Chapter Text
Carla walked arm in arm down the cobbles with Ryan, but even the familiar press of his shoulder against hers didn’t do much to steady her.
Somewhere behind them, somebody laughed, and Carla had to resist the bitter urge to turn around and snap at them, to ask what exactly was so funny. Because she didn’t feel funny.
She felt raw.
There was a dark cloud hanging over her that no amount of sarcasm or pretending she was above it all, that she was unbothered, could shift because Lisa had walked out on her yesterday. She had retreated. Pulled back, bolted again, like the moment between them, the heat and tenderness and breathless confessions between her bedsheets had suddenly become a mistake because Betsy had reacted badly.
Betsy. The name alone sat like grit under Carla’s ribs. Carla understood her. Better than Lisa gave her credit for. She understood loyalty, jealousy, fear, confusion.
She understood Betsy was Lisa’s daughter and that meant she came first, of course she did, as she should. Carla wouldn’t have respected Lisa if she didn’t put her daughter first. But understanding it didn’t make the rejection hurt any less. It didn’t stop Carla from replaying yesterday over and over all night until she felt sick with it.
Lisa’s hands on her. Lisa’s mouth against hers. Their bodies pressed together, no space between them. Lisa looking at her like she was something precious. They had crossed a line neither of them could pretend they hadn’t seen coming and din’t want. But then Lisa had walked away.
Carla hated how much their time together yesterday had mattered. She hated how much she had let herself hope.
Then she lifted her head and saw them. Lisa and Betsy, just ahead, coming the other way.
Her stomach dropped so quickly it was almost embarrassing.
“Oh great, terrific, just what I need.” She said to Ryan.
Ryan followed her gaze and his expression changed. Softened first, then sharpened with caution as he saw his aunt already straightening, already pulling the patented Carla armour back into place, shoulders squaring beneath her coat, chin lifting as if she could make herself untouchable by posture alone.
Lisa saw her at almost the same time.
It was instant. Carla caught the little hitch in Lisa’s step, the brief widening of her eyes before she controlled it. Betsy noticed too. Of course she did. Betsy noticed everything when it suited her.
For one horrible second, the four of them seemed to slow in the middle of the street like the world had narrowed to this one patch of cobbles.
Lisa looked tired, there were shadows beneath her eyes and tension in her jaw. Her blonde hair was neat, but her fingers twitched once at her side like she wanted to reach for Carla and knew she couldn’t. Carla saw it. Then hated herself for seeing it, her hope was a stupid, humiliating thing.
“Hi.” The detective’s greeting was awkward, making Carla feel even more awkward than she already did as she returned the greeting, missing as Lisa checked her out multiple times, eyes flicking up and down her.
Carla didn’t miss the awkwardness, though. That landed cleanly. The little pause before Lisa spoke. The carefulness and the distance.
“Hi,” Carla replied, and even to her own ears it sounded too flat, like she had shoved everything she felt into a locked drawer and was leaning her full weight against it to lock it up tight. Lisa’s eyes flicked over her again, helpless and quick, taking in the tights, the dress beneath her coat, the way Carla’s hair fell loose around her shoulders. There was want there. Carla would have had to be blind not to see it. Except she didn’t let herself see it. She was too busy looking anywhere else.
Betsy stood beside Lisa, face arranged into something bored and teenage, but there was too much attention in her eyes. Too much calculation under the slouch.
“Let me guess, off to the factory.”
“Good guess,” Carla couldn’t even look at the woman as she responded, the rejection already festering in her stomach. “Anyway, must crack on, early bird and all that.”
The words came out brisk and dismissive, pure Carla Connor on a bad day. But inside, she felt anything but brisk. Inside, the question kept gnawing.
How?
How did they go from giving each other multiple orgasms yesterday, from Lisa gasping her name and asking multiple times if it really was her first time with a woman, from Carla letting be touched and held and wanted in a way that was completely new but felt terrifyingly close to perfect… to this?
To standing on the street like near-strangers. How did they go from sharing a moment so special to barely able to look at each other today?
The reason why opened her mouth as Carla tried to move past.
Betsy shifted forward, just enough to block the easy exit.
