Chapter twenty-six
Rory
Fuck. Shit. Fuck. She’s here.
For half a second, I genuinely consider turning around and walking straight back out the door. Maybe even running. Pretending I never opened it, never saw her, never felt my entire nervous system short-circuit. But then…
“RORY, MY MAN!”
Rowan’s voice booms across the pub like a foghorn, and that’s that. No escape.
Rowan and I grew up together or as close as you can when one of you is in school and the other’s being home-schooled on a farm.
I basically lived in his fields every summer, getting chased by geese and pretending we were tough enough to wrangle sheep.
I haven’t properly caught up with him since moving back to Oakwood.
And of course the first time I come into The Old Oak… She’s here.
I look at Freya for maybe two seconds and yet my dick is now standing to attention inside my jeans.
Fuck she is… breath-taking.
She’s wearing a backless dress. Dark, soft fabric that skims over her hips before falling down her legs.
Her back is bare, smooth, the line of her spine disappearing into the curve of her waist. Her hair is down, loose, catching the coloured lights from the dance floor, copper and gold flashing as it sways.
It brushes the small of her back when she moves.
And she is moving. Laughing, arms in the air with Clara, hips swaying in time to the music like she doesn’t have a single care in the world.
Her legs are toned and strong, stepping and spinning, and every time she throws her head back laughing, my dick hardens a bit more.
She looks happy. Free. And for some reason, that massively turns me on.
I drag my eyes away like I’ve touched something I shouldn’t. Mentally, I start listing the most aggressively unsexy things I can think of to get my dick to shrink. Brick walls. Tax returns. Wet socks. A sponge.
Breathe, Bennett. For the love of God.
I make my way to the bar and climb onto a stool, turning slightly so I’m not blatantly staring at the dance floor, even though every nerve in my body knows exactly where she is anyway.
A long table of Oakwood Primary mums and a few other women are gathered in and around a booth, cocktails and shots lined up. Laughter, glitter, chaos.
So, this is the infamous girls’ night she’s mentioned over the years. Brilliant. Of all nights to come out.
I scrub a hand over my face. I should leave.
But truthfully? I need this. I need noise, distraction, a drink, a conversation about literally anything that isn’t Freya Collins and the fact that we nearly kissed and I swiftly fucked it up.
Unfortunately, Rowan follows my line of sight like a heat-seeking missile.
He leans on the bar beside me, polishing a glass with a grin that says he’s already clocked everything.
“Hot bunch of ladies over there,” he says casually. “Got your eye on one of ’em, mate? Or still hooked on Freya?”
“I…” I clear my throat. “Er. No. Not exactly.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Rory Bennett. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so sheepish.”
“I’m not sheepish.”
“You look like a man who’s just realised he’s in very deep.”
I risk another glance toward the dance floor. Freya’s laughing at something Clara says, still glancing over at me occasionally.
“Yeah,” I mutter, mostly to myself. “Something like that.”
I order a pint and swirl my finger around the rim, doing anything to stop myself from staring at her. It doesn’t work. Because of course it doesn’t. She’s now on stage. And of all songs… Flowers by Miley bloody Cyrus.
I close my eyes for half a second. You have got to be kidding me.
When I look back, she’s holding the mic, one hand on her hip, that backless dress doing absolutely nothing to help me keep my dick under control.
The disco lights sweep over her skin, over the curve of her shoulders, catching in her hair as she sings.
And then she looks at me. Right at me. On certain lyrics.
Sharp. Pointed. Like she’s launching each word across the room and aiming straight for my chest.
Yeah. That one was for you, mate.
The girls at the booth are on their feet now, screaming, dancing around the stage like she’s headlining Glastonbury.
It does something warm to my blood seeing how loved she is, how supported.
But also? If I ever hurt her again, I am one hundred percent getting jumped behind the bins by a pack of primary school mums in heels.
The song ends to cheers and whoops and I finally exhale, relieved I don’t have to pretend I’m deeply invested in the condensation on my pint glass anymore.
I glance up and immediately wish I hadn’t. Freya is marching toward me. Well. Slightly wobbling. But with purpose. I blink, convinced for a second that tequila has somehow teleported into my bloodstream. Nope. Two seconds later she’s right in front of me, cheeks flushed, eyes glassy but blazing.
