Chapter 13
Theo
Brilliant. Another power cut.
It’s freezing. A deep, penetrating cold has settled into my bones and makes my teeth ache. And I’m a human icicle because my good winter duvet is currently cocooning the flanker on my pull-out sofa.
For four days after the interview, it’s worked. We’ve existed in the same flat on different schedules. I wake to the lingering scent of his shower gel; he gets home from late training to a note about the recycling.
His days revolve around rugby. Early mornings spent at the gym, followed by perfecting drills, running through contact scenarios on the pitch.
If it’s a hard week, he’s at the physio, getting his muscles loosened or dealing with niggling injuries.
I, on the other hand, work late into the evenings, dealing with deadlines, clients, and schedules.
It’s an unspoken avoidance strategy. A necessary retreat after the photoshoot.
The things he said during that interview replay in my head. ‘How she sees through the act.’ He’d looked right at me, his gaze stripping away the polished layers of the girlfriend persona, straight to the woman underneath who was panicking. A perfectly executed lie that rang uncomfortably true.
I have a serious Finn-shaped problem. A problem that has moved from my sofa into the part of my brain that’s supposed to handle logistics and long-term planning.
I’m just gonna admit it.
I like him.
It’s an inconvenient, unprofessional, and frankly foolish development. But there’s nothing I can do about it.
I really, really like him.
A soft thud from the living room, followed by a half-screamed, fractured groan.
Every muscle tenses, ready for… I don’t know what. I lever myself out of bed until my bare feet hit the floorboards. Then I stand and inch forward, my hand flat against the wall for guidance in the dark.
The living room is bathed in the faint glow of a full moon that has found a gap in the clouds.
It’s enough to see Finn. He’s tangled in my duvet on the pull-out, half-sitting.
The unicorn sleep mask has slipped up from his eyes to his forehead.
His breathing is an erratic rhythm that cuts through the silence.
His eyes are wide, staring at a spot beyond me.
He’s drowning or something. In the middle of my living room, he’s drowning.
My heart pounds so hard it bruises my ribs, and my brain flashes through a list of anxieties.
This is too much. This is how you get burned. This is…
But my feet are already moving. My instinct to fix is a force of nature. This old reflex is stronger than my fear.
And this is not anyone. It’s Finn.
I don’t make a sound until I’m right beside the sofa. ‘Shhh…Finn.’
His head snaps towards me, but his eyes don’t focus. They’re glassy with terror. He’s not here. He’s in another world, somewhere awful.
‘Hey…’ I keep my tone gentle and even, a human stabiliser. ‘Hey, it’s me. Theo.’
I don’t ask what’s wrong. I don’t ask if he’s okay. He is clearly not okay, and the question is useless. Instead, I pull back a corner of the duvet. I budge in beside him, my strawberry-print jammies the wrong uniform for this kind of rescue mission.
No idea if this is one of those ‘do not wake up’ or ‘wake up immediately’-nightmare scenarios.
So I’m going with my instincts. They’re all I got.
I roll onto my side to face him and carefully pull him towards me.
The space is so tight that our knees are bumping.
I lift my hands to his face. His skin is clammy.
‘You’re here with me.’ My voice is a quiet line in the dark. I turn his face towards mine, forcing him to see me, to latch onto something real. ‘The power’s out, that’s all. But you’re safe. You’re here.’
His pupils are vast, black holes swallowing the moonlight. He’s looking through me. A shudder racks his body.
‘Hey. Hey, look at me.’ I stroke his cheek lightly. ‘I’ve got you. I’m here.’
I place my palm flat against his sternum. His heart is a wild beast trapped behind his breastbone.
‘Feel that? That’s my hand. You’re safe. It’s okay.’
He gasps, a ragged sound, and his own hands fly up, tangling in my hair. It’s not rough or harsh, more a clutch. A drowning man grabbing a rope. His fingertips press against my scalp, rooting himself in the reality of me. Of us.
‘Breathe with me, Finn.’ I take an exaggerated breath in, hold it, and release it slowly. ‘Come on. In…and out.’
His gaze flickers, a tiny spark of awareness.
‘Again,’ I command softly. ‘With me. In…’ I watch his chest rise in a stuttering, shallow movement. ‘And out.’
He lets it go in a rush.
‘Good. That’s so good.’ I start a rhythm. ‘I’m right here. You’re not alone. It’s okay. It’s okay, love. I’m here.’
His breathing starts to slow, to match my own. The wildness in his eyes begins to recede, and his focus sharpens until he’s not looking through me anymore. He’s looking at me. Seeing me.
The woman in the silly jammies who crawled right into his nightmare.
