Mason
I was already melancholy when I landed at Manchester airport, my heart pining for another glimpse of my beautiful daughter. But that was nothing when queueing to go through passport check, I caught sight of a man that had my heart threatening to stampede out of my chest.
“Kade,” I whispered on a short breath.
He was stood with Grace, looking exasperated, as an airport official questioned him about something.
Panic and happiness clashed inside me, making me lightheaded. My heart weighed so much that I could feel the heaviness of it bearing down on me. My lungs felt too big for my body, crushing me from the inside out.
My hand reached out instinctively towards him, the need to touch him overwhelming. However, alarm had me stepping behind the large guy in front of me to hide. Lowering my face, I clenched my teeth together as I hungrily feasted my eyes on the man I loved only slightly less than my wife.
Grace appeared bored as Kade went into his familiar rant. He’d never had much patience, and I couldn’t hold back the small smile from curling my lips. I missed him so much, and a physical pain tore through me when, finally, the official allowed him through, and both him and Grace disappeared through the doors. I wanted to shout out to him, make him stop and turn around and see me. I longed to touch his face, the tips of my fingers itching for a fleeting moment of him on my skin. But I couldn’t. Although the craving for him was bringing me to my knees, I knew I couldn’t drag him back into the terror that was my life now.
The need to chase after him was so engulfing that I hadn’t realised I’d even moved towards the door until the bloke in front of me turned and glared at me after I pushed him forward.
“Sorry, mate.”
He curled his lip at me before he stepped into the express passport check booth. Some people were so sensitive.
I was bouncing on the balls of my feet as I waited for the machine to accept his passport. Four times the stupid twat inserted it into the reader the wrong way.
“Jesus. Come on!”
Finally, just as I was about to step inside and do it for him, he slid his passport in correctly, and the gate opened for him to move forward.
Eight seconds it took him to pick up his case from the floor. Christ! Could he go any slower?
The world appeared to be sluggish, everything taking longer just to hold me back. I jammed my passport into the machine. My eyes were constantly scanning the large window in front of me, and my hands shook so much that I swore I must have looked like a terrorist. So much so, an airport official narrowed his eyes on me.
The machine beeped, allowing me to exit and I forced myself through the barrier, nearly jamming the gate when I tried to fit myself and my bag through together.
There were people everywhere, masses of bodies all moving in the same direction. A few tutted at me as I pushed my way through, my eyes searching through the crowd for the familiar shock of black hair I always loved to run my fingers through.
“Where are you? Just one more glimpse. Please,” I begged a non-entity as my heart climbed up my throat.
Before I knew it, I burst through the exit doors, and the cool night air hit my lungs.
“No!” I stood, running my hands through my hair as I spun in a circle.
Disappointment made me draw a long breath, and my shoulders sagged.
And then I saw him, the edge of his face lit by the bright lights illuminating the front of the airport.
As if magnetised to him, my feet carried me along almost mechanically, quickly closing the gap between us.
I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to feel him in my arms once again, feel the press of his soft lips on mine. The devastating need to touch him quashed all rational thought, and I sped up.
Five hundred metres.
Three hundred metres.
Two hundred metres.
“No!”
A hand gripped my wrist and pulled me back. Spinning around, ready to floor whoever was keeping me from Kade, my mouth was open, preparing to spray vehemence at my captor.
“You can’t!” The dim light didn’t conceal the look of desolation in Ava’s striking green eyes. “You can’t.” She looked contrite, guilty, as though she denied her child his Christmas present, the tears shimmering in her eyes evidence that she was hurting as much as I was.
Slowly, I nodded. “I know.”
A soft smile tilted her lips upward as she gazed behind me. “He looks happy.”
“Really?” I mused. “I thought he looked like Grace had just told him she had sold the strap-on.”
Hoping to catch another glimpse of him, I looked over my shoulder. Ava slipped her hand into mine as we watched Kade and Grace disappear through the assortment of cars, vanishing into the darkness and from our lives once again.
The pain in my chest was as profound as the day I had silently bid my goodbye to him. It had only been a few months, but my heart begged to argue that it had been years, the ache inside making my soul sit down and weep.
