Authors: Lauren Henderson
Callum senses that, and pulls back.
“Oh shit,” he says quickly, “I taste of beer, don’t I? Sorry!” He grabs the bottle of wine and takes a swig from it, almost gargling it around his mouth. It should be funny, but I’m too wound up now, too nervous, to be able to make a laughing comment or reassure him; I just sit there, feeling glued to the spot, as he kisses me again, with less hesitation this time.
“That better?” he says against my mouth, and I nod and mumble “Uh-huh,” because it is. It’s lovely. He’s warm, and the wine’s intoxicating as I kiss him back, first with small, delicate nips, finding each other, finding the connection; then, leaning against each other with more weight, Callum’s body heavy and solid, my hands coming up to wrap around his neck, feeling him wind his arms round my waist to pull me closer.
My head tips to the side, and Callum follows me eagerly, urgent now.
God, I love kissing,
I think, my heart surging, my body flooding with the thrill of it, as Callum’s tongue meets mine and I let myself go completely. Everything I have is going into this kiss. I want nothing more than to forget about Jase, forget about Dan, forget about anything that’s ever gone wrong for me, just lose myself in kissing Callum McAndrew, right here, right now, on a blanket in front of a bonfire, drums pounding, music swirling around us, his mouth tasting of wine, his tongue sliding past my open lips.…
My eyes snap open. My hands, even though they’re around his neck, touching his warm skin, are suddenly clammy and cold.
Something doesn’t feel right.
I pull back, unwrapping my arms from him, rubbing my hands together, mumbling awkwardly:
“Sorry—my hands were freezing—”
“Yeah, it’s pretty chilly,” Callum agrees. “Like, um, the wind got up all of a sudden.”
“I know,” I agree instantly, though I haven’t felt even a breeze and I don’t think he has either.
“Do you want me to warm them?” he asks, awkwardly, but he doesn’t make a move to reach out to take my hands between his, and when I shake my head, he doesn’t insist. I make a big show of rubbing my hands together, even putting them into my armpits under my jacket and pantomiming shivering, as if I were a really talentless children’s TV presenter, miming being cold so obviously that even a two-year-old would understand what I was trying to convey.
Thank God for the music, the rise and fall of voices around the bonfire and up on the quarry ledges, the crackle of flames from the fires. Without them, our silence would be even more obvious. And it’s embarrassing enough as it is.
Callum shuffles his legs nervously. I can’t sit there any longer with my hands in my armpits. I’m beginning to feel like I’m not miming cold anymore, but imitating a gorilla instead, again at a two-year-old level: I have a crazy impulse to squat and start going ‘Ooh-ooh! Ooh-ooh!’ Pulling my hands out from under my jacket, I rest them in my lap and look down at them.
“Better?” Callum asks.
“Yes,” I mumble.
Callum shifts uncomfortably. I pull my legs up to my side, unable to sit still. I’m twitching as if my skin is crawling off my body. I open my mouth, needing to say something, anything, to break the silence, and what comes out is:
“Um … I really need to go to the loo.”
Nice, Scarlett. Really nice. First you do a gorilla impersonation and then you talk about going to the toilet.
“Everyone goes in the bushes,” Callum offers. “Over there, usually.”
He turns, extending an arm, pointing to the thick undergrowth bordering the access path to the quarry.
“You just have to be careful not to get scratched up,” he adds. “Um—do you want me to come with you?”
“No!” I almost scream, jumping to my feet as if I’d just been stung by fire ants. “I’ll be fine! Thanks! But I’ll be fine!”
I take off in the direction of the bushes in such a hurry that I stumble over a hillock of stubbly dirt and turn my left foot over on the plastic flange on the heel of my trainer. Ow. I bite my tongue to avoid gasping in pain, and don’t even break stride, hobbling along as Callum calls:
“You all right?”
I raise one hand to reassure him and keep going grimly, ignoring the stabbing pain in my ankle. Not till I reach the undergrowth and can bury myself safely inside its shelter do I stop, grab a branch, and balance on my right foot while circling my left one way and then the other, easing out the ankle strain.