“Hang on a second, I know I’m not working today but I left something in my locker, my phone charger and I really need it. Can I come and pick it up later?”
Carla stopped. Ryan’s arm tightened fractionally beneath hers. Not enough to be obvious to anyone else, but enough for Carla to know he’d felt the stiffening as she’d been stopped from retreating. Betsy didn’t look at her mum. She kept her eyes on Carla, chin tilted, expression carefully casual.
Carla stared at her. There were a dozen responses she could have given. Sensible ones. She could have told Betsy to come back tomorrow when she was actually on shift. She could have said no. She could have said she’d send someone to drop it off. She could have said that after the stunts Betsy had already pulled, she wasn’t exactly top of the trusted list. And she should have but Betsy was Lisa’s daughter.
And despite the frustration Carla felt at the situation, she didn’t have it in her to blame the youngster, to show her how much her temper tantrum had hurt her chance at being happy with her mum. She didn’t have it in her to be cruel to a kid who was clearly frightened of change, even if that fear felt like a noose around Carla’s neck.
“Yeah, fill your boots,” Carla said.
Lisa’s gaze snapped to her, something painfully grateful and guilty flickering across her face.
Carla ignored it.
“And also just to check I do still actually have the job there?” Betsy asked with her usually sarcastic drawl.
There it was again, that push. Betsy’s expression was calm but there was something underneath it that Carla didn’t like. Something too sharp. She had seen enough chancers, liars and wounded kids lashing out sideways to know when someone was trying to get one over on her and despite the number of times she’d already let Carla down and proven why she shouldn’t have a job, again, Carla was a goner for the Swains. That was the problem. Lisa had opened a door Carla hadn’t even realised she wanted open, and Betsy, difficult as she was, came with her.
Despite all of her misgivings about giving her chance after chance, she responded, “Yes Betsy, you still have the job, for now anyway. Anything else?”
For a second, something passed over Betsy’s face. A look of satisfaction. It was gone quickly enough that most people would have missed it.
Carla almost did.
“No, that’s it, thanks, thanks a lot.”
Carla didn’t respond, pretended not to notice the way Lisa stayed quiet beside her daughter as she brushed past them to make her way to the factory, she felt Lisa watching her go thoguh.
Every step she took away from Lisa felt ridiculous, like she was seventeen again, pretending she wasn’t bothered by someone who had the power to ruin her day with one look.
Ryan waited until they were far enough away before he spoke.
“Well, that wasn’t at all awkward was it,” Ryan teased as they continued down the street.
“Shut your hole,” Carla huffed, but there was no heat in it.
Behind them, back on the street, Carla missed Betsy’s smirk. She missed the way Betsy waited until Carla and Ryan had disappeared onto the factory before letting her gaze slide across the road. She missed the small nod Betsy gave towards the Radcliffe brothers. It wasn’t much. Barely anythiny, just a small dip of the chin. A flash of eye contact. The sort of thing that could have meant nothing if anyone had been watching.
But it didn’t mean nothing.
The brothers were loitering near the corner in a car. One of them lifted his brows at Betsy. The other smirked, low and mean.
Betsy’s mouth curved at the edge. Lisa, still caught staring after Carla with guilt written all over her face, didn’t see it either.
None of them understood yet that something had been set in motion by a wayward teen who had no thought for the consequences of her actions.
Or maybe she did, which was worse, because she just didn’t care.
By the time Carla reached Underworld, she had done what she always did best. She buried it.
She buried thoughts of Lisa under client emails, stock issues, invoices, three separate phone calls with clients who all seemed to think they were the most important contacts. She buried the ache in her chest beneath fabric samples, then snapped at Kirk for putting something in the wrong place, apologised without actually using the word sorry, then spent twenty minutes helping Fizz solve a production issue she could have pretended not to notice.
She was good at work. Work made sense. If something went wrong, you could trace it backwards until you found the mistake.
By early afternoon, she had almost convinced herself she was doing fine when the team appeared at the office door, all in footwear not appropriate for the factory, wittering about team building and bowling that she had completely forgotten about.