“Come on,” Ava said, prompting me with a gentle tug of my hand. “I’ve been the good wifey and got you a joint ready rolled in the car.”
I stared at her, my eyes wide. “What the hell! Where’s my wife, and what have you done with her?”
Rolling her eyes, she tutted. “I don’t mind you smoking, it's snorting I have a problem with.”
“Are you sure you’re still talking to me or Harry the Hog?”
It took a moment for my joke to sink in, yet instead of laughing, she stared at me for an age, her mouth slightly open, and then shook her head, exasperated.
“Well, I thought it was funny. Smoking and snorting. You know…”
Her head was shaking all the way back to where she had parked.
♡
Ava reached across the table and gently wiped the froth from my top lip with the edge of her thumb. “Ready for that, huh?” She snorted, eyeing my empty beer glass.
“Damn right. I hate flying economy.”
Shaking her head, she took a sip of her wine and chuckled. “You’re such a snob!”
“No, I’m not! I just missed the service that you get in business class. There’s some right riff-raff fly in economy, you know!”
Widening her eyes at my gripe, her mouth fell open slightly. “When was the last time you flew in a cabin with all the other ‘riff-raff’?”
Pursing my lips, I pondered her question. Unable to supply an answer, I shrugged and picked up my empty glass, standing before she came back with some huffed response. “You want another?”
Tilting her head, her eyebrows arching, she stared at me as if I’d asked her if the pope was Catholic.
“Right,” I scoffed.
The barmaid had disappeared somewhere, and, impatiently, I tapped my fingers on the bar top as I looked around the place. As if economy class hadn’t been bad enough, my wife had brought me to some shitty backstreet pub in the centre of Kirkingham, the chipped and stained wooden bar indicating that the riff-raff I had shared a plane with also drank in this dive. The dreary green flock wallpaper was peeling away from the walls, and the few glass sconces on the wall had yellowed with time. The carpet by the bar was threadbare, the soles of my shoes disgustingly sticking to the floor. Although the place wasn’t dirty, no cobwebs or filth to be seen anywhere, it was seriously dated, as if it still lingered in the middle of the seventies, not daring to move with the times.
It was quiet, only another couple sat at a table towards the back of the room warming themselves in front of the log fire. Yet the smell that came from the door leading to the kitchen was seriously making my stomach grumble.
Finally deciding I was worth serving, the barmaid bustled through a doorway behind the bar and shot a toothless grin my way. “Same again, lad?” Lad? I was only slightly younger than she was.
I nodded, smiling my thanks before glancing towards Ava. She was still so fucking beautiful, ageless almost, as if our many years together refused to ruin her perfection. My heart still skipped a beat every time I looked her way. However, she looked different, and I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why.
She peeked up from her phone, feeling my eyes on her, and gave me a soft smile before turning her attention back to her phone.
“Eight, eighty,” the barmaid said, pulling my attention away from Ava. Taking the tenner from me, she rang it in the till and gave me a nod of appreciation when I told her to keep the change. “Food should be right along.”
I said my thanks and slid back onto the chair opposite Ava. I frowned again, squinting at her face, frustrated with myself when I struggled to pinpoint exactly what was different about her.
Her eyes slid upwards, and she watched me with an amused expression. “Surely you didn’t miss me that much, you’ve only been gone a few days.”
Shaking my head, I huffed and pouted. “There’s something different about you.”
Biting the tip of her tongue, she sighed. “Seriously? It’s taken you over four hours to realise that I’ve dyed my hair.”
Resting back in my seat, I grinned, relieved she had solved the mystery for me. Taking a sip of my beer, I continued to stare at her, my thumb tapping against my glass and my gut still bubbling with something I couldn’t put my finger on. “No, it’s not your hair.”
This time she faltered, her throat bobbing sharply with a gulp. Her cheeks flushed, gaining my attention.
Bolting upright, I shot my hand out and took her chin harshly in my fingers, angling her face to the side for better light. I leaned closer, squinting with knowing eyes. She had obviously tried to hide it with make-up, but it glared beneath the layer of foundation like a bloody comet in the night sky. “Is that a fucking black eye!?”
“Calm down, baby.”
Calm down? Calm – fucking – down?
“Talk! Now.”