I think I must be in shock. I can’t believe what just happened.
Kissing Callum was lovely, just as lovely as it was last year. Until—and I can’t think of a nicer way to put this—until his tongue slid into my mouth.
And then all I wanted to do was scream at him to get it out.
It’s not Callum’s fault, not in any way. I wanted him to kiss me, and I wanted to kiss him back just as much. I opened my mouth, I tightened my arms around him, I met his own tongue with the tip of mine. Up until that moment, I was yearning to press my whole body against his, to lie down next to him on the blanket, kissing and touching till we worked each other up into as high a state of excitement as we could manage.
So what just went so badly wrong that I scarpered away as if my trainers were on fire?
My brain’s spinning. The only two logical conclusions I can come to are:
A) I don’t actually fancy Callum after all,
or:
B) I’m so in love with Jase that I can’t even French-kiss a boy without feeling so guilty that I have to stop.
Neither of these theories is remotely consoling.
I set my left foot back to the ground and start pushing my way farther into the bushes. I’m so wound up by now with conflicting emotions that I feel really vulnerable: no way am I peeling down my jeans and tights and squatting to wee on the ground without making sure I’m safely in deep cover. Thank goodness at least that I don’t actually need to go to the loo that badly. It was mostly an excuse to get away from that nightmare situation, Callum and I just sitting there, riven with embarrassment.
Oh.
Another thought hits me. If it had been just me pulling away from him—if he still wanted to kiss me—he’d have tried harder to get me back in his arms. He’d have kissed me again, tried to convince me that I really wanted to keep kissing him back. That’s how boys behave; once they’ve started, they hate to stop. And they’ll say, and do, a lot to keep you there.
But Callum didn’t do a thing. He acted like he wanted to stop as much as I did. He didn’t try to hold on to me, and when he offered to warm my hands or walk me to the bushes, he was just being polite. I could tell he didn’t really mean it.
It seemed as if he felt exactly the same as me.
Which leads me to option A: I don’t actually fancy Callum after all. I found that out as soon as our kissing got serious. And it was just the same for him. For some alchemical reason, we just didn’t kiss the way the other person liked. And after that, there’s no going back.
I’ve never heard of this kind of situation before. I really need some girls to talk to, girls who’ve kissed a lot of boys and maybe have had this same kind of experience. Because it’s utterly confusing to me. Unfortunately, all the girls I know who’ve kissed a lot of boys are total cows who’d lie to me just to mess up my head, so I can’t rely on any of them to tell me the truth.
I’m racking my brains to think about anyone at all I could ask, and not coming up with a single name. I’ve been weaving my way through the bushes for a while now; they’re not as dense as they look from the path, and it’s been easy enough to keep walking at a steady pace, lost in thought. But now that I’ve hit a dead end, mentally, my feet stop too.
And now that I’m not making any noise myself, I hear a heavy rustling in the bushes behind me.
The dogs,
I tell myself immediately, over the instant terror that surges through me.
It’s just those big dogs I saw playing before, chasing each other through the forest.
Nothing to freak me out there: I like dogs. But as I stand, not moving a muscle, my ears practically pricked into points to listen to the sound that seems to be coming closer by the second, it doesn’t seem like a dog, or even two. It’s too steady. Too even.
Too much like footsteps.
And no matter how calm I tell myself to be, the memory of that male figure I saw yesterday evening, following us through the dark streets of Leith, swamps my reason. I’m convinced, suddenly, that it’s Callum behind me in the woods. That it was Callum last night stalking us, and that, though he seemed totally calm and fine about me taking off just now with a rather feeble excuse about needing the loo, he’s a much better actor than I realize, and in fact, he wasn’t calm and fine at all.
After all, that wouldn’t make him the only good actor in his family.
