Runaway Girl (Part Six)
Summary: Another day spells another disaster as Tommy gives himself twenty-four hours to convince the one woman who stole his horse and patience to play the perfect arm candy. But being the particularly stubborn breed of woman you are, you dig your heels in. Making him work for it through bickering, bruised egos, and a cloud-spotting duel that turns unexpectedly intimate. By the end you're both faced with the truth you've desperately been trying to ignore. Neither one of you knows the rules to the game you've been playing anymore.
Warnings: Language, angst.
Word Count: 4K
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No. Catergorically fucking…
“ No” Tommy’s last word on the matter landed with all the weight of a petulant boy digging his heels in, as his aunt shoved the invitation back at him, sharp finger tapping the embossed lettering like she meant to drive it straight through the blotter.
“ Yes” Polly fired back, glare twisting his obstinate head halfway off his neck. The formidable matriarch of the Shelby clan wasn’t taking the piss, and she wasn't fucking about. She'd bulldozed right through her nephew's pig-headedness, demanding he put his hostile sentiments aside for the sake of his royal box dreams.
But Tommy continued to eye the thing like it might explode. Like the committee for the Epsom Derby had sent him a live bomb disguised in gilded gold. And if it went off, took him, Polly's catastrophic suggestion and his idiotic brothers snorts with it, then all the better. Because the latter…christ, that threatened to explode in his face in a far more spectacular fashion.
“Posh do, that” Arthur sniffed, leaning far enough back in his chair he was close to concussion, if he dared, fucking dared, add one more word to his running commentary. “ Oysters and shit. They provide the canapes, you bring the bird…”
The lanky fucking…
“ Thomas!” Polly's palm cracked against the desk as Tommy rose, every intention pointed toward some belated brotherly correction.
You see, Monaghan Boy's name had made the rounds. Those that be had heard the murmurs of a mob boss with ambitions. And ever the fantasists for a good story, the Brooks Club had sent an invitation to Shelby Company Limited to join them for a soirée. It was a foot into their world, into drawing rooms where jockey stewards and chairmen deliberated. A guaranteed pass. A place for Boy to run the track at Epsom in a month's time.
This was all well and good, all fine and bloody dandy, until Polly reminded him that he was, in actual fact, a gangster, and not some gentlemen that took tea with two spoons of softened sugar at four every afternoon.
For the world of trinket-wearing toffs and top-hat sporting lords played a whole different kind of game. One where a man's worth was measured in his morals, breeding, appearance, and the quality of feminine company on his arm.
Which meant you had been fronted as the only suitable candidate to play the part. His ornament. His showpiece. His girl.
Jesus Christ.
“ I dunno, Pol. Bit naughty to play the nice girl, ain't she?” John's scepticism sounded less like concern and more like a man with a plan specifically designed to let the cat loose amongst the pigeons. And Tommy, for all his stoic composure, was starting to look like he might just take the bait.
“ Naughty?” Polly's head snapped to him, voice flat, patience fraying like an aunt who'd wished for nieces and been cursed with four nephews instead.
“ She stole our Tom's bloody horse!” Arthur cut in, indignation blazing in defence for his brother. “Committed grand larceny in the name of love, Pol” he paused, long enough to see Tommy’s jaw tighten, then reloaded. “ She's definitely on Tommy's naughty list. Right at the top I'd wager. Next to women he wants to…shag”
This fucking…
“ Sit down, Tommy!” Polly snapped, stepping between him and his brother's hysterical laughs before broken bones and bloody noses became the unwanted highlight of her morning.
Put back in his place with threats to his life, his afterlife and any breath he dared take again, Tommy dragged smoke into his lungs with the morbid hope it might finish him before he finished Tweedledee and Tweedle-fucking-Dums sniggering in the corner.
“ What'll those toffs ‘ave to say about that, eh, Pol?” John murmured, laughter sneaking past his smirk as his toothpick rolled lazily across his tongue. “When they find out Tommy's arm candy is a bloody crook. Same as him. Same as the lot of us”
“ That it sparked a love match” Polly replied cooly, waving off the truth as if it were nothing but a mere inconvenience to her carefully curated plan. “That Thomas was positively delighted by her”
“ Delighted” Tommy scoffed, humourless, stubbing his cigarette out with barely leashed violence. “Damned seems more fitting”
Damned to daily migraines. Damned to a lifetime of being tested. Damned to looking at your stubborn pout until the day it finally killed him.