“YOU,” she says, jabbing a finger into my chest.
“Hi, Frey”
“No. No ‘hi, Frey’. You don’t get to ‘hi, Frey’ me.”
“Okay…”
“You don’t just get to swan back into my life, look all… all rugby and broad and annoyingly hot, and then start acting like you have ANY kind of claim over me.”
“I don’t think I…”
“Scott Wheeler, Rory. SCOTT WHEELER. Do you know how long it’s been since a man flirted with me that wasn’t trying to sell me double glazing or ask about Theo’s reading level?”
I open my mouth.
“And you just stomp over like some sort of jealous caveman and glare at him until he runs away!”
“He’s not a good guy Frey, I…”
“That is NOT the point!” she hisses, swaying slightly. “You don’t get to decide who is or isn’t good for me when you disappeared for YEARS. And then you try to kiss me and get me all confused.”
My hand hovers near her elbow in case she topples, but I don’t touch her.
“I was fine, Rory. I was doing my life. Raising my son. Surviving. And then you come back with your stupid backwards caps and your stupid shoulders and your… your FACE.”
“My face?”
“YES, your FACE. And those looks you keep giving me like you’re about to either kiss me or start a fight. Which is it, huh?”
People nearby are pretending not to listen. Terribly.
“Freya…”
“No! You don’t get to ‘Freya’ me in that voice either. You had your chance and you walked away.”
I swallow. She wobbles again, eyes shining now, angry, hurt, drunk, everything tangled together.
“I am not your backup plan,” she says, quieter but fiercer. “I am not the girl you come home to when the city chews you up. I deserved to be chosen the first time.”
That one lands. Hard.
“And now you look at me like that” she gestures vaguely at my face “and I don’t know if you want me or you just don’t like other men wanting me, and I am too old and too tired and too tequila-ed for mixed signals, Rory Bennett.”
Finally, finally, she runs out of breath. And I still haven’t managed to get more than three words in.
“Freya, I…” I look around. “Come on, let’s go.”
She glares at me blankly.
“Rowan. Party room?” I ask. Rowan doesn’t even pretend to be surprised. He’s been clocking this slow-motion car crash from the bar since it started.
“All yours, mate.”
I reach for her hand without thinking. She yanks it away immediately, sharp and defensive, so I back off, lift my hands in surrender and nod toward the hallway instead.
“Please.”
She exhales hard, then stalks ahead of me. I follow close enough to catch her if she stumbles, resting my hand lightly at the small of her back, not possessive, not demanding. Just… there. A steadying presence. She doesn’t shrug it off.
The party room is dim, fairy lights strung along one wall, the muffled thud of karaoke bleeding through the door behind us.
As soon as it clicks shut, she moves as far away as possible, back to the wall, arms crossed tightly over her chest like armour.
I can’t help but notice the way her arms now form a perfect shelf for her tits which are now threatening to burst out of the top of her dress.
Her chin lifts.
“Well?” she says. “What, Rory?”
I swallow. My heart is going like I’ve just run a hundred metres uphill.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “For trying to kiss you.”
Her jaw tightens.
“For years,” I continue, “I never felt good enough for you. I wanted to ask you out but every time I thought about it, I chickened out. I told myself you deserved better. Someone braver. Someone who wouldn’t mess it up” My voice cracks.
I don’t try to stop it. I laugh softly to myself.
“And then suddenly it wasn’t ‘someday’. It was too late.
I was in the city, swept up in a life that looked impressive on paper and felt empty everywhere else. I disappeared. And that is on me.”
Her eyes flicker. Just for a second.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, emotion finally winning. “For leaving. For being a pussy and not asking you out. For trying to kiss you and confusing you. You don’t deserve any of this. I just wish we could go back to how we were before I fucked things up. I felt like I finally had you back, Frey.”
Her breathing changes. It’s slight, but I feel it because I’m standing close enough that I can feel the warmth of her skin through the air between us.
The anger’s drained out of her now. Not gone, exactly.
Just… softened at the edges. Which somehow feels worse.
When she’s shouting, I can defend myself.
When she’s quiet like this, I’ve got nowhere to hide.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she says, and it’s not sharp, it’s tired.
