Kylie shook her head. There was no accounting for taste.
Craig had done a little digging and come up with a name for the bastard: Fraser McCracken. He had been pictured in numerous local newspaper articles about the young swimmers he trained, but he couldn’t find anything from the last two years, suggesting that that was when he had had his ‘accident.’
Fraser was not in the phone book, nor was he on the electoral register. All the same, he couldn’t be that hard to find, not if he was local. Craig was not a local, so he didn’t have the luxury of a social network to call on, so he decided to try his luck at the local pool.
With the beach just a stone’s throw away, it had never occurred to him to visit the leisure centre, but he had passed it often, and knew that it was popular with the kids. Warm air hit him as he walked through the automatic doors and he turned to see a large pool and a duckling pool, both of them full of swimmers.
There was a small café and a gym upstairs, all staffed by workers in bright yellow and red uniforms. He approached the receptionist, a scrawny looking teen with red hair but she gaped at him with suspicion when he showed her the picture. He couldn’t be sure, but he got the feeling she knew exactly who he was talking about. She just wasn’t willing to blab.
“I remember him,” one of the lifeguards said, leaning over the counter. “Fraser McCracken. Everyone calls him Coach.”
“Does he work here?” Craig asked hopefully.
“Not for a couple of years, mate. He moved away to Glasgow, last I heard. Good man though, taught both my lads to swim. What do you want with him? Does he owe you money or something?”
The lifeguard was joshing, but it grated on him all the same. He debated internally whether to tell him the truth but decided against it, opting instead to say that he was merely an old friend.
“Didn’t he used to live in Port Drive, behind the railway?” somebody said. “Not anymore, though. Dunno where he lives now.”
The lifeguard gave him a helpless shrug. “You might try Wetherspoons, he was always in there.”
“Thank you,” Craig said. “Maybe I will.”
“Man, I could get high in here,” Craig observed, when he called in on Kylie later. “You do love to clean.”
Kylie pressed her lips together. She couldn’t see the fleas anymore, but she still felt them, every time she walked into her flat. She was suspicious of every speck of dirt on the floor, obsessed that they’d come back to get her.
“Seriously, it can’t be good for you to breathe all this in. Why don’t you come to mine for dinner?”
She wavered. She knew it should be her offering to cook for him, but she had nothing to offer him, and she could still sense the fleas using her mattress as a trampoline. Craig wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Do you like avocados?”
“Never tried them,” she admitted. “But I’ll try anything once.”
He raised an eyebrow and she found herself blushing.
He waited while she locked her flat and they headed for the stairs.
“After you,” he said, indicating that she should go first. He seemed to enjoy walking behind her, and she could feel his warm breath on her neck.
Craig’s flat was not locked, she noticed. Perhaps he didn’t feel the need.
“Not as clean as your place,” he said, though it was indeed very clean despite his unmistakably male odour.
She turned and saw Sinister, lapping up a bowl of water on the kitchen floor.
“Sin!” she gasped. “What’s she doing here?”
“Oh, she often pays me a little visit,” he said. “Especially when you start cleaning.”
She watched as he chopped a salad with ripe avocados, plump tomatoes, and luscious slices of mozzarella cheese. He added a handful of lettuce and some garlic bread, hot from the oven. The smell was exquisite.
They ate at his little island table, their legs so close together that their knees touched. She tried not to think about his strong, firm thighs but it was very distracting, sitting so close to the man she wanted.
“You’re not eating,” he said, watching her closely.
“That’s because I can’t stop staring at you.”
She hoped her tone was playful, even though her heart was filled with desire.
“You need your strength,” he urged. “You must eat, or there will be nothing left of you.”
She turned her attention to her food and ate quickly, pleasing him by clearing her plate.
“That’s better,” he said, pushing his own plate away when he’d finished.
She felt his hand on her thigh and she shivered with need. She longed for him to pick her up and carry her over to his bed. She didn’t know if she could take it much longer, being with him but not being with him. She reached out and brushed her hand over his torso, feeling the ripples of his muscles. Her hand moved lower and lower. She couldn’t help herself, even though she sensed he liked to take the lead.
“No,” he said, when she reached his crotch. “Not yet.”
She pulled back in frustration.
“I don’t want you treating me like I’m weak or fragile, Craig. I am strong and hardy, and I want to be with you, damn it!”
His beautiful blue eyes blazed through her and she sensed his lust. So why was he blocking her, stopping her from taking things to the next level?
“There’s something else that’s been bothering me,” he said. “Something I feel I should tell you.”
She looked at him curiously. “What is it?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely straight with you.”
24
“What are you talking about Craig?”
“I think it’s time I told you a bit about myself. A bit more than you already know.”
“Alright then, I’m all ears.”
Sensing this was going to be a longer conversation, she leaned back in her seat.
“Do you want to know how I got these tats?” he asked, rolling up his sleeve.
Kylie blinked. His arm bore the marks of three dragons. Not cartoon dragons, but quite scary ones, breathing fire.
