Chapter 26
Isla
Lunch had been loud. A little overwhelming, if I’m honest. Laughter and voices talking over one another and multiple spilled drinks, like the kids had teamed up to get every person at the table as sticky as possible.
Alistair had seemed determined to make me eat, loading up my plate with enough pasta, garlic bread and salad to feed a small army, while I’d fixed Teddy’s plate.
Afterwards, I’d helped load the dishwasher, given Teddy a thorough scrub down, then we joined the others in the living room where the family spread out across the many sofas.
Teddy, Ava and Emily spilled the contents of the toybox out onto the carpet, hosting a wedding between two Ken dolls. Beach Ken was dressed a little casually for his wedding day with a surfboard tucked beneath his arm, but who was I to judge?
I’d never been in a house quite like this one. I couldn’t stop looking at the family photos lining the walls. Baby pictures, first steps out on the front drive, all four Macabe children squeezed onto the same sofa I was currently sitting on.
Alistair on the outside of the group, his skinny arm thrown around Mal’s shoulders. Coke-bottle glasses halfway down his nose, his smile was a little less broad than his siblings’, just wide enough to show his missing front tooth.
From Cameron’s Instagram posts, I knew the few pictures I’d hung up in my old home – his home – were gone with all the work he and Annabelle had done on the house.
The original hardwood floors I’d fallen in love with from our first viewing had been replaced with carpet.
Even Teddy’s height chart on the kitchen wall had been painted over like, with enough beige paint, we could be erased from his life.
“Here, it’s a little full . . .” Alistair’s voice pulled me from the thought as he handed me another glass of Coke. He sat down beside me, his thigh pressing against the length of mine.
“Oh, thank you.”
“I think we need to put a ban on those words from your vocabulary,” he murmured the words low enough to appear playful, flirtatious even, but just loud enough for his family to overhear.
“Are you morally opposed to politeness?”
“I’m morally opposed to being thanked for something that should go without saying.”
“You lot are sickening,” Heather muttered from the floor, where she was packing away some of the toys the girls had abandoned.
“Heather, stop teasing your brothers,” Iris said, returning from checking the pie warming in the oven. Squeezing my shoulder as she passed with so much warmth, a pit opened up in my stomach.
“Yeah, Heather, stop teasing your brothers,” Callum chimed in.
She glared. “Can one of you at least move up so I can sit down?”
Alistair didn’t hesitate. Sliding further into my space, his body was hot and hard against mine as he lifted my legs and deposited them on his lap.
My muscles tensed as I fought not to fidget.
To keep breathing.
We were a couple.
This was completely normal.
“Steady.” His breath caressed the shell of my ear.
Easy for him to say.
The biggest surprise of the afternoon . . . Alistair was a lot better at pretending than I was. He wasn’t overly showy with his affection like Callum, or as nurturing as Mal, he was . . . watchful.
Even now as he tuned into his brothers’ conversation about the charity shinty game coming up in a few weeks, I sensed his attention like I never had before.
It hummed between us like a live wire, pulsating shockwaves of electricity beneath my skin.
I felt so giddy with it that I had to force myself to make conversation, determined to not be remembered, when this was all over, as Alistair’s weird girlfriend he brought to lunch one time.
“How are you feeling, April? Ready for the baby to arrive?” My words ended on a croak. One of Alistair’s hands was sliding over my bare thigh.
I gawked at him. Then at his hand. Then at everyone else, wondering if they’d also felt the fissure opening up in the middle of the room.
Just me.
“Oh, you know, wonderful, awful. My feet are four times their normal size, and I feel like I’ve swallowed a beach ball.
” She shifted uncomfortably. “Why did I have to fall in love with a giant?” I laughed a beat behind everyone else.
“Can you believe Mal actually had to lift me out of the bath yesterday? I got stuck.”
“You weren’t stuck; the floor was slippery,” he assured her.
All the while, Alistair’s fingers slipped over muscle and to the fleshy part of my inner thigh, unhurried, like he’d done it a thousand times before.
My eyes soared to his. What the hell are you doing?
“He’s being generous.” April sounded so far away. “I was in the empty tub like a beached whale.”
“I remember that feeling, it’s rough,” I managed to choke out.
Was my brain melting? Alistair gently squeezed and my pulse fluttered.
Cheeks as hot as the stickiness growing between my legs.