Is Callum playing some weird double game? Is he angry with me because of Dan’s death and everything that happened at Castle Airlie afterward? Or is he following me now—making enough noise so I can’t help but be aware there’s someone else in the woods—to scare me because I pulled away from kissing him?
Wild speculations spin through my mind, speeding up into a whir of panic, and my feet speed up too. I take off, crashing into the bushes, cannoning off branches, my breath coming in panting gasps, stumbling over roots and debris on the forest floor. Acting, in other words, like the kind of pathetic, ridiculous victim that I totally despise when I watch them in horror films.
When I watch those films, I’m always shouting advice to the girls in them.
Don’t open the door without a weapon in your hand! Hit him over the head with the frying pan till he falls down—not just once, you moron, keep hitting him till he can’t move!
Or, when she’s being followed in a gloomy dark forest:
Duck down behind a big tree stump, hide till he’s past you, and then double back!
And of course, when it actually happens to me, I don’t follow my own suggestions. Instead of hiding in the dark, I flail around like a madwoman; if someone didn’t notice I was there before, they certainly do now as I tear through the bushes in a raptus of fear. But it’s stronger than me. I can’t stop. I physically can’t. I’m a running machine, fueled by pure terror. All the events of the last few days—the smoke, the fire alarm, the push over the stair rail, the drugging of my water, the possibility that someone was following me last night—all sweep together in one sharp stabbing scream inside my head, a conviction that the person behind me—Callum, it must be!—is out to kill me.
The bushes part and close behind me. I’m racing out onto some scrub land, moonlight glinting down on the gray, almost lunar landscape in front of me. Loose shingle underfoot makes it hard to keep my balance. I slip and slide, carried forward down a shallow slope, still going at full pelt.
And suddenly, I see a drop in front of me. Darkness below, a steep fall. I realize in a split second what it is: another quarry.
Because the bowl of stone in which everyone’s partying reaches up to high cliffs around us, I assumed there wouldn’t be any lower ground. But that bowl must once have been hollowed from the earth, cut out over years to quarry the stone to build the city. And the stoneworkers kept digging down, looking for more. Opening up at my feet is a huge, gaping maw, like a mouth about to swallow me.
My momentum is unstoppable. I try to dig my feet in, to turn them sideways to brake my body, but that sends me off balance, and I skid sideways, finding no purchase on the shale. I’m being carried inexorably toward the rim of the quarry. In a matter of seconds, I’ll slide over the edge.
And in that moment I don’t care. I shut my eyes and let go. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever given up, and it feels better than I thought it would. I’m so tired. I’m so tired of all this drama, the miserable break with Jase, the weirdness with Callum, the fear that someone’s seriously trying to hurt me, maybe even kill me.
I can’t fight anymore: I’ve got nothing left.
So I might as well just fall.
fourteen
“I LOVE YOU, SCARLETT”
A split second later, I realize what an idiot I’m being. An idiot drama queen, getting carried away by the wine I’ve drunk and the nonstop craziness that’s been my life ever since we reached Edinburgh. Of
course
I don’t want to fall! Of
course
I have more fight in me! Of
course
I don’t want to be found with a broken neck or a broken back at the bottom of a quarry when a search party eventually comes out looking for me!
With every ounce of strength I have, I throw myself backward, aiming to land on my bum. Even though I’m bound to take a tumble, I’ll do much better sliding down the slope on my bottom than I will pitching headfirst into nothingness. My arms flail wildly, pushing away as if through water, a huge paddling motion that, though awkward, does help to tip me backward. I brace myself for a painful landing, for getting scraped and dragged along the rough shale beneath.
And then I’m jerked back with such force that I go flying through the air. Something’s grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me as if I were a dog being hauled by its collar. The zip of my jacket cuts into the soft skin of my throat, and I scrabble with my fingers, trying to work them under the metal to stop myself from choking.
I fall back like a dead weight, landing with an impact that smacks the breath from my body. Gasping, shocked, I realize that I haven’t hit ground; there’s no sharp shale below me, but a hard, warm body. Nothing soft about it, no yielding flesh, just solid muscle.