“ She's got the right look, Tommy” Polly's palms uncurled onto his desk, invading his space, daring that ironclad pride of his to flinch.
“ Yeh” he grunted, sinking back into his leather stitched chair.” A stubborn one”
Stubbornly beautiful.
“ She's got Eddie's backbone too. Those vipers won't break her” Polly's eyes held his as she leaned in. “Not. An. Inch”
“ And his temperament for trouble” he murmured around the cigarette perched between his lips as the match flared. “ She'll go off at anyone given half the chance”
At me. Every bloody day.
“ And she'll handle herself” Polly countered, head tilting. “ When the men start circling”
“ And make a scene”
Make me want to shoot any bastard that gets close.
Polly's eyes tightened, rummaging through all the tosh he'd have everyone believe, plucking out each betraying thought and laying them neatly in front of her as evidence against his illusion of control, until she said her final word.
“ I'll call the dressmaker” she declared, spinning on her heel for the door as Tommy shot to his feet.
“ Polly…”
“ I'll put it on the company account” she brushed him off like he was a mote of dust half-hazardly obscuring her vision as she crossed the betting shop floor, reaching for the phone.
“ She can wear rags for all I care!” he called after her, steel eyes tracking her retreat, already feeling his wallet bleed as lengths of fabric were ordered down the line in the name of fashion.
“ So that's a yes, then?” Polly paused mid-dial, granting him the courtesy of thinking he had a say in the matter, as what sounded suspiciously like, Japanese silk, rolled off her tongue as the call connected.
“ No!” Tommy jabbed a useless finger into the glass partition as she turned her back to him. Literally. “That's a bloody, fucking, no, Polly!”
Left to brood about every female in his life, blood-bound or bold enough to barge in without his say, Tommy slumped back into his chair. Defeated for the day by another woman who thought she knew better than him. A gangster, who carved smiles into his enemies faces.
Fuck.
He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe he was actually going to ask the same bloody woman who’d stolen his horse, his patience, his sanity, and a good chunk out of his day for the past fortnight to play girlfriend at a dinner party he’d sooner blow a bollock off than attend.
He could hear them already. Heels.
So you'd come for the kill.
Which meant when he'd asked John to send word for you, his incompetent brother had seen fit to give you a heads up.
Inconvenient. Very inconvenient.
Hands steepled in front of him, Tommy waited, calculating his play before you thought you had the upper hand. Which you did. But that was neither the bloody point or your female prerogative to toy with.
However, when the door swung open, and you blazed through all heat and intent, he knew, instantly knew he'd already lost control of the board when you opened your mouth and said…
“ You whistled?”
Fuck sake.
“ Sit” his voice came out rough, too clipped and commanding for you to give it a breath of room to dominate the conversation.
“ I think I'd rather stand” your arms folded in front of you, pivoting on one heel, eyes lifting lazily around his office like you were waiting for the bus and not standing in front of a Brummie gangster who murdered for sport.
“ Why? You planning on running again, eh?” he smirked smug, only for it to falter the second he caught your eye and the dozen inventive ways you were currently committing first degree murder with intent.
Shit. Wrong move.
“Right” he cleared his throat of your hands, hands he was fairly certain were wrapped around his neck, wringing the life from him as he pushed himself up from his chair and reached for his only trusted friend and companion.
Whiskey.
“ Drink” he rasped, less of an offer and more an order, as he poured you a measure of his preferred numbing agent, a glass of John Power & Son 1885, you swiftly turned your nose up as if it had personally offended you.
Bloody woman.
“ Let's cut through the bullshit, then, eh?” he bit out, watching you snub his whiskey with that infuriating stubbornness. “You already know why I asked you here”
“ I do, but I'd love to hear it again” you toyed, eyes glinting as you gestured at him to make his grand speech. "Please, go ahead…”
“ Fair enough. You're needed at a…”
“No, no, no. Say it properly, Mr. Shelby” you cut straight through his attempts to sidestep as you prompted him with the correct admission. “ I need…”
“I need…” he confessed, each word like jagged glass, scraping across his throat, tearing at his pride. “...your help. I need your help”
Your eyes lit up, like a cat that got the cream. You felt vindicated, triumphant and thoroughly entertained. Then with surgical precision, voice dripping with satisfaction you dropped him with one word...
