Chapter 14
Phil
Christina’s fingers slip from mine at the bottom of the staircase.
“I won’t be long,” she says.
“You don’t have to rush.”
She smiles at that, like she knows exactly how impossible that request is, then turns and disappears upstairs with the rest of the band. The door closes behind them, cutting off the brief spill of laughter that followed them up.
I stand there for a moment longer than necessary, staring at the door like it might open again.
It doesn’t.
“Phil!”
I turn.
Nick is halfway out of his chair at the back table, waving like I might otherwise miss five grown men occupying the largest piece of furniture in the room.
As if they’ve ever blended into anything.
I make my way over.
Chris slides a pint toward me before I’ve even sat down.
I nod at him. “Thanks.”
Nick leans back in his chair, studying me.
“You look nervous.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m not,” I repeat.
Rob leans forward, elbows on the table, grinning like he’s been waiting for this exact moment all week.
“He’s nervous,” he confirms.
Tommy sighs into his drink.
“Leave him alone.”
“I haven’t done anything,” Rob says innocently.
“You’re about to.”
Emma beams at me from beside Alex.
“I’m so excited,” she says. “She’s going to be brilliant.”
“She is,” I say.
Nick watches me over the rim of his glass.
“You’ve got that look.”
I frown. “What look?”
“That one,” he says vaguely. “Like someone’s replaced your internal organs.”
Rob nods eagerly. “Yes. Soft.”
“I am not soft.”
Chris snorts into his pint.
Alex clears his throat.
“So,” Rob says casually. “Christina.”
I take a drink.
“Yes.”
He waits.
I wait.
Nick tilts his head.
“You held her hand,” he says.
“It’s allowed.”
Emma leans forward. “It’s encouraged,” she corrects. “Healthy relationships thrive on physical affection.” She says the word relationship deliberately.
I feel it land somewhere behind my ribs, heavier than the rest of the conversation. Because she isn’t one of them. She isn’t just part of the team. She’s Christina’s person. The one who was there long before I was.
Nick notices the shift immediately, of course.
“Well,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “this is new. Emma using professional terminology. It must be serious.”
Emma doesn’t look at him.
Beside her, Alex hides a small smile in his glass, like he’s been waiting for this exact moment and is determined not to interfere.
Rob, on the other hand, has no such restraint.
“A relationship,” he repeats, clearly enjoying himself. “Phil. In a relationship.”
He shakes his head, impressed.
“I honestly didn’t think I’d see the day.”
I take a drink, partly to give myself something to do with my hands, partly to buy time.
“I didn’t either,” Nick says cheerfully.
Chris glances between them.
“It makes sense,” he says simply.
Rob turns to him.
“Based on what evidence?”
Chris shrugs. “He looks different.”
That makes all of them pause for half a second.
Different how, I want to ask.
But I don’t.
Because I don’t want to hear the answer.
Emma studies me more closely now, her expression softening just slightly, like she’s recognised something she was hoping to see.
“She makes you happy,” she says.
It isn’t phrased like a challenge.
It’s a statement of fact.
“Yes,” I say. The word comes easier this time. These are my best friends. If I can’t tell them, who can I tell?
Across the table, Rob leans back in his chair and folds his arms.
“Well,” he says, “this is excellent news for me.”
Nick looks at him. “How?”
Rob grins. “It restores balance. I was carrying the entire romantic credibility of this group on my own.”
Tommy snorts into his pint. “You’ve been on three dates this week.”
“Four,” Rob corrects.
Emma raises an eyebrow. “And how many second dates?”
Rob pauses. “That’s not the point.”
Chris laughs quietly into his drink.
Nick points at Rob. “Serial dating is not the same as a relationship.”
Rob looks offended. “It absolutely contributes to the ecosystem.”
Emma shakes her head, smiling now despite herself. “You’re exhausting.”
Alex finally speaks. “He’s also deflecting,” he says mildly.
Rob ignores him.
“So,” he says, turning back to me, “how serious is it?”
The question lands differently.
I think about Christina upstairs, about the way her hand had fit into mine like it belonged there, about the look on her face when I told her I was falling for her.
“Serious,” I say.
The word settles over the table.
No one laughs.
Nick studies me for a moment longer than usual.
Then he nods once, small and approving beneath everything else.
