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‘I’m doing great, honey. It’s so good to be settled into town. Cam’s got me all set up with a lovely flat near here. You should come over and see it sometime. Or I could come visit your house?’
The pleading look in her eyes made me avert my own as I stuttered out a response. ‘I’m just... well, just a bit busy at the moment. Tommy has an extensive tour coming up, and he’s got all the promos going on for it at the minute. And I’m renovating the house.’
‘I can easily pick up a paintbrush and help,’ Mum said. ‘I’m sure we could all come and help.’
‘Or I could get in a team and have it done within a week or two,’ Cam said. Not a DIYer at all.
I didn’t want them in my house. I needed it to be mine, away from all of them and their happy-go-lucky lives. Breaking away and standing on my own was exactly what I needed after being smothered by my father and his syndicate for my whole life.
‘I’m going to go grab a drink.’
I twisted through the people before they could say anything else, taking a deep breath and heading toward the bar that they’d had set up in one corner. Tommy was there, grabbing a whisky bottle from the bartender and swigging straight from it. Tension coiled in my stomach as I watched him gulp down mouthful after mouthful. His drinking had increased in the past few months as his band’s popularity hit new heights. The side of him that had come out when drunk sent fear down my spine.
A hand slipped through my arm and turned me away from Tommy’s ugly scene and Maeve squealed as she pulled me into a hug.
‘God, I’m glad to see your face,’ she said into my ear as she squashed me.
‘It’s not been that long,’ I countered, squeezing her back before releasing her.
‘It bloody well has. Too busy off in the throes of romance, huh?’
I gave an awkward laugh before nodding. ‘Yeah, something like that.’
‘I saw you at the Rock Awards the other day on the TV. You looked immense. That dress was fucking amazing.’
‘Thank you.’ Warmth crept into my cheeks at her easy praise. ‘Easy when you have an entire team of stylists dolling you up.’
‘Psh.’ She waved a hand as though sweeping my words away. ‘Nonsense, you’d look fab if you rolled out of the shower and went with your towel on.’
If only Tommy had thought so. Instead, he’d grabbed my love handles and squeezed them hard through my dress, telling me that maybe I needed to lay off the cake for a bit. It had taken everything I had to hold back the tears so that the make-up artist wouldn’t need to do an emergency repair.
‘You’re so sweet,’ I said. ‘How are Grace and Elias?’
Her face instantly brightened. ‘They are doing fab. They’ve come on such a lot since they moved in. Their school work has improved massively, and the nightmares have decreased. I think they’ve finally accepted that we’ll always be here for them, however they need us.’
She’d saved them from being trafficked and opened her home and heart to them. Both she and Cam had. Month by month, their family unit had solidified through their shared trauma. And I’d felt more and more like an outsider. Not that I could blame them, they made efforts to include me, but I couldn’t slip into their happy bubble. My world felt sharp and dark and ready to implode.
‘It’s so lovely to see you, but we need to head off,’ I said, unwilling to let my black mood bring down Cam’s party.
‘But you only just got here.’
‘Sorry, it’s just that Tommy has a thing and we could only stop by for a little while.’ It was more that Tommy had sunk half a bottle of whisky and I didn’t need him picking a fight with anyone or throwing a tv out of Cam’s window. It was better to remove him pre-emptively.
‘Okay, well let’s do coffee in the week?’
‘Sure,’ I said, having no intentions of following it through. ‘Text me.’
Tommy had fixed his eyes on me as I started toward him, a hungry look on his face that no longer made my insides quiver the way it once had. When he got drunk, he got horny. And when his dick refused to rise to the occasion, he’d get mean. Sex had started off okay, but he had become obsessed with trying to fuck me even though his dick had refused to cooperate from the first few weeks we’d been together.
‘Ready to go?’ I asked.
‘Need me already, baby?’ The slur in his words turned my stomach.
‘I’m just tired and ready to go home.’
He slipped a hand around my waist and pulled me close, his whisky tainted breath running over my lips as he took in my face. An old spark flared in my chest as his eyes softened. A moment of hope that he saw me as he had at the beginning. When it was a whirlwind of emotion and lust. Before, I’d become just another part of his retinue.
He placed a soft kiss on my nose and whispered, ‘You look pretty today.’