“I got these done with my brothers, Ivor and Blake. We all have the same tattoo. Three brothers. Three dragons.”
She nodded absently, trying to slot this information together with what she already knew about him.
“Now Ivor, my little brother is a good lad, quiet as anything, but as soon he gets a drink into him he becomes someone else entirely.”
She leaned forward, intrigued.
“They know him well in our local, I’d tip the barmaid extra for watering down his pints, anything to keep him from blowing his top. Because once he gets going, he’s like a hurricane, he’ll fight anyone who gets in his way. The sad thing is he doesn’t remember a thing about it in the morning, and he’s mortified when we fill him in on what he’s done.”
She clasped her hands together. “Sounds to me like he shouldn’t drink.”
“Don’t I know it, but he keeps falling off the wagon. I’ve been telling him for years he’s going to lose it all: his job, his friends, his reputation, but he just can’t kick it. It’s like there’s this whole other person living inside of him.”
“I think I can understand that,” she said, thinking of her beast.
Craig looked off into the distance. “He’ll be fine for ages and then one day he’ll just snap. It’s as if this invisible hand strangles all the goodness out of him, and all we’re left with is his rotten core. I try to keep him in check when that happens, Lord knows how many nights I’ve dragged him home and put him to bed. But one night, I failed in my duty. He picked a fight with the wrong guy. Turned out the bloke was a pro-wrestler. Ivor started it, but then the wrestler started laying into him, and I couldn’t just stand by and watch. I mean he had been asking for it, but I wasn’t about to watch my little brother get beaten to a pulp.”
“So what happened?”
“I managed to get in between them. I told the
guy I’d hold Ivor off and sort him out if he’d let him go, but he wasn’t having it. He told me either Ivor finished the fight, or I did. Poor Ivor was a bloody mess by then, so I asked the barmaid to take him behind the bar and clean him up. Meanwhile, this wrestler was still spoiling for a fight, and nothing I said was going to calm him down. Fortunately for me, I had one advantage. I was the designated driver, so unlike the rest of them, I hadn’t been drinking. So whilst I couldn’t compete with him on experience in the ring, I had the steadier hand and the clearer head. I got in a lucky punch and I put the guy to sleep right there on the bar. Unfortunately for me, that’s when the police arrived. They witnessed my knockout punch and they weren’t willing to let it pass. And when he came around, the wrestler claimed to have memory loss. I don’t know if that part is true or not, but the law came down on his side. I was arrested and locked in a cell.”
Kylie’s hand flew to her head. “That’s so unfair! You were only trying to protect your brother!”
He nodded ruefully. “Well, unfortunately the law didn’t see it that way. It wasn’t the first time I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they wanted to make an example of me. I went to jail, Kylie. It wasn’t a long sentence, I served less than six months. But a spell inside changes a man, nonetheless.”
She stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. “But you… you told me you had worked in a prison! You said you’d been teaching prisoners!”
“I did do that,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I started when I was inside, and I continued as a volunteer once I got out.
She looked into the blue eyes she had thought so honest and trustworthy, and for a moment, she didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said eventually. “But I don’t understand why you lied. Why couldn’t you have told me this in the first place? Why lie about it?”
He took her hand and clung to her, as if he was afraid to let go.
“I’m sorry Kylie, but I didn’t want to scare you. I thought if I told you I’d been to prison, you might be afraid of me. I mean, would you have taken the time to get to know me if you had known?”
“I…” It was hard to answer that, because there was something in what he said. Maybe she would have been a bit more wary. As it was, his lie didn’t sit well with her. A spell inside changed a man, like he said. Maybe he wasn’t quite the man she had imagined him to be. Perhaps she wasn’t safe with him after all.
God, what was he thinking?
Kylie hadn’t run off straight away, but she hadn’t hung about long either. He’d thought honesty was the best policy and surely better late than never but now he wasn’t so sure. All he knew was that he ached for Kylie, and the thought he might have lost her was killing him.
After a while, he had walked downstairs and stood outside her door, hand poised to knock, but then he stopped himself. Maybe Kylie needed time to process what he had told her. Maybe she would come back to him after she’d had a chance to take it in.
There was a giggle from downstairs, and he saw Flora disappear into her flat with a man who looked strangely familiar. He recognized those mug ears. Wasn’t that Marc from the library? The man who had discovered Kylie’s pictures online. He raised an eyebrow, impressed that he’d managed to worm his way into Flora’s affections. He was punching above his weight there. He skulked back up to his room and put on some music. A good workout always lifted his mood and it didn’t hurt to stay in shape. Especially if he wanted to win Kylie back.
Kylie closed the door softly behind her. She needed to get out of the house, and she didn’t want Craig offering to accompany her. She paused in front of Flora’s door but she could hear voices and a few giggles. And then a few moans. Sounded like Flora was getting some. Lucky girl.
She walked down to the town and stopped outside the cinema. There was a film she wanted to see but the price of tickets was astronomical. Never mind, she knew her way in through the back entrance. Something Cherry had shown her when she was a kid. She just had to wait till one of the employees came out on their cigarette break and in she went. They rarely challenged her. They didn’t seem to care. And if they did, she just slipped them a couple of quid.