The erratic pounding of his heart beneath my palm eases and settles into a heavy, resonant thud. We’re inhaling the same cold air, exhaling the same small cloud of steam. We’re breathing each other.
‘Sorry.’ He sounds sandpaper-rough. ‘Bad dream.’
‘Yeah, I figured as much.’
He traces the shell of my ear with his thumb, so featherlight it tickles. ‘You shouldn’t have to deal with this. You need sleep.’
‘Neither should you. Yet here we are.’ I don’t move away. The pull between us has its own gravity, so elemental that it makes physics irrelevant. ‘Wanna talk about it?’
He swallows, the sound audible in our cocoon, and lets the silence settle. I think he’s weighing whether unloading all of it is worth it or not.
‘My… My da died over Christmas, a day after my birthday. Overdose. In The Big Hoose – Barlinnie. Didn’t even hear until days after, when I got a birthday call from my oldest sister.’
I blink. ‘Shit. Finn. I’m so sorry.’
He shrugs as though it’s nothing, but tension rolls off him. His chest is tight again. Not panic this time. Shame, I guess.
‘I didn’t go to his funeral because I didn’t truly know him.
Hadn’t talked to him since I was eleven.
He left when I was wee and got done for dealing and other stuff a few years later.
Wasn’t exactly a loss, but… Still fucks you up and makes you wonder what part of you wasn’t worth sticking around for. ’
I don’t speak. Just let him keep going, because he needs to.
‘My mum didn’t want a boy. Not one like me anyway. She had two daughters already, from another father. The better one, I guess. I was the accident. Loud and hyper. Got into fights and broke stuff. She used to say I came out wrong. That I gave her headaches. That I looked like him.’
A muscle under my heart pulls taut. He says it as though he’s reading a weather report.
‘She’d slap me when I got mouthy, ignore me when I got quiet. I learned early on that if I wasn’t making her laugh, I was making her mad. So I got good at the first thing.’
‘Christ,’ I breathe.
‘She kicked me out when I was sixteen. Caught me nicking a perfume from Boots because we had no money. I was gonna give it to her for Christmas.’ His voice doesn’t break – it buckles, as if each word hits a bruise on the way out.
‘She lost it. Called me a thief and a liar. Said I’d end up like my da. ’
I bite the inside of my cheek. He’s not crying, but I might be. ‘You stole her a present, and she threw you out?’
‘Aye. Didn’t speak to her after that. Crashed at a mate’s for a while. Slept in a youth hostel a couple nights. On floors. Sometimes outside. Didn’t tell anybody. School was fucked, but rugby…’
I stay still and move my fingers over his chest, drawing quiet outlines only he can feel.
‘Rugby was the only thing I didn’t mess up.’
‘Tell me about it.’ I think the pitch is where he feels safe, so I take him there. ‘How did it start?’
‘I’ve been playing since I was nine. I didn’t know the rules, didn’t care.
But I liked smashing into things and being told I was good at something for once.
After Active Schools came a club, then trials, camps.
Academy. I didn’t have the grades or the gear or the parents with cars, but I kept showing up, and I kept winning them matches.
That’s the main reason they didn’t toss me out.
When shit hit the fan, they eventually gave me kit and food and a bed in a host family’s house in Edinburgh. ’
My chest knots around the ache to make it better. I want to kiss every awful memory out of his skin. But I can’t, so I run my hand down his chest.
‘You want to know the worst part? I kept hoping she’d change her mind.
That one day, she’d let me come home.’ His voice holds, but only just. Every word is flattened into armour, every pause is a seam that wants to split.
‘I was sixteen, Theo. Sixteen and standing in the cold thinking if I made it big enough, she’d want me back. ’
His inhale shudders. Not a sob, but it rips through me anyway.
I’ve never heard him speak without that protective layer of charm and bravado.
This is Finn stripped bare, and it’s more intimate than if he’d shed every stitch of clothing.
The power cut has plunged us into near darkness, but I see him perfectly.
I reach for his face. My fingers graze the curve of his jaw, then settle over his cheek.
Steady, so he knows I’m not pulling away. He turns into my touch.
‘I’m so, so sorry Finn. She didn’t deserve you then. And she definitely doesn’t now.’
The faint moonlight catches his eyes, turning them silver-rimmed. I can count his eyelashes, see the scar above his eyebrow that the stitches will leave behind.
We’re nose to nose, and I feel the moment his focus shifts to my mouth. Every unspoken word, every near-miss, every fake touch that wasn’t fake at all… It all crowds into the small space between us.
‘Theo.’
He stays perfectly still, letting me lead, letting me decide.