In his head.
Always watching. Down through the years. It was like some intense but drawn out soap opera, running brightly through the screen of life. In the beginning it hadn't been too bad. She was just a woman he would have liked to shag; but it hadn't affected him or his life. He had continued as normal. He couldn't even tell you the point when it had began to change. When she hit him maybe? When she asked what he would do with his last few seconds on earth? How terrified he had felt, and how he had camouflaged his fear with drunkenness, feigned drunkenness if you want the truth. How that night he had gone home and lain awake all night with a million scenarios running amok in his head. Hopeless and impossible scenarios that would never happen. But even then, two years or more ago, the next day had been manageable. The sense of doing the right thing, of preserving her modesty, her dignity, the knowledge that their professional relationship, such as it was, remained intact. The fact that she flung modesty and dignity out of the window with another man was like a thorn in his side; no, not a thorn, a burr with many barbed hooks that caused pain over and over. But he was above it all. No woman had ever got under his skin, and she hadn't either. Not then. She had tried hard to pierce the outer shell and send in her barbs, but he rebounded them, and kept his façade in place, remained one of the men. Saying and doing things that made him appear ugly and undesirable to her, because it was so much easier that way, to keep things as they were, to not set free any little piece of sensitivity that may lurk somewhere in his character.
Sensitive; his mother always told him he was sensitive. She said with hands like his, and those long, long fingers, he should have artistic tendencies, he might paint, sculpt, play the piano. Of course his father almost burst a blood vessel if he heard her talking that way, and became threatening and abusive as always, bearing down on his mother and telling her not to fill the boy's head with such rubbish.
When he said 'Oh good- women' in that dry caustic tone of his, it was another way of yanking up the drawbridge and adding a bit of distance between them, he fed on her confusion and fear, it gave him the strength to keep her at arms length. But sometimes when he saw a look of utter misery on her face, he hated himself for being such a hideous bully. He'd never had a female DI before and he found her hard to handle. It was easier when she was feisty and tough with him, as he didn't feel so guilty about being a bastard, knowing she could give as good as she got. But when she was sad he found her absolutely terrifying.
'I thought I'd lost you.' Yes that was probably it; the turning point, the floodgates of a tidal wave of love he had no control over. Those doe eyes that were so easy to sneer at and yet poked a rusty blunt edged knife right into the centre of his heart. It was her hair's fault. It was different, softer, framing her face like a dark fluffy storm cloud, making her hazel and amber eyes appear enormous.
'I thought I'd lost you.' Oh how he'd gazed at that quivering mouth, the colour of autumn's last raspberry, and wanted to crush it with his own, to see what it tasted of.
But then Shaz. Thank god for Shaz. Bursting in, breaking the moment. And that night, the woman who'd been more than willing, eager even. It wasn't as if she was some old slapper he'd picked up, and in his time he'd picked up a few. She was educated, refined, on the lookout for a bit of rough evidently. But as he went in for the kill, and her arms had slid around him, it was Alex in his head, and that look, the doe eyes and raspberry lips, and he had pulled back, stepped away, apologising. Knowing she was an Alex substitute and therefore no good. No sodding bastard good at all.
Then there was the time when he'd almost weakened, after Chris had let him down so badly.
'It's all shit' he had told her, blundering into her flat with a bottle of wine and two glasses, forcing her to listen as he talked yet more shit, adding to the shit that was already piling up neck deep in their world. When he paused for breath he saw how exhausted she was, but she sat meekly on the sofa, listening with what appeared to be genuine interest at his ranting. He wondered how anyone could look so excruciatingly sexy bundled up in a pyjamas and dressing gown. She had opened more wine when they had finished the first bottle, and he had fallen asleep on her sofa when they were almost through the second. When he woke his hand was between her thighs, and she was deeply asleep, so deeply he could barely hear her breathing, his hand skidded from her leg like it was burning hot. She sighed and groaned and smiled but didn't wake. He looked away. His mouth turned down. He couldn't have her.
That caused trouble because he was so wound up about not having her he had been tempted again by the worst kind. The sister of the scummiest piece of scum. But he tried not to think about her, she was best glossed over, he wouldn't want her featured in a biography of his life. It had turned out more badly than even he could have imagined, because he shot Alex when he was actually aiming for Jeanette.
He had gone on the run and everyone had thought he was running because he shot her. But he was running because he couldn't bear the thought of her being dead. When he found out that she wasn't dead, just awkwardly in a coma, he had come back.
Out of sheer desperation to force her back to him, he slapped her face. His stomach had disappeared when she opened her eyes, the relief was so great, and they had walked along the corridor of the hospital, she as frail as the driest slenderest twig. But she was holding him up as much as he was holding her, although he didn't let her know that.
'You fell all wrong' he accused, as he checked out the damage he had inflicted on her.
'Sometimes in life you can't help which way you fall' her eyes burned into him.
But now she was falling another way. Still the wrong way. Jim Keats.
His insides churned and twisted as he watched her at the speed dating and the look on her face as she talked to the pencil neck. He couldn't take the torture. Wouldn't accept it. They were trying to drag him down from all angles. But he had faith in her, she would see through Keats. He was just a novelty and could talk the talk, but Alex wasn't stupid, she'd be back, she'd fall the other way again.
One day he'd come clean. He'd tell her how he felt. How his body was stuffed full of love for her. But for now he'd just keep on watching and keep it all the most secret of secrets, hidden away in his head.
oxxo