Page 28 of Beyond Repair
Her face when he answered the phone to Lydia that night had made his chest contract so tightly that he was in actual physical pain. And what kind of twat deliberately goes out of their way to answer a booty call in front of a woman like that? What kind of fucking coward pushes a woman like Katie away because he’s afraid to feel anything after years of being totally shut down? He told himself it was better for her, that it was for her own good, that she deserved a man who wasn’t a broken shell; but he also knew that, true as all that was, the overriding emotion holding him back was fear.
Well, he might be a twat but right now he didn’t care. Right now he was going to turn this around and thenhewas going to be the one changing her oil, servicing her car, walking her home from work, making sure she was protected, and putting an end to this whole stalking thing.
The only problem was that he was still in the dickhead category and had no idea how he was going to claw his way out. As his feelings for Katie had grown over the years, and she’d taken up more and more of his subconscious mind, he’d put more effort into avoiding her and pushing her away on the rare occasions he did see her. When she got together with that bloody surgeon joker last year, he should have been glad, but instead he developed a deep loathing of that arrogant tosser, and been evenmoreunpleasant to Katie. The relief he felt when Sarah had informed him that that relationship was over before it had begun had actually shocked Sam silly. (What that goddamn idiot had been thinking, letting Katie slip through his fingers, Sam had no idea; something about how he’d been in love with Lou all along – but as far as Sam could see there was no real comparison.) He should have manned up and made his move then, but instead he’d buggered off to Somalia for two months to try to forget.
So not only had he behaved like a complete knob-end to Katie for the last six years, but now he was also up against his more recent stupidity. He glanced at her again (if it were possible she had shrunk even further into her seat) and gritted his teeth. Yes, he definitely had work to do, but absolutely no idea how to go about it. His emotional-cripple tendencies did not exactly stand him in good stead for this sort of thing.
As he pulled into her tiny driveway he tensed as his gaze fixed on her porch. Years of training had taught him to be hyper-aware of everything about his surroundings at all times. The large mound of orange fur lying on her doorstep wasn’t moving, and its head was at too acute an angle. Katie, having had no training and never the most observant person, was rooting around in her cavernous bag for her keys, and now trying yet again to locate the door handle. He switched off the engine and turned to her.
‘Katie,’ he called, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him, away from the house. She reluctantly abandoned her search for the hidden handle and looked up at him warily.
‘What?’
‘If I ask you to do something for me will you do it?’
She frowned. ‘Well, I’d have to know what this mysterious “something” was, wouldn’t I? I mean, if it was just, “Pass me one of those Wagon Wheels,” you know the ones that you’ve got stashed in the door shelf here – I’m impressed by the way, I had you down as more of a spinach-protein shake kind of a guy – then okay. But if it’s something of a more morally dubious nature – say, “Make a snuff film graphically depicting the gruesome deaths of two enraged male hedgehogs allowed to tear each other apart in a territorial dispute over a Tangle Teaser liberally doused with female hedgehog pheromones,” or, “Vote UKIP in the upcoming by-election” – then no, I wouldn’t be on board.’
He stared at her for a moment, a heavy feeling settling in his chest as he realized just how much she meant to him, how far he would be willing to go to keep her from any form of pain. His mind flashed to the décor in her living room and he winced; there was no way even he could make this completely pain free. Suddenly he felt overwhelmingly under-qualified to deal with the disaster he knew was about to unfold.
‘Katie,’ he said, finding that his voice was strangely hoarse. ‘Please stay in the car for a moment. Can you do that?’ She huffed, and her chin lifted to a determined angle, before sighing and muttering, ‘Not like I can find the sodding door handle anyway.’
Sam wasted no time in jumping down from the truck and jogging to her door. The cat was totally motionless, its head hanging uselessly from its neck and blood still seeping from its mouth. Sam laid a hand on the cat’s side, confirming that it wasn’t breathing, and was, in fact, cold. He closed his eyes and scraped a hand down his face before taking his coat off and wrapping the big ginger bundle in its folds. Then he turned and walked back to the car, running through the options in his mind. Rob and Sarah were just around the corner, but it was barely six and the kids would still be up and about. He didn’t think that bringing a dead cat into that mix was a particularly good idea. He squared his shoulders, resolving to deal with this himself, then wrenched open the door and climbed back into the cab, cradling the bundle carefully in his arms. Katie was looking at his lap, frowning.
‘What … er … what’s going on?’ she asked, as her look of confusion was slowly replaced with that of fear. ‘There wasn’t …’ she swallowed, ‘there wasn’t a … parcel or flowers or something in the porch, was there?’ Sam knew exactly how many ‘gifts’ had been left on Katie’s doorstep over the last few months; the police report had been very revealing about that too. Much as it annoyed Sam that she hid the extent of Daniel’s harassment from the people that cared about her, he decided to leave that lecture for now, given the circumstances.
‘No, Katie,’ he said softly, causing her eyes to jerk from the bundle in his lap to his in shock, and making him feel like a real bastard that she should actually be shocked by him using a soft tone with her. ‘Look … I’m sorry … I …’ He peeled back part of his coat, revealing some ginger fur.