Taylor?
I think.
But Taylor isn’t this big, this wide
.…
“Scarlett!” gasps a voice above my head.
I wriggle off him onto my knees in one rush of movement, unable to believe what I think I just heard.
“Jase?”
I exclaim, looking down at him. Moonlight is glowing on us, sparking flashes of light off the sharp edges of the gravel. But even if we weren’t so well illuminated, I would recognize Jase anywhere. His touch, his scent, his voice, his shape.
I can’t believe he’s here. But I know it’s him.
“Hey,” he says weakly, still winded by the fall.
“Oh,
Jase—
”
I throw myself on top of him again, wrapping my arms around as much of his body as I can manage. Breathing him in, taking huge comfort in pressing myself against as much of him as I can possibly manage. And, of course, I’m showering his face with burning kisses, to quote a P. G. Wodehouse novel I recently read in which the hero did that to the heroine.
“What are you
doing
here?” I exclaim, between bouts of burning-kiss showering. “How did you know where I was? Where did you
come
from? Why are you— Oh, Jase, you saved me! Jase, I missed you
so
much!”
“Scarlett—” He’s kissing me back, his hands on my face, but not with the mad enthusiasm I’m showing. “Look, let me sit up—Scarlett, let go a sec—”
But I can’t. I’m gripping him so tightly he has to put his hands behind him on the ground and lever himself up, carrying me with him like a monkey clinging to a tree for dear life.
“What are you
doing
here?” I ask again, like a CD stuck in a scratch. “I don’t understand—why are you—”
“Stop! Scarlett, stop!” He prises my hands off him and holds them tightly. “Let me get a word in, Scarlett,
please
!”
I squeeze his hands back, staring at him in amazement. His hair’s grown a little, his curls more of a short, trendy Afro now; his golden eyes are glinting at me. And he isn’t smiling.
“I saw you,” he blurts out. “I saw you back there. With that guy.”
“Back where?” I ask stupidly, before I realize what he means.
“I saw you kissing him,” Jase says quietly.
“Jase …” I gulp and catch my breath, mustering my thoughts. Knowing how important it is that I say the right words, find a way to tell him the truth without offending or blaming him. “You went away. I haven’t seen you for months. And when I told you on the phone that I couldn’t be with someone who wasn’t there when I needed him … you didn’t say anything.”
Thank God. I’ve said the right thing. Jase’s expression shifts from accusatory to embarrassed; he bites his full lower lip.
“I
was
there for you,” he insists. “Just now. You’d’ve taken a header down that quarry if it weren’t for me.”
“Yes.” I tighten my grip on his hands as he tries to pull away. “You were. Thank you.” I look sideways at the slope, tilting to the sheer drop into black nothingness, and shiver: I could be down there right now, badly injured or worse. And it would be completely my own fault; no one to blame this time but myself.
“I thought you’d broken up with me,” I say, looking down at our hands. “When you never rang me back.”
“I thought you’d broken up with
me,
” he says instantly.
“No, I didn’t!” I drag in a deep breath. “But I missed you so much, and it isn’t enough just to talk to you on the phone every so often. I need you closer than that. I need to be with you, Jase. I really do. I missed you so badly, I couldn’t bear it.”
We’re hugging now, Jase pulling me onto his lap, his arms wrapping around my back.
“I missed you too!” he mumbles into my neck, his breath deliciously tickly on my bare skin. “I was so messed up … but when you said that about me not being there for you, it really did my head in. I felt so bad, I can’t tell you. And I didn’t know what to say.” He pauses. “No, that’s not right. I thought there wasn’t anything I
could
say. I went around and around in circles. And then I decided I was being completely stupid. You rang me ’cause you were in trouble, and I wasn’t there. And I
should
be there if you’re in trouble. That’s what a boyfriend’s for. So I got on my bike and came straight up to Edinburgh to find you.”
