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How does a girl cope when her twin flame is the definitive bad boy? (18+ Erotica)
Chapter 12 | Chapter 13: The Real and the Imaginary
Stephen was the first to break out of their emotional reticence, which was surprising. “You need to get some food down you before it gets cold.” He led her away from the bed, and sat her in the armchair, placing the boxes on her lap. “Now, eat.”
Oh, Stephen... How can I think of eating at a time like this? Her body was hungry, but Sally felt stronger pangs than hunger. She doubted she could eat while her brother remained in his present condition. There was a knot in her throat the size of a tennis ball. Trying to override the guilt, however, her stomach grumbled in support of Stephen’s remonstrations.
“You hear that, Sally? Even your stomach agrees with me.”
“Thanks for pointing that out. You’re a real gentleman.”
She grimaced at him, but he was insistent. “No arguments. Eat. Please.”
“Yes, sir!” Sally gave her impression of an army salute, adding a smile she didn’t feel in return. She opened the boxes, and began searching through them listlessly. She didn’t have the energy to eat. Or maybe she didn’t deserve to eat.
“No one ever tell you not to play with your food? What are you looking for?”
She looked a little shamefaced. “A fork.”
“No forks.”
“OK... So, no forks. What are we going to eat with?”
“The time honoured way. With our fingers and out of the box. Got anywhere to wash your hands?”
She inclined her head towards a door situated behind the armchair, and he diverted his eyes up to look. “Is that the bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, job done. Now enough with the delay tactics. Eat, will you?” He stared directly at her with an understanding look. His voice was low. “You need to be strong for him, Sally. Punishing yourself won’t help him, OK? Just try.”
She nodded, without looking at him. How do you know to say the right things? I wish I knew what the trick was. Sometimes I think I can read your mind, but other times I think I don’t know you at all. How do you do it?
Focusing on the open box in front of her, from amongst the greasy strips of meat, she picked up a round object wrapped in a foil wrapper. With some surprise, she recognised it as a childhood confectionery.
Pointing to it, Stephen remarked, “I was wondering what that was when I gave the food a blast in the microwave. Nearly set the bloody thing on fire.”
“Don’t you have these down in England? It’s a Tunnock tea cake.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I grew up eating these... It’s marshmallow on top of a plain biscuit, covered with chocolate. Tunnock tea cakes and bacon. Interesting combination. Never had them together for breakfast before.” Her eyes lit up at a distant memory. “Iain would love this, though. They’re his favourite...”
“Consider it a treat, then, for when he wakes up.” He leaned over, took one of the foil wrapped tea cakes and put it on the bedside table. “You can thank Mr. Laidlaw when you see him. My mate, the legend.”
Laidlaw. Why did the surname sound familiar? She racked her brain, trying to remember where she had heard it not long ago. Unwrapping the foil of the Scottish sweet in her hand, she took a small bite of the chocolate. Then it came to her. The soldier who saved more than twenty-three lives patrolling the local cliffs where his wife had taken her own life. She knew she had heard that name before, but never made the link until now.
“Is he the angel of Seaton Cliffs? Is he that Kevin?”
Stephen tipped his head. “The one and only. But he doesn’t like to talk about it... or to be called that. The guy is as humble as they come.”
She nodded her head in acknowledgement. “I’m sorry about his wife...”
“We all were. He doesn’t show it, but... it hit him hard. He blamed himself. She never wanted him to go on his last tour, you see.” He took a pause of several seconds, as though stewing on his thoughts. “He’s a good man. One of the best. I’m lucky to have him as a mate... Don’t tell him I said that, though.”
“You’re a good friend, too,” she said, reaching across and taking one of his hands in her own. “I can imagine how difficult it must have been for him.” Their gazes connected, and a whole world of feeling flowed from one to the other and back again. A sharing of present strife and past misgivings, some unspoken but ambient in the air between them.
“Right, that’s enough chit-chat," he coughed, breaking the rising morbidness in mood. He let go of her hand, and backing away, his foot knocked something on the floor. “What’s this?” he asked, holding the wicker flask up to her line of vision.
“Oh, that? It’s coffee.”
“I could do with a cup.” He took a pitcher from the bedside table and poured out the liquid. “Care for some? Mind if I do?”
Shaking her head, she chewed absent-mindedly at the chocolate sweet as she watched him take a long sip of the drink.
“Not bad... So, who do I have to thank for this godsend?”
“I had a visitor just before you. She must have left it here.” The memories of Molly and her flask began to crystallise in her mind, and she turned to look at the bedside table expecting to see two more used pitchers. They were all clean.
