We ended up at Thornhill pub—a place that had been renovated in recent years to look more like one of those quaint, yet fancy, gastropubs. One thing you couldn’t get away from in West Yorkshire, no matter how much you changed the interiors, was the clientele. Men from around these parts loved their beer, and while the pub may have been overrun with ladies who lunched and brunched during the daytime, there was no stopping it being taken over by us boys on a Friday and Saturday night. And Sunday. Monday, too. Okay, so Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays had to be included. I’d never been the sort to leave anyone or anything out.

Taking our freshly bought pints from the bar, Cam turned to me and nodded towards the door.

“Let’s take these outside.”

“Fine, but if you try to kiss me under the stars because the moonlight is twinkling in my eyes, I might have to slap you around your bearded chops.”

Cam barely even let out a laugh before he shook his head. “You’re really not my type.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but a girl walking back from the toilets cut straight through us, her eyes alive as she sashayed her curvaceous arse right past me and gave me a wink. She was all red hair, piercing eyes, and lips that promised to take good care of me if I let her. My eyes widened, as did my grin, when she eye-fucked me all the way back to a table where a group of other girls sat giggling and waiting for her to park her arse in her seat.

She leaned in to whisper something to them before every single head at that table turned our way.

“Score,” Cam said quietly.

“You think?” I blinked slowly, watching the girl as she leaned even farther over the table, forcing the waistband of her skirt to ride down, allowing the very top of her arse cheeks to show the first signs of their curves.

“Nice arse.”

“Nice little wink on her, too.”

“Tits begging to be handled like stress balls, and you’re focusing on her wink?”

I turned back to Cam before I caught his eye and threw my head back laughing. All the memories of the banter we’d had over the years came flooding back, and it was kind of mind-blowing how two people who often went months without seeing each other could slip right back into their old ways.

The night was still warm when we stepped out into the small terraced area that housed four picnic tables with surrounding benches. It was right by the roadside, which I knew some didn’t like, but I loved to watch the traffic fly by while conversation flowed around me. There was something almost intrusive about watching people while they were alone in their cars. It was a place where everyone did their deepest thinking. Their hands would be on the wheel, and they’d be driving on auto, eyes focused straight ahead as they studied the road they’d travelled down a thousand times before. But their minds… they would be in several different worlds at once. Perhaps a woman would be daydreaming about the one who got away while driving home to her ignorant husband. Some husband would be imagining how he was going to make one hour of the day stand out for his kids when he got home, trying not to be jealous of the fact that his wife got to spend all her time with his babies while he had to go and do the manly thing and earn a living for them. A sister could be driving to see her brother, desperate to play a game of basketball on the driveway with her sibling after not seeing him for weeks. A son might be on his way to see his father for the last time. A grandfather could be making a journey to see his wife in the hospital after she’d taken a fall.

I, as much as anyone, was aware that there were stories all around us, and I liked to imagine that most of them were played out in the minds of the people who stared vacantly at the road ahead of them, driving their cars to destinations they’d been to a thousand times before.

Without any prior warning, my mind drifted to Alice, and I frowned instantly.

“I love it when people do that,” Cam said, his lips pressing together momentarily as he rubbed off the foam from the pint he’d just taken a sip of.

“What?” I asked, lifting my own beer to my lips.

“Drift off to someplace else without realising it. You just went somewhere that made your eyes do that deep thinking, crinkling shit. Your mask slipped.”

I blinked at him a couple of times before I answered, eventually lowering my drink back down to the table and resting my arms out in front of me. “Is this the part where one of my oldest friends waltzes back into my life and tells me everything about me that I’ve yet to figure out for myself?”

“If you want it to be.” He smiled lazily like he really didn’t give two shits. There was a laissez-faire approach to everything Cameron did and every word he spoke. Even when he was being forceful and pushing you to think, he had an air about him that made you think the decision was up to you and you alone. Damn mind magician.

“I’m not good at this stuff.”

“Funny that, isn’t it? How you can dish out the advice and be the strong guy for everyone else, but when it comes to looking at yourself everything clamps shut.”

I glanced up at him through my brows and stared straight into his eyes.

“Hey...” He laughed softly. “That’s not me having a dig at you. I’m the same way. I get it. I could sit here until two in the morning and tell you what I think you should do with your life, but I’m twenty-five, and I’m more stuck than anyone.”

“You are?”

