“Please yourself, but you look like you could use something. How about a drink?”
“I don’t drink either.”
“God Almighty. You’ll be living a sorry life.”
If only he knew, but I couldn’t stand here and talk to him. “I need to go, or else I’ll miss the last bus.”
“It’s barely eight o’clock. The night is young. Join me for a coffee, won’t ya?”
Tempted as I was, this had to end now. I wanted to claw the skin off my bones.
“Maybe another time.” I smiled, hoping he wouldn’t take offence. It wasn’t him; it was me.
I placed one foot in front of the other and slowly walked away. My skin prickled again, and I felt his eyes bore into me as I finally broke free from his orbit.
I couldn’t get sucked in again. It never ended well.
“Next week it is.” His words went round and round in my head as I rode the bus home, my bag still clutched to my chest.
The journey wasn’t quite an hour at this time of night, but it was still after nine when I got home. I threw my bag to the floor, stripped off my coat, and hung it in the hallway, resisting the urge to chuck it and my other clothes in a heap.
“I am enough just as I am. I release fear and welcome peace.” Words I should have tattooed on my fucking body, but while the affirmations usually worked, tonight I struggled to connect with them.
“I am safe and protected.” But by whom?
“I love and accept myself.” Well, no one else would.
I clawed at my now-bare skin, the pearlescent ridges firm beneath my fingers. Too many scars littered my body.
Scars from a younger me.
Scars I fought to hide every day lest everyone see my shame.
Scars I would add to. Of that, I had no doubt.
Chapter 2
Killian
“You smashed it again, Kill,” the excited voice said in my ear.
I sat on the sofa in my rundown bedsit, the springs in the second-hand sofa sticking into my arse. I shifted, wincing as another one jabbed me, and vowed to check the classified ads for a newer one as soon as I got off this call.
“It was okay.” I absentmindedly picked at a loose thread in my jeans, cursing when yet another hole appeared.
I swear to God himself, everything was falling apart around me. My flat, my clothes, and definitely my love life. Not that it had ever been anything to shout about.
“One day, you’ll get the break you deserve. Remember who your friends are when that happens,” Seth joked.
“I’ve been doing this for years, and no one has picked me up yet.” Ten fucking years I’d been at this, and all I had to show for it was this shitty bedsit and a gig in a karaoke bar that paid me a pittance and all the booze I could drink.
I was living hand to mouth, but I was fucked if I was going back home to Ireland and admitting defeat. That was never going to fucking happen.
“Eh, there’s time yet. You’re still young.” Seth. Ever the optimist.
“I’m thirty-five. A few more years, and I’ll be too old to do anything but sing at weddings.”
“Not true, Kill, and you know it. Soon, my friend. I can feel it.” Seth’s voice softened as it always did.