Now that’s strange. Molly must have rinsed them out in the bathroom before she left, she surmised, struggling to remember exactly when she had fallen asleep. Her recollection was still hazy in parts, and she couldn’t picture Molly leaving. If it wasn’t for the flask she might have thought the visit more a lucid dream than a memory.
Stephen took another sip. “She?”
Sally noticed his eyes widen in astonishment, as she replied, “Would you believe me if I said she’s a fortune teller I met at the fair last night?”
As they neared his Land Rover, Kevin felt Daisy resisting his hold as best she could. “You’re going to do yourself harm,” he said.
“Will you stop pulling at me then, please? You’re hurting me!”
In response to her plea, he promptly let go of her hand. As she snatched it back, the force threw her to the pavement. She sat on the ground with a bump. “Owww!”
He looked at her, having gleaned enough from their conversation in the tea shop to see through her hurt girl act. “Do you want to cause a scene here, or shall we get in my car?”
Rubbing at her wrist with an injured look on her face, she exclaimed, “You did that on purpose.”
“Get up, will you?”
“Not until you tell me where you think you’re taking me.”
“Where do you think?”
“To the police station?” she asked, laboriously getting back on her feet.
He clapped his hands. “Give the girl a gold star.” A few passers-by on the street turned to look at them. “I’ll ask you again. Do you want to cause a scene here, or shall we get in the car? Because you’re going to talk to the police whether you like it or not, even if I have to sling you over my shoulder and carry you there myself.”
“I’d like to see you try.” She jutted her chin out in defiance, staring up at him, dainty hands curled into balls of fists, her glittering pink fingernails disappearing from view. He would have admired her gumption, he thought with more than a little wonderment, were she not so very, very wrong in keeping this to herself.
“You just don’t get it do you? You don’t get what you’ve done. There’s a young boy in hospital, and a girl has gone missing. You need to tell the police what you know.”
“What I’ve done you mean, You said it yourself.”
He exhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and placed a thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose. Summoning a great deal of restraint, he said, “I can’t for the life of me fathom out your actions for last night, but despite all that, this isn’t about you. The police need to know what you know, it may help them. And don’t you think Sally needs to know, too?”
Hearing her friend’s name set her off her again. Hands in the air, she gesticulated wildly. “I don’t need you to tell me that! I know already! Shit!”
“Do you think you could raise your voice any higher? Not everyone in the near vicinity has heard you yet.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“Such ugly words are unsuited for such a pretty mouth.”
“What century are you from exactly?”
He took his keys and unlocked the vehicle’s passenger side door. Opening it with a flourish, he said, “Are you going to get in by yourself, or do I give you a hand?”
“Using force on women turns you on does it? Like to use those big hands of yours to slap us around?”
“I can honestly say I’ve never hit a woman before, but trust me, if I did slap you, you really would be speaking out of your arse.”
“Oh, very funny. I like what you did there.”
“So help me, I’ll not think twice to picking you up and putting you in the boot if you keep this up. We can do this your way or my way. You choose.”
The sudden truth of it seemed to weigh down on her. She lowered her head, before flashing him an upturned stare. “Iain’s lying in hospital because of me.”
“He could be lying in that bed because of someone else. Anything you tell the police could help them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you left a sleeping boy home alone with the front door open.”
Her eyes widened in horror at the realisation. She began to tremble. “Where anyone could have walked in... You mean there might be some psycho on the loose and I just left the door open for him? I don’t believe it, not in our town.”
He took her hand, more gently this time. “I can’t say, but I won’t let you waste any more time than you have already on self-pity. If you really want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for Iain.”
“Fuck, go on guilt trips much do you? I know I have to tell the police, it’s just-”
“It’s just what?”
“I’m scared, OK?”
He recognised the fear in her eyes. It was genuine. The real little girl inside her had made an appearance finally. He softened his voice. “I know you’re scared, but this is the right thing to do.”
“Doesn’t make it easier, though.”
“It’s not meant to.” Although he still couldn’t believe the sheer naivety of her actions, while watching her drop her act something had shifted inside him. “But you’re not alone. I’ll be with you,” he said.
After a moment’s hesitation, she blurted out, “This doing the right thing shit is really, really overrated.”
He guided her into the passenger seat. “Trust me, you’ll feel better once you do.”
Stephen stared at Sally, watching her eyes widened in surprise to match his own as he described Molly to her.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for the palm reading type,” she said finally.
He reached out for the flask again. “You think? I met her downstairs in the waiting room. She came up and introduced herself large as you like.”
