Guard your Heart by Sue Divin

Author:Sue Divin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter 23. Jolt.

IONA

Friday 29 July.

Stretching both arms, I reached for the edge of the pool with my fingertips, letting the bubbles fizz from my nostrils as I finished my final length. Forty. Forty was a kilometre. Enough to clear my head and bleach the vanilla-coffee scent from my skin after work. My goggles were fogged, my breathing still heavy with the exertion as I hauled myself up the metal steps. A cloud escaped the steam room as a lady emerged with a shiver. The sign by the open door was trilingual. Cultures side by side. Ulster-Scots. English. Irish. The letters didn’t touch. Would it kill to sneak in for ten minutes even without the proper wristband?

Alone in the privacy of the cloud, the warmth of the wet tiles soaked into my thighs as water from my hair rivered with sweat down my back. I relaxed, playing with the bubbles of air trapped between my toes and the sparkly mosaic, the squelch of my hands in the condensation. My nostrils flayed as wet heat hit my lungs and, closing my eyes, I imagined Aidan’s fingers interlacing with mine, the touch of his shoulder on my skin. Sometimes he tasted of cinnamon.

A suck of steam left the room as the door opened.

‘Traitor all alone?’ Dylan’s voice iced my blood. First time I’d seen him since the attack.

In two steps he towered over me, fencing me into the corner. I froze. Luke sniggered, silhouette blocking the door.

‘Wee birdy tells me you’re too rainbow-shoelaced for a shag. Least you were after your school formal anyway.’ He licked his tongue along his teeth, staring me up, down and over again in my swimsuit. I tightened my arms and legs into my body.

‘Understandable Kyle was cut seeing you plastered over Facebook with a new man. Thing was –’ he leaned in – ‘when he showed us the photo, Luke here reckoned his boot remembered your man’s face.’

I flinched as his fingers slid round my ear and grabbed my chin.

‘Laugh was, I defended you. Can’t be ugly and stupid, says me. So.’ His grip tightened. ‘Squeal.’

My brain told my mouth to speak, my hands to move, my feet to run. Nothing. Nothing but palpitations, rapid intakes of breath with no exhale, no release. As he slid his hand from my chin, to my neck, to the elastic of my swimsuit, he shoved his knee forward, splaying my legs. I gasped with the jolt of it.

‘Frigid is easy fixed,’ he whispered. ‘Think you’re the big girl now?’

My back was glued to hot tiles. As his face pressed against mine, my stomach lurched with the smell of fried fish on his breath. A moan slipped from my throat.

‘It’s your lucky day,’ he said into my ear. ‘Big things happen to big girls.’

I winced as he grabbed my wrist. My fingers starfished, rigid in spasm as he shoved my palm against the groin of his swimming trunks. A strangled cough from Luke at the door halted him.

‘Fucking forgot,’ he said. ‘Eejit here likes ye.

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