‘W-what … what is … ?’ Her eyes flew between his and his lap and then filled with tears as she leant forward and wrenched back his coat. ‘L-L-Lady,’ she whispered, smoothing down the fur and feeling the cat’s side much as Sam had done. A strangled sound rose up in her throat before she fell forward and buried her face in the ginger fur, great wracking sobs shaking her whole body. Sam frowned down at her head in his lap and hesitantly lifted his hand to run it over her soft curls. After a few minutes of Katie crying while he stroked her hair, she straightened, wiped the moisture from under her eyes and reached across to lift the cat, while he made sure his coat stayed underneath, seeing as blood was still damp on its fur. She sat in the passenger seat staring down at the large mound of ginger, silent tears streaking down her face.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have let him out on his own,’ she mumbled, stroking the ginger ears and letting her tears drip down onto his fur. ‘But …’ she hiccupped another sob, ‘… but I wanted him to be free to be the cat-about-town, meet his lady friends, widdle on trees to mark his territory … you know: boy stuff.’
Sam was sensing that a question as to what would possess you to name a male cat Lady Mufflington le Foof, and why, after lumbering the unfortunate feline with that, you would be concerned that he was getting out amongst it to partake of ‘boy stuff’ wouldn’t be advisable at this juncture.
‘And he was always so cautious about the road, you know? I never thought he’d …’ her breathing hitched again and a fresh batch of tears rolled down her cheeks ‘… that he’d get smushed,’ she finished in a whisper, burying her head back into the ginger fur.
Sam stared fixedly out of the window. She thought the cat had been run over. Maybe that was for the best, but Sam knew better; he’d seen what an animal looked like after its neck had been snapped, just as he’d seen the same with human beings.
*****
Katie frowned down at the floor, clutching Lady to her chest.
‘I know it sounds silly but the floor’s so hard and …’ She trailed off, holding Lady closer. Sam spun on his heel and grabbed a grey blanket (there didn’t seem to be any other colour in his flat) from the back of one of the chairs in his living-room-type area. (Katie hesitated to call it a living room, seeing as there were only two wooden chairs and a tiny, ancient leather sofa – the word Spartan couldn’t even begin to cover it.) She laid Lady down on the blanket, then backed away slowly, her hand pressed against her mouth in an effort to stem another round of sobs. Honestly, she really needed to try and get it together. It was just a cat. She glanced at Sam, who was standing awkwardly in the kitchen, one of his hands at the back of his neck the other leaning on the counter.
In her haze of grief she had somehow allowed herself to be manoeuvred over to his flat. In truth shehadn’twanted to stay at her house by herself. Just thinking about the décor in the living room brought on a fresh wave of tears. But now she decided she needed to take some control of the situation and tried to choke back the rest of her tears; this had the weird result of her making a slightly strangled noise which actually sounded worse than the crying, and caused Sam’s gaze to move from the bundle on the floor to her. He hesitated a beat before clenching his jaw, walking purposefully over to her, and pulling her into a hug.
Katie stiffened for a moment before allowing herself to collapse against him, clutching at his shirt and letting her tears soak into the material. Why on earth she was in his flat and why he was holding her became totally immaterial. All that mattered in that moment was that hewasholding her. The feel of his strong arms around her and the firm, warm bulk of his chest under her face were somehow cutting through the sadness. She felt his hand stroke her hair again and relaxed into him more.
When she tried to shift away slightly, embarrassed at her blubbing, she felt his arms tighten around her. She looked up at him, but before she could blink to clear the tears from her eyes so that she could focus on him properly his mouth had covered hers and he was kissing her. That was when everything melted away for Katie. The grief, mixed with the pent-up lust she normally kept carefully in check around him, made her lose control completely. She went up on tiptoes, her hands now gripping his hair, and Sam, clearly being done with bending down so far to reach her mouth, simply picked her up so that she was straddling his waist and strode through the flat into his bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him.
Chapter 14
We don’t really talk much
Katie swam up towards full consciousness slowly. She registered the hardness of the mattress and the immense heat of the large body she was sprawled over. As she blinked awake she stared at the tanned column of throat directly in her eye line, then followed it up to the strong jaw with the telltale scar slicing through the thick stubble. She smiled before remembering about Lady and feeling the tears prick at her eyes again. Pushing herself up onto her elbow, she looked down at Sam and started in surprise when she realized he was awake and staring at the ceiling.
‘You’re awake,’ she croaked, her voice wrecked from all her sobbing last night, reminding her of what a prat she must have made of herself. After all, what man wants a crazy woman ravenously tearing at his clothes whilst sobbing for her dead cat? Bizarre didn’t even begin to cover it, but that hadn’t stopped her.
Luckily Sam had seemed to come to his senses once they hit the bed. He had pulled her hands from his shirt, caught them both in his, then pulled away from the frantic kiss and stared down at her. His eyes had seemed a little wild for a moment before he did a slow blink and breathed in deeply through his nose. When he opened them again they were back to normal and Katie almost thought she had imagined it. Once her lust-haze had cleared, embarrassment had swamped her, causing a fiery blush to break out over her face.