“No”
Here we bloody go again.
“ They're good at this part” Arthur murmured around his cup of English brew, stood next to Polly, eyes tracking the verbal ping-pong match unfolding in Tommy's office from the betting shop floor.
You were all flying limbs and righteous indignation, arms cutting through the air like you might take flight at any second.
Tommy, however, stood perfectly still. Watching. Studying. Bewildered and faintly fascinated, like you were a rare and volatile species of woman he hadn’t yet decided whether to catalogue or cage.
“ That's what worries me” Polly answered with words steeped in resigned exasperation as the two of you went at it for what had to be the hundredth time that week.
“ Did he just?” Arthur paused mid sip, disbelief freezing him in place. His unbelieving ears needing confirmation. Needing to etch this monumental occasion in bloody stone. Bells to be rung, town criers dispatched.
“ He did” Polly confirmed, lips curling into a faint satisfied smirk, enjoying the turn in negotiations.
“ What's she rabbiting on about now? your grandad muttered around the cigar clenched between his teeth, smoke puffing as he and Charlie wandered through the shop to put a bob or two on the ponies, when his gaze was snagged by you mid-rant. “ No that two centimeters too thin bloody hay again?”
“They’re haggling…” Arthur crossed his arms, grin plastered across his face, thoroughly entertained as he watched you drive a hard bargain against his brother." Over Monaghan Boy”
“ Papers?” Charlie's brows shot up, eyes flicking to you and Tommy as you haggled high enough to insult God himself and he haggled insultingly low enough to feel the heat of hellfire under your heels.
“ Jockey club dinner” Polly went on, calmly filling in the potholes of a plotline that had skidded from daily bickering into high stakes. “He needs her cooperation if he wants Monaghan entered at Epsom. So, he's offering her part ownership of him”
Cigar lowering slowly, Eddie's eyes narrowed in on the spectacle with something that looked dangerously close to grandfatherly pride. And ever the wind up merchant to his own amusement, he simply couldn't help himself.
“ Fleece him for all his got, girl!” his voice rumbled across the betting shop floor, rich with encouragement, as Tommy's head whipped to his old friend's antics. “God knows his pockets run deep enough”
Jesus Christ this family.
A low, disgruntled grumble crawled out of Tommy's chest at the gathered audience to his downfall, while you waited hands on hips, smugger now you had not one, but four bystanders cheering you on.
“ Ten percent…” Tommy offered half heartedly, chiseled jaw cutting sharp lines as a match flared against his cigarette. “Since I'm feeling particularly generous today”
“ Eighty” you fired back without missing a beat, as the corner of Tommy's mouth twitched, a humoured smirk betraying him despite himself at your sheer audacity.
“ That's not how haggling works, sweetheart” he drawled, a lazy flick of his wrist depositing a stub of ash into the glass- blown dish on his desk. “ You don't just bid yourself into the heavens and expect me to follow”
“ Yes, I do ” you shot back, stubbornness climbing your spine, straightening you into something defiant and unmovable.
“ No…” Tommy's voice came slow and deliberate, correcting your particularly wilful attitude today. “You don't”
Horns locked, you stared each other down. Daring the other to flinch, to finish one of you off with words that would end the duel and draw blood. And of course, Tommy was the one that did the honours.
“ You always this stubborn?” He murmured, smoke curling lazily from the cigarette perched between his lips. “Or is this you trying to prove that a girl belongs in a room of gangsters?”
Oh, fuck.
The whiskey hit cold across his face. Thirty fucking year old distilled Irish, worth more than a two months salary, now running down his hardening features as his tongue swept across his bottom lip, eyes darkening into something devilish.
“ Run”
You didn't need to be told twice. No time for excuses, no pleading over clumsy hands. You bolted out of his office door as Tommy, a man that never made a habit out of chasing women, stormed after you with increasing determination.
“ Eddie!” He bellowed, cutting across the betting shop to the back door after you, shouting over his shoulder to your grandfather with every expectation of being heard. “We need to have words about your granddaughter's behaviour. And her blatant disregard for thirty year old fucking whiskey!”
