Chapter 13
Scottie
One word. Help.
The car door screams when I wrench it open, I’m barely seated before the engine howls to life and my Audi’s tearing through the wet streets from Duncraig to Stirling.
The wipers beat a slashing metronome. Headlights smear against the rain-slicked tarmac, and every red light I run is a bet I’ll pay for later.
There’s only now, and now is seven minutes since my phone lit up with a message from a contact saved as Marzipan, and my blood is battery acid and I can’t breathe.
I try her number. Rings twice. Voicemail.
Fuck.
The drive from Duncraig to Stirling takes twelve minutes if you obey the speed limit and stop at crossings – without thinking of a different time, a different silence, another woman. One who never asked for help from anyone because she didn’t know how to. My mum.
Not this time.
The thought shears through the noise. I floor the accelerator.
The engine growls, and I take the corner onto King’s Road too fast. Tyres shriek, and the back end fishtails for one sick second before the traction catches.
The slam of my heartbeat is so loud it fills my throat all the way up.
Acid is on my tongue. The metallic tang of a scrum gone wrong. Except tonight there’s no whistle.
I reach the sandstone villas of Victoria Place. I’ve been here once before. March, last year. Nevin’s housewarming party. The team was being formed. Seems like two lifetimes ago.
I park at the kerb with more force than sense. My hands are still shaking when I open the car and make a run for the door.
The close is locked. Coded entry. Numbers on a polished panel, and I don’t have the code and I can’t think—
I hammer a sequence at random. The keypad spits back a synthetic rejection tone. Once. Twice. Then the red light stops flashing and stays a solid, judging crimson. The buttons go dead. It’s stopped taking inputs.
Come on.
A minute later, the main door swings outward, and a woman – mid-sixties, cashmere coat, a small terrier on a lead – comes out. She’s barely glancing up, and I catch the door before it clicks shut. I slip through. She probably thinks I’m a delivery guy.
The stairwell closes around me. Polished stone, polished wood handrails. I take the steps two at a time, heart punching against my ribs.
Flat 1. First floor.
I reach the landing. The door is closed. Warm light leaks from the gap beneath, and the silence on the other side is loaded. My fingers hover over the wood until I force my fist forward and knock.
‘Ava!’
Nothing.
I throw my full weight against the door. ‘Ava!’
Then, from inside, Nevin’s voice. ‘Who the fuck—’
The door cracks open, and his face fills the gap. Red-eyed. The stench of whisky rolls off him in waves.
‘Kerr?’ His brow furrows, then twists into something uglier. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
I don’t wait. I drive my shoulder into the door.
Physics wins. Eighteen stone against a drunk bloke bracing with one arm.
The door slams inward, catching him in the chest, and he staggers back with a grunt.
I’m inside before he recovers, scanning the room.
There’s a hole in the hallway wall. And at the end of the corridor, a closed door with a strip of light beneath it.
That’s where she’s hiding.
‘Get out of my flat!’ Nevin finds his feet, plants himself between me and the rest of the hallway. His right fist is wrapped in a bloody rag. ‘You fucking psycho.’
‘Where is she?’
‘None of your business.’ He gets on his toes and right in my face. ‘She’s my girlfriend. This is my home. Get the fuck out before I call the police.’
‘Where. Is. She?’ My voice is flat. A tone I don’t recognise, stripped of everything except the next three seconds.
Nevin’s lip curls. ‘You want her? Is that it?’ He squares up to me, breath hot and sour. ‘Been sniffing around that cunt for months. Thought I didn’t notice? Thought you could—’
‘I’m not asking again.’
He lets out a sick little laugh. ‘She’s mine, Kerr. And you’re nothing. A nobody. You think she’d ever want—’
‘She texted me.’
His face contorts – and he swings.
I see it coming. The telegraph from his elbow. The sloppy rotation of his torso. He throws with his right – the injured hand – and I sidestep, let the punch sail past my face, and then I’m coiling my arm back and driving my fist into the hinge of his jaw.
The impact travels up my arm as his head snaps sideways. His eyes roll back. And then he’s falling, a sack of wet sand, crumpling onto the floorboards with a blunt, dead-weight drop.
He doesn’t get up.
I stand over him. My fist is screaming with the impact. Two knuckles split, blood welling in the creases. Bile climbs my throat. I cram it down and fight the urge to spit. This violence triggers an instinctive sickness I thought I’d burned out of me years ago.
I punched my teammate the way I wish I’d punched my father. Shame, regret, and anger leave a sour film on my teeth.
His chest rises and falls. Part of me – the part that remembers the same helplessness – wants to hit him again. And again. Until the memory stops.
He’s still breathing. Pity.
I step over him and move down the hallway.
There’s a mangled noise from behind the door. Worse than a scream. The sound of a cry crushed so hard it turns into a long, pained groan.