Chris lifts his glass slightly in my direction.
Tommy does the same.
Even Rob, after a second.
Emma watches me quietly.
Then she smiles.
I glance toward the stairs again without meaning to.
Nick follows my gaze.
“She’ll smash it,” he says.
I nod.
I already know that.
The first chord carries further than it has any right to in a room like this.
The Devil’s Barrel was never designed for clarity.
It was built for noise and spilt pints and conversations that overlap until nothing can be separated from anything else.
But somehow her voice cuts through it anyway, not by force, but by existing with a kind of quiet confidence that makes everything else step back.
Christina stands at the microphone with one hand resting lightly on the stand, her shoulders relaxed in a way that feels both familiar and entirely new.
I’ve seen her behind the counter at the shop, sitting at my kitchen table, lying beside me in the early hours of the morning when the world feels smaller and more honest. But this version of her belongs to something wider.
She glances across the room, and when her eyes find me, she smiles.
It isn’t the smile she gives customers, or Emma, or anyone else. It’s smaller than that. Personal.
Then she starts to sing.
Her voice settles into the space like it has always belonged there. There’s no strain in it, no performance in the way I expected there might be. She isn’t trying to impress anyone. She’s simply allowing herself to be heard.
Around me, conversations fade without anyone announcing it. Chairs shift. Glasses pause halfway to mouths. Even Nick, who rarely stops talking for longer than thirty seconds, goes quiet.
I feel it in my chest before I fully understand why.
Then the band moves into the next song.
I recognise it immediately.
Not from the opening chord, but from the shape of it. From the way it settles into something familiar before it fully reveals itself.
Next to Me.
The memory arrives without warning.
My cottage. Christina beside me, half-awake, her hair a mess across the pillow. The quiet that comes after something irreversible has already happened.
I hadn’t planned it.
The words had just been there, sitting somewhere behind my ribs without purpose, until suddenly they had one.
I remember the way she’d looked at me when she realised what I was doing. Not laughing. Not embarrassed. Just still, like she understood that this wasn’t performance. That it wasn’t something I did.
It was something I gave.
I haven’t sung it since.
Not properly.
And now she’s standing here, in a pub full of people who have no idea what they’re hearing, giving it back to me like it belongs to both of us.
She doesn’t look at anyone else.
Not really.
Her eyes find mine as she sings the first line, and the rest of the room fades into something secondary. I’m aware of it, of the noise and the movement and the presence of the others beside me, but none of it reaches the same place.
She remembered.
Not just the song.
The moment.
The meaning behind it.
My throat tightens, and I swallow hard, suddenly aware of how exposed I feel sitting here while she stands there without hesitation.
She isn’t hiding.
She never has.
She finishes the last line and lets the final note settle naturally, her hand still resting on the microphone stand like she’s steadying something that doesn’t need steadying.
The applause begins a second later, but I barely hear it.
Because she’s looking at me like she already knows what it did.
And she did it anyway.
The applause fades slowly after the fourth song, dissolving back into the usual noise of the pub as people turn toward their drinks and their conversations again.
Christina stays on the small stage a moment longer, leaning toward the guitarist as he says something to her.
She laughs, her hand going briefly to her chest like she’s trying to hold the feeling in place.
Then the band starts unplugging cables.
Taking a break.
She looks out across the room, searching.
When she finds me, her face changes completely.
She doesn’t walk.
She runs.
She weaves between chairs and people, ignoring the narrow spaces and half-turned bodies, her focus fixed entirely on our table. By the time she reaches us, she’s breathless and glowing in a way that makes it clear she hasn’t fully processed it yet.
“They want me,” she says.
Her voice comes out half laugh, half disbelief.
“I'm in. As lead singer.”
Emma lets out a shriek beside Alex and launches herself at Christina, wrapping her in a hug that nearly knocks them both sideways.
“I knew it,” Emma says. “I knew it. I told you.”
Chris raises his glass immediately.
“Well done.”
Tommy nods once, approval written plainly across his face.
Nick whistles low under his breath.
Rob looks genuinely impressed.
“That was ridiculous,” he says. “In a good way.”
Christina laughs again, overwhelmed and unguarded.
Then she turns to me.
She doesn’t say anything at first.