She withered beneath me, but as was usual with Ava, she fluttered her eyelashes and attempted to placate me with wide puppy dog eyes. “It was just a little misunderstanding. Nothing major.”
Nothing major? She had a bruise the size of my clenched fist and the colour of the vein bulging on my temple.
Fury started to ooze from every single pore on my body, thickening the air around us. The roar forcing its way up my throat threatened to blow the couple by the fire into the fucking flames.
“Who. Did. This?”
“Fucking Petey did,” the barmaid grumbled, appearing from nowhere. She stood beside me, holding two plates of pie and peas like she’d witnessed my anger a thousand times and it now bored her. “Don’t you worry yourself, lad. Your missus showed him who was boss.”
Slowly I turned my face her way. I shot her a look that turned her face the same shade as the peas she had slopped onto our meal. Practically throwing our plates on to the table, she gave me a nervous nod of her head and scurried away.
Turning back to Ava, I growled out, “Who the hell is Petey?” I was struggling to hold onto the rage. Whoever this motherfucker was, he’d soon learn that laying even his pinkie finger on my wife had been the worst decision he had ever made. I was going to make him bite off his own fucking fingers. One by one.
“You’re going to give yourself a coronary if you don’t calm down,” she mumbled through the clench of my hold on her jaw. “Especially at your age.”
Ava was a stubborn mare, and I knew if I were to get anything out of her I would have to take a softer approach and allow her to tell the story in her own way. Forcing it out of her, along with my anger, would only make her cautious, and I needed every single revolting detail of the man who had hurt my little warrior. So, relenting, I let go of her and dropped back into my chair.
The delicious aroma of steak pie was doing nothing to bate the rage slithering in my belly.
Ava stabbed her fork into her pie and slid some meat it into her mouth, her eyes closing in enjoyment before she told me what had happened with Janice’s ex-husband, his mates, a pool cue, and Ava’s fists.
On the one hand, I was proud of her, on the other, I was infuriated at how stupid she had been.
She continued eating, occasionally glancing at me as I tried to calm myself down, and patiently waited for me to say my piece.
Inhaling deeply, I released it in a long breath. “You should have walked away, Ava. For one, you can’t risk exposure, and two, you don’t know these men. They could have had knives. You were irresponsible.”
She scoffed, placing her cutlery on her nearly empty plate. Picking up her glass, she leaned back in her chair and pursed her lips. “Mason, you know I can handle myself.”
“I know,” I agreed with a firm nod. “But, and this might sound callous, but what if you’d have been stabbed?”
Shrugging, she said, “I’m not with you.”
Rubbing at my forehead, I scoffed loudly. “Hospital, Ava. The hospital. Or, some fucker recording you fighting and slapping it all over social media. Do you think Kade hasn’t got an alert out on us?”
She blanched, finally understanding.
“Do you think I took your credit cards off you because I was soliciting your spending?” I asked, more softly this time.
“Fuck,” she hissed under her breath, closing her eyes in dismay. “I’m sorry.”
My stomach settled, and I smiled sympathetically, reaching out to rest my hand over hers. “I know. But we have to be so careful.”
We were sat at a corner table, the gloomy lampshade providing a muted light and partially concealing us from the rest of the room. However, even in the dark, I couldn’t miss the blood drain from Ava’s face when the door opened behind me, and she looked up to see who had entered.
“Well, fuck,” she whispered, lowering her face and holding my attention with just her eyes.
When I made to look up, Ava shook her head. “Don’t.”
Frowning, I did as she bid and kept my gaze on her. “What?”
The edges of her lips tilted upwards, and her eyes suddenly danced with delight. “You know how we always have the shittiest luck, baby?”
I answered her with a simple nod.
“Well, today our luck changed. You’ll never guess who just walked in?”
Narrowing my eyes on her, I shrugged and waited impatiently for her to spit it out.
Her smile morphed into a wicked grin, amusement playing across her face. She paused for a beat before she flicked her eyes sideways, notifying me it was clear to look.
The grin that spread across my face matched that of my wife’s, when, stealing a quick glance towards the bar, my gaze landed on no other than the woman we had both visited this shitty town in quest of. Etta fucking Scott.