“With me she happened to be passing by. Looking for the third floor.”
He began to describe his meeting with Molly. By the look on her face, his description of the fortune teller was too accurate to have been a dream, not unless they had both dreamt her. But how did that explain the fairground and finding himself in the tent?
You were half-asleep as it was. He could have fallen asleep after speaking to her, and not remembered it. It could have happened that way.
They looked at each other, not really believing it. But what was the alternative?
Stephen watched as she picked up a piece of warm bacon with the aid of the wrapper from her half eaten cake. All fingertips and foil, she tentatively placed the bacon in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully, lips closed. He grinned, glad to see her eating at last.
“What?” she asked, hand over mouth.
“Nothing. Sure you don’t want some coffee?”
“No...” Swallowing slowly, she picked up another strip of bacon. “Molly said she saw you there asleep. Didn’t mention you spoke though... Thought you were handsome. Looks to me you have a fan.”
Stephen downed his drink in one go, and said with a wry smile, “You think I’m in with a chance?”
“Oh, definitely. Look at you, even dreaming about Molly.”
He sat down on the laminated floor next to her. “Great. Looks like I’m sorted for life. I always wanted to join a travelling fair as a kid. And she can make good coffee. Could you put in a good word for me?”
Sally smiled, and crossed two fingers. “Yeah, me and Molly are like that. You should have heard us before I dropped off. Like Plato and Socrates debating the great themes of life.”
“I would have liked to have heard that.”
“You would. Molly is a spiritual Einstein.”
“I meant you, get your take on life.”
“Me? You wouldn’t thought much of what I had to say. Crying and moping.”
“I care a lot about what you have to say.” He reached for the boxes and placed them on the floor. “Want to sit with me?”
Before she could respond to his invitation, Iain’s breathing apparatus gave a particularly mournful hiss. Abruptly, she looked up at the bed.
Reading the faraway look in her eyes, he took her hand. “If I could take this all away, I would.”
“A mother is meant to be able to protect their child. What he needs is a proper mother.”
“He needs someone who loves him. That’s you.”
“I just keep thinking, why? Why him?”
The sound of her voice and the sadness in her eyes did something to him that he didn’t have the wherewithal to put into words. It was then he felt he would have to tell her what Kevin had told him. She needed to know the truth, he decided, but the problem was he didn’t know yet what that was, either. “I don’t have an answer to that. I wish I did.”
“I wish I did, too. We’re going to have to learn to live with that, I suppose. And blaming myself, or my mother, or anyone else isn’t going to change that.”
“There’s my spiritual Einstein right there.”
“Einstein?” She rubbed her hands together in tired frustration. “I feel more like Frankenstein, and just as moronic. You know I did something I never did before. I prayed. To a dead mum. Who deserted us. How stupid was that?”
“I don’t think that was stupid.”
“No?”
“No." His voice thickened, as he said, “You prayed because you believe in love.” Where the fuck had that come from? Embarrassed he raised his hands to his head, leant back against the foot of the armchair. “Besides, having a mother is no big deal. Sometimes you’re better off without one.”
He saw in her face something had hit its mark. She squeezed his hand and said, “You, too, huh?”
He frowned. They had rarely spoken about their parents in the short time they had been together. He shrugged his shoulders. “Most kids have imaginary friends growing up. I had an imaginary mother. And my father might not have been there, for all I saw of him growing up.”
He blinked in surprise at how bitter he sounded. Even after all this time. All this fucking time and I still feel small when I talk about him.
His one constant memory of his father as a child was of the man telling him how he had to learn to take what he wanted. A real man knew how to take, because no one gave you something for nothing. So, you had to grab what was yours with both hands.
Yeah, Dad I know. You have to grab the world by the throat, and make it give you what you want - friends, money, freedom, someone to talk to, someone to love. It’s the only way to live in a world that’s tough on quitters.
But Stephen was beginning to realise if you grabbed too hard, you could choke the very life out of the thing you cared about the most.
“Hey, you.” Sliding off the armchair, she came to sit next to him on the floor. She cupped his face in her free hand. He tickled her palm with his day old bristle. “You would make a great father, you know.”
He shook his head. “You can’t fight genetics, and I wouldn’t want to inflict a father like mine on anyone. But you... any child would be lucky to have you as their mother.”
He noticed her body tense as he spoke. It wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting. Had he said something wrong?
“You OK?”
She averted her eyes, shying her thoughts away from him. He couldn’t understand what had just happened.
“Sally?”
The heavens opened up outside and unleashed a flurry of cloudburst against the window in response.
Halfway to the city’s main police station, the rain began to fall in heavy bursts. The Land Rover’s windscreen wipers squeaked at full speed as Kevin kept a firm grip on the wheel, and tried to ignore her fidgeting. She obviously wanted to tell him something.
“I just had an idea.”
He didn’t look at her. “What?”
“We were going to go to Sally’s first, weren’t we? So, let’s get that out of the way.”
He stopped himself from sending her a dark look. “It’s no good putting this off. It has to be done.”
“I’m not, but we could take ages at the police station. Besides if what you think is true, they might not let us in the house after... and I don’t want to go back to Sally empty-handed.”
He considered her proposal. It might be a better idea if he did go to the house first after all, and have a look around himself. What she had to tell the police could strengthen the argument either way. The boy could have woken up and fallen out of his bedroom window from a sense of heightened fear brought on by his autism, or someone could have easily crept in and disturbed the boy.
“So what do you think?”
What did he think? What kind of psychotic nut could throw a young child out of a window, but he kept that to himself. It took all sorts to make a world, his sweet old dad used to say, but some of those went far beyond his comprehension.
“I guess it wouldn’t make too much of a difference, if we were quick.”
“I know where everything is. It won’t take me long to grab a few essentials. Some books for-” her voice faltered momentarily, “-Iain. A peace offering for Sally.”
He sighed.
“What now?”
“I don’t doubt your love for them, but damn it was a foolish thing you did.”
“I’m never going to hear the end of this am I?”
“If I had my way? No. It might just make you grow up.”
“Well, who died and made you an expert on me? You worked all that out yourself in these short wee hours together, did you?”
The muscle in his jaw flexed. “What you’ve told me is enough. I mean you got into bed with your best friend’s boyfriend, didn’t you?”
Her only response was to dig her fingers into the seat cushion. She turned her face away from him towards the falling rain and slick road. The atmosphere in the car hardened over into a thin sheen of icy silence.
“Why don’t you try the radio?” he said. “See if you can get an update.”
Without saying a word, she pushed at the archaic buttons on the radio until she found an all-talk, local news station briefing listeners on the ongoing manhunt over the missing girl.
She turned up the volume as the announcer said, “Police officials still have no line on the whereabouts of sixteen year-old Rachel Laing, who is believed to have been babysitting the nine year-old son of the late mining magnate Paul McMasters, found seriously injured at his home last night. Shaken by the events, the small town community, built around the McMasters mines, is currently protesting controversial drilling plans by an international mining company, recently merged with the McMasters enterprise. More news at ten. This is-”
She turned the radio off. “You know we could save on time, if we go to the local police station there, if you want. Our town is a good way out of the city, it’ll be closer and- and I know them all,” she confessed quickly at the end.
“You’re a tight-knit community, aren’t you?”
Her voice was almost inaudible. “Sometimes too tight I think. Everyone is in everyone’s business. But at a time like this I’d prefer not to have to spill my guts to strangers.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “I feel a complete idiot as it is.”
“Well, pretty soon your entire little town is going to know it.” He regretted the remark the minute it came out of his mouth. It was a cruel thing to say. What was wrong with him? He expected her to cast a glare at him, but she gave no visible outward reaction.
“It won’t make no difference. They all think that anyway. Sally’s the only person that really gives me any time of day. If it wasn’t for her standing in the community, I don’t think anyone would notice I existed.”
“Bullshit. You’re noticed whenever you go. And you know it.”
“Men! That wasn’t the sort of notice I meant. But when that’s the only attention you’re given, you take what you can get.”
“And you get plenty.”
“Fuck you, OK! Just fuck you!”
“Calm down, will you? I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Yes you did. And I love a good fuck, so what? But that’s all you know!” She looked at him, and from the corner of his eye he could see her eyes were brimming with tears. “Shall I tell you something you’ll never understand? What I really want is to find a man that can share the tenderness after...”
“I do understand that.”
“I imagine him sometimes, what he will look like, and I think that I won’t care. I’ll only know him once he holds me.”
“I didn’t realise...”
“What? You didn’t get that from the few minutes you’ve known me? Tenderness is what I really want,” she said in a small voice. “But sex is the only way I know how to get it.”
He hated himself suddenly. “I’m sorry,” was all he could say.
“Yeah, I am too. But I don’t need your pity, OK?”
“That was an apology, not pity.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, scowling from under his jacket. “Had my fill of both. Don’t need either.”
“As you wish,” he replied, and focused on the rainy road ahead.
End of Chapter 13 | Read Chapter 14
Yours in love,
