Chapter Four Hidden Foundations #2
He slid onto a stool and knocked it back in one swallow, as if it were tequila.
It burned all the way down. And Pete folded his arms as he leaned back against the optics.
For all his sarcasm, there was concern in the lines around his eyes.
He’d owned The King’s Arms for nearly twenty years.
Kept it afloat when every other local had gone under after Covid.
Paid bands properly. Looked after his staff.
Half of them were kids from town he’d watched grow up.
One of them was missing.
“Take it you’ve heard then?” Pete scratched his beard.
“Aye.”
“Had her dad banging on the door at three a.m. Then the police came round first light. Gave them my statement.”
Jake tightened his grip around the tiny cup. “Which was?”
“I saw her off about twenty past eleven. She finished at ten thirty, but she hung about.” Pete rubbed his forehead. “Saw her outside. Thought she was waiting for a lift. Told her to text when she got in.”
Jake’s stomach clenched. “Why’d she hang about?”
“I don’t know, Jake.” Pete sounded both exasperated at having been questioned probably for the third time about things he didn’t know and pissed off it was Jake doing it. Again. “It was busy. Band night. She said she were waiting.”
“For who?”
Pete shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Jake shook his head. “Who did she talk to last night?”
“A lot of people. We were rammed. You know that.”
Yeah. He did. He’d been here himself. On stage. Watching the crowd blur under the lights. Banging drums until he felt nothing but bass and noise.
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Was he here?”
Pete fluttered his eyes shut. “Jake…”
“Tell me.” Jake slammed a hand on the bar surface, sticky beer and years of indentations on the old wood scraping across his palm.
“Not that I saw. And you know he keeps his distance when you’re in. I’ve told him enough times.”
Jake exhaled, forcing his pulse down. “Right.” He levelled himself out. “So let’s do this properly. Who were the last ones left?”
Pete pinched the bridge of his nose, more weary than irritated. “You are not the police.”
“Thank fuck for that. Means I can do this properly.”
Pete widened his eyes in challenge. “Like you did last time, aye?”
Jake ground his jaw. He could see it as if it were happening again. The roar in his ears, the tunnel vision, the way the world had narrowed to one man’s face and his fist colliding with it because he’d been certain. Absolutely certain.
Did he regret it?
No.
But it hadn’t brought Robyn home either.
It hadn’t filled the empty chair at his mum’s table. Hadn’t given Teddy a mother. Hadn’t given him peace. What it had given him was a record. A reputation.
Footsteps echoed down the back corridor, along with a voice drifting through into the pub. “Hey, Pete, did you mean to leave the door open—” Brodie emerged into the bar and stopped.
Course, he had to come down. At this exact moment.
With his blond hair artfully messy, fringe falling over eyes the colour of cheap gin, slim jeans and a fitted black tee clinging to a narrow waist and lean chest, Brodie was a lot of things.
Quick with a joke. Quick with a drink. Quick with his hands.
And for a while there, he’d been Jake’s quickest way to burn off pressure after closing.
Jake had had that man bent over stacked kegs, breath hitching, laughter swallowed as he worked out whatever had crawled under his skin most nights.
Mornings, too, occasionally. But Jake usually slipped out of the flat above the pub Brodie rented before sunrise, leaving Brodie tangled in sheets carrying the scent of beer and cheap detergent.
They’d never named it.
Never needed to.
But Brodie had wanted more. That had become obvious. He wanted something that didn’t end with Jake pulling on his boots and leaving before anyone saw. And when Jake realised he’d never invite Brodie to his bedsit, he’d ended it. Didn’t stop the way Brodie still looked at him, though.
As if he should change his mind.
“Jake.” Brodie came to a halt a few feet inside the bar, spinning keys around his fingers.
Twenty-five and well aware of the effect he had, there was a natural sway to him.
Feline. Easy. With his lips curving as if he’d thought of something filthy.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your company this early?”
Brodie was Pete’s most regular barman, pretty much full-time, and had been a fixture behind the King’s Arms bar for about a year. Moved from Hull. That was more or less the extent of what Jake knew about him. He didn’t even know his last name.
Knew what he sounded like when he came, though.
What that said about Jake, he wasn’t entirely sure.
Then again, Brodie wasn’t special in that regard.
Jake had never met a bloke he wanted to know beyond the shag.
Never wanted the talking afterwards, the falling asleep together, the awkward morning where someone inevitably mistook staying the night for the beginning of something.
