He stood up, abandoning his empty beer bottle on the coffee table. Pausing in the living room doorway, he turned back to Jack.
“I think maybe you should stay away from her for a couple of days, just until we can be sure this is all a storm in a teacup.”
Jack nodded. “I hate lying to her, but I think you’re right.”
More lies, even if they too were disguised as little white ones.
She felt as if she were running in quicksand. Each step sucked her leg into the molten road, but she fought on regardless. Smoke filled her lungs as the wind changed direction, blowing smoke and ash from the burning car straight into her face. People ran past, heading for the burning car on the road up ahead, but for some reason she couldn’t explain, she didn’t call out for help.
She kept her eye on the car, horrified as the flames engulfed it. People pushed past her, blocking her view, and panic began to take hold, squeezing her chest.
She could hear Jack up ahead, screaming her name. She tried to call back to him but the smoke got caught in her throat and she choked on her words.
Ally woke up gasping for breath, her lungs burning. She was trembling all over. She knew instinctively that she had been moaning in her sleep, maybe even screaming. She whimpered, hating how pathetic she sounded. Her thighs ached and she tried to hang on to the phantom pain, even as the last threads of sensation died.
Uncharacteristically angry, she pulled the sweat-soaked pillow out from under her head and flung it across the room. Lying alone in the dark, she crossed her arms over her face and cried.
As Callum headed home after work the following day, he scanned the streets for any sign of the car he had seen outside Tom’s house.
He had spent the day going over and over the conversation with Jack the night before. Putting himself in Jack’s shoes the night he found out about Tom, he was on the brink of understanding. But the nagging feeling that this wasn’t just going to go away refused to leave him.
He checked the rear-view mirror again. Who knew that Jack would turn out to be the one involved in an underground boxing ring? With his own history of ‘misunderstandings’, he was sure that even money would have been on him.
He pulled into his driveway a short time later. The light was just beginning to fade and the streetlights hadn’t yet come on, but Jack had the curtains pulled in the living room. His car was still hidden from sight, around the back of the house. Jack wasn’t taking any chances, and that was worrying in itself. He reached over for the bag of takeout he had picked up on the way home and headed into the house via the back door.
“Honey, I’m home!” he called, pocketing his keys as he closed the door after him.
Jack appeared in the doorway, bleary-eyed.
“Enjoy your nap? I got Chinese food.”
“Great – I’m starving.”
Jack rubbed his short brown hair roughly, making it stand on end even more. Callum grabbed a couple of forks out of the drawer and handed one to him, along with a carton of Chinese food.
“What? No chopsticks?”
“Rule number one: we don’t do chopsticks in this house.”
“That’s right. Sorry,” Jack said, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
He grabbed two bottles of beer out of the fridge and handed one to Callum, who eyed it greedily. “Jesus, I deserve that after the day I’ve had.”
“Tough day at the office, dear?”
“Something like that. Dealing with idiots can give a man a healthy thirst.”
“I called Ally earlier. She seemed a little out of sorts,” Jack said, heading into the living room.
“Yeah, I stopped by to see her on my way home from work. Nothing out of place, but she seemed a little down at the mouth. Said she was tired, so I’m sure that’s all it is.”
He collapsed in his favourite armchair, taking a good long swallow of beer as Jack switched on the TV. They sat in comfortable silence while they ate.
The whole situation had a thoroughly surreal vibe running through it. Jack, sitting in his living room, having a beer with him. The last couple of weeks had been a rollercoaster. Tom’s death, Jack’s sudden reappearance and the resulting chaos – not to mention Jack’s revelation of the previous evening – all of it felt completely bizarre. It had thrown him off-kilter, especially hearing about what Jack had been up to in the past year. What the hell was he thinking?
He glanced over at him now, as memories tumbled over him.
The night of the accident. Joking around outside Tom’s house. Jack’s new t-shirt. Discussing how Jack was going to pop the question. His best man speech. Talk of the bachelor party.
Jack throwing punches at Tom’s funeral. Andy McLeish going down in a screaming heap. Cage-fighting. Heavies who travelled in pairs.
Jack and Ally kissing in her backyard.
How the hell did we get from there to here?