“Mate, I work at an indoor ski slope in Castleford. I keep getting offered promotions, opportunities to settle and make a life for myself, go into management and all that jazz, but shit… the thought of being stuck in one place, inside an office that sits underneath an indoor ski slope for the rest of my days… Fuck me. No, thank you. Not being able to see the sky for eight hours straight, not having any windows to look through, and going to work in a shirt and tie? The thought of staring at a computer screen just to earn some cash makes me itch. And it’s crazy ‘cause one minute I was eighteen with the whole world at my feet and all these opportunities to swim in every ocean, screw pretty girls on white sandy beaches on every continent, and now, just seven years later, I get the glares from everyone in my family.”

“You feel the pressure to do the grown-up stuff.”

“Same story as you, bro. Just living it in a different body.” He took another sip of his drink before he settled his hands back on his thighs and shook his head. “I feel like I should have a place away from my parents, a nice girl on my arm who everyone can get to know—one who wants kids, a three-bedroom house in Calverley, and maybe a big garden with the possibility of extending the home when we have fourteen kids.”

“Fourteen...” My eyes widened.

“The sperm is strong with this one.”

“You are most definitely the father.” I smirked.

“My point, peanut dick, is that if you’re feeling a little messed up, you can talk to me about it. I’m here to listen.”

“I must be worse than I thought. You’re being deep and meaningful.”

“Dude,” he said in that low, deep voice that let me know he wasn’t playing.

“I know. I know.” I sighed back, not needing to hear it. “I’ve got to quit being the joker and deal with my crap instead of brushing it under the rug every two minutes.”

“You said it.”

“Thought I’d get there before you did.” I stared down into my drink and rubbed my lips back and forth over one another. “Thing is, Cam, I don’t know where I want to be or what I want. I’ve spent so long looking after women, putting them first, that I think I’ve forgotten how to live for myself. I feel a bit lost now, just wandering around without someone to check in on, someone to make smile or laugh at the end of the day.”

“Women? Plural?”

I sighed internally this time. I hadn’t been lying to Natalie when I’d told her that the whole relationship between Alice and me had been something I’d kept sacred and held tightly to my chest. Of course, most knew I’d had several hook-ups at university before she came along—what guy my age hadn’t? But nobody from my hometown knew anything about the way I’d loved Alice. Nobody around these parts knew how I’d asked her to marry me and how, despite everything we’d have been up against had we gone through with it, I meant it when I’d told her I intended to spend all my mornings waking up just to see her face.

“Marcus?” Cameron pushed, eliciting a small groan from me.

“There was someone before Nat. A girl from uni.”

“What kind of someone?”

“An important kind of someone. You know...” I scratched my eyebrow. “Fiancée important.”

He leaned forward straight away, resting his veiny arms on the table before he gave me that smouldering glare of his. “Spill.”

There wasn’t any point in trying to put it off, so I didn’t. I went back to the start and told him about the first time I’d laid eyes on Alice Harper in the corridor of our dorms, and how I’d stood there with a crate of beer in my hands and just gawked unashamedly. I told him how she’d looked to me, this innocent little vision who just needed to be shown how good life could be if two people connected deeply enough to show their bad sides to one another. I told him way too much, unable to stop as all the years of trying to pretend she hadn’t existed came pouring out. I explained what she’d made me feel when she looked up through her innocent little eyes and how her cheeks blushed when I touched her somewhere she’d never been touched before. I told him how much of a man I’d felt bringing this incredible woman to life, and how everything else just seemed to vanish into thin air, gone in a puff of smoke, leaving only me and Alice in the world while everyone else disappeared from my thoughts. I told him about the first time she’d danced with me in a crowded bar, when I laid my head on top of hers, closed my eyes and knew for certain that I didn’t want to let her go. I gave him way too much information, too much insight into the thoughts I’d had about her but never before admitted to myself. I told him about the first time we made love, then the first time we screwed hard. Shit, I told the guy everything. I let those memories bleed out of me as the words, sharp like little knives, cut me with a brand-new pain, spilling from my mouth and gathering into a pool of bitterness around my ankles.

Cameron never once interrupted me. He nodded in the right places and remained silent throughout the stuff I was pretty sure he didn’t agree with, until the last breath fell out of my mouth and I uttered the one painful truth I’d never wanted to utter before.

“And now I’m scared that I’ll never love anyone as intensely as I loved her back then, and that terrifies me, because it was the highest I’ve ever felt in my whole damn life, and I don’t want to imagine that my best moments have already been and gone. ‘Cause if that’s the case, what the hell have I got left to look forward to?”