“Oh,
Jase
…,” I say idiotically, my heart too full to manage another word. I’m determined not to cry.
“I found the school easy enough, first thing this morning,” he goes on. “But I wasn’t sure what to do next. I thought, they’ll never let me in to see you, and what could I do in a girls’ school anyway?”
“It’s actually a boys’ school,” I mumble, “but never mind.…”
“So I got a bunk in a hostel and just hung around outside all day, waiting for you. But no one came out.”
“They had us doing lectures all day,” I explain.
“And then I saw someone climbing down a fire escape,” he says, “and I knew it had to be you and Taylor, because who else would do something like that—”
“You were waiting outside all day and all evening?” I practically coo. “Oh,
Jase,
that’s so
sweet
of you.…”
“—I was getting off my bike to come and talk to you, but you raced across the road like someone was chasing you, and jumped into that car,” he continues. “So when it took off, I thought I might as well follow you. I mean,” he adds dryly, “I didn’t have anything else to do this evening.”
We’re getting to the dodgy bit now. I wince.
“It’s a nice party, isn’t it?” I mutter feebly. “The music’s pretty good.”
“I parked my bike near that old heap of a car,” Jase says, “and walked in after you. You didn’t even look back, you were much too busy having a laugh with those boys.” He clears his throat. “I wasn’t spying on you,” he says quickly. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I mean, I didn’t know that boy from Adam. It might not have been safe for you to be alone with him.”
Well, alone in the middle of a crowd of people,
I think.
But Jase is right—having people around doesn’t make you safe.
“And you kissed him!” Jase concludes accusingly. “I saw you kissing him!”
“I’m sorry you saw that,” I say slowly.
“And that made me think that maybe you broke up with me because you wanted to be with him,” he says in a much smaller voice. “Not because I wasn’t around. I thought maybe you were just making an excuse because there was someone else you liked better.”
“No!” I pull his head down, stare straight into his eyes, crying now, but unable to help it. “There isn’t
anyone
I like better in the whole
world
! Jase, you have to believe me! I was feeling so lonely, and scared, and I thought kissing him would make me feel better, but it just made me feel worse—it was weird and wrong and it just made me miss you more … that’s why I took off and came into the bushes by myself, because I felt so awful and strange and lonely.…”
“Really?” he says, his arms tightening around me, and just by the tone of his voice, I know that he’s forgiven me for kissing another boy. Not that, technically, I did anything wrong, I note to myself. We were broken up, or I thought we were. And I was careful not to apologize for kissing Callum—I said I was sorry Jase saw it, but that’s different. Instinct tells me not to say that I’m sorry just to get back with my boyfriend. This way I can be happy that I told nothing but the truth.
“Yes,” I say, winding my fingers as best I can through his ridiculously thick curls, causing him to yelp and wince because they’re so tightly knit. “Sorry,” I say guiltily. “I like your hair longer, by the way. It’s really cool.”
“I do too. But I can’t have it too long,” he says. “ ’Cause of the bike helmet.”
“Right,” I say.
And then we stop talking and look at each other, a long, serious stare right into each other’s eyes. Silence falls, a calm, all-encompassing silence, in which we’re not saying anything because there’s nothing left to say. And I learn that sometimes, having nothing left to say can be the most wonderfully peaceful thing you ever feel.
I’m smiling with this realization as Jase lowers his head to kiss me and I tilt mine up to his. For a moment I have a flash of déjà vu, an image of Callum and me doing exactly the same thing only half an hour before. God, I was just thinking that I needed to find a girl with more experience than me to ask her about what happened with Callum—and now I’m kissing two boys in one night! How did my life get to be this mad?
And then Jase’s lips come down on mine, and a flood of happy recognition sweeps through me, the softness of his full lips so familiar and wonderful that it’s like coming home—if coming home were the most exciting thing that you could possibly imagine.
“I love you,” I say against his mouth, and I feel, more than hear, him say it back to me as my eyes close in sheer, perfect happiness at being back with Jase