Chapter 3
Scottie
I’m way too early, which makes no sense because I never am. Not least because timing’s everything in rugby. Screen three at The Wallace is three-quarters empty, the usual sparse Tuesday ‘crowd’. I’ve squeezed myself into my spot in the rear.
Another Christmas romance. Just like last week.
Bring it on. Cover me in icing sugar.
My head’s still stuck in the session from this morning. Brodie barked orders at the forwards. Finn chirped back with some shite about Brodie’s agent slash secret girlfriend Charlie, and the whole pack melted. I’d laughed too, said nothing, and held the tackle bags solid.
My focus keeps drifting to the entrance of the cinema, then snapping back.
I shift. My shoulder still clicks from the maul reps today. I hit the dirt nine times, knees ploughing grooves in the peat. When they score, nobody asks who softened the line.
Neither do I. It’s simply who I am. I live and breathe rugby.
I’d been on the pathway since I was fourteen, rucking in the sleet for the local club back in Oban.
Seventeen, scouted by the District. Three years in the Academy living on beans and hope and graft.
Then the first pro contract. The breakout season where the national selectors finally started paying attention.
Now I’m overlooked and locked in for a bit less than three years.
That one still bites. Even though it was the right call at the time.
I check the time on my phone and realise I’ve already done it twice.
A Visit Scotland ad flickers on. One of those drone shots that makes the sea look like hammered silver. The camera pans up the hillside until it clears the ridge and reveals the grey crown of McCaig’s Tower.
My insides seize.
The memory drops in uninvited. A summer evening ten years ago. David scrambling up the stone behind me, nine years old and ninety per cent mouth. I’d gone first. Tested the footholds. Called down that it was solid. That’s what big brothers do. They go first. ‘Get up here, Dave!’
He hauled himself up beside me, panting, grinning wide enough to crack his face open. A ferry horn groaned from the Mull crossing.
David jabbed my ribs with a bony elbow. ‘When I’m older, I’m buying a trawler. You can work on it.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Bait.’
‘Ya wee shite.’ I cuffed the back of his head. We sat there with our legs dangling.
Not even an hour later we were at the hospital, and David would never dangle his legs again. Because he followed me. I will the memory down. The advert’s long over. The guilt isn’t.
When the Rebels waved a sign-on bonus, I didn’t look at the weekly wage or the four-year clause.
I took the money and gave up my potential international career for a lump sum.
For Mum and David. Now I’m the best defensive centre in the URC, playing on a basement contract while my mother’s mortgage eats half my take-home.
The double doors creak open, letting in a sliver of the foyer’s bright glare. A petite silhouette moves in the light, and the rest of the room blurs. The red scarf, the tight bun, the posture. Light wrapped around steel, or maybe the other way round.
Nevin’s girl. Same magnetic presence as last week, logged by my body before my head even catches up. My pulse thumps once, hard, in the hollow of my throat.
She pauses in the aisle and scans the seats. Then she turns – and finds me.
My hands stay on the armrests. No wave, nothing that might admit I’ve seen her. She clearly doesn’t want anyone to know that she’s doing whatever she’s doing here.
A smile flickers across her face. Small and shy, gone almost before it lands. The undertow of it drags at my chest. I file it under ‘not tonight’ and offer a curt nod, but that’s that. I know how to respect a woman’s space.
But then she climbs the slope towards me. Slowly, with precise movements. Pure class, even in leggings and trainers.
‘Hi. Again. Is this taken?’ Her voice sounds husky and soft, but the question mark curls upward as if she’s genuinely unsure.
Which is utter bullshit, considering we’re two of maybe fifteen people in here.
For half a second, I take her in properly.
She’s got that ‘girl next door’ vibe that’s stunning without trying too hard.
No makeup, just freckles and a really pretty face.
And those piercing eyes… They’ve got that same glint as the sea glass I used to find on the beach.
The comparison sits wrong. Sea glass is cold.
Her eyes aren’t. They’re lit from beneath.
I scan the empty rows stretching in every direction. ‘Better grab it quick before the rush. Proper heaving in here.’
She lets out a laugh that’s more grunt than giggle, and the sound catches me off guard.
‘Thanks.’ She slides her coat off her shoulders and folds it into a neat rectangle, drapes it over mine on the seat between us, and sits down, leaving a careful gap.
Far enough to pretend she didn’t choose this specific patch of darkness when the whole place lies vacant.
But she did.
