Chapter Fifteen
It hit me the moment I opened the front door, my eyes skirting down the stairs, looking for someone who shouldn’t be there. I paused a little longer on the door handle of the big wooden door on the ground floor, scared to open it for fear of what might be waiting for me outside.
But nothing would be. I already knew that.
I’d already scanned the road outside, looking for a car that didn’t belong.
A person standing too far back. I exhaled.
This was ridiculous. It was anxiety. Paranoia.
This feeling of being watched had been overwhelming me daily ever since I sat at the Northern Kings clubhouse and then faking ignorance about it during my father's interrogation.
And now, as I pulled open the big front door and peered out into the leafy street in Jesmond, at the expensive cars that lined the road, and the distant purr of traffic moving over the bypass in the distance, it hit me hard again.
Not something I could point to. Just a feeling, and it had settled low in my stomach and refused to move.
I paused on that step longer than I needed to, my fingers tightening around my keys as my gaze swept the street for a second time.
Everything looked normal. The same cars.
The same net curtains twitching in the windows opposite.
The same early morning stillness, broken only by the distant hum of traffic. Normal.
I checked the door twice after I locked it.
Then turned towards my car. I didn’t rush.
Didn’t give whatever this was the satisfaction.
But I felt it, glancing at each car as I passed it, searching for someone inside them and finding no one.
No engines idling. No movement. Still, I didn’t relax until I was inside my own, the doors locked, the engine running.
Even then, I checked the mirrors an extra twice. Pathetic.
Gripping the wheel, my knuckles pale, I filtered onto the Central Motorway, counting the cars behind me, looking for anyone that might have followed me from home. My father’s voice slipped into my head again, uninvited.
You’d do well to be careful, Sophie.
My jaw tightened. I pulled out into a stream of traffic, slipping into space. Cars filtered in behind me. Normal. And still I watched.
By the time I reached work, my shoulders were tight, my hands aching from gripping the steering wheel.
Nothing had happened. Not a single thing.
Yet, that feeling hadn’t left me, just doubled in strength.
Pressure building in my chest. Something gripping my ribs in an over-enthusiastic-hug-sort-of-way.
I took the last parking space at the far end of the car park again. Nearly the same one as when I’d seen Ryan that night. That feeling of unease again, and now it felt like it had rooted in my bones.
A & E was already busy. Phones ringing. Doors opening and closing.
Voices overlapping in that constant, controlled chaos that usually grounded me.
Usually. Today it felt different. Sharper.
Every sound in there carrying a threat. Something about to spill over.
Something about to go wrong. And that grip on my chest that I’d been fighting all the way here tightened.
I dropped my bag into a locker, pushing my coat in with it.
Forcing my hands to move through the motions I knew so well.
White coat on. Stethoscope in position. I kicked off my boots and slipped into my comfy trainers.
Routine. Control. But my eyes kept drifting.
To the corridor. To the patients walking past. And then to the waiting room as I stepped out onto the floor.
The hospital was packed. A recent sunny spell causing chaos the way it always did.
Gardening injuries. Falls. Domestic violence, the stuff you always saw when the sun came out.
But something felt different today. Patients waited: tired, frustrated and bored.
That wasn’t unusual. Nothing looked off.
It just felt different. Or maybe that was me.
A man coughed in the corner, his head bent over his phone. A woman flicked through a magazine, turning the same page twice without seeming to notice. A young lad tapped his foot against the floor, restless. Normal. All of it.
“You alright, Soph?”
I flinched.
“Yeah,” I said too quickly, glancing up at the nurse now face to face with me in the corridor. “Fine.”
She hesitated for a second, like she didn’t quite believe me, took a step and stopped again.
“Couple of us are going for a drink after our shift tonight if you fancy it?”
“Thanks. But I’ll pass. Probably get stuck here.”
“No problem. We’ll be over the road later if you change your mind.” She shrugged before walking off towards the packed waiting room.
Another shift. Another invitation declined.
At some point I’d need to make some friends.
I watched after her as she approached another nurse.
They smiled at each other. Made some hand gestures.
Laughed. Then moved on. Friends. I cut and run so frequently these days it didn’t seem to make much sense to make any. I left them behind anyway.
I stepped forward, my eyes still on the nurse who now approached a patient. And then I hit a wall. Hard. Hands wrapped around my biceps as I staggered backwards.
“Careful, miss,” an accent but I’d been too focused on the hammering of my heart and the threat of falling onto my arse to catch it till he spoke again. “Wouldn’t want you hittin’ the floor now.”
A southern drawl. Not local. Not even close.
American. I could smell the leather before my gaze even snapped up at him.
The thick cut over the top of the rest of his clothes.
I didn’t need to see the badges and patches sewn on the front to know what he was.
A metal pin of a fist with blood running from it.
A president patch over his heart. The words ‘Bloody Hand’ on the patch sewn underneath.
My eyes travelled higher. He was tall, like they all were. Broad and solid and still.
“I’m fine,” I said quickly, pulling back, shrugging out of his grip.
He let me go easily enough. But he didn’t step back either. Just watched me. Slow. Like he was taking his time to really look at me.
“You sure ‘bout that?” he drawled, head tipping slightly to the side. “Looked like you were somewhere else?”
Heat prickled under my skin, and on the outside, the hairs on my arms stood on end.
“I said I’m fine. Thank you,” I added, recognising the curtness in my voice.