She just steps closer to where I sit and rests her arm across my shoulders, her hand settling against the back of my neck like it belongs there. Her body is warm beside mine, real and solid and still humming with adrenaline.
I look up at her.
“I’m proud of you,” I say.
The words feel insufficient for the scale of it, but they’re the only ones that exist.
Her smile softens.
“Thank you for coming.”
I don’t tell her that there is nowhere else I would have been.
I don’t have to.
Someone shoves past behind her.
Not hard enough to knock her over completely, but hard enough that she loses her balance. Her hip hits the edge of the table, glasses rattling loudly, beer sloshing over the rim of Chris’s pint.
My hand comes up automatically, steadying her before she can fall forward.
She straightens immediately and turns around.
The man standing behind her looks ordinary at first glance. Late thirties, maybe. Local. The kind of face you’d pass in the street without remembering it.
He doesn’t apologise.
He doesn’t look embarrassed.
He looks annoyed.
“Watch it,” he says.
Christina doesn’t step back.
“You pushed me.”
He shrugs, dismissive.
“I can go where I want.”
His eyes flick over her face, her hair, her skin.
Something in his expression shifts.
Cold.
“And if you don’t like it,” he adds, his voice lowering just enough to make sure the words land where they’re meant to, “you can go back to whatever country you crawled out of.”
For a moment, I don’t understand what I’ve heard.
Not because the words are unclear.
Because they don’t belong in the same space as her.
Christina goes completely still beside me.
Then she lifts her chin. "You don't get to talk to me like that."
The wanker snorts.
"Yeah?" he says. "Doesn't look like it."
Around us, the noise of the pub continues, oblivious. Someone laughs at the bar. A glass breaks somewhere near the door. The world carries on like something hasn’t just fractured open in the middle of it.
I feel my hand tighten against the edge of the table.
He’s looking at her like he expects her to move.
Like he expects her to accept it.
She doesn’t.
Neither do I.
I stand up before I’ve made the decision to.
The chair legs scrape loudly against the floor behind me, sharp enough that Chris looks up immediately. Nick stops mid-sentence. Emma’s hand, still resting on Christina’s arm, tightens.
The man doesn’t move.
Up close, he smells faintly of stale beer and something sour underneath it. He isn’t much taller than me, but he stands like he expects the space to belong to him.
“You need to leave,” I say.
My voice is steady.
Stronger than I expect.
He looks at me properly now, like he hadn’t realised I was there until this moment.
“And who the hell are you?”
I don’t answer the question.
It doesn’t matter.
“You heard me,” I say instead.
Something flickers across his face. Amusement. Contempt. The easy confidence of someone who has never been told no in a way that meant anything.
He lets out a short laugh.
“Relax,” he says. “Didn’t realise she needed a bodyguard.”
Christina’s hand finds my arm.
“I’m fine,” she says quietly.
I know she is.
That isn’t the point.
He looks at her again.
Then back at me.
“You locals are getting sensitive,” he says. “Used to be different.”
Behind me, I can hear movement. Chairs shifting. The others standing, not crowding, but present.
Not intervening.
Not leaving.
He notices it too.
His eyes move past me briefly, taking in the table behind me. Alex. Chris. Tommy. Nick. Rob. Emma.
Witnesses.
The balance shifts, almost imperceptibly.
He exhales sharply through his nose, like he’s already bored of this.
“Whatever,” he mutters.
He steps past Christina again.
This time he doesn’t touch her.
He walks toward the bar like nothing has happened, like he hasn’t just left something broken behind him.
The noise of the pub fills the space he leaves.
I don’t move.
I can feel Christina beside me, close enough that I’m aware of the warmth of her arm against mine.
“I’m okay,” she says.
I turn to look at her.
Her chin is lifted, her expression composed, but there’s something else there too. Not fear. Not weakness.
Something harder.
Something familiar.
Emma steps closer to her immediately.
“You don’t have to stay,” Emma says.
Christina shakes her head.
“No.”
Her voice is steady.
“I’m not leaving. I’m fine.”
I believe her.
That isn’t the part that unsettles me.
What unsettles me is how easily it happened.
How quickly something good can be interrupted by something ugly.
How close he stood.
How easily he thought he could erase her belonging here.
My hand finds hers without thinking.
This time, I don’t let go.