Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ELLIE
The streets are quiet. Of course they are—it’s late on a Sunday night in Ardmara, and sensible people are in their homes, winding down, getting ready for Monday. Not walking through town with their heart pounding and their fists clenched at their sides.
I’ve spent my whole life being sensible. Staying in the background. Keeping my feelings contained, my wants small, and my head down. I’m not doing that tonight. I’ve waited too long for Douglas Fraser. I’m not about to let Leah waltz back into his life and undo everything.
My stomach tightens as I reach his door, but I don’t let myself hesitate. I knock.
The door opens almost immediately, as though Douglas has been pacing on the other side of it. And there he is—jaw tight, shoulders bunched up, exhaustion carved into every line of his face, like all the rest he got this weekend has already been wiped away. But when he sees me, something loosens.
“Ellie.” The word is little more than an exhale, and it’s threaded with relief.
I step inside. He closes the door behind me, and we stand in the narrow hall, close enough to touch. The house smells of fish and chips and something floral. Perfume, I realise. Leah’s perfume.
Douglas lifts his hand to my face. His thumb brushes my cheek, and I lean into it without thinking.
Then he kisses me—brief, firm, slightly desperate—before pulling back.
He leads me through to the living room. It’s my first time inside Douglas’s house, and I take it in quickly: the toy box by the fireplace, the model boat on the windowsill, the colouring books on the coffee table.
It’s cosy, a bit cluttered, unmistakably a family space.
I wish the circumstances were different.
I wish I were here because he’d invited me for tea, not because another woman is in his bed.
My eyes settle on the sofa. That’s where Douglas said he’d sleep tonight.
No. Absolutely not. He is not sleeping on the sofa in his own house.
“Right.” Douglas rubs the back of his neck. “We should probably figure out a plan. I was thinking—”
Footsteps on the stairs.
We both go still, then Douglas’s expression hardens. I straighten my spine, even as nerves skitter through me.
Leah appears in the living room doorway.
She’s wearing one of Douglas’s shirts, the blue-and-black checked one I’ve seen him in a hundred times.
It hangs to mid-thigh, showing off her bare, lean legs.
Her dark hair is tousled. She looks like a woman who has just rolled out of a man’s bed—which, I suppose, she has.
“I thought I heard voices.” Her gaze lands on me. She looks me up and down, taking in my washed-out old T-shirt, my leggings, my hair scraped back in a hasty ponytail. Her face arranges itself into something between amusement and pity.
“Oh. This is who you went away with, Douglas?” She lets out a laugh, light and dismissive. “Well, that’s a relief.”
The implication is clear. She’s looked at my size, my shape, my lack of polish, and decided I’m not a threat.
It cuts me. Of course it does. Comments like that always do. But then I remember Friday night. Douglas unzipping my dress, the fabric falling away, and the look on his face when he saw me, as though he couldn’t quite believe I was real. I’m not going to let her get to me.
“Don’t, Leah,” Douglas says before I can speak. There’s an edge to his voice.
She ignores him. Her attention is still on me, studying me more closely now, and then recognition dawns. “Oh, I know you!” Her eyes widen with theatrical delight. “You’re the library girl. Oh my God, Douglas, really?” She laughs again, shaking her head as though she’s embarrassed on his behalf.
“Leah.” Douglas’s voice hardens further. “You don’t get to speak to Ellie like that.”
Something flickers across Leah’s face—surprise, maybe, as though she’s not used to Douglas pushing back. Then her expression softens, and she turns back to me with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I’m sorry. That was rude of me. It’s just . . . it’s been a long day. I came home to see my husband and my children, and now there’s a stranger in my living room when I’m trying to get to sleep.” She tilts her head. “I’m sure you understand.”
My husband. My children. My living room. Each phrase is a fence post driven into the ground. This is mine. This is mine. This is mine.
I look at her steadily. My pulse is loud in my ears, and my hands want to tremble, but I clasp them in front of me. “This isn’t your living room, Leah.” My words come out quiet but clear. “It’s Douglas’s house.”
The smile thins.
“And you don’t want Douglas,” I add. “You just don’t want anyone else to have him.”
The room goes very still. I’m aware of Douglas beside me—his sharp intake of breath, the way his whole body goes rigid—but I don’t look at him. I keep my eyes on Leah.
Her composure cracks, just for a second, a hairline fracture across the polished surface, there and gone. She wasn’t expecting this, not from me. Not from the library girl in her old T-shirt and leggings.
She recovers, but not smoothly. “That’s . . . that’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to. “You could have come back any time you wanted, any time at all. But the only time you bother is when you think Douglas might be moving on.”
