40. Present Day – January
40
PRESENT DAY – JANUARY
SCOTT
J osie spends the night, and my flat above the pub has never felt warmer, cosier, more like home.
Tangled together, I reacquaint myself with every damn inch. When I’m not inside her, we talk. I ask her about her artwork, what she has been working on, what she wants to do — revelling in how her eyes shine as she thinks about it.
Finding a smudge of paint behind her ear, I say, ‘How did you get it there?’
‘When I work, it’s not me and the paint.’ She tuts. ‘I become one with the paint.’
I card my fingers through her hair, twisting the silky strands rhythmically, and she falls quiet for a moment.
‘I painted us, you know?’ she says, shifting her head a little. ‘After that party.’
‘Us?’
‘Well, not us. I’m terrible at portraits. But I painted our first night. How you made me feel.’
My hands pause their stroking. ‘How did I make you feel?’
‘Free,’ she says after a moment. She curls herself against me.
‘Can I see it?’
‘Come to my apartment. It took up the whole wall.’
I think back to the beautiful mural I’d studied the night I’d helped her with Jamie. Fuck, she really doesn’t know how amazing she truly is.
It’s pitch dark out of the window, and I don’t know if it’s the middle of the night or just before dawn. Her soft, rainbow hair tickles my chin as she sprawls across my chest, fingers stroking slowly up and down my arm. Like me, she can’t quite let go either.
‘You should sleep,’ she mutters, lips against my skin.
‘I don’t want to sleep.’ I press my mouth to the top of her head. ‘I don’t want to miss anything. Don’t want to wake up and find out all this has been a cruel dream.’
‘Why would it be?’
‘I don’t deserve this.’ I drop another kiss on her crown. ‘ You .’ A burning pain stings my arm. ‘Ow! What was that?’
‘Proving that you’re not dreaming,’ she chuckles into my chest.
‘Did you just pinch me?’
She walks her fingertips up my stomach and says, ‘Don’t pretend you don’t like it a little rough, ’ as she tweaks my nipple.
I chuckle at that. ‘There’s not much I don’t like when it comes to you. You have no idea how,’ I consider the right word to describe the feeling that descends whenever she is near, ending up with, ‘ feral you make me.’ I run my hands over her, gripping her round ass firmly for emphasis.
‘Plenty of time to find out.’ She smiles against my skin.
I sigh. Plenty of time. No rush.
Sounds perfect.
As I lie on my back, Josie’s sprawled across me like a blanket, her leg draped over my thigh. Her breathing slows and I wonder if she’s fallen asleep until she murmurs, ‘Why don’t you feel like you deserve this?’
Fuck.
I don’t want to say anything to change her mind and end us before we’ve even managed to begin.
My stomach, heart, lungs all twist together as I deliberate.
Do I tell her?
Hell, everything else has been stripped bare tonight. It’d feel wrong if I held back on this.
My hand cups her head gently into my chest as I say, ‘I don’t deserve you.’
‘Why not?’
I sigh.
Here goes.
‘ I shouldn’t get what I want in life. Marcus didn’t.’
She huffs out a short laugh. ‘Marcus is really starting to grind my gears.’
Rolling us slightly, I push onto my side to look at her as I speak. ‘Josie, the night of the accident.’ I swallow. ‘It was my fault. My fault that he died.’
‘No, it wasn’t.’ She sounds uncertain. I don’t want any misunderstanding between us, so I forge on. She needs to know my truth.
‘It was.’ I stroke her hair again, it may be my last chance.
‘You couldn’t have stopped him,’ she says simply, her limpid eyes soulful.
‘I didn’t even try. The opposite , in fact.’ I swallow again, trying to dislodge the sinking stone making its way from my throat to the pit of my stomach. ‘It was me. I insisted on going. He wanted to stay at our friends’ house.’
She remains silent, and I continue, letting the confession tumble out of me.
‘I wanted to go to a party, but Marcus didn’t fancy it. I told him I was going and he tried to convince me to stay. I got pissy with him, said we always did what he wanted to do. Like we were some married couple having a barney.’ My joke falls flat. ‘He got pissy back, and said, “oh you want your turn to shine, huh? ” Then he jumped on his motorbike and shouted, “You want it like this? See who’s got the biggest dick, huh?” Then he kicked off shouting, “Race you there.”’
‘Our helmets had intercom in, so we could talk to each other on rides. We carried on arguing on the way. Usually, I always backed down. Always. But that night, I don’t know what riled me but I went for him, taunting him, undertaking him at every chance. Giving him shit the whole time. We batted insults back and forth and then suddenly, I don’t know.’ I swipe my hair off my face. ‘I didn’t feel like arguing anymore. Or going to the party. The rain got harder and harder, and I started to tell him we should turn back; getting my way wasn’t so urgent after all. But he wasn’t having it. Probably thought it was a ploy of mine to get him to slow down so I could overtake him again. He was laughing as he came up to the junction. Laughing . And definitely not concentrating.’ I suck in a breath. ‘You know the rest.’
I squeeze my eyes shut, opening them to find her big blues wide, her expression unfathomable.
‘My fucking selfish … pride . My fucking selfish hissy fit, cost him his life. So no, Josie, I don’t think I deserve anything good to happen in mine.’
There’s a beat where I think I might be sick, and then she says, ‘Fuck, Scott. Marcus did not hold grudges. He didn’t get in arguments. He was playing with you.’
My gaze flicks to hers. ‘What?’
She’s smiling and scowling at the same time, as if bemused. ‘When did you two ever argue?’
I hesitate. ‘Never.’
‘Exactly.’ Her smile brightens. ‘That wasn’t an argument then , either. He’d have been messing with you.’
‘But—’
She shrugs her right shoulder. ‘I know I didn’t know him that well after he moved out, but a couple things I know for sure.’ She taps a finger on my chest. ‘One, you couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to. And two,’ she pokes me again, ‘he was always playing the fool.’
‘But—’ I cup her face. She can’t have heard me properly.
‘And you said “undertak ing ” like, more than once? You passed him on the inside to get in front?’
‘ Ye-ess ,’ now my words are uncertain.
‘Exactly! He was playing. Tit for tat.’ She raises an eyebrow as she continues to cross-examine me. ‘I take it he undertook you each time, too?’
‘ Ye-ess ,’ I repeat.
‘And he was laughing. The last thing you heard was him laughing?’ She’s really grinning now.
‘Yes.’
‘He was in his fucking element , Scott.’ She shakes her head as if in disbelief.
I’m the one who should be in disbelief. ‘But how can I just carry on with my life when he doesn’t have his?’
She presses her hand more firmly on my chest, over my heart. ‘You have got to free yourself from this fucking punishing narrative. It wasn’t your fault. And wasting your life worrying about it? That’s something Marcus would want no part of. No sir.’
I lie with her words swirling around my head. Ashley’s words from months ago. My words to Jamie that Marcus would always be the ringleader. The videos of Marcus and me, playing the stupidest of games. Him being the biggest personality in any room. No one ever made him do something he didn’t want to. He always chose the option for the most fun. Most carnage. He squeezed every ounce out of life. Always .