Chapter 18
Finn
The Kelpies shimmer in the pale daylight as we pass them, their steel flanks catching the weak February sun. Theo’s gazing out the car window, legs crossed, one boot bouncing gently with the road’s rhythm. Her profile’s sharp in the dim light. Thoughtful, unreadable, and a complete knockout.
I should be focussed on the road.
She glances over. ‘You keep staring.’
‘Yeah, well. Your face is distracting.’
‘You’ve seen it before.’
‘Still distracting.’
She rolls her eyes, but she’s fighting a smile. Which means I’m winning. I know that expression now. I know a lot of things I didn’t two weeks ago. Not only the way she grips my hair when I’ve got my tongue on her or how she swears when she’s close, the in-between bits too.
Two weeks. That’s how long I’ve been living in Theo’s flat. Was only meant to be one, but that day came and went, and neither of us said a thing. So I just…kept waking up next to her. Feels as if I’ve nicked something no one said I could have.
I flick the indicator. ‘We’ve got two and a half hours before the MacKenzie Mid-Season Mixer, so I figured…pool?’
She turns to face me. ‘Are you asking me on a date, Lennox?’
‘I’m asking you to publicly humiliate me in front of several pensioners at Hendry Halls so I can jerk off to the memory later.’
‘Romantic.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Sure.’ She giggles, and something behind my breastbone gives a hard twang.
The truth is, I’ve been thinking about that night at the party since it happened.
The way she stalked around that table, confident and smug and hot with the casual lethality of a panther cleaning blood from its claws.
She wiped the floor with Scottie. I’d wanted to drag her into a dark corner right then and there. Still do.
Except now I’ve had her – gasping into her pillow, clenching around my fingers, making those needy little sounds I’ve been dreaming about – and somehow I’m worse off than before.
The want’s not gone. It’s fucking multiplied.
I’ve barely slept. I’ve barely eaten. I’ve bent her over the counter, fucked her against the door, had her legs locked around me. My thighs are wrecked. My groin’s tight. My lower back has a dull, satisfied ache. I’m not even sure I can sprint right now.
And I don’t give a shit. I’d rather limp onto the pitch tomorrow than miss a single sound she makes when she comes. I’m getting more hooked on her happiness than the game.
Didn’t see that coming.
Hendry Halls is half pub, half shrine. Signed posters of snooker legends on every wall.
The old carpet holds the faint smell of battered sausage and vinegar.
The table is a bit warped, but Theo leans over like there’s prize money riding on it.
She lines up her shot, brows pinched in concentration.
Her boot nudges against mine for balance.
The ball clacks clean into the corner pocket.
She straightens. ‘That’s four–nil.’
‘I’m still finding my flow.’ I’m chalking my cue like it’s going to help. ‘Or maybe I’m lulling you into a false sense of security.’
She laughs. ‘You said that two games ago.’
‘Still true. You’ll never see it coming.’
She grins, smug as hell, and sips her orange fizzy juice. I made sure the pub had it. Aye, I called ahead like a sappy bastard. Worth it.
‘You’re not bad, for someone whose entire life is balls.’ She takes a seat on one of the scuffed leather benches.
I blink at her. ‘Did you seriously make a testicle joke?’
‘I did. You may now retire.’
‘Oh, you’ve changed, MacMickin.’
Her lips twist as if she’s tasting something delicious and slightly illegal. ‘No. I’ve adapted.’
I sit beside her, our shoulders close. The room hums with old jukebox sound and quiet commentary from a nearby table.
‘You done kicking my arse, or do you need another one to really drive it home?’
Theo stretches her arms. ‘I could go again. But it seems a bit unfair. Like hustling a toddler.’
‘You’re enjoying this way too much.’
‘Perhaps a little.’ Her gaze is skating over the posters. Steve Davis. Ronnie O’Sullivan. Hendry himself. ‘A pool den. Is this where you usually take girls on a date?’
I huff through my nose. ‘I don’t usually take anyone on dates.’
‘C’mon. It can’t all have been threesomes and foursomes and mindless shagging.’
I make a noise that’s basically yeah, and?
She fixes me with that look people save for liars and politicians.
‘Awright, maybe not all. But mostly. I was never the relationship guy.’
‘Why not?’
I rest my cue against the bench. ‘Because shagging’s easier when you’ve got nowhere to sleep. If someone cute fancied me and had central heating? That was enough.’
‘That’s not all, though. Is it?’