She opens her mouth, but I’m not finished.
“You don’t want him. You don’t care about his happiness. You just want the option to come and go when it suits you, to see the twins when you please, and you think I might disrupt that arrangement.” I pause. My heart is beating so hard I’m sure she can hear it. “Well, you’re right. I might.”
Leah stares at me, and the slight tightening around her mouth tells me every word landed exactly as I wanted it to.
“Well,” she says finally, sighing dramatically, “I can see I’m not wanted tonight.” She glances at Douglas. “I’ll go to the inn, but we’re not done talking about the children, Douglas.”
“Fine,” he says. “We can talk about the children tomorrow or whenever you like, but not tonight. I want you out of my house, Leah. Right now.”
“Now?” she repeats. “You’re not going to send me out onto the street like this, Douglas?” She lifts the hem of the shirt she’s wearing, showing a flash of pink silk knickers beneath.
Oh, for God’s sake. I press my lips together and roll my eyes. That was completely unnecessary, and she knows it.
Douglas flushes and turns his head away. “No, of course not. When I said now, I didn’t mean right this second. Of course you can get dressed first.”
Leah lets the shirt fall. A small smug smile plays at her mouth—petty pleasure at having reclaimed a scrap of control. She turns and heads for the stairs without another word.
The moment she’s out of earshot, I breathe out and press my hands to my thighs. They’re shaking. They’ve been shaking for a while, I think.
“That woman,” I say, “is a piece of work.”
“Aye, she’s a nightmare.” Douglas lays his hands on my shoulders. “But you, Ellie—that was incredible.”
He pulls me into a hug, and we stand there together, listening to the footsteps overhead until they come back down the stairs. Leah appears in the hall, properly dressed this time: jeans, a jacket. Through the living room doorway, she looks in at me, her gaze different now. Sharper. Reassessing.
I hold her stare, and she looks away first.
“I’ll be in touch tomorrow,” she says to Douglas. Then she pulls open the front door, pauses on the threshold, and adds lightly—almost to herself, as though she’s genuinely puzzled—“I just don’t understand it, though. You’ve always liked a more petite figure, Douglas.”
The door closes behind her before either of us can respond.
Douglas is already moving towards it. “She doesn’t get to say things like that. Not to you. I’m going to—”
I catch his hand and stop him. “Leave it. We got rid of her.” I squeeze his fingers. “People like that always have to get the last word in. Let her have it. What matters is she’s gone.”
Douglas stands for a moment, his chest rising and falling. Then he closes his eyes, exhales, and opens them again.
“Like I said on the phone,” he says quietly, “she knows how to get under people’s skin. She’s cruel, Ellie. But I need you to understand something. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” The sincerity in his face is so raw it almost undoes me.
“Oh, I know.” The words come out before I can question them, and I’m surprised by my own confidence. But I do know that Douglas thinks I’m beautiful, because I have evidence. Real, physical, undeniable evidence.
“I saw how you looked at me this weekend,” I say, then I step closer and drop my voice. “I saw how hard it made your cock.”
Douglas’s eyebrows shoot up. A grin breaks across his face—slow, delighted, slightly stunned by my crass words—and he shakes his head.
“God, I love that I get to see this side of you, the side no one else gets to see.” He takes my face in both hands.
“What you did tonight, standing up to her like that—nobody has ever done that for me before.” He swallows. “You were incredible.”
He kisses me. Not gently, not tentatively. Hard and grateful, his fingers threading into my hair, his mouth pressing mine open. I grip the front of his shirt and kiss him back, and I feel the tension drain out of him as he leans into me.
The kiss deepens. His hands slide from my face down my back and settle at my waist, pulling me closer. My hand drifts down his chest, over his stomach, and lower. I find him hard through his jeans.
“See?” I whisper against his mouth. “You just can’t help yourself around me.”
Douglas lets out a low, breathless laugh. “No, I really can’t.”
We stay like that for a while, pressed together, kissing, my hand stroking him lightly through the denim.
The pull between us is enormous. After all we got up to this weekend, my body knows exactly what comes next, exactly what it wants.
It’d be so easy to undo Douglas’s belt, pull down his fly, and—
But the twins are asleep upstairs. Leah’s perfume still lingers in the air. It doesn’t feel right. Not tonight, not like this.
I break the kiss first. “Another time,” I say softly. “I should go.”
Douglas’s hands linger at my waist, then he nods and lets go. I can see how much it costs him.
I kiss him one more time—gently, just a brush of my lips against his—then leave.