is.
Caitlin holds up a jar of Nutella from where she’s clearing up the breakfast detritus, and I smile in relief.
“Nutella?” I ask, and Nancy nods.