“ Right you are, Tom” your grandad puffed a cloud of smoke from the cigar clenched between his teeth, as his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his waistcoat with all the urgency of a man late for his own funeral.
“ Well, that conversations never gonna see the light of day” Charlie murmured as he watched the back door swing shut on Tommy's boots, thundering after your clicking heels on cobbles.
“ Is it heck” your grandad chuckled, turning to the weathered window to see Tommy cutting through the back alleys of Small Heath.
“ You're granddaughters got fire in her, Ed” Polly shook her head, pushing off the wall back into the room, back into normalcy as her nephew tore after his stubborn stable hand.
“ Good. Let it thaw him out” your grandad replied, returning to his bet, 5 to 1 at Kempton on Devils Duchess. Fitting.
“ What? Like a bloody Christmas turkey?” Arthur's brow scrunched as he watched Knock 'Em Dead Ed glance up at the chalked odds, mischief twinkling in his eyes as if he was betting on an entirely different kind of race.
“ Exactly like a Christmas turkey, Arthur” your grandfather smirked, while out back, the Brummie gangster was hot on your heels, marching through puddles and potholes deep enough to break an ankle.
Close to reaching you, Tommy's eyes lingered on your plump behind, hand flexing ready for a spanking as you walked with the veracity of a woman who dared him to try.
“You’re about two steps away from a lesson, love” he murmured, fingers stretching, calculating angle and place like he was about to land a Gloster Grebe and not a spank across the bum.
“Then you better make them fucking count” you shot back, chin up, hips swaying with more panache than any flapper girl worth her frills. Like obedience was never a language you'd learnt let alone bothered to speak.
“Mind your tone, girl,” Tommy reached out, spinning you around with a rough voice, close enough to see the stubborn set in your shoulders, the wildfires blazing bright in your eyes.
Fuck. You were beautiful.
“ All this over spilt whiskey, Tommy?” Your voice oozed play, convincing enough if it weren’t for the unpredictability that came with knowing you. Knowing you’d toss the table, flip the board entirely, if the game ever stopped entertaining you.
“ A thirty pound fucking bottle's worth” Tommy corrected like he bloody cared, like he wasn't acutely aware of how close you were standing, of the heat rolling off you and burning straight into his skin.
“Oh, please. It was a dribble” you dismissed his luxury liquor with everything but an eye roll as the truth settled into Tommy with familiar irritation. If he wanted you at that Jockey dinner, wanted Monaghan Boy to race at Epsom he was going to have to cut his losses, and swallow his pride.
“ The London soirée” he proposed, the words leaving his mouth like splinters, physically pained by that toying smirk curling at the corner of your lips.
“ I'll think about it” you tossed back as you whirled around, down the gully away from his reach. Again.
“ That's not an answer!” Tommy called out, hands planting on his hips, jaw working as he watched you strut past puddles and pissed-stained walls.
“ It's the only one you're getting!” you fired back over your shoulder, maddening, unapologetic, absolutely infuriating.
A dribble, she said. Bloody woman
As Tommy watched you sway away, he was reminded without grandstanding that you didn't belong to men's rules. Didn't break. Didn't bend.
And as a crooked smile pulled at something long buried, and best left there, Tommy was reminded, against all sense and survival instinct, why he still tolerated you.
He'd given you exactly twenty four hours, one minute and thirty three seconds, before deciding you'd had more than enough bloody time to think about it. More than enough freedom to start believing you had the upper hand.
So when he walked into Charlie's yard that afternoon, boots crushing gravel, coat tails slicing through the smog, battle-ready words lined up for whatever fresh hell you'd throw at him next, he was prepared for resistance.
But he wasn't prepared for this.
Because there, in the middle of the yard, you lay sunbathing. Yes, sunbathing.
Stretched out like you were on your holidays down in Brighton and not Birmingham where any sliver of warmth usually warranted a mention in the local paper and three conspiratorial theories as to whether the sun even existed or was a figment of everyone's imagination.
Fuck sake.
“ Oi!” He called out, expecting obedience like you were some overzealous retriever eager to please.
Instead, what you gave him was an unimpressed cat of a woman, head lolling lazily to the side, eyes half-lidded, as though he were nothing more than a nuisance interrupting a perfectly good nap.