“That’s deep.”

“Total penetration of the skull.”

When I looked back up at him, he stared at me for a second before he frowned and looked down at the table in concentration.

“So…” he began, cocking his head to the side and looking up at me from the corners of his eyes. “This isn’t really about Nat at all?”

“It’s about both of them. I loved both of them.”

“Just differently?”

“I guess so.” I nodded slowly. “Nat was… she was fucking amazing. Any man would be lucky to have her.”

“But you always knew it was going to end.”

“Each day was a gift, you know...”

“That’s why you let her go so easily.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, here’s what I think.” He turned his body to give me his full attention, clasping his hands together in front of me before he put on his most serious face. “I think you got with Nat knowing she still had feelings for this ex of hers for a reason.”

“Was that my version of Hail Marys?”

“In a way, I think it could have been. You knew she had feelings for the other guy and you were stupidly okay with it the whole time you were together. No guy in their right mind would put up with that shit. But you did. You did it, and do you know why?”

I did know why, but I wasn’t going to say it out loud.

“Because you were no better than her. You still love Alice.”

“Loved,” I said firmly. “Not love.”

“You sure about that?”

Was I sure? Who knew? Certainly not me. I’d never had closure, so I had no idea where that love for my ex could have gone—if, indeed, it had disappeared. Was it even possible to still love someone who’d walked away from you so coldly? Someone you hadn’t seen since they turned and left, choosing a life away from you and leaving with no explanation, no reasons, no healed wounds? It was hard to imagine that love could exist through all the bad storms we’d had and all the years apart. She left me. Alice left me. She didn’t look back, and she’d given me nothing to fall back on. No reassurances or ways to patch up my broken heart with her promises that I was still a good man. She offered me no peace of mind, not even with a cliché reminder that it wasn’t me, it was her.

I didn’t have an answer for my friend, so instead, I did the only thing I could think to do. I picked up my lukewarm beer and I downed it. I downed it to drown out any words that were trying to break free.

Gasping when I finished, I held my empty pint glass up in the air and nodded. “My round. You want another one?”

“Well, I didn’t bring you here just so you could stare at all my pretty,” he answered through a smile.

That was one thing I loved about Cameron. He knew when to push and when not to. He knew all my reactions and how sometimes, the things I didn’t say said more than the things I did. Or at least I thought he did.

“One last thing, mate?” he called out to me. “For future reference, here’s a last bit of advice for you. From now on, you need to go for the one chick who doesn’t need saving.”

I stared at him, unable to say anything.

“That one was for free.” Cam winked. “Now get me my beer.”

Unease battered my stomach as I walked back into the pub and made my way to the bar. It was a feeling I’d been avoiding for years, and one I’d been able to bury deep underneath my concern for my family, Natalie, or anything else that proved a pleasant distraction. But as I leaned over the counter and waited to be served, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that the old ghosts were swirling around me again, haunting me to do something about this negative energy I’d tried to pretend didn’t exist all along.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked, pulling my thoughts back to the present.

I smiled flatly at the old guy, taking in the way he looked absolutely shattered, even though the night was still young. “I’ll have two pints—”

“And two vodka, lime and sodas,” a soft but confident voice rang out beside me.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention as I slowly turned to take her in. It was the redhead from earlier, and she was now pressing her breasts up against my arm as she leaned sideways against the counter. In the most obvious display of unashamed perversion, my eyes fell straight down to her ample cleavage, which was on display for everyone to see, and I noticed a small freckle that sat right on the curve before the rest disappeared into the abyss.

I swallowed without intention, correcting myself as I coughed to clear my throat and looked up at her, one brow arched.

“Hey,” she sang.

“Hi.”

“I’m joining you for a drink.”

“Apparently so.”

“If that’s okay?” she asked sweetly, tilting her head to the side and allowing her hair to fall farther down her arm.

“Kinda presumptuous, don’t you think?” I challenged her calmly, unable to hide the soft smile that was tugging on one corner of my mouth.

“Sometimes us ladies have to be a little bit presumptuous.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because it’s not every day that two handsome men walk into a pub like this without any women on their arms or wedding bands on their fingers. So, in an age where we’re told that we can be anything we want to be and do anything we want to do, I’ve decided that I would like to be your date for the night and perhaps later, if the conversation flows nicely and we feel a connection, I would like to do… you.”

