Chapter 14
Ava
Scottie’s knuckles are crusted dark where the skin split two hours ago. I’m holding the hand that unmade my boyfriend’s jaw.
Ex-boyfriend.
The wipers tick patiently against the windscreen, and somewhere behind my breastbone, a small animal is clawing its way out.
It’s about two hours since we pulled away from King’s Park, and my body hasn’t caught up with the geography.
I’m still bracing for the door to splinter.
My ears still strain for footsteps that are now seventy-five miles away and fading.
Scottie doesn’t speak. He draws slow circles on the back of my hand, and I count them because counting is control. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
The shame presses against my windpipe. I’m the midnight text that dragged him from his flat. I’m the reason his hand looks like it lost a fight with a slab of concrete.
Mist creeps in from Ben Cruachan, pale tendrils reaching across the tarmac in the dark. The quiet between us is thick, but not wrong. Scottie has always understood silence. It’s one of the reasons I kept sitting beside him in The Wallace, week after week.
‘Well…’ My voice scrapes out dry. ‘That will take a few years of therapy.’
Then we both laugh – his is startled, mine a strange grunt-giggle that threatens to turn into a sob. At least the sound loosens the rusted vice clamped around my diaphragm that’s been tightening since I moved in with Nevin.
‘Weirdly,’ I say, ‘that’s not how any of those films ever end.’
He keeps his eyes on the road. ‘Aye, well. Usually, the villain’s still conscious for the dramatic finale.’
‘And the heroine doesn’t usually leave in the middle of the night, kidnapping a coffee machine. That’s unheard of in romance films.’
‘Too bad. That was the best bit.’
I catch the sliver of a smile crossing his lips. It’s the first real expression I’ve seen on his face since he burst through the door. Or kicked it in. Or whatever he did while I was curled on the bathroom floor, counting the cracks in the grout.
The banter fades, and the weight of the night settles back around us, heavier than before.
‘It wasn’t always like that.’ I don’t even know why I’m still making excuses.
‘Nevin, I mean. At the start, he was charming and funny. He’d text first thing every morning and drive an hour out of his way to see me for twenty minutes.
I thought I’d found someone who actually wanted me around.
Not as a convenience or a burden. Just…me. ’
‘What changed?’
‘I moved in.’ The answer is too simple and too true.
‘Once I was in his flat, in his space, he didn’t have to chase me anymore.
And the version of him that chased started showing up less and less.
The other version, the one who needed to control everything, who couldn’t stand it if I talked to anyone else or had a thought he hadn’t approved first, that version moved in with us. ’
Scottie’s holding my hand tighter for a moment and then loosens.
‘I kept thinking it was temporary,’ I continue, tracing the curved spine of the hills rolling past. ‘That the man I met at the wedding would come back if I only waited patiently enough. Needed less.’ I let out a bitter sound.
‘My parents had a nasty divorce when I was ten. My dad works offshore. My mum moved to Northern Ireland two years ago. I bought myself a bunch of flowers after my first professional show, because nobody came backstage.’
He huffs, and it sounds vaguely disapproving.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Nothing. It’s… I can’t stand the thought of you being unhappy, even if it’s in the past.’
The quiet way he says it actually hurts. Nobody has ever minded about my past. Not even me. Unhappiness was wallpaper that I stopped noticing years ago. And here’s this man – my friend – driving us through the night, feeling for a version of me he never met.
I have no shelf for that sort of kindness. All I can do is latch onto his hand harder.
‘You learn to take up less space. Because you’re convinced that needing things is the reason people leave.
’ I exhale slowly. ‘I couldn’t even tell my best friend what was going on.
And I’ve known Laurel since we were eighteen and I moved in with her in Pollokshields.
I couldn’t even admit it to myself. Because I didn’t know what “it” actually was. ’
Scottie is silent for a long time. The only sound is the engine and the rain and the wipers.
When he finally speaks, he strips every bit of emotion out of it. ‘I was nine the first time I saw my dad hit my mum.’
Air stalls in my lungs.
‘Middle of the kitchen. She’d burnt his toast. She was crying and apologising, and he kept pushing her against the worktop.
The fridge.’ A muscle in his jaw moves, a tiny spasm near his ear.
‘He slapped her twice. I hid behind the door, too scared to do anything. He pulled her hair as he shouted at her, his back to the door. She saw me and gestured for me to stay hidden. Afterwards, he went to the pub, and she cleaned herself up and never mentioned it. It was as if it didn’t happen. ’
Any reply I could offer right now would sound cheap.
