AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I still can’t help clutching the handle of my chainsaw, my fist clenched like that guy in the woods clenched his at me before smiling without his lips moving. I’m snagged again now, like that veil he freed for me. This time I’m caught by the sight of someone else discovering that their happy ending is snarled by more than brambles.
Find out that your future is over before it started?
I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Be unable to see a way out?
Maybe that’s why I set down my chainsaw and step into the open to spill what really matters. “You got your family with you?”
“Yes.” The groom—Finn—glances over his shoulder at that empty chapel. “I mean, both sets flew into the UK a week ago. Their train from London gets in later.”
“Then your world isn’t ending.” I must have inhaled sawdust while up in that tree, this croak is so dry and dusty. “I know because my world did end when I couldn’t bring my family home with me.”
The padre lets out a small sound, but I can’t look at him. He can save his compassion for the kids who come to Glynn Harber. Rowan says some of them are feral, and that they only snap and snarl because life hurt them early. That’s what this place is—aschool for kids who didn’t ask for what happened to them, not a confessional for adults who caused all of their own problems.
I can’t look at Luke Lawson either. Not when I’ve heard him tell my noisy housemate that his past doesn’t define him.
This definitely defines me.
“You see, my family followed my dream. Supported me every step of the way after I got scouted.” I answer the padre’s sole raised eyebrow. “Football,” I tell him. “Goalie. Lived and breathed making save after save.”
My stepmum always said it’s what my long arms and legs were made for. What the chambers of my heart were built for before it cracked in public.
“And all my family ever wanted was to see me walk out onto a Premier League pitch and walk off ninety minutes later with a trophy. They even relocated so I could still live at home with them while at the academy.”
Luke Lawson asks, “Academy? Which one scouted you? And when?”
“When I was fifteen. By the Supernus Soccer Academy.” That istheelite feeder for England’s top clubs. “I got to train with the best of the best, all of us fighting for a chance to sign first-team contracts.”
I’m aware that he frowns. I’m also aware that another of Glynn Harber’s teachers has joined us. This art master holding a stack of sketchbooks is a nice guy. I saw Solomon leave for France at the start of the summer. Now he’s back with a question. “What happened?”
“I got my shot at making my dream come true.”And my family’s.I shrug shoulders that are broader these days—that can carry what it cost them. “It took two years, but I almost made it with my stepmum right there to watch me.”
Another voice asks, “And your sisters?” and a quick glance suggests the man I met in the woods must have found his wayto the art building. Like Solomon, he now holds a stack of sketchbooks and tilts his head, waiting for my answer.
This is a piss-poor time to get self-conscious all over again, but this stranger who made a plus-one suggestion while dressed smartly enough for a real wedding only reminds me that I’m a scruffy fucker with burrs in my beard. And that I’ve been shat on by wood pigeons.
Everyone here must have noticed.
They’ll also get to hear about me getting shat on by life if I keep going, and who wants to hear that sob story?
My gaze skips away from dancing dark eyes to land on the padre’s half-frozen, half-sympathetic expression before skipping again to the headmaster. All of Luke Lawson’s concerned forehead furrows mean it’s easier to focus on Finn. At least him listening to me bleat about my worst day distracts him from his own. The whole time, it’s hard to resist taking another look at someone who joked about the size of my chopper before curling his fists, despite my height and weight advantage.
He was brave.
I wasn’t.
Not when it really mattered.
Maybe that’s why my gaze doesn’t only land on him. It sticks like the burrs in my beard. Those clingy fuckers have hooks. I wish I did as well to stop this landslide, this plunge into a second pool of prolonged eye contact where he smiles without his lips curving and mine can’t help parting to spill my whole truth. Or almost.
“Yeah,” I partially admit. “My sisters got to watch me walk onto a Premier League pitch with a top team.” This part is harder to admit. “And they got to see me get escorted off right before kickoff.”
Here’s what I hope is actually helpful. I meet the groom’s eyes and tell him, “Next to my dad, my sisters and my stepmumwere my number one supporters. He was my first and best coach. They were my cheerleaders. He almost made it in football once himself. Got a second shot through me. I lost it for all of them on the worst day of my life.” This is the part that really matters. “I’m still standing. You and your fiancée will too.”
That plus-one stranger reclaims my attention. “Escorted off?”
He’s right to question my word choice. I’d been marched away with TV cameras trained on the Novac name printed across my shoulders. Not in the same way I marched Marc across a headland towards the man he married—my ending wasn’t half as happy. Finn’s still can be, but it isn’t him who asks, “Why?” and it sucks that this is the moment that the sun takes another shot at finding fire, this time in a dark gaze. It burns intensely, lingering and molten, which only spotlights that he’s…
