On Loverose Lane (Return to Dublin Street #1)

39. Callan

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CALLAN

I knew a week could feel like a year.

I’d just forgotten. The last time a week felt like a year was after my parents died.

We played Dingwall the day after Beth and me … the day after she left my flat, making me feel like scum for ever touching her.

The first half was a mess. My head was not in the game.

As I moved down the pitch, Beth’s tearful expression kept filling my mind and suddenly, I had no idea what was happening in the match.

Etienne yelled at me at halftime and although I wanted to smash the cunt’s face in, his ire pulled my head out of my arse. I tapped into my self-directed frustration and my bitterness toward Beth for seeing the worst in me. We dominated the second half and won the game 2–1.

The gaffer still gave me a talking-to afterward.

Baird and John watched me warily. They knew something was up. Later that evening, I told them that the thing with Beth and me was over. My tone demanded they not discuss it any further, and since I had good mates, they didn’t.

However, the next week passed in slow fucking motion. I kept hoping to see her as I was coming and going from the flat, but for the first time since I’d moved in, I didn’t. I’d hear heels on the concrete stairwell and my heart would jump into my throat, but it was never her.

She had to be avoiding me.

A week that felt like a year. And with every day that passed, I couldn’t deny it got harder to get out of bed. Because I couldn’t admit to myself what this great big fucking black cloud over my head was.

When Baumann slapped me on the back at training and told me to go shag Beth if that’s what it would take to drag me out of my mood, I almost took a swing at him, and John had to intervene.

“Do we need to talk about this?” Baird had asked tentatively as we left the grounds that afternoon.

“Nothing to talk about.” I jumped into my Defender and left without another word.

It was a good thing Gavin didn’t show up because I was ready to take this swelling beast of emotion building inside me out on someone. Just unleash it so I could be rid of it.

She was everywhere. I’d catch a glimpse of a tall lassie with long, wavy dark blond hair, and I’d feel a lurch in my chest. It was never her. On Thursday night, I finally broke and went on social media. I hadn’t posted anything in a while and still didn’t post now. Instead, I searched for Beth’s private profile, not the Social Queens one.

There were no new posts or stories.

My stomach knotted as I tapped on her last photo. It was one I’d taken of her in Dean Village about a week before it ended between us. She stared at me in the low evening sun, the light catching her eyes and turning them an even more vibrant blue. Her lips were quirked in a sexy, barely there smile.

I scrolled through the comments from her friends. All supportive and positive. Some randoms commented to say they wished they looked like her. Beth had replied, telling them they were beautiful too. Aye, that was Beth. Then I scowled at a couple of comments from some strange men telling her she was sexy as fuck and that they’d DM’d her. Beth hadn’t responded.

Staring at the photo, I could see how people would look at her from the outside and see a young, gorgeous, confident woman and think she had it all. To me, she was even more stunning for knowing the kind comments to those other women were genuine and not said to make her appear to be a nice person. To me, she was even more beautiful for the loyalty she felt toward her family and friends. For the grief she battled every day and the anxiety she fought to defeat. For the way she saw me, just Callan, and not Callan Keen the Pro League football player.

But I’d made a promise to myself long ago.

No one would ever break my fucking heart again.

Even if that meant letting Beth believe all I wanted from her was sex.

I chucked my phone across the room so hard, it shattered against the wall.