In the middle of all of it, Betsy appeared. Carla barely registered her at first. Just another body at the edge of the floor, hovering in a way that managed to look both bored and expectant.
Then Betsy spoke. “Can I get my charger?”
Carla turned, distracted, “Yeah, go on then.”
Lisa’s daughter looked towards the lockers. Then towards Carla’s office. Carla didn’t notice. She was too busy waving the staff towards the door after agreeing that she’d accompany them for just one game.
The factory emptied in bursts of chatter and laughter, the warmth of bodies draining out of the place until the hum of Underworld became thinner, quieter. Betsy slipped across the floor. Not to the lockers but into Carla’s office. She moved with a teenage boldness of someone who believed consequences were something that happened to other people. Her eyes flicked once to the glass panel, back to Carla, who was now near the cutting table, half-turned away, talking over her shoulder to Sarah.
Betsy opened the office door. Inside, everything smelled faintly of Carla, like coffee and expensive perfume.
Betsy went straight to the drawer. She knew where to look. She’d watched Carla rummaged around enough times when she’d decided to ditch the machines and camp out in Carlas office to know where things were.
The spare set of keys sat in the drawer, for a second, Betsy paused, not with any actual guilt but just awareness that she was about to cross a new line. She snatched the keys, shoved them into her pocket, grabbed the charger she had actually left on purpose earlier, and stepped back out.
By the time Carla returned to the factory after changing her shoes, the atmosphere had shifted into that strange quiet that came after everyone had left. The machines stood still. Fabric lay folded in shadows. The usual chatter had been replaced by the hum of electricity and the faint creak of the building settling.
Carla stepped inside and moved through the floor methodically, switching off lights, checking plugs, glancing beneath tables. It soothed her, in a way.
The control.
She was just reaching for the final switch when she heard it. A phone chime from somewhere in the darkened factory floor.
Carla froze. Her head lifted. For a moment she thought she had imagined it. Her own phone was on her desk, screen dark. The building was supposed to be empty.
“Hello,” she called, “hello, hello is anybody there.”
Her voice carried across the factory and came back thinner.
Nothing.
Carla stepped forward slightly, eyes narrowing as she peered between the machines. Shadows pooled in the corners, stretched beneath worktables, gathered behind stacks of fabric.
She felt it then, an unmistakable prickle, a sense of being watched. Her fingers tightened around her keys.
Silence.
Carla moved another step. She didn’t see Betsy crouched behind one of the machines. Didn’t see the way the girl held her breath, phone clutched too tightly in her hand after the accidental chime had given her away. Didn’t see Betsy’s wide eyes, not frightened enough to stop, but frightened enough now to understand that being clever in theory felt different from hiding in the dark while Carla stood only feet away.
The tension was broken as Carla’s phone rang.
The sound made her flinch more than she would ever admit.
Lisa’s name glowed on her screen and Carla’s heart did something embarrassingly hopeful before she could crush it.
She answered. “Hello, I didn’t expect to hear from you, after yesterday anyway.”
There was a pause on the other end. Then Lisa’s voice came through, softer than before. “Carla, please can we talk?”
Carla closed her eyes. That please did something to her. It slipped straight under the armour.
“Talk about what?” She knew it sounded defensive. She knew she was making it harder. But what else was she supposed to do? Smile sweetly and pretend Lisa hadn’t left her feeling like a mistake?
Lisa breathed out, and Carla could picture her. The hand through the blonde hair that she had held clenched between her fists not even twenty four hours ago.
“About yesterday, Please. Can you come to the Rovers?”
Carla glanced once more across the factory floor. Still nothing. Maybe she had imagined it. Maybe one of the staff had left a phone somewhere.
“Errrm, yeah okay then, listen though I’ll be a few minutes, I’ve got to call some clients back, they want some figures asap sooo… meet you in the pub?”
“Yeah, I’ll get us a drink.”
There was something careful in Lisa’s voice now. Nervous. Carla’s throat tightened again.
“Okay see you then, bye.” She ended the call before either of them could say anything else. Before Lisa could change her mind and before Carla showed her hand and asked the question she was desperate not to ask.
Do you want me, or don’t you?