“Nothing could have prepared me for being a twenty-year-old with the bladder of a pensioner.” Was I seriously talking about incontinence with his hand so close to my—
“Don’t mention peeing, please, I only went five minutes ago.” April covered her ears like she could unhear me. “Heather, you’re my hero, I don’t know how you did it with two babies.”
Heather laughed. “I tore my arse in half and not in a fun way.”
Mal choked on his water but made no comment. April blinked. “What?”
“Don’t scare her, Heather,” Iris cut in, reaching out to swat her arm. “The risk of tearing can be minimised with some preparation; did I teach you nothing?”
April looked to Alistair, who nodded reassuringly, like he wasn’t etching patterns into my upper thigh with his fingertips. “It’s true. It wasn’t my field of study but perineal massage and pelvic floor exercises can help.”
The words “perineal massage” shouldn’t have conjured such lurid thoughts, but his thumb brushed a slow circle. Stroked. I was certain everyone within a fifty-mile radius could hear my thundering heartbeat.
It was Juniper who pulled me from my stupor. “Thank fuck I have no interest in doing that.”
I gulped down my drink, eyes locking with Alistair’s.
His gaze was steady. Unruffled. This was nothing but a show, and we were the main characters. But I was embarrassed at how thoroughly my body responded to his.
I wrenched my gaze away in time to watch Callum and Juniper fist bump.
“Team no babies,” he said.
She grinned. “Team going on holiday whenever we want.”
“Good, that gives the rest of us designated babysitters for life,” Heather said.
Everyone laughed but me.
I couldn’t stand it, suddenly desperate to make this all stop.
It was too much.
Me and Alistair pretending. This beautiful family I would never be a part of including me in their future like any of this was real.
It was fake – nothing but a show. Just like Alistair’s casual touch.
I couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
“I can’t wait to teach the twins how to drink,” Juniper said.
Alistair’s thumb swiped again, and I sprang to my feet.
Everyone looked at me.
“Bathroom,” I croaked.
Alistair rose too, setting his untouched beer on the coffee table. “I’ll show you where it is.”
“Oh . . . sure.” I forced a smile, pretending this wasn’t the opposite of what I wanted.
I desperately needed a moment to get my head on straight, not to spend more time with him.
Shoving down my nerves, I followed him down the hallway at the back of the kitchen. His steps were soft and slow over the red shag carpet that seemed to be a staple in every house on the island with a resident over sixty.
“Here you are. Careful with the lock, it jams,” he said swinging one of the doors open.
“Thank you, I mean—” I broke off.
“I know what you mean, Isla.” His voice rumbled. He nodded to the room and turned to leave. “Go on.”
I took two steps into the incredibly seventies bathroom, complete with lace curtains. I hadn’t even shut the door when he spoke again.
“Wait.”
I had my back to him as he caught my elbow, stilling me. My breath stalled as he slid my hair to the side. Dragged his fingers along the collar of my T-shirt.
My body erupted with goosebumps.
“You have a loose thread,” he said, tugging on it. It was over in a blink. I felt the heat of his body as his chest brushed my back. “Don’t you dare thank me,” he said, his breath warm on my neck. Then he pulled the door shut behind me.
I took my time, washing my hands until my pulse steadied, dabbing cool water on my face. Mentally calculating how long I could hide out until everyone assumed I was in number-two territory.
I barely contained my shriek when I opened the door minutes later, and found Alistair waiting in the hallway. Leaning against a door, an old wedding photo on the wall beside his shoulder. His mum and, I assumed, his dad. Iris and Jim.
“I could have found my way back.”
But of course he waited.
My brain filled in the blanks, knowing it likely had something to do with the undisguised hope in his family’s eyes all afternoon. The questions he’d fielded over lunch about his plans for the surgery.
It was none of my business. I lifted my chin, gesturing to the photo. “You look like your dad.”
His shoulders inched up. “You think so?”
I nodded, stepping beside him for a closer look, tracing a finger over the glass. From the few things he’d told me about his dad, I didn’t know if it was a compliment, but it was true.
He resembled his dad more than his brothers or Heather did.
“Same nose and chin,” I declared. But it went deeper than that.
Even in the still image, I could tell Jim Macabe held himself with the same rigidness that Alistair did, shoulders rolled back.
An aloofness in his eyes that indicated he had a million other things on his mind even on his wedding day.
I studied the photo for a few minutes longer, until I felt Alistair’s focus drift from the photograph to me. I glanced up and down the hallway, not ready to return to the living room just yet.
“Which bedroom was yours?”