CHAPTER Fifteen
FREYA
Hannah: So you and Rory have clearly fucked.
I nearly inhale a lungful of powdered face paint from the other side of the stall as the message pops up on my phone.
“What is wrong with you?” I mouth, turning slightly away from the stall so none of the Year Twos can lip-read my demise.
Hannah doesn’t even look up from the tiger she’s painting onto a six-year-old’s cheek.
“Just calling it as I see it.” She mouths back.
Freya: We have not and we would not.
I type back furiously.
“Mm-hm.” She says, her eyebrows raised.
Freya: He is not interested
I add, thumbs stabbing at the screen harder than necessary.
Freya: If he was, he would have tried something. He’s had plenty of opportunities.
Hannah finally glances up, one brow lifting.
Hannah: Didn’t he just nearly square up to that winger because he was talking to you?
Freya: That was not squaring up. That was unnecessary male peacocking. And shouldn’t you be concentrating on your face painting?
Hannah: Babe, he looked like he was about to fold him into a festive origami swan.
I refuse to look across at her since she’s probably giggling to herself at that remark.
Freya: He’s protective, it’s a rugby thing. Pack mentality. Very primal. Nothing to do with me.
She blows gently on the face paint of the kid in front of her to set it, then wipes her hands on a towel and starts typing.
Hannah: He’s staring at you again.
Freya: I swear to God, if he doesn’t stop staring at me, I’m going to throw a rubber duck at him
Hannah: Please do. That would make this fair way less boring.
I slide my phone face down on the trestle table before I can launch it into the fake snow display. Hannah is a pain in my arse…But she is not often wrong.
I risk a glance. Rory is across the playground near the tombola, laughing at something Noah has said, but his eyes are not on Noah.
They are on me. When he realises I’ve caught him, he doesn’t look away immediately.
His jaw tightens slightly instead, something unreadable passing over his expression, before he drags his gaze back to the conversation in front of him.
My pulse stutters anyway. Which irritates me more than the staring itself.
The Christmas fair hums at full volume around me.
I move through it all with my clipboard tucked under one arm, directing traffic, reorganising stall queues, solving three separate minor crises involving raffle tickets and a lost child.
I do not look for him. I absolutely do not.
And yet I know exactly where he is at all times. It is deeply irritating.
The Ravens idea was his. Pros versus kids touch rugby in the playground, shirt signings, photos, a whole spectacle that has brought in more money in one afternoon than last year’s bake sales did all year.
The school adores him. The mums adore him way too much for my liking.
The Year Fives are hovering like he’s a visiting superhero.
The fair winds down in that slow, messy way school events always do.
Sugar highs dissolve into overtired tears, parents clutch raffle prizes like they’ve won the lottery, volunteers begin stacking chairs with the weary coordination of people who have given up on perfection.
By the time we’re folding tables, the playground feels larger.
Rory and I end up at opposite ends of the same trestle table.
We lift. Metal legs scrape against the floor. We do not look at each other.
“What was that earlier?” I ask eventually, focusing on the hinge as I fold it in.
“What was what?” he replies, too neutral.
“With Scott.”
There is the smallest pause.
“He’s not the nicest guy,” Rory says. “That’s all.”
“That’s not what it looked like.”
He sets his end down carefully, straightening slowly.
“What did it look like?”
“Like you thought you had a say.”
His gaze settles on me, steady and unreadable. “I don’t,” he says evenly. “You can talk to whoever you want.”
“Good,” I reply, sharper than intended. “Because I will.”
Silence presses in between us, not hostile, just thick.
“I just don’t like the way he looks at you,” he adds after a moment, quieter now.
“And how exactly does he look at me?”
He hesitates. That is new.
“Like you’re… dessert” he says finally.
I feel irritation spark, but something more complicated coils beneath it. “You don’t get to do that,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Do what?”
“Disappear for years and then come back acting like you have to rescue me.”
His jaw tightens slightly.
“I know I don’t have to,” he says. “I was just making sure you weren’t uncomfortable.”
“I wasn’t.”
Another beat of silence.
He nods once, like he’s filing that away for future reference. “Right,” he says. “Then I misread it.”
There is something restrained about him now. A pullback. A quiet recalibration. “Look,” he adds, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, “it’s none of my business. I know that.”
Do you? The question stays lodged behind my teeth.
Noah calls his name from the other side of the playground, breaking whatever fragile thing had been hovering between us. Rory glances over his shoulder, then back at me. “I’ll see you around,” he says easily, as if nothing here carried any weight at all. And then he walks away.
My phone buzzes in my hand before I’ve even processed the silence he leaves behind.
Hannah: That man is feral and pretending he’s not.
Hannah: I am exhausted for you.
I stare at the messages.
Across the playground, Rory laughs at something Noah says, but his shoulders look tighter than they did earlier.
He thinks he’s protecting me. He thinks he’s being decent. And I have no idea whether I’m more annoyed that he did it. Or more annoyed that he did it and then didn’t claim me for himself.
I flip my phone over and help stack the last of the chairs, pretending my heartbeat is not behaving like a fifteen-year-old’s. Which, frankly, is embarrassing.