‘I had a girlfriend, once,’ I say. ‘Before all that, when I was fifteen. Joanna. We were together a year. First time I ever felt…safe, maybe. Until it all went to shite and I didn’t have a place to land anymore. Her parents didn’t want her with the homeless lad fae Easterhoose.’
Theo’s face softens, but she doesn’t say anything. Just gives me that silence she does. She’s making space instead of trying to fill it.
‘After that, I figured it was better to be the one walking away early,’ I say. ‘Or, better yet, not stay at all.’
‘Did you ever fall in love?’
I pick at a tear in the leather seat. ‘Not properly. Plenty of lust and drama. But naw. Never got to the bit with the toothbrush at mine. That stuff.’
‘Do you want that stuff?’ She lists her head sideways, one eyebrow curving up. ‘Not everybody does.’
‘Used to think I didn’t. Thought I’d cock it up. But lately… I keep catching myself daydreaming about matching strawberry jammies.’
Her gaze drops to her cue, but not before I catch that quick flare behind her lashes. ‘That’s disturbingly wholesome.’
‘It is. Domesticity’s corrupted me.’
She laughs again, and it’s warm and real and right here between us.
‘I don’t want to be a prick, Theo. I don’t want to be like my da. Or the lads I saw growing up who used their fists more than their mouths. I want to be better.’
She’s quiet for a second. ‘You already are.’
‘What about you? Didn’t you mention a break up in London?’
I picture some smug bastard with his hands on her, her laugh in his mouth, and something ugly coils in my chest. Jealousy, yeah. But there’s pain too. That she let someone in before me. That he fucked it up so much that she’s having a hard time opening up again.
She blows out a breath. ‘You ever trust someone and then realise they only were with you because you made them look better? It sucks.’
‘Aye. It does.’
Silence for a moment. Not heavy, just turned a notch tighter.
‘Gil was more than my boyfriend,’ she says eventually. ‘He was my manager at the agency in London. Brilliant, older, charming. Everyone adored him. Including me.’
My shoulders hitch. ‘Sounds like a puffed-up arsehole.’
‘He knew how to say the right things: that I was talented, promising, amazing. He sent me flowers and took me on dates, called me first thing in the morning and late at night. Like I was exceptional and he couldn’t believe his luck.
And I believed him.’ Her eyes are on the table now.
‘Love bombing is what the kids call it nowadays. And I wasn’t prepared for that. ’
‘You’re always prepared for everything, Theo.’
‘Not for a grade A narcissist as it turned out. He started using my work. Strategy decks, campaign ideas. Stuff I stayed up all night building. He’d take my ideas, polish them with a grin, and pitch them as his.’
‘And you found out.’
She nods. ‘At a party. One of our biggest clients. That account was a huge deal for me. I stood next to the bar while he told the room my ideas like he’d dreamt them up in the shower. Everyone clapped and called him a genius. I just…stood there, floored.’
‘What a fucking twat.’
‘When I confronted him, he told me not to be dramatic. Said I was making things personal. That I was threatening his position. He made me feel like I was unstable. Even though I found out that I wasn’t the first young female employee he did that to.’
The wood beneath my hand creaks. Hadn’t noticed I was gripping the table.
‘I escalated it, and HR got involved. He flipped it and told them I was stalking him because I was starstruck by his reputation or whatever. They didn’t exactly fire me, but they let me go quietly when my contract ended. The project I built got reassigned. My name disappeared.’
She says it all calmly. But her jaw ticks once, and I know it’s costing her.
‘That bastard stole from you,’ I say. ‘And then made you feel like you were the problem. You don’t happen to still have his address? Asking for an itching fist.’
‘Don’t be daft, Finn.’
I’m not daft, I’m raging. But I swallow it for her sake. ‘You ever see him again?’
‘No. And I wouldn’t trust myself not to pour boiling water in his lap, so that’s for the best.’
I let that hang for a second. ‘So…what’s it like, trying to trust me?’
Her mouth crooks. ‘Probably risky, but oddly thrilling.’
‘I’ll take that.’
She puts a hand on my cheek. ‘You’re a cocky menace with no off switch, but you’ve never made me feel small. Not once.’
I bite back the victory in my smile, but my ribs tighten anyway. ‘That’s only because you terrify me.’
Another laugh slips free, and her lashes dip as if she knows what that laugh does to me.
‘Wanna play one more? I think I’ve finally figured out which end of the cue to use.’
She stands. ‘You’re going down so hard, Lennox.’
What can I say? I’ve never felt more like a winner than when I’m losing to Theo MacMickin.
And I never thought I had a type.
Turns out, I just hadn’t met her yet.