‘But it did happen. After he lost his job, he was drunk most of the time. And when he wasn’t drunk, he was angry about something.
Mum learned to be invisible. As did the rest of us.
’ He exhales through his nose. ‘My older brother Evan was the loud one. The brave one. He tried to get between them, but he got a thrashing, too. Evan warned me to stay away when Dad was like that because I was too wee.’
His thumb resumes its slow circles on my hand. ‘When I saw your name on my phone… When you texted, I didn’t even think. I just drove. Because I spent my childhood not stepping in, and I couldn’t do that again. Not with you.’
The confession sits between us like a third passenger. Two people who learned similar lessons in different houses.
Scottie presses a button on the steering wheel, and the car’s command system pings. ‘Call Mum.’
A ring fills the cabin. Then a woman’s voice, raspy and half-awake. ‘Scottie? God, look at the time. What’s wrong?’
‘I’m coming home tonight. And…I’m bringing someone.’
Muffled words on the other end, a question I can’t catch.
‘A very good friend. She needs somewhere safe. Only for a few days.’
A longer pause. I watch his face, the way his brow creases with something that isn’t guilt. ‘I’ll explain when I get there.’
He ends the call. ‘She’ll probably have questions.’
I trace the path of the rain through the windscreen. ‘What are you going to tell her?’
‘The truth.’ He changes gear. ‘Eventually.’
The word ‘eventually’ occupies the cabin between us. I let it as the last miles to Oban unravel. Scottie’s hand stays warm around mine, and I stop counting.
‘You know that cinema was the only place I could breathe?’ I say.
He lets the question sit there. I realise I’m tracing a line straight back to the reason I got in this passenger seat tonight. I need him to know that my trust in him didn’t appear out of nowhere.
‘I went there after my tendon diagnosis when I needed somewhere to process what happened and what it meant. And then you were there. You didn’t say a word. You could have mentioned it to Nevin, told him you’d seen his girlfriend crying alone. But you didn’t, and that meant the world.’
His profile is carved in shadow, the light catching the slope of his nose, the stubborn set of his mouth. Serious and solid, impossibly beautiful and gentle for a man his size.
‘I came back the next week to thank you,’ I continue. ‘And you kept my secret again. And again. And somehow you made everything better. Without saying much at all.’
His hand flexes on mine. A small negotiation with himself I understand without words.
The sign for Oban appears in the headlights.
‘Thank you.’ The words feel hopelessly cheap, and I say them anyway.
Scottie shifts. ‘That’s what friends are for.’
‘That’s what we are. Friends. Right?’
The road curves. The headlights sweep across a deer warning sign, then into darkness again.
‘Aye. Friends.’
‘Scottie…I don’t really know what to do now.’
He cuts a sideways look at me. It lasts a tad too long for safe driving. ‘For starters, I know I’m not letting you go back there.’
My fingers curl tighter through his, holding on in a way that means more than holding on.
‘How long are we staying?’ My brain needs a framework for the chaos.
‘Until you’re ready to leave. Rugby season’s not over, so I have to get back at some point. What about you?’
‘The company’s touring with The Nutcracker. I’ve been training for the next production, because I want to be Principal dancer. That’s all I want. I can’t commute from Oban, but I don’t have to be in Glasgow constantly right now.’
He tenses, his whole frame locking into a promise. ‘We’ll figure it out.’
It’s not a plan, but I’ll take it.
Shortly after midnight, we pull into a gravel drive. The house is modest, stone walls weathered by salt air, and warm light spilling from a kitchen window. A coastal wind shoves against the car door when I open it. I climb out before my legs decide they are ready.
Scottie is already at the back door. He shoulders my duffel bag and tucks the coffee maker under one arm like a rugby ball.
His mother appears in the doorway before we reach the steps, tying the belt of her fleece housecoat. She is a good bit shorter than her son, but has the same red hair threaded through with grey, and watchful eyes that take in my puffed-up face and his bruised hands.
‘Hi, I’m Gillian. Kettle’s on. House is quiet. Get in, the pair of you.’
The fridge door is plastered in mismatched magnets, a reminder card for the dentist, and a faded takeaway menu.
It’s so ordinary and a world away from Nevin’s Smeg that it actually makes my eyes sting.
She shuffles around the units in her slippers, slots a mug into my hands, and points me toward a chair at the pine table.
There’s nothing pitying in the way she looks at me. Only warmth.