A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, not quite friendly, and his head still tilted like a guard dog deciding whether attack was necessary.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Thought so.”
My stomach tightened. I shifted to step around him, but he moved with me. Not blocking me, just matching me.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
I froze.
“No,” I answered quickly.
His eyes flicked over my face again, slower this time. Taking more in.
“Funny,” he said, his voice low, that drawl dragging over the word like he had all the time in the world. “You look real familiar.”
My pulse kicked harder.
“I don’t think so.”
I took a half step backwards. He let me have it.
“You obviously work here?” he asked, eyes casting to the corridor behind me before settling back on me.
“Yes. Obviously.”
“Busy place,” he went on. “Lotta people comin’ in and out.”
I swallowed slowly, trying to push down the knot of fear that was edging up my throat.
“Yes.”
He watched me a second longer.
“Must be hard keepin’ track of who’s who.”
“I manage.” I held his gaze this time.
His smile shifted slightly. Like that was the answer he’d been looking for.
His eyes were cold. Blue. Very light blue, like they’d been bleached by too much sun.
He was bald, but one side of his head was completely covered in tattoos.
In the middle of them all was the number twenty-eight, bold and black.
“Reckon you do.”
The silence stretched, neither one of us moving. Behind me, the sound of voices bled through from reception. Feet on linoleum padded up and down the corridor. But right now, it felt like I was stood in a bubble, with just him.
“You local?” he asked, his voice a low growl in the charged air around us.
“Why?”
“Thought maybe I’d seen you ‘round.”
My fingers curled into my palm.
“You haven’t.”
A heartbeat. A breath. Then his gaze sharpened, just slightly.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But I got a good memory for faces. You look like someone I would remember. Sophie isn’t it?”
My breath hitched. Just for a second. But it was enough. Because something in his expression shifted. Not surprise. Recognition.
“How do you know that?” I breathed, the words sitting on a whisper.
“Heard your nurse, just now. Small world.” he continued, voice dropping just a fraction. “Girl like you, don’t seem the type to mix with men in cuts.”
A pause. His eyes studied my face again, slow, deliberate.
“But then…” My chest tightened. “Guess you never really know what people get up to behind closed doors.”
My fingernails cut into my palm. Tiny pricks of pain burning in my hand.
“Saw you out late the other night,” he added, almost absently. “Didn’t peg you for the type.”
Pressure grabbed at my ribs. Too tight. Air catching halfway in. I stepped back again, my heel catching on the floor.
“I…I need to…”
The words wouldn’t come. My lungs wouldn’t work. The corridor tilted, the edges of my vision blurring as that familiar, creeping numbness started in my fingers.
No.
Not here.
Not now.
“You alright there?” he asked, voice closer now. Too close.
I shook my head, but it barely moved. My chest constricted, each breath shallow, useless. Too fast. Too tight. I couldn’t get enough air in.
“Hey…” His hand moved, like he was reaching for me again.
I flinched hard, stumbling back into the wall this time.
“Don’t…”
My voice cracked. The world narrowed, sound dropping out, blood rushing in to take its place.
“Sophie?”
Not his voice. A different voice. Closer. Familiar. A hand lay on my shoulder. Grounding. Steady.
“Hey, hey…it’s okay. Look at me.”
I tried. My eyes couldn’t focus. Her face. The corridor. A leather cut. Everything was spinning.
“Breathe with me,” she said firmly. “In… and out. Come on.”
I pulled in a ragged breath, not even half filling my lungs.
“Good. Again.”
Her hand tightened slightly against my shoulder, anchoring me there.
“In. Out.”
I clung to the rhythm she set. Focusing on her voice. At the gentleness. The confidence.
In.
Out.
In.
Slowly, the room stopped spinning, and my eyes focussed on her face. At the dark lashes and thin black eyeliner. At blonde hair scraped back off her face in a ponytail, every strand neatly secured. Not like the curls that hung over my forehead, escaping from the bun I’d pushed it into this morning.
Around us, people watched. A patient supported by a nurse. A porter wheeling someone in a bed. Every one of them staring as I pushed up off the knees I hadn’t even realised I’d sunk to. Everyone but him. The man in the cut with the Southern American accent was nowhere to be seen.
“Where did he go?” I whispered.
“That biker? What did he say to you? Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head.
“I didn’t know him. He was just…”
“Dodgy. Yeah. There’s been a few in A & E recently. Never seen so many in here in my life. Wonder what’s going on?”
“Yeah. Wonder.”
The nurse wrapped a hand under my arm and eased me to my feet.
“You need a cuppa?”
“No. Thank you, Katie,” I answered, pulling my stethoscope so each side hung equally.
“It’s Kirsten.”
I squeezed my eyes shut a second. “Sorry. Kirsten.”
“That’s ok. There’s so many of us.” She offered me a smile that said she was being polite and that it was really shit of me that I didn’t get her name right.
“Better get back to triage.” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder to the busy waiting room on the other side of the corridor, and I followed the movement, searching for black leather. Nothing. Not that I could see from here.
“That drink tonight,” I called as she started to move away from me. “Can I come after all?”
“Course you can. We’ll see you there after shift?”
I nodded, exhaling slowly so that she couldn’t see the tension still plaguing my body. A few words from my dad. A few days of overthinking. And him. My chest tightened at the thought before I could stop it.
Ryan.
Reap.
Whatever he was now.