A Natural Act (Contradictions) (39 page)

“No, I suppose not,” Ian chuckles. “Alright, dinner’s on you.”

I feel like I’m on top of the world as we eat our sushi, even if it takes m
e a few attempts to master chopsticks. I’m overjoyed at the prospect of a phone that only rings for friends or family, of walking down the street without feeling eyes on me, of knowing the plague of my past is gone from my life forever.

“Piggy back?” Craig offers me with a grin as we leave the restaurant.

I may or may not have indulged in a little sake. I’m not drunk, just a little tipsy. Ian joined in
for a couple but Craig remained sober so he could drive us back.

“You can’t give me one and not Ian,” I tease him.

Craig looks at me like I’ve gone mad. I’m feeling more free and happy than ever before and I can’t help being playful.

“That’s true,” Ian agrees, putting his
arm around my shoulder. “Hop on, blondie,” he tells me, bending his knees to help me propel myself onto his back.

My enhanced spirits and a good deal of sake have me jumping up without question. Ian then proceeds to jump onto Craig’s back without any real warning.

I hear a pronounced “oomph” and we wobble to the right slightly before he finds his footing.

“Need to give her sake more often,” Craig chuckles to himself as he shows extreme power by walking us both towards the car park behind the restaurant.

I’m a heap of giggling chaos because I can’t stop imagining what passers-by must think. We’re a triple decker piggy back.

I doubt my giggling is making Craig’s job any easier and when I hear Ian tell him to “giddy-up” I lose my grip completely and slide off of Ian’s back.

I almost fall to the floor clutching my aching stomach but the two of them catch me and Craig presses me to his chest and holds me up with a hug.

“Didn’t think you were that drunk,” he chuckles, pressing kisses to the top of my head.

“I’m not,” I splutter, gasping for breath. “I’m just so happy.”

“Like you happy, lady,” he grins, waiting for me to regain normal breathing.

“Let’s get you two sickening love birds home,” Ian shakes his head at us, moving towards the car

“We’re adorable,” Craig tells him.

“She is,” Ian retorts. “You? Not so much.”

I giggle again because adorable isn’t perhaps the first word that comes to mind when you first see Craig. Not with his bald head and multitude of tattoos. Once you get to know him though, once you get to love him, he is truly adorable.

“Where’s the love, E?” Craig grins at his brother.

Ian isn’t grinning though. He’s looking intently at the car.

Well, not quite at the car, but rather at the man slumped against it.

The man in a rumpled designer suit with something spilled all down it. The man with a bottle of high end vodka in one hand.

“Nigel,” my breath catches in my throat as my sobriety rushes back to me.

He hears us approach and looks up.

“He’s wasted,” Craig murmurs in disgust.

“Isabella,” Nigel slurs, rising
clumsily to standing and placing handprints all over the nice clean car. Not that Ian cares about that. I just find it ironic because Nigel has his own car valeted every other week.

“What are you doing here, Nigel?” I demand, pulling back slightly so I’m behind the guys.

“Father tried to hand me over,” he spits out, taking another swig from the bottle. “Can you believe that? My own father.”

None of us answer because I doubt he cares what we say anyway. His blood-alcohol level must be dangerously high.

With Nigel’s attention on us, I can see Ian doing something with his phone behind his back. I hope that something involves getting the police here pronto.

I don’t think we’re in any danger because he’s so drunk but I doubt he’s here to say one last goodbye before he goes away so my nerves are on edge.

“It got me thinking about all this,” Nigel spits, stumbling closer to us. “About exactly whose fault this is.”

No need to ask who he thinks that might be.

“You ruined my life, Isabella,” he screeches, spitting in a highly uncivilised way. It’d be comical if I weren’t so scared.

“You did that yourself,” I tell him softly.

“Liar!” He screams, bringing a revolver out from his jacket pocket.

I recognise it instantly. It’s from his father’s display cabinet, the one that was in the parlour we visited earlier today. It’s an antique which comes from an ancestor who fought in the Great War. As such, it’s been deactivated.

Mr Callaghan is too intelligent to keep a gun on display without having it deactivated. He could be sent to prison otherwise and he’s too legally savvy to be sent down for something like that with all the other various laws he’s broken.

I’m about to tell Ian and Craig as much but perhaps I don’t need to because Nigel’s face turns green and then white as his stomach starts heaving.

He drops the gun and clutches his middle, vomiting all over his own shoes. Abruptly, the vomiting stops but the convulsing remains.

He falls to the floor, his body shaking a few more times before he stills completely, his eyes still wide open with fear as he realise
s what’s happening to him.

The three of us rush over to him, Ian kicking the gun away as we get close.

Craig gets there first, pulling Nigel’s lifeless body from the floor and quickly administering the Heimlich manoeuvre. He makes several attempts but nothing happens aside from the faint sound of a rib cracking.

