Chapter 16
Alistair
The drive home from the market had been awkward as hell. Like the calm right before the storm.
Teddy had taken the news of Cameron’s cancellation with only a solemn nod and a “Can we go home now?”
“What about ice cream?” Isla had asked, plastering on a shaking smile that even I saw straight through.
“I’m not hungry,” Teddy had said, sighing as she slid into the Land Rover’s back seat to wait while Isla and I packed up the food truck in a strained silence that accompanied us all the way home.
Between Isla furiously switching through the radio stations until she finally settled on one my mum would listen to and Teddy’s brooding taking up all the air in the car, I’d quickly taken my departure as soon as I’d parked in front of the cottages, barely able to look Isla in the eye as we’d hurried through a goodbye.
We hadn’t even planned when to go out again.
Closing the front door, I’d dropped back against it with a heavy sigh, wondering if maybe that was for the best. A week ago, this plan had felt foolproof.
A few dates in the village, a wee bit of hand-holding and we could get on with our lives as soon as summer ended.
But now I realised it all became a lot more complicated in real life.
Fake or not, spending time with someone meant your lives intertwined, whether you wanted them to or not.
I wasn’t sure I wanted my life to intertwine with Isla’s. Not when I’d be out of here the second the surgery sold. What would be the point of complicating that?
A devastated cry from Isla’s side of the wall had finally snapped me out of it. Isla hadn’t been lying when she said Teddy would be devastated at Cameron’s cancellation. Teddy’s sobs followed me all the way to the bedroom where I tore off the jumper that somehow smelled like Isla.
I’d showered as a distraction, doing my best not to remember how her silken skin felt beneath my hands.
Afterwards, I made a smoothie that Heather had so lovingly named my douchebag drink – because according to her, only arseholes drank wheatgrass – and then got a jump-start on patient referral letters at my kitchen table.
But it was no use. An hour later, I could still hear Teddy crying through the wall.
It was a mystery to me why anyone would have kids, even if Teddy was turning out to be a great one. Parents like Isla gave up their bodies, money and sanity, just to be told, “It’s all your fault we have to live here! Why does Daddy have to hate me just because he hates you?”
I’d been half tempted to call back, Because the spineless little prick decided to start his midlife crisis a decade earlier than scheduled.
Yeah, I’d been practically standing with my ear to the wall for that part. I was a snoop when it came to Isla, fucking sue me. And I’d heard enough to know that Isla handled the tantrum with a grace I did not possess.
“I know you’re hurting, baby girl. I’m so sorry I can’t fix it.” The anguish in her voice had me palming my keys, ready to drive over to Cameron’s place, punch him in the dick, then drag him here by the collar and force him to his knees so he could give them both the apology they deserved.
Isla wouldn’t thank me for getting involved with Cameron again. I’d already dented his pride enough for one day.
It was for that reason alone I was standing in my front garden right now, holding the Lego set I’d just dug out of a moving box, like a complete arsehole.
“Where’s your mummy?”
Teddy sat cross-legged on my lawn, elbows on knees, tear-stained cheeks planted on her fists.
“On the phone to my granny.” She sighed quietly. “Am I in trouble for being in your garden again?”
“No.” I walked closer. “I was hoping you might help me with my Lego. Can I sit?”
She squinted behind her glasses, gaze shrewd. “You played with Lego when you were a kid?”
“A kid?” I huffed out a laugh. “I still play Lego now.” It was a great stress-reliever. “Shift over, let me show you what I’ve got.” I sat cross-legged, like her. My legs folded a little awkwardly, but I made it work and handed her the box.
She brushed her fingers over the dragon on the front. “I have one like this at my dad’s house, but I haven’t built it yet. I don’t think he realised it’s for big kids.”
“Let’s look at the instructions. Maybe we can figure it out together.” She shook out the contents, and I laid the paper out on the grass, arranging the pieces into piles. “I like organising them into size groups first, then I can see exactly what I’m working with.”
She didn’t reply, just watched me, a sad little divot etched between her brows, and I thought, To hell with it. If I was involving myself, I might as well commit. “Does your daddy play Lego with you?”
A little shrug. “He used to. Now he’s too busy with Annie, the lady that lives with him.
” As a reasonable adult, this was probably the place I should reassure her, but I also couldn’t bring myself to lie to the kid.
Cameron had found something new and shiny to fill his time with, and his family were paying the price. So I said nothing.
“We were supposed to hang out today,” she said, the smallest sniffle in her voice. “Mummy promised he would take me to the beach, but then she said he had an emergency.”
“That must have felt . . . really big inside when you found out.” I clicked two pieces together, holding them out for her to see how the pieces slid together. Her slightly chubby fingers fumbled a little as she tried, but she got the hang of it on her next go.
“My stomach felt all twisty, like it does right before I get sick.”
“Did you tell your mummy how you felt?”
She shook her head, sitting quietly for a few minutes, connecting the pieces that would become the dragon’s feet to the baseplate.
“I shouted at her when we got home.” She admitted it like a shameful secret, scrubbing at her face as a slow tear crested her cheek. I almost called for Isla at the sight of it.
I wasn’t great at offering comfort. Callum would have been far more suited to this.
Even Mal. He was great with kids.
A decline in empathy was one of the drawbacks of being a medical professional.
It didn’t happen to everyone, but if it did, it usually happened early, during medical training as students transitioned to a clinical setting and were taught to see patients as a series of scans and body parts.
It wasn’t intentional or even malicious, but preparation for the emotional toll the career would take.
If a doctor broke down over every lost patient, we wouldn’t make it through the day.
But watching Teddy trying to hide the quiver in her bottom lip felt like a fist around my heart.
Something told me getting Isla would be the wrong move. That maybe she was admitting this to me because I was an adult in her life who didn’t hold any permanence.