“I don’t know either,” I admit, because I genuinely don’t. I just know that every time I try to stay away from her I end up standing two inches from her mouth like an idiot.
I step closer without thinking it through. She doesn’t move back. Her hand comes up to my chest like she’s bracing herself, fingers curling slightly into my shirt, and that tiny movement nearly undoes me. Her palm is warm. My heart is not behaving.
I slide my hand to her waist carefully, slowly, giving her every chance to push me off. She doesn’t. She tilts her chin up a fraction instead, eyes flicking down to my mouth before she can stop herself. And that’s it. That’s the crack in my self-control.
I lean in just enough that I can feel her breath against my lips.
My forehead brushes hers first, skin to skin, and the contact is soft enough that it almost makes me laugh because this is ridiculous.
We’re in our mid-thirties. We have children.
We are not teenagers behind the sports hall.
And yet my body is reacting like it’s the first time I’ve ever been this close to a woman.
Her nose grazes mine. Her fingers tighten in my shirt. I can feel the faint tremor in her breath and it shoots straight through me.
I want to kiss her. Fuck, I want it so bad.
I want to kiss her because she’s right there and because I’ve wanted to for about twenty years and because every time I get close to her something in my chest loosens and tightens at the same time.
Which is exactly why I shouldn’t. Because if I kiss her now, in this room, after tequila and shouting and me admitting I’ve been a coward for most of my adult life, it won’t be steady.
It’ll be impulse. It’ll be heat. It’ll be me grabbing something I’m terrified of losing.
And she’s already told me she doesn’t trust me.
“Frey,” I murmur, my mouth barely a breath from hers, my eyes still shut. Her eyes open first.
“We can’t,” she whispers.
Not because she doesn’t want to. Because she does, I can feel it.
I let my forehead rest against hers for another second, just long enough to feel how close we are to doing something irreversible.
“I know,” I say, even though every part of me wants to argue.
My thumb shifts against her waist once, almost unconsciously, and I feel her inhale sharply. If I move half an inch forward, I’ll have her mouth. If I stay exactly where I am, I still have her warmth. If I pull back, I keep her. That’s the calculation. So I pull back.
The air rushes in between us and it feels colder than it should. She wraps her arms around herself, but not defensively. More like she’s trying to hold herself steady.
“I don’t want to ruin this,” she says.
“I don’t either.”
And I mean that more than I mean our second almost-kiss.
She looks at me properly now. “You get that I can’t just… fall into this, right?”
“I know.”
“And I don’t trust you to not leave me again.”
There’s no venom in it. Just truth.
“That’s fair,” I say, because it is. I left. I chased something shiny. I built a life that didn’t have her in it and then I came back expecting the ground to still be warm where I’d stood.
Silence settles between us again, but it’s not explosive now. It’s tight. Careful. Two people trying not to make the same mistake twice.
“Maybe we just… don’t do this,” she says slowly.
“Don’t do what?”
She gestures between us. “The almosts. The staring. The nearly.”
I huff a breath through my nose because she’s right. I’ve been hovering around her like a dog that doesn’t know whether it’s allowed on the sofa.
“Friends,” she says finally.
The word hits weirdly. Friends means I don’t lose her.
Friends means I don’t get her. Friends means I stop acting like she’s something I can claim just because I finally got brave enough to admit I wanted her.
It also means I prove I’m not going anywhere this time.
And if I’m honest, if I strip the ego out of it, that might be the only way she ever believes me.
“Friends,” I repeat.
She lifts her hand slightly between us, eyebrows raised like she’s daring me to argue.
“Are we actually shaking on this?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says firmly. “Because if we don’t make it official, you will absolutely try to kiss me again.”
I laugh. She’s not wrong.
I take her hand. We shake. It’s stupid but intimate in a completely different way.
“Friends,” I say.
“Friends,” she echoes.
Neither of us lets go immediately. And as we stand there, I realise something that annoys the hell out of me: Choosing friendship isn’t me giving up.
It’s me finally doing something the right way.
And if that means I have to stand two inches from her mouth and not kiss her until she believes I’m not going to disappear, then fine. I’ll deal with it. Even if it kills me.