She liked Lisa. Really liked Lisa. Her feelings probably were a lot deeper than even she wanted to acknowledge for the blonde. They had been building for weeks, if not months, in glances and and charged silences.
The way she had felt when they were together yesterday… Carla swallowed hard. She wanted that again. Not just the sex, though God knew that had branded itself into her skin. Not just the heat of it, not just the memory of Lisa’s mouth and hands and the way her name had sounded when Lisa lost control.
She wanted the after. The closeness. The terrifying, impossible possibility that maybe someone like Lisa could look at someone like Carla and not walk away.
She wanted Lisa to choose her.
Or at least to stop making Carla feel ridiculous for hoping she might.
Behind the machine, Betsy listened. She heard enough. Enough to know her mum had called Carla. Enough to know Carla was going to the Rovers. Enough for her expression to harden.
The small, uncertain flicker from earlier disappeared completely. In its place came something colder. Something born from jealousy and fear and a desperate need to control a situation she felt slipping out of her hands.
Carla drew in a breath, shoved her phone into her pocket, and forced herself back into motion.
“Right,” she muttered to herself, shaking off the odd feeling crawling over her skin as she made her way out of the factory, “Don’t make a tit of yourself.”
As she walked into the pub, she spotted Lisa almost immediately, sat in a booth, hands clasped in front of her on the table.
Carla’s step faltered so slightly most people would have missed it. Lisa looked composed at first glance. Too composed. Back straight, shoulders squared, face arranged into that detective’s stillness she wore somwtimes. Her hands were the giveaway. Fingers interlocked too tightly, knuckles pale, thumbs pressing together like she needed something to do with them or she might come apart.
Carla noticed because of course she did. She noticed everything about Lisa now, apparently. She hated herself for it. Hated the way her heart gave a stupid, painful lift at the sight of her, even after yesterday. Even after being walked out on. Even after spending the whole morning telling herself she was done making a fool of herself over someone who had already made her choice.
Lisa looked up, there was something in Lisa’s eyes that pulled at Carla before she could stop it. Want, regret and fear all tangled together and quickly hidden as Carla approached the booth.
Carla didn’t let herself soften. She couldn’t afford to, not with Ryan behind the bar watching her every move. Not with Lisa sitting there like she was about to deliver bad news and had rehearsed everything she was about to say to her.
Carla slid into the seat opposite her, already bracing.
“Hi, I’ve got you a drink, just a soft one since we’re both working.”
The drink was there on the table between them. A Coke, untouched, beads of condensation gathering on the glass.
Lisa had sounded soft on the phone, careful and nervous in a way that had made Carla stupid enough to hope there might be an apology waiting, or at least an admission that yesterday had scared her because it mattered. That Betsy’s reaction had thrown her, but she hadn’t meant to make Carla feel disposable.
Carla still didn’t dare glance at Ryan stood behind the bar clearly watching, instead she took a seat with a murmured, “Tar. What did you want to talk to me about?”
She kept her voice level. The effort it took was humiliating beciase underneath it, everything in her was too exposed.
She could still feel Lisa’s body against hers, Lisa’s fingers clinging and pulling her back in like she couldn’t bear to let her go. The heat of it. The laughter afterwards, breathless and quiet as they’d drank tea in Carlas dressing gowns. The kind of intimacy that didn’t feel casual no matter what anyone tried to call it.
“I suppose about the way things ended between us yesterday.”
There it was. Carla’s stomach tightened hard enough to hurt, those words made something flicker inside her again. Something pathetic and hopeful. Because Lisa had said between us. Not the way I left. Not what happened yesterday. Between us. Like there had been an us, was still an us. Like Carla hadn’t invented the weight of it all in her own head.
But hope was dangerous. Hope was the thing that made you stand in front of someone with your chest open. Carla knew better.
“I thought there was no us, according to you.”
It slipped out before she could soften it, edged with all the hurt she would never admit to directly. Her eyes stayed on Lisa’s face, daring her to deny it, daring her to be honest, daring her not to make Carla feel like she’d been the only one in that room yesterday who had felt something real.
Lisa’s expression shifted. A small closing down “Carla, we slept together, once.”