A safe space, if only for a few minutes.
It worked that way in the surgery too. Perhaps it was the doctor–patient confidentiality. We were a place for people to bring their sickness and injuries but also take a weight off their mind.
“I didn’t mean to.” She shook her head. “I felt so . . . so sad. I just want it to be like it was before, when we all lived together.”
Fuck. What could I say to that?
I shifted an ich closer, hands hanging between my knees.
“Can I tell you a secret?” She nodded, eyes almost sparkling with her tears.
Her face was so like Isla’s, it made me want to give her nothing but the truth.
“When I moved back to Kinleith, I was sad too.” I admitted what I’d admitted to no one.
“I’d had to leave a job I worked really hard for, and then my dad died and I was even sadder.
I wanted things to go back to the way they were before too. ”
“What did you do?” She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.
“I got really moody and said some not-nice things that got printed in the newspaper.”
Her lips stretched into a tiny smile, and the knot in my chest eased a fraction. “Oh, yeah. Mummy stuck it onto the connecting door.”
I laughed, pretending I hadn’t seen it adhered to the wood with glittery stickers just this morning. “Is that so?”
“She drew little devil horns around your name.”
I’d noticed that too. Isla might project sunshine and blushing cheeks to the folk of this village, but she also had a malicious streak that intrigued the hell out of me.
“Even adults do things we aren’t proud of, and most of us don’t admit when we’re wrong.
It’s okay to be mad and sad and every emotion in between.
Emotionally, you’re miles ahead of me, kid. ”
“Was your dad a bad daddy too? Is that why you’re grumpy all the time?”
My laugh was bigger this time. Hoarse, like it had been wrenched from my chest kicking and screaming. Fuck, this kid really had no filter.
“He wasn’t really good or bad. Sometimes he was so busy he didn’t feel like my dad at all, because he put everything else before us.” I stacked the next piece. “So, I tried really hard to make him proud. So that he’d notice me.” My throat narrowed, and I handed the blocks to her.
“Did you do it?”
The question of my life, right there, and it had been picked up by a seven-year-old. Maybe she was smarter than I’d anticipated. “I’m still trying, I think.”
She nodded like that made sense and added the next piece. We built in silence for a few minutes, until the sun disappeared behind a big cloud. “Do I need to say sorry to Mummy?”
“If you think you have something you should apologise for, then yeah, you should.”
She bit her bottom lip, twirling a piece of the red wing around in her fingers. “What if she stops loving me too?”
Teddy was facing me, her back to the cottages. She couldn’t see Isla appearing at the door just in time to overhear. I watched her heart crack in her eyes, but lifted a finger, signalling that I could handle this. Hoping to hell I wasn’t about to fuck this up.
“Kid,” I said to Teddy. “Your mummy is never going to stop loving you. I promise.”
Teddy’s head snapped up. “How do you know?”
It should have been obvious. But when it came to family, the answer wasn’t always so clear cut. “Because you’re the best thing that ever happened to her.”
“She told you that?”
“She doesn’t need to. She calls you sunshine, doesn’t she?” I knocked my knee against her small one. “I’d bet it’s because you are the one thing that brightens everything for her.”
She chewed her lower lip, considering. “I dunno . . . that could be true.”
“It is true. I’m Scottish, trust me when I tell you, there’s nothing more precious than sunshine.”
I couldn’t stop my gaze from straying to Isla’s. Catching it just in time to see her press a hand to her heart. A gentle smile on her lips. I’d done nothing but recite her nickname back at her. Still, I felt ten feet tall for putting that look on her face.
It was dangerous. I could see how a man could become addicted to the feeling.
“Thanks, Ali,” Teddy said after a moment. “I like speaking with you; you don’t treat me like a wee baby.”
“Because you’re not a baby.” I let her set the final piece in place, sitting back to admire the fully formed dragon.
Right on cue, Isla cleared her throat. “It’s dinner time, sunshine.”
Teddy rose to her knees, her expression brighter than it had been all afternoon. “Mummy, look what Ali and I made. Can we put it on the bookshelves?”
“If Ali says it’s okay.”
Teddy’s pleading face turned to me. “Please, Ali. You can come visit him anytime you want.”
Like a magnet, my eyes were back on Isla. I was far too tempted to take Teddy up on that offer. “It’s all yours, kid.”
Isla shielded her eyes from the sun. I couldn’t see where her gaze landed, but I would have bartered every penny I had that it lay squarely on me. Feeling restless, I stood, collecting the box and plastic wrappers.
“Tell Ali ‘thank you’, then wash your hands, okay?”
“Thanks, Ali.” Teddy’s face was still a little red. But she grinned up at me with an expression I could only describe as hero worship, and equal amounts of pride and fear knotted a ball in my gut.
“No problem.” Isla and I stood in silence, watching Teddy disappear inside the cottage, proudly carrying the Lego dragon.
She broke the silence. “You didn’t need to do that.”
No. But I had. I couldn’t undo it.
And now she was looking at me with a softness that made white noise blare inside my head. “It was nothing, just an excuse to play Lego,” I said, holding up the box. I moved to edge around her, to shut myself in my cottage and stare at that damn wall all evening, cursing myself for getting involved.
But her hand touched my bare arm, a request to wait. I halted instantly. “Hey, want to share a nightcap later? After Teddy’s in bed. I should thank you . . . for helping me today.”
“You don’t need to thank me. My reasons for being there were entirely self-serving.”
“I know but . . . surely we should get to know each other a bit if we’re going to keep doing this?” She spoke quickly, looking everywhere but my face.
She was nervous. Bracing herself for rejection.
I hated that she was unsure of herself.
And just like that, every reason for ending this agreement got carried away on the wind. “Okay, text me when Teddy’s asleep.”