“Oh my god,” I realise out
loud. Nigel is choking on his own vomit. He’s going to die.

I can hear Ian on the phone requesting an ambulance
but not the words he’s saying because I’m frozen still as Craig lays Nigel’s body back down on the tarmac, opening his mouth to check the airway.

His face is calm and focussed;
the doctor in action. He doesn’t speak a word, just rips his patient’s shirt open. He isn’t looking at Nigel as the man who ruined my life and almost killed me. He’s looking at a man whose life he can try to save.

He pulls his knife from his pocket and gestures to Ian who hands him a lighter, clearly they know what they’re doing.

I feel helpless as I stand by and watch, undecided about what I’d like the result to be and guilty that those thoughts even cross my mind.

Craig uses the lighter to heat up the knife in his pocket, sterilising it

He needs to act fast before Nigel’s heart stops beating and so his movements are fast and decisive as he slices through the skin of Nigel’s neck, quickly sliding the tube of a ballpoint pen into the wound to create a new route for oxygen to travel to get to his lungs, bypassing the stubborn blockage.

There are a few tense seconds as Nigel remains immobile but his chest does eventually begin to rise and fall, even if he doesn’t regain consciousness.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur of ambulances, police, statements and disbelief.

Nigel is alive because Craig saved him. The man who saved my life also saved the life of the one who tried to kill me.

“Bella,” Craig whispers as we sit in the station and wait for Ian to finish giving his statement. “You’re in shock. I need you to talk to me.”

I shake my head because I’m not quite ready yet.

“Are you upset?” He tucks my hair behind my ear and pulls me into his lap so he can wrap his arms around me.

I nod.

“Because I intervened?” He asks.

I remain still because I don’t know. Would it have been easier if we left him there? He would have only had himself to blame.

“Bella,” he sighs, hugging me to him. “I can’t stand by and watch a person die. No matter what that person has done, the decision as to whether they live or die should not be up to me. It’s my duty as a doctor to try to help.”

“I know,” I mumble because I’m not mad at him. “I’m upset with myself for wanting you not to help,” I admit tearfully.
“I wanted him gone.”

“Know that, lady,” he breathes out slowly, pressing a kiss to the side of my head. “Understand why. He almost killed you. He tortured you for years.”

I’m not going to argue that point. “He took your life away from you so why should he get to keep his, right?”

Right. That’s exactly where my thoughts were at as I watched him lying on the ground.

“Except that’s not the real you. The real you would never make that decision. The feelings you harbour towards him are understandable but if you’d asked me to leave him there, and I had listened, that would have haunted you for years, Bella. You would always regret it.”

I nod tearfully, clinging to him for
dear life. I know he’s right but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“Now he will recover, with a stinking headache and a nasty scar, and face the charges he’s brought upon himself. He won’t get the easy way out. He’ll probably spend the rest of his life in prison to contemplate every wrong decision he’s ever made.”

“He doesn’t deserve the easy way out,” I quiver against the man who always seems to know what’s best for me.

“No he doesn’t,” Craig reassures me. “And you don’t deserve to live the res
t of your life with that guilt. You deserve happiness.”

I know Craig’s right, I know I would have carried that guilt for eternity. I wanted him to suffer but he should do that through a sentencing and a life time spent behind bars with nothing to do but reflect on the awful things he’s done during his life.

Watching him die and lose his life in that way would make me almost as bad as him for trying to take my life I the first place.

The fact that Craig did hi
s duty and saved Nigel’s life speaks volumes about the type of man he is. He hates Nigel as well but he’d rather keep the evil sod alive and do the right thing than exact his revenge. He once explained to me that revenge is a primal instinct and that it takes an enlightened person to forgive instead. I may never be enlightened enough to forgive but I can move onwards knowing that Craig practices what he preaches.

It’s hard to believe that my nightmare is finally over and can never return. The recent months have really helped me find myself again, both inside and outside of my relationship with Craig. This is the final step which I needed to take to forever step away from my past.

“Epomlepoy,” I whisper to him softly.

“Epomlepoy, lady.”

The end.

As always, I am extremely grateful to my readers for the fact that you take the time to read my work and especially to those who leave reviews or comments.

Any feedback is a chance to learn and grow as an author and is invaluable to an independent author.

My family are amazing at listening to me ramble about my characters as if they were imaginary friends and I love them for it. They are my biggest motivation.

My wonderful real life man has spent many an even
ing massaging my feet as I write and gently pushing me towards the goal line and without him this book may never have been finished.

RJ Sable is an author from the UK. She is a lover of language of all kinds and has a degree in linguistics and phonetics. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts she is only fluent in English and Swedish after having lived in Sweden for three years.

When she’s not writing, RJ can be found with an impossibly large cup of tea, a crochet hook, and a mess of tangled yarn. Alternatively, she might be on her beloved racing bike “Mary” or mountain bike “Bumble”, annoying car drivers everywhere.

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