CRAIG
CRAIG
As soon as I enter the house, I feel there’s something off. I’ve gotten pretty skilled at sensing tension, and right now, the air is practically crackling with it. Gut clenching uneasily, I kick off my shoes and line them up beside the welcome mat. My jacket, I leave on.
Generally, on a Saturday, I’m not expected to emerge from my room much before lunchtime, and Dad remains shut away in his office until mid-afternoon. Mum spends her morning meeting Kathryn for coffee, shopping, or beauty treatments. But today, the soft sound of the front door clicking shut at my back is drowned beneath the muffled voices of both my parents, speaking heatedly in the lounge.
Taking a deep breath, I force myself past the lure of the stairs.
And any glimmer of hope I held that I’d misread the atmosphere dissipates into the intense silence that greets me the instant I push open the lounge door.
Dad locks his eyes on mine immediately, and he sinks back into his armchair. Anyone who didn’t know him could be excused for interpreting the slow curve of his lips as a mellow smile, but I’m not so green. “You’re up and about early today, Son.”
I stop just inside the doorway on faltering feet. My clothes may be freshly laundered, but I’m all too aware of the layer upon layer of sweat and filth coating my skin as his gaze burns through me. I’ve helped demolish a barn down to rubble and firewood this morning. I still can’t quite understand how Sebastian manipulated me into it, but every single muscle of my hungover body has been tested and abused.
The adrenaline rush that came from wielding a sledgehammer depleted quickly on the car ride home when Alex spoke little beyond insisting he drive. Now, I can muster only enough good sense to hold my tongue.
“Or perhaps,” he continues in the same deceptively easy tone. “You’ve been up and about all night.” It’s not a question.
Mum sits perched and rigid on the edge of the couch cushion with Christopher on her knee. She has yet to acknowledge my entrance, her attention remaining trained on my baby brother, whose bright smile and nonsensical chatter chime a discordant tone of warmth to the scene. His pudgy hands grasp out for me, imploring, and I bite hard into my lower lip.
But Dad doesn’t indulge my non-response for long. “Good party, was it?”
Instinctive denial starts my head shaking, and I’m too slow to catch it — a careless slip.
“No?”
He already has his answers, my gut warns with an ominous churn, and something cold and horrifying spreads through my veins as the implications of that soak in.
“No, you weren’t partying, or no, it wasn’t good?” I’m prompted, his facade cracking ever so slightly. “I’d strongly advise you don’t bullshit me here, Craig.”
I swallow thickly. My voice grates past the lump in my throat. “I” — will not be baited into dooming myself — “I went to see Alex for a bit, that’s all.”
“Oh, but of course, Alex would be involved. Only, I’ve already gone to the trouble of speaking to Lorraine, and she’s not seen you. He didn’t return home last night either.” Leaning forward, like a predator ready to pounce, he steeples his fingers. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Craig. You’ve had your mum worried sick.”
Another flicked glance at Mum finds her adamantly tight-lipped. She’s angled herself further away from me, clutching Christopher to her chest as if protecting him from a threat. Her expression is not one I’d describe as worried—not for my sake, anyway.
Their issue isn’t that I was out all night partying, but who I was at that party with. And there’s only one source from which this information could have come—the virulent source of my every undoing.
Gary wasn’t at Steph’s house. Even before he crossed the line with Lyndsay, he wouldn’t have been welcome there. Hers is one of the few ever-dwindling places I’m guaranteed to be safe from his watch.
More fool me, however, for believing that to be protection enough. I’d been more reckless last night than I’ve had the good sense to realise because, of course, he would’ve been nearby, skulking in the shadows like the malevolent creeper he is.
I make the mistake of blinking, and my hammering heart plummets into my toes as Tate’s hostile face flares up behind my eyelids. His body’s sudden clash against mine is no less painful for being the ghost of a moment already spent.
Dad makes good use of my split-second distraction to start advancing on me. “You’re well aware of what will happen should you repeat past mistakes, aren’t you, Son?” he says, and it’s as if he’s just read my mind.
The walls are closing in. How much of that scene I caused on the front lawn might Gary have witnessed? Heard? Divulged?
“I’ve got this satisfying feeling,” Sebastian’s final taunt ricochets back on me with double the brutality of its first hit, “that today’s going to only get worse for you.”
“Ashleigh,” explodes from my mouth, louder than intended. “Ashleigh let me stay at hers.”
Christopher’s mood takes an abrupt turn, reacting to the sudden crack in my voice. “Ayg! Ayg!” I hear him. He starts kicking up a fuss, and it wrenches my heart not to turn to him.
Mum shushes him. Or maybe it’s me she’s cautioning, the sound strained and terse. Either way, it’s the first input she’s given since I came in.
“Alex wanted to stay at Steph’s. I didn’t, so… I went with Ashleigh.”
“Ashleigh,” Dad repeats, sounding not at all appeased. “Huh.” It’s like he’s determined to not believe me.
Another stride brings him within easy reach of me, close enough that I can smell the coffee on his breath. My feet trip over themselves, at odds in their effort to both backstep and hold ground. I dread to think what incriminating undertones his flared nostrils might be extracting from my stench. “There’s a name I’ve not heard mention of before. How convenient.”
“Mum.” My appeal causes her to wince. I twist my body away from Dad toward her, but the grab he makes for my shoulder still lands a firm hold. “You remember Ash, right?” Mum pushes up to her feet, my brother bundled in her arms, and when her eyes finally slide my way, it’s as if she sees no one standing between herself and the open door at my back. “She’s been here before. Once. With Lyndsay. The girl obsessed with your crystal duck?”
I can practically feel Sebastian’s smug satisfaction thickening the air around me like a toxin as Christopher is briskly skirted past.
“Alright,” Dad snaps me back to him. “So, this girl, she’s been a friend of yours since…?”
“She’s not,” I’m quick to interject. “A friend. Exactly.”
It’s the truth, but it’s also an impulsive effort of misdirection. The sudden impact of Mum’s gaze on the side of my head accelerates my pulse.
“Not a friend?” She cracks, taking the bait, her hand frozen halfway toward the doorknob. “You’ve spent the night with a girl who’s not exactly a friend?”
I manage a single nod.
“More than? And you plan to see her again?”
The bright shade of hope I hear in her voice only deepens the hopelessness in my own. “No.”
“No?”
“Ash isn’t… She’s just…”
“She’s just what, Son?” Dad’s brow furrows, and, too late, I realise the trap I’ve dumbly backed myself into. “A one-night fling?” His grip on my shoulder tightens. “A bit of drunken entertainment?”
“No.”
“I should think not,” he continues. And his following words are as close to a joke as I’ve ever heard from him. “You weren’t raised to treat the fairer sex with such disrespect.”
However, the laugh bubbling up is not one of amusement. The lump in my throat grows thorns. I haven’t duped him. He’s playing along, testing me to see just how far I’m willing to bend. There’s no safe way to respond to that.
“We should meet her.”
“Dad…”
Out the corner of my eye, I can see that Mum has unconsciously drifted Christopher nearer, almost within my reach. “Ayg,” he calls again, but I know letting my guard slip now would be a regrettable error.
“Invite her over.”
“What?” My head shakes again, this time with vehemence.
“She granted you a night with her in her home, Son.” He leans in close—close enough to fill the entirety of my vision. “It’s only right you return the favour.” His grin stretches across his face, chilling my blood to ice. “Friday night. It’s Games Night. You’ll bring her along.”