The words landed so bluntly that Carla genuinely forgot, for a moment, how to arrange her face.
Once.
Once.
Carla looked at her incredulously. Once was such a small word. Such a cruel, neat, dismissive little word for something that had not felt small at all.
Once, like it had been nothing more than a mistake after too much tension.
Once, like she hadn’t given Lisa multiple orgasms, like Lisa hadn’t come apart beneath her, around her, against her.
Like Lisa hadn’t reached for her again after they’d both been spent and laughing and trying to catch their breath. Like Lisa hadn’t pulled her back into the bedroom for another round even after Lisa’s phone rang.
Once, like Lisa hadn’t looked at her afterwards with something dangerously close to wonder, asking again if it really was her first time with a woman (which had been quite the ego boost).
Carla felt the humiliation rise first. Hot and vicious. It crawled up her throat and settled behind her eyes. Not tears. She wouldn’t let it be tears, not here with witnesses and in front of Lisa.
She just looked at her as Lisa continued, “and I’m not saying it wasn’t amazing because it was, but, I just don’t feel that I’m ready for anything else right now. Not with you, not with anybody.”
There was a ringing silence inside Carla after that, she felt something in her go very still.
Not with you, not with anybody. It should have softened the blow, maybe. Lisa had clearly meant it to. She had probably told herself it was kinder that way, making it general, making it not about Carla specifically. But Carla heard the words the only way her old wounds knew how to hear them.
Not with you.
That was the bit that stuck. Not with you. She wasn’t ready. Not for Carla. Not for whatever Carla represented. The fact that Carla Connor was never simple, never soft enough, never easy to love without consequence. Carla couldn’t have closed her gobsmacked expression if she’d have tried, the hurt was all consuming, though she masked it well. This was coming from the woman who said she didn’t do casual.
The woman who had made that distinction matter.
The woman who had made Carla think she was safe to feel something, because Lisa wasn’t the type to make it cheap. Lisa had said she didn’t do casual, and Carla had believed her. Worse than that, Carla had let that belief settle somewhere tender inside her.
Now Lisa was sitting opposite her, turning yesterday into a one-off.
An amazing mistake but mistake all the same - what was it the kids these days said, ‘fucked and chucked’.
Something old and ugly twisted in Carla’s chest.
That familiar feeling of inadequacy. Of being wanted in private and regretted in daylight. Of being desirable enough to touch but not enough to choose. Good enough for a body in the dark. Not good enough for the complicated, ordinary, public aftermath.
Not good enough to stay for.
She felt suddenly exposed in her own skin.
Too much. Too eager. Too foolish. Too old to be sitting in a pub feeling like the child she once was, waiting to be told why she wasn’t enough. Instead of crying like she wanted, she instead started laughing, folding her head in her hands “Unbelievable.”
The laugh came out sharp, almost amused, but it wasn’t amusement. It was the sound of a door being slammed internally. The sound of Carla grabbing for the nearest weapon she had left, scorn.
Her fingers pressed against her forehead for a second, hiding her eyes. It was the closest she would allow herself to come to breaking. Because if she looked at Lisa too long, she might ask why.
Why did you look at me like that yesterday?
Why did you touch me like that?
Why did you make me feel like I mattered?
Why did you call me here just to take it back?
But Carla didn’t ask questions that made her sound breakable, so she laughed.
Lisa’s face was closed off and cold as she responded with a sharp, “what?”
That sharpness finished what the rejection had started. Carla lifted her head slowly. The coldness on Lisa’s face felt almost obscene after everything. Like Lisa had put her professional mask on to survive hurting Carla and somehow expected Carla to be thankful. Like she was annoyed Carla had reacted wrong. Annoyed Carla had made the rejection messy. Carla stared at her, and beneath the smirk she could feel herself splitting.
“Did you bring me all the way here just to tell me that? Just that you’re not interested?”
The words were controlled. Too controlled. If anyone else had heard them, they might have thought Carla was merely irritated.
But it wasn’t irritation, not really. It was devastation dressed up as bite. It was the sickening awareness that she had walked into that pub with hope in her chest. That she had changed given herself a few extra minutes to check her hair in the mirror without admitting why. That she had let herself imagine, even briefly, that Lisa had called her there because she couldn’t stay away. She had let herself hope Lisa might apologise.