My chest seizes, but I force my feet to move.
I knock. Gently this time. ‘Ava. Hey. It’s me.’
Silence.
‘Ava. I’m here. Please. It’s okay.’
A click, and the door swings open.
She’s on the tiles, knees still drawn up, cowering. Face tear-streaked. Eyes wide and wild, darting past me toward the hallway, searching for the threat.
‘Is he—’
‘Unconscious, but alive.’ I crouch in the doorway, making myself smaller. A difficult trick considering my size. ‘We need to go. Now. Before I fucking kill him.’
She doesn’t move. The fear and the fury I’ve seen her fighting down for months – at the cinema, at the pub, in every careful smile – has finally broken free. Her whole body is shaking with it.
‘Ava.’ I kneel in front of her. My hands find hers. ‘Look at me. You’re safe. He’s not going to touch you. Never again.’
Her eyes meet mine, and for a minute, she does nothing but stare. Then her breath hitches, and something cracks. ‘I thought he was going to—’
‘I know.’
‘I didn’t know if you’d—’
‘I’m here. I’m here, love.’ I squeeze her fingers. ‘Can you stand?’
Ava nods, so I help her up. She sways, steadies, and something shifts in her posture. The trembling doesn’t stop, but it moves, transforms, and becomes motion.
‘My things—’
‘Two minutes. Grab what matters. I’ve got your back.’
She moves past me into the bedroom and works fast. One duffel bag, yanked from under the bed. She’s moving on autopilot, firing things into the bag. Clothes, phone charger, passport. Ninety seconds. She’s packing like she’s played this out in her head a hundred times.
I check on Nevin while she packs. Still breathing. I roll him onto his side – recovery position, so he won’t choke on his own vomit – and feel nothing.
His eyes open. For one sickening second, his dazed, drunken stare finds mine. Then his eyes roll back, and he’s gone again.
Good. Stay down, bastard.
‘Ready.’ Ava appears by my side, bag over her shoulder. Her eyes flick to the body on the floor. ‘Is he… Will he be—’
‘He’ll be fine.’ I don’t look at her when I say it. ‘Unfortunately.’
She huffs. It’s not quite a laugh, but it’s close. The shadow of the woman who snorts at bad films and exists in a version of her life that doesn’t include this flat, this night, this prick on the tiles.
‘Got your phone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’ She wipes her face. ‘Although, actually? I’ll take the fancy coffee machine. Fuck him.’
I almost smile. ‘Aye. Fuck him.’
Ava disappears into the kitchen. A clatter, the sound of a plug being yanked. She reappears seconds later, hugging the chrome machine to her chest.
Then she grabs my palm with her free fingers, and leads me out.
The stairwell is empty. Our footsteps echo on the stone as we descend. My Audi waits at the kerb, rain beading on the bonnet. The February air cuts at my face, and Ava sucks in a breath beside me.
The bag and the coffee maker go into the back seat. Then I open the passenger door, and she slides in.
I round the back and get behind the wheel. ‘Seatbelt.’
She reaches for the clip, but her fingers fumble, motor control stripped by shock. I lean across the console, close enough to catch the salt on her cheeks, the tremble in her breath. My fingers find the buckle. Click.
I pull back and start the car.
‘Where are we going?’ She asks
‘Oban. My mum’s place. It’s safe. Far enough.’
The wipers sweep rain from the windscreen. I turn left onto the main road, and with each second, Stirling disappears behind us.
‘Your family?’ Her voice is small.
‘Aye.’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘I know.’
I don’t have to do any of this. I’m choosing to. For reasons I’m not ready to name out loud, in a car that’s speeding toward a destination I haven’t warned my mother about, with a woman whose boyfriend I knocked out cold.
There will be consequences. The team. My contract. The unified front we’ve been pretending exists since pre-season.
None of it matters as much as the fact that she’s here, alive, breathing, and no longer in that house. No longer with him.
She shifts against the headrest, and her hair catches the light from the dashboard.
The scent of her shampoo, clean and faintly sweet, drifts over, and my hold tightens on the steering wheel because the thought that surfaces isn’t she’s safe now.
It’s I never want her to sit in anyone else’s passenger seat.
The possessiveness of it shocks me. That’s not a protector’s instinct.
That’s something else. Something I’m not ready to look at directly, like staring into the floodlights during warm-up.
The A84 stretches ahead. Dark fields, darker hills. The rain eases into mist.
‘How long are we staying?’ Her thin voice breaks the silence. ‘I don’t have anywhere to be. I don’t have to be in Glasgow every day, but I do need to train.’ A shaky breath. ‘Oh God. What happened?’
I don’t have an answer. Not one that fits into words.
As I reach for the gear stick, she takes my hand first. And I hold it as softly as I can.