I’ve missed her.
The thought lands wrong. Or right. I can’t tell anymore. Three weeks since the Burns Supper. Three weeks since she crumpled in that corridor and I held her and told her she didn’t have to be fine.
She’s been running on a loop in my brain. Not only the memory of her stunning face in the candlelight, but the shape of her in my arms. Her trust in me.
I’ve been turning over every detail, and I don’t know what to do with any of it.
If I push, I’ll lose her. If I name the thing writhing behind my sternum, she’ll stop talking to me. And I can’t ruin this. It’s the first time in years I’ve felt like a person instead of a function. She’s…the only girl I’d give up every win for.
And she belongs to someone who’s grinding her to dust. My teammate.
She tips her head back, those glassy grey-blue eyes finding mine, and everything inside me caves.
Fuck loyalty.
‘He doesn’t deserve you. You know that.’ The words slip out without filter. Driven by a sudden need to break the glass she’s behind. ‘You’re too fucking good for him.’
She pulls in a short, uneven breath. ‘Scottie?—’
‘Why don’t you leave him?’ The question rips out of me, snapping every wire I’ve used to keep my mouth shut.
Jesus Christ. I’ve just asked my teammate’s girlfriend to leave him. In a pub. In public. There’s no taking it back. Her face cycles through shock, fear, and a raw, unguarded want that cracks me open.
And I realise I don’t want to take it back.
It’s more than a question. It’s an offer. A door held open, and for a heartbeat, she looks ready to run. Not away from me. To me. The yearning in her eyes mirrors my own so perfectly it’s destroying me.
‘Ava!’ Nevin’s voice cuts across the room.
We both flinch. She retreats back to create distance, her face smoothing into neutrality. But I saw her wanting to answer.
‘I should—’ She gestures vaguely.
‘Aye.’
She moves away, and I force myself to stand still as Nevin’s arm circles her waist again, as she shrinks into the space he allows.
But she doesn’t stay shrunk for long. Minutes later, she moves toward the bar again. No eye contact with me. Only a woman getting water. Except she stops so close that I feel the warmth of her breath against my neck.
‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘There are reasons. It’s complicated.’
Movement flickers in my peripheral vision: a dark shape cutting through the crowd with focused intensity. I start to move, to wedge myself between them, but Nevin is faster.
‘Twice in five minutes. You’re wandering off again. Wise up before people start talking.’ He pulls her with him. ‘Come on. Stop embarrassing me.’
The noise of the pub goes flat, the muffled sound of a crowd after a blow to the head. I hook my fingers under the edge of the bar and brace, the muscles in my forearms bunching as I put the weight of my whole frame into the wood. A controlled burn to stop me from lashing out. The pressure behind my eyes builds until my skull feels too small for everything inside it.
I could end him. One final conversation. One fist through his smug fucking face.
The thought is dark, satisfying, and useless.
Mum taught me the mechanics of this without meaning to. The lessons are etched into my nervous system: the violence a man does in private gets paid in currency the woman can’t afford. If I touch him, Ava pays the interest. He’s insulated by charm and money; she’s trapped by everything he’s taken from her. The cost of my anger would be her safety. I can’t do that to her.
I can’t do anything unless she wants me to.
Every time he touches her – guiding, correcting, owning – the tendons in my forearms strain against the effort of staying still.
I down the rest of my Coke Zero in one go and set the bottle down with too much force.