Instead, Lisa had given her a drink and a soft voice and then calmly told her there would be nothing else.
“I just wanted to talk to you, I thought I owed you that at least.”
Owed. That word hurt too. Carla almost flinched from it. Owed made it sound like a duty. A kindness Lisa was extending so she could tick a moral box and go home less burdened by guilt. It made Carla feel like a loose end, a mistake.
Not someone Lisa wanted, Not someone Lisa had stayed awake thinking about.
“Oh well that’s big of you, well thanks a bundle, but if that’s all we’ve got to say then… are we good?” She gave it the shape of sarcasm because she had nothing else left.
Are we good?
It was absurd. They were not good. Carla could feel the damage spreading quietly through her. Could feel how carefully she would have to pack this away later. How she would replay it despite herself, every word, every look, every place where maybe she had misunderstood and every place where she hadn’t.
Lisa shook her head, unaware that she’d just broken something inside Carla, despite her outward projection of not caring.
“Fine, if that’s the way you want to do this, I’ll go.”
Carla didn’t answer. She couldn’t, if she opened her mouth, something else might come out. Something humiliating. Something like don’t. Something like I thought you were different. Something like I wanted you.
Lisa snatched up her phone and stood, walking out without a backwards glance.
The absence of that backward glance was almost worse than the words. Carla watched her leave with a smirk still held on her face by sheer force of will. Her mouth stayed curved, eyes narrowed slightly, expression perfectly calibrated to say she was bored by the whole thing. Above it. Unmoved. Inside, she felt like she’d been left standing naked in the street.
The pub door opened. Lisa stepped out. The door closed behind her. Only then did Carla’s face fall. It didn’t collapse dramatically, she didn’t sob, didn’t gasp or cover her mouth or do anything that would let the room understand the scale of what had happened.
It simply drained from her.
The smirk disappeared first. Then the light from her eyes. Her shoulders lowered a fraction, the tension no longer useful now there was no one left to perform at. She stared down at the table, at the beer mat beneath her fingertips, and began playing with it idly. Turning it. Pressing one corner down.
Anything to occupy her hands, to stop them shaking.
The Coke Lisa had bought her sat untouched.
Ryan came over, Carla sensed him before he reached the table. She didn’t look up when he asked if she was alright.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be,” she replied as she picked up the Coke Lisa had bought her before deciding against taking a sip. The glass was cold against her fingers. She held it for half a second, then put it back down. She couldn’t drink it, didn’t think she could swallow around the knot in her throat.
Shame curled around her ribs. She had misjudged it. That was the thought that hurt most. Not Lisa changing her mind. Not even Lisa walking away. But the possibility that Carla had been wrong. That she had taken warmth and lust and a few breathless moments and built them into something more because she wanted to be wanted so badly, wanted Lisa to feel for her as she did her, she’d stopped being careful.
She wasn’t in the mood now for bowling. The thought of fluorescent lights, and pretending to care whether Kirk knocked down six pins or seven made her stomach turn. She couldn’t do loud. She couldn’t do cheerful. She couldn’t stand in front of everyone and be the sharp, dry, glamorous boss when all she wanted was to disappear somewhere no one could look at her.
She wanted to hunker down and wallow in self-pity and shame. So she stood. The movement was too quick, too final, like if she stayed seated one second longer, Ryan might see through her.
She made her way back out of the pub, the air outside cooler against her face, the noise of the Rovers closing behind her.
Carla looked towards the factory. There was a dull ache spreading beneath her breastbone, heavy and humiliating. But she forced herself forward anyway, each step putting distance between her and the booth, the drink, the conversation, the unbearable softness of what she’d let herself want.
By the time Underworld came back into view, her face had settled again, determined to bury her pain in something productive.
Determined not to think about Lisa.
Determined not to feel like yesterday had meant everything to her and nothing to the woman who had walked away.
Determined, above all, not to admit that the worst part wasn’t being rejected, it was believing, even for a moment, that she might have been chosen back.