Sex was easy. He understood sex. He was good at it.
It was everything that came after he had no fucking clue what to do with.
No man would understand him enough to stick around, anyway. The temper. The conviction. Robyn. The thirteen years of his life that had somehow become about a person who wasn’t even there. So Jake had stopped giving anyone the opportunity to try.
One night was enough.
Usually, a couple of hours was better.
“Bit early for an encore, int it?” Brodie stepped behind the bar, setting his keys down and shrugging out of his hoodie. He moved on instinct, like he always did around Jake, closing the distance, and sliding his hand up Jake’s back, giving a familiar rub and tickle. “Miss me?”
Pete turned back to the coffee machine.
Jake wriggled his shoulders to brush him off. “Not now, Brode.”
Brodie dropped his hand and watched Jake for a beat, reading the room properly this time. “Why? What’s happened?”
Jake held his gaze a fraction too long, then looked away. He shook his head.
Brodie’s mouth twisted. “If this is about you fucking that lad in the loos last night, save it. I know.” He swung back behind the bar, movements sharper than usual, and yanked a mug from the shelf.
The coffee machine hissed as he filled it.
“If you didn’t want me hearing about it, maybe don’t do it where I have to clean up after. Sound carries. So does gossip.”
“Fuck off.”
Brodie lifted the mug in a mock toast. “That’s exactly what I thought last night.”
Pete turned from the machine, expression flat. “Not the time, lads.”
Brodie glanced between them, finally clocking the atmosphere. The way Jake’s shoulders sat high and wired. The way Pete wasn’t rising to the bait.
“…What’s happened?”
Pete took a sip from his mug before answering. “Emily didn’t make it home last night.”
“Emily?” Brodie frowned. “New girl?”
Pete nodded. “Mm.”
“Shit.” Brodie tucked a hand on his hip. “Where’s she gone to then?” He gave a careless little cluck of his tongue. “Naughty girl.”
Jake was off the stool in a heartbeat, and it screeched back across the floor as he launched over the bar to get his hands on Brodie. Not in the good way. If the ale taps hadn’t been between them, he’d have been over it with a hand around Brodie’s throat.
Instead, all he could do was point a finger. “Don’t ever fucking say that again.”
Brodie jolted back, spine hitting the counter behind him. “What the fuck’s up with you?”
Pete moved faster than Jake expected for a man pushing sixty. He stepped in hard, planting a broad palm on Jake’s chest to drive him back from the bar before he could vault it.
“Cool off. I get you’re rattled. But you lay a hand on anyone in here again and you’re barred. I don’t care who you are.”
Jake sucked in a breath, scraping his lungs raw.
Then he dropped back onto his heels as the old surge flared.
That blind, red rush meaning he was about to do something stupid.
He tried to swallow it. He couldn’t do that here.
But as his ankle hit the stool lying on its side on the floor, he lashed out, kicking it hard and sending it skidding across the floorboards. It hit the wall with a sharp crack.
Silence followed.
“Sorry.” Jake ran a hand through his hair, fingers snagging as if he could comb the temper out of himself. “Sorry. I’m good.”
Because the last thing he needed, the absolute last thing, was to be barred from this pub. It wasn’t just his drinking hole. It was the band’s anchor. Their regular slot. Their crowd. Their history.
And he’d already cost himself enough.
Pete gave a single, measured nod.
“Jesus.” Brodie took a cautious sip of his coffee. “Didn’t know you even knew her.”
“I don’t.” Jake pushed his hair back from his face.
“Then why are you so bothered?”
Jake looked over at him.
Could he really be that oblivious? Not put it together?
Alright, their thing had mostly been sweat and noise and Jake working off the adrenalin after a set.
They hadn’t exactly lain there sharing life stories.
But this…this wasn’t obscure. This was Hartswick.
Everyone knew. Years of whispers, searches, and sympathetic looks might as well stitch themselves into the town sign.
By lunchtime the butchers would be talking.
The post office. The lads in the builders’ yard.
Everyone would hear how a girl hadn’t made it home and think of Robyn.
His mum. The family that never got an answer.
So how was it that Brodie, who’d had Jake’s hands on him, who he’d been in, still hadn’t made that connection? Still looked at him as if this was local gossip and not a knife sliding between his ribs?
Still, it gave him reason.
This was why it’d never gone deeper with Brodie. Because he might know Jake’s body, but he knew nothing else.