The film she wanted to see was clearly not very popular. There were only a handful of people sitting in the auditorium when she sat down. It was good though, and she sat entranced the whole time, waiting to see if the hero and heroine would get together.
“Oh god, if this ends badly, I’m going to die,” she thought, covering her eyes. She opened them again and her heart soared as she saw the couple were snogging. The man had taken the woman into his arms and was kissing her so deeply that she fell back against him, her arms draped around his neck. Kylie sighed, remembering what it had felt like when Craig had kissed her. The flutter in her stomach as she surrendered herself to him.
That was why it had freaked her out so much when he had told her he’d spent time inside, but not for the reason he was thinking. It had brought a fear, deep and terrifying that he would put one foot wrong, and they’d send him back again. In her experience, men who spent time in jail rarely stayed out, even the good ones. She couldn’t bear the thought of him trapped behind bars. He was so virile, it seemed impossible to imagine him caged like a bird.
She sat back, happy tears flowing down her cheeks as the couple tumbled into bed. It felt cathartic to cry and she rose from her seat, feeling miles better than when she had gone in. She walked out, trying to act casual as she walked past the staff members who were checking people’s tickets. No one ever checked them on the way out. She walked close behind a group of women who must have come out of another film and smiled confidently as if she was supposed to be there.
“Excuse me, miss!”
She kept her head down and kept walking. She wasn’t sure if it was her the ticket guy was calling back, but she didn’t wait around to find out. Better to pretend she hadn’t heard. The aroma of freshly made popcorn filled her nose as she reached the foyer and she glanced at the exorbitant price. She could buy a lot of groceries for the same money it would cost to buy one tub of popcorn. Her mouth watered all the same.
She was almost out the door when something shot past her, out onto the High Street. Had she imagined it, or was that Dexter trotting along the road in front of her? The dog was off the lead and didn’t appear to be with anyone. She quickened her pace.
“Dexter!” she called. “Dexter!”
The dog turned at the sound of her voice and then she was convinced.
“Dexter!”
He let out a little yap, but then he turned and ran again, heading down the street and around the corner, into the alleyway behind Marks and Spencer. She ran after him, arms open wide, as he disappeared behind the bins.
“Hello, Kylie,” said the man from her nightmares. “Fancy seeing you here.”
25
“You’re still after my wee dog then?”
Kylie froze. Dexter stepped out from behind his owner and offered her his paw.
“Is he okay?”
“You still want him, don’t you?”
She looked longingly at the dog.
“Can I just stroke him?”
“You’ll have to stroke me first.”
She shrank back, but he stepped towards her, his whistle dangling from the orange ribbon around his neck. He had an ugly purple mark under the left eye.
“Here’s how it’s gonna go down. You’re going to come crawling back to me like the cheap little whore you are.”
“No.”
He picked up the dog by the scruff of his neck, ignoring his plaintive yowls.
“We’ll meet in the Duke at nine. You know where that is, right? The shitty old pub on Gregory Street. The one with the broken window.”
Of course she knew it. Smack bang in her old neighbourhood. A place she had avoided ever since she’d left home.
“And dress up like a tramp,” he said. “Short skirt, high heels. Something
to tickle my fancy.” The buzzing was back, loud and insistent in her ears. “I don’t… I don’t own any heels.”
“Then borrow some from one of your hooker friends.”
“I don’t have any hooker friends.”
But it didn’t matter. She was whatever he wanted her to be. That was how it had always worked with them.
“Why don’t you just give me the dog?” she wheedled, reaching up the stroke Dexter. “I’ll take good care of him, I promise.”
“Come tonight and we’ll come to an arrangement. Otherwise, the dog might not do so well.”
She stared at him, at his cold, loveless eyes and his thin, cruel mouth, then backed away.
Flora opened the door looking dreamy and dishevelled.
“Oh, sorry,” Kylie said. “Have you got company?”
“No, you’re grand, he’s just left.” Flora waved her in.
“So, you and Marc then?”
“Isn’t he lovely?” Flora sighed. “I’ve never been with a man so thoughtful before. He truly thinks of everything.”
She gestured to the vase filled with roses and the box of chocolates sitting on the table.
“Go ahead, have one, Kylie. I can’t possibly eat them all myself.”
Kylie was only too happy to indulge. She reached into the box and plucked out a hazelnut whirl. The chocolate tasted rich and delicious on her tongue.
“So, he buys you stuff?”
“Oh, no it’s more than that,” Flora said, her face flushed. “He even wrote me a little poem. I mean, when has a man ever done that for you?”
“Never.”
“And he sends me these little messages with funny pictures and stuff. He always knows how to make me laugh. I think I’m falling for him, Kylie.”
“Isn’t it a bit soon?” she asked, choosing a lime square from the box.
They Won't Believe You (Scottish Dark Romance Book 1) Page 14