The fact settles beneath my sternum. Last week was chance. Coincidence. Two strangers who prefer alone time. Tonight is different. Tonight is her scanning rows of empty seats and walking up to the stranger at the back on purpose.
Why?
Maybe she’s another stray looking to gnaw on her own bone in the same corner. Alone in company.
Fine by me.
I plant my stare ahead and neither of us speaks. The quiet sits easy between us, and I let it. We both do, for a while.
‘Thanks for last week, by the way.’ She keeps her eyes on the film, profile half-lit by the flicker.
Her words don’t ask for anything, but they change how I’m sitting. ‘That’s awright. Nothing to thank me for.’ I’m not even sure why she thinks she needs to say thanks.
She turns and those blue-grey eyes find mine. ‘Still. I appreciated it. I needed a moment for me. You’re on Nevin’s team and…’ She trails off.
‘Your business is your business.’ I fold my arms across my chest and clear my throat to ease the tightness. ‘You do you.’
The tension in her shoulders loosens. Noticing when people are holding on by a thread is my primary skill. She’s tense underneath that poise, a strain I definitely won’t ask her about.
A moment passes. ‘Do you mind me sitting here? I hope it’s okay.’
I cut a look across. She’s after permission for something that doesn’t require any. I dig around inside for objection or resistance and find nothing.
‘Course not. This is a public space.’ My mouth tugs upward. I can’t help it. ‘You’re so tiny compared to me, it’s like you’re barely even here.’
There. That snort again.
A laugh like that?
Adorable.
I shove the word into the dark silt of my gut where it can’t cause trouble.
Except it’s already causing trouble. She’s Nevin’s. That fact should function as a brick wall. Concrete, steel fence, razor wire. I crack my knuckles and pretend the inch of air between our armrests isn’t charged. Mum raised me better than this. And the Rebels need me focused, not distracted.
Plus, a stunning woman like that? She’d never look twice at a bloke built for utility and nothing else.
‘I bet for someone of your stature, eighty per cent of the world seems tiny,’ she says after a minute. ‘Must feel like you’re in Lilliput all the time.’
Now I’m the one laughing. It comes out before I’ve decided to allow it.
That never happens with people I’ve just met.
Christ, I can’t even remember the last time someone got a genuine laugh out of me.
Finn makes me grin. Brodie gets a jovial grunt.
But this – this full-chested, unplanned bark?
She found a part of me I thought I’d bricked over. Took her all of five minutes.
Our laughter fades, and the air between the seats snaps tight as we look at each other. A tingle hits my chest and knocks the breath out of me. I keep staring at her, and the mechanics of the room shift.
What the hell is this?
It’s nothing. Nada. Her boyfriend plays on my team. We’re supposed to be a brotherhood.
Two separate seats with a coat-buffer between them. There’s no law against sitting next to each other in public. We might as well be on a bus. I mean, it’s not like we’re snogging. There’s no carry-on. It’s all innocent and platonic.
If that weren’t the case, I’d already be three rows forward.
Last thing I need is to mess up the team’s dynamic.
The Rebels are new to the United Rugby Championship.
We’re still finding our feet. I might not particularly enjoy Nevin’s Billy Big Baws routine, but when he’s at the bottom of a ruck with three Irish giants trying to peel his head off, I’m the first one there to clear them out.
I protect his ball, and he throws mine. I’ve got him covered.
Every single time. That’s the law I live by.
The lights dip as the trailers start rolling. The silence is easy and companionable. But my peripheral vision, trained to track wingers breaking the line, catches movement. Her right knee jitters up and down. A wired beat that judders through the seats.
She’s running on fumes. It’s the same way the lads look in the changing room after eighty minutes on the pitch, holding it together by bloody-mindedness.
I could ask. I could lean over and say, You awright, love? But that demands an answer she probably doesn’t have the energy to construct. Also, words are cheap. Calories are far better.
I lean in, keeping my voice under the booming soundtrack. ‘I’m away to get some snacks. Want anything?’
She hitches, then looks at me with wide eyes. ‘Oh. No, I’m fine.’
‘I’m getting popcorn cause I’m starvin’.’ A lie. I had a large bowl of pasta with chicken after training an hour ago. But she won’t take charity, and she clearly needs the fuel. ‘Help me out?’
She hesitates, weighing the social contract. ‘Only if you’re sure you’re getting some anyway.’
‘Sweet or salt?’
‘Sweet.’
‘Deal.’ I lever myself up and navigate the dark aisle.