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I fucking hated it here.

The only things that made my life better here than it had been back in East Kilbride were the island itself and the friends I’d made. When my aunt first came to tell me that she had been granted custody and was bringing me home to her place on a remote fucking island, I didn’t think I could get any madder. But weirdly, when I got here, I liked it. The island. There was something about Glenvulin that felt right. Mum used to talk about how much she hated growing up here, so I was surprised I liked it so much. It helped I met Quinn McQuarrie, who made living with strangers worth it for the life I could have outside of the house.

Even now, days before my eighteenth birthday, it pissed me off to have to come back here. As soon as I turned eighteen, I had to find a cheap place to live.

I’d just left Geraldine McIver’s bed. She was Shona’s wee cousin and one of Kiera’s pals. Kiera had a party at her place because her parents were off island. Everyone knew Kiera had a crush on Quinn and while she had spent most of the evening staring at Quinn and Taran who were as usual all over each other, Geraldine had been making it clear she wanted my dick. She was two years older than us, back for the weekend from uni, and horny. Who was I to say no to that?

But I’d also fallen asleep after we fucked and now it was just past four in the morning and getting close to the time my aunt and uncle woke up.

Sneaking into their small one-and-a-half-story fisherman’s cottage, I had a foot on the second step of the staircase when a voice hissed behind me, “Where have you been?”

Agitation thrummed through me as I glanced over my shoulder to see my aunt Isa in the kitchen doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. Her plain face was pinched with disgust. I imagined she might have been bonny like Mum at some point, but her bitter judgment of everyone around her seemed to have narrowed her features. I realized now why Mum had hated it here, having to live with a sister like Isa.

“Out.” I walked upstairs before she could say anything else.

“Aye, out whoring again as usual. Just like your slut of a mother. Dirty unclean boy!”

As difficult as it was to not retaliate against what she said about Mum, I ignored her. Ignoring her infuriated her.

There was only one bathroom in the house, and my uncle Roddy would want to use it as soon as he woke up, but I suddenly didn’t give a fuck. I grabbed fresh clothes and underwear from my bedroom and took them into the bathroom so I could shower. It was a shower in a bathtub and the ceilings were low in here, so I had to bend awkwardly to wash. The men in my family weren’t Viking tall like Quinn, but I hit five eleven last summer, so I wasn’t exactly short either. Uncle Roddy was a few inches shorter than me, but he had these massive shoulders from hauling fish.

I spent my time showering wondering where I might find a reasonably priced place to stay. Bernie, the island’s only mechanic, was in his eighties and trying to train me as fast as possible to take over the garage, but at first, I could only do evenings and weekends (because he insisted I finish high school), so he had been paying me peanuts. My hope was that my dedication to him would pay off. And that seemed to be true.

He’d been sending me on courses over the summer to get trained up on how to service some of the newer vehicles with their digital tech. That was the future, after all, so I’d need to stay on top of it. By the end of summer, I should be trained enough for him to start paying me a full salary. Being a mechanic wasn’t like a dream job or anything, but I enjoyed it and I seemed to have a natural affinity for it. I liked the satisfaction of fixing something that was important in making folks’ lives easier. And it meant I could stay on the island. Too many of my peers were heading off island for school because they knew they couldn’t make a living here.

I’d also started training to volunteer for the Leth Sholas Lifeboat Service, and I was looking forward to the job. One of the other trainees, Isla, was also training to be a paramedic since the island no longer had one. She told me if they could get someone else to train, we might get an ambulance service back. I told her I’d do it, though I didn’t know how I was going to juggle everything. However, I preferred to keep busy, so I’d find a way to manage.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t have a chance to see it coming when I stepped out of the bathroom.

I opened the door, and the next thing I knew, I was stumbling back into the sink, pain blinding me as it radiated across my nose. My eyes watered and stung. Dazed, I pushed onto my feet, blinking in confusion and shock as warm liquid trickled down over my upper lip. It didn’t take long for me to understand, though.

When you were used to getting smacked around, the shock didn’t last long.

As I wiped the blood from my nose and steadied myself, meeting my uncle’s gaze as he glared at me from the hall, I felt something rise in me. Something that had been building for a while.

I charged my uncle and watched his features slacken with surprise. I grabbed him by his pajama shirt, smelling his honking fucking breath on my face as I slammed him back into the wall opposite the bathroom door. He struggled against me, but I had two inches on him and for the first time ever, I was angrier. I gripped him tighter and slammed him against the wall again. “That is the last time you ever raise your hand to me. Do it again and I will fucking end you!”

Roddy’s eyes widened with fear.

“Get off him!” my aunt screeched in terror.

What made me angrier was that their fear was so unjustified. From the moment Aunt Isa came to get me, she’d treated me like I was a plague she was petrified of catching. That had never changed in all these years, even though I’d never done anything to hurt them. But they’d certainly done their fair share of hurting me. Roddy believed smacking the shite out of me would keep me on the right path so I wouldn’t turn out like my father.

Nobody knew about the abuse.

Not even Quinn.

I was good at covering it up.

If he knew, he’d wonder why, and I really didn’t want him to know why my aunt and uncle thought I was literally the devil’s spawn.

“Get off him or I’ll call the police!”

I pushed away from my uncle, wiping at my still-bleeding nose. “Dinnae fash yerself,” I cut her a look of disgust. “I’m leaving. For good.”

Neither of them responded to that, which was a shock in itself and they let me be as I walked into the tiny room that had been mine since I was thirteen years old.

It had seemed like I’d been here a lot longer.