“ Sleeping on the job are we now?” he looked down at you sprawled out in your godfather's yard like you owned the bloody place as he nudged your boot with the tip of his own. “ Come on. Get up”
“ Do you ever relax?” you shielded your eyes from the glare of the sun and his looming presence, looking down at you like you'd just spoken a foreign tongue.
Right. So we we're doing this again.
“ No” he replied flatly, as he struck a match against the cigarette sat lazily in the corner of his mouth. “But you clearly do” he murmured, taking a hard drag, the need going from bad habit to emotional support in your insufferable presence “ I'm docking your pay”
“ Nobody wishes they worked harder on their death bed, Tommy” you brushed off his threatened pay cut with a prophetic proverb that sounded wise until he filed it away as complete bollocks the moment it left your mouth.
“ Sit. Or if you're feeling particularly adventurous, lay down” the suggestion came with its usual double dose of amusement and aggravation, as Tommy stood there like an unwilling sentry to your top-up tan.
With what sounded suspiciously like a growl, he sat down beside you, acutely aware of Charlie looking up from his anvil as though he was witnessing some historical event that came only once every half-century.
“London. Epsom dinner. Yes or no?” Tommy cut straight to business, while you lay back, head tilted to the heavens with far too much ease for someone that lived in a city where murders, theft and domestic disputes were hourly occurrences.
“ What do you see?” you mused, eyes fixed on the candy floss sky of broken clouds drifting over Small Heath as Tommy felt an incoming headache clock in for overtime.
Christ sake.
“A waste of bloody time” he muttered around his cigarette, blowing a cloud of tobacco-laden doom over your scenic sky.
“That's not how you play” you propped yourself up onto your elbows, brow scrunching at the spoil sport sat beside you “ Come on. Indulge me”
“A noose”
This bloody man.
“ Tommy ” your voice had that particular edge about it, the same one Polly used, one he was increasingly aware belonged to ferocious women that didn't fuck about.
“Fine. A hare” he begrudgingly gave in, gesturing vaguely to the blotted sky as your squinting eyes hunted for the four-legged form.
“Where?”
“Right there” he murmured, catching your hand, jabbing it towards the sky and guiding your gaze to where the furry silhouette floated.
“ And look, there's the farmer about to shoot it for his dinner” he added, nodding to the cloud next to it, turning the picturesque scene predictably morbid as he leant back onto his elbows in the dirt.
“That's not a rabbit!” you sat up, dusting your hands off as you glared at your game, turned into someone's super. “That's a dog”
“ It bloody ain't” he settled back with smug satisfaction, a smirk curling at his lips as he watched you flustered by his fluffy find. “No farmer's gonna shoot his own dog”
And then you were at it again, bickering over the fundamental rules of cloud spotting as Charlie glanced over at you waltzing around each other once again in a dance only you and Tommy seemed to know the steps of.
“ Well. He went and cocked that one up” Tommy grunted, shifting against the ground as the clouds merged into one large, messy massacre “ Should've used a handgun. Now there's rabbit innards all over my bloody sky”
Your laugh came light, breathy, impossibly feminine, freezing Tommy mid-drag of his cigarette as his eyes tracked every delicate line of your face and that unguarded, unrehearsed, devastating sound he'd coaxed from your lips.
And despite himself, he wanted to hear it again. And again.
“ Suits you, that” he muttered, eyes lingering on the soft curve of your smile as your gaze met his, locked for a second time in a moment neither of you dared name.
But as one brow began to knit, the others deepened and surrender gave way to stubbornness, accusing the other for having caught them off guard.
“ London. Yes or no?” Tommy snapped back to default, chasing whatever the fuck that was away with cold precision as you shot to your feet, eager to escape the heat under your heels.
“Yes” you agreed, brushing the dirt from the hem of your dress into the air as you pivoted on your heel, calling over your shoulder. “ Just don't expect me to act like the besotted girlfriend!”
“Wouldn't dream of it!” his voice carried across the yard as he squinted through the dying sun, watching you vanish out onto the road.
“ You're already half gone for her, Tom” Charlie's voice cut through his thoughts, as Tommy remained where you'd left him, tracking the sky, and seeing nothing but a problem. A beautiful, bloody, problem.
And I'm already halfway lost for her, too. Fuck.
*I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter in the comments below 🩵*
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