The bartender almost choked on his surprise, and even though I wanted to look at him with wide eyes and say, ‘Fucking hell, are you hard, too, pal?’ I somehow, by some miracle, kept my eyes on the woman in front of me and let out a slow, hopefully seductive, breath.

“Ten points for that chat-up line.”

“Why, thank you.”

“I feel like I should at least be a gentleman and tell you to get to know me first.”

She smiled a way-too-innocent smile for someone who was clearly as confident as hell, swaying her body back and forth subtly as she leaned in that little bit closer. “So, buy me and my friend a drink, let us come sit outside with you, and then I’ll spend all night getting to know you any way you want me to.”

“I don’t even have to buy you a packet of crisps and tell you all my worst dad jokes?”

“I’d prefer you to save your energy for when you’ll need it.”

“You’re good.” I smirked.

“You have no idea.”

There was a definite twitch in my jeans as my dick woke up from its slumber and took a slow peek around. I focused all of my energy on the barman, tensing everything south of my mouth as I willed it not to get hard in the crowded bar.

“She drives a hard bargain. Two beers and two… erm…” I scowled as I tried to remember.

“Vodka, lime and sodas,” the old man said through a sly smile.

“No crisps.”

Within seconds, the girl beside me had clicked her fingers, beckoning her friend to join us. When the drinks had been served, I turned and handed them their glasses, unsure what I was actually doing and ignoring the very obvious fact that this interaction with some woman I barely knew somehow didn’t feel right to me. Maybe I’d spent so long being faithful, unable to even imagine doing shit like this in random pubs with random women, that it made sense for it to feel weird and a little wrong to me.

I had to change all that. I had to reset my way of thinking.

I had to remember that I was single and free, and it was time to live a little recklessly every once in a while.

“What’s your name?” I asked the redhead, not even looking at her friend beside us.

“Natasha.” She smiled. “But I prefer Nat.”

My heart sank as I stared at her and felt my fingers clench around the two pints in my hands. “Nat?” I croaked.

“And my friend here is Grace.”

“Mind if I call you Tasha?” I asked her, ignoring the introduction to her friend.

Natasha’s face flickered with doubt for just a split second before she took a sip of her drink through the small straw and giggled. “Call me anything you want.”

“Don’t say that. It’s a well-known fact that I’m terrible with names.”

“And yours is?” she asked quietly.

I dragged my teeth over my bottom lip before I moved closer and looked down on her pretty little face. “Marcus. Remember that for later. You know, in case the conversation is good, the connection is there, and you decide to go ahead and do… me.”

“Marcus,” she breathed out, and I watched as goosebumps spread out across her chest. “I won’t forget.”

“Good girl.”

The rest of the night was all a haze of alcohol, girls sitting in our laps, giggling, those unnecessary bad jokes mixed with rough laughter, along with the occasional questioning look from Cameron as Tasha licked my face or dangled her arms around my neck like we’d been dating for the last six years and I’d always belonged to her.

There were fleeting thoughts of regret before anything had actually happened at all. Every now and then, usually after Cam raised a brow in my direction, a small feminine voice would creep into my conscience and ask me to step away.

Sometimes it was Alice.

Sometimes it was Natalie.

Unfortunately for them, on that particular occasion and on that particular night, both their voices were drowned out by Tasha, and the more I drank away and pushed down my past, the more I began to allow myself to enjoy the present. I allowed my hands to roam over the smooth thighs of a girl I’d only just met, and I allowed the brain located in my trousers to take over and show her a good time.

The last thing I remember, as my head fell back onto a soft pillow and I let out an about-to-be-satisfied groan of appreciation, was a naked girl climbing onto the bed and straddling me. I remember her pulling all her hair to the side, allowing it to drape over one shoulder as she lowered her body against my chest and pressed her soft lips to mine.

I remember closing my eyes as my hands reached around to grab her bare arse with a desperate but slow-burning intensity that had me bucking my hips slowly to try to get inside her.

I remember the moment she allowed it and I lost myself to the feel of her sliding down around me.

I remember the way she began to ride me, taking me to a fuzzy world of long overdue pleasure, and I remember the way my name sounded falling from a stranger’s lips. It felt good. All of it. Empty but good. I didn’t care about the girl I was inside of. All I cared about was floating in this headspace for as long as I possibly could, where all the voices of all the women I’d ever loved were a million miles away, being drowned out by the ecstasy that was pumping through every strained vein in my body and every exhausted thought in my mind.

I’d have stayed there forever to get by if I could have.