Only You (Adair Family #5)(2)

“Now we’ll have to keep you off school for Christ knows how long,” Mum huffed, and I could see through my one eye that she was tearing up. “Let me get some antiseptic for your lip, and then we’ll get some ice on your face.”

On which part? I thought numbly.

As she walked dejectedly out of the kitchen, I got up. Dad was still here. He could come back and do more damage. Maybe even kill me this time.

So I stumbled toward the kitchen door, the floor bobbing up and down like waves in the sea. I pushed past the strange feeling and threw myself out of the house.

Terror made me pick up my heavy legs, and I ran. I took the back streets toward the road that led to Ardnoch Estate. Brodan and his siblings rode their bikes to the castle they called their home. In a few years, Lachlan would be old enough to drive them to school.

Sharp pain cut through my ribs, and I had to slow to a walk. It would be ages before I got to the drafty old castle, and I hurt so much, I didn’t know if I could make it.

“Roe!” a familiar voice called.

I lifted my head, trying to see through my one good eye. Blurry figures appeared on the road ahead.

On bikes.

Brodan?

Brodan! I tried to open my mouth, but suddenly the world tilted and my legs disappeared.

Pain shot through my knees.

“Monroe!”

Brodan.

It seemed like only seconds later that hands were on me, and I looked up into Brodan’s frantic face. Tears glimmered in his eyes. “Arran, get Dad.”

“What … what’s going on?” I heard his brother Arran whisper.

“Arran, get Dad!” Brodan yelled. I could hear the panic in my friend’s voice.

Then his arm was around me, and he held me to him. “You’ll be okay, Sunset, you’ll be okay. I won’t let anything happen to you ever again. You’re safe. I’ve got you, Roe.”



* * *



I blinked, coming out of one of the most vivid memories of my childhood. Tears wet my cheeks, and I glanced around to make sure no one paid attention.

There were only two other people at the screening, and their attention was glued to the film.

To Brodan.

From the moment my father had begun beating me, Brodan, my best friend since our first day at primary school, had become my protector. Even at twelve, he’d been determined to take care of me. Because of him and his father, my life changed after that day.

And I’d stupidly thought Brodan’s passionate commitment to my well-being meant something.

I would be fourteen years old when I finally admitted to myself that I loved Brodan more than just a friend.

Hope had bound me to him until he shattered it.

In my hurt, I’d acted impulsively.

We ruined everything, he and I.

So why couldn’t I be free of him?

My emotion spilled over as I looked at his face on the screen.

So familiar.

Yet so much a stranger.

I didn’t know who that man was. That knowledge was so fucking painful I couldn’t stand it.

Wiping angrily at my tears, I pushed up out of the seat and turned my back on the screen.

On him.

Enough. It was enough now.

I had to forget him. To move on.

I had to.





1





Monroe





PRESENT DAY





Ardnoch, Scotland


I tried desperately not to think of the pile of jotters that needed marking piled on the back seat of my car as I miraculously found a parking spot on Castle Street. Renovations were ongoing at the local hotel and restaurant, the Gloaming, so the car park was filled with work vans, vehicles, and the camper vans of the very last tourists of the season.

Mum’s food shopping was in the car’s boot, but I’d promised her I’d pick her up a to-go coffee from Flora’s, and I had a package to collect from the post office before it closed. Then I had to drop off the food, make Mum’s dinner, get back to the caravan, make my dinner, and spend the rest of the evening marking my primary five class’s math and their online work while bingeing episodes of Gilmore Girls on my laptop.

What a glamorous life I led.

The sooner I got to Mum’s, however, the sooner I could return to the caravan Gordon had rented to me for peanuts at his beachside caravan park.

It turned out returning to my hometown of Ardnoch wasn’t as simple as I’d thought it would be. When my mum’s neighbor called to tell me that Mum had broken her hip and wasn’t coping on her own and that there was an opening for a teacher at the village primary school, I really had no good excuse to not run to Mum’s rescue. But after accepting the job, I tried to find somewhere to rent and realized my hometown had risen from my financial reach. I made a fairly good salary and there was only me. However, the rent was high in the village. That, plus the average council tax, made living in Ardnoch almost impossible. I just couldn’t afford anything that was available, not with rent and all the other bills. Not on my own. So now I was stuck in Gordon’s caravan park and trying not to panic about it.

I could always move in with Mum, but after a few weeks of living with her when I first returned, I vowed to never do so again, else I resign myself to a life of misery.

No, my only real sensible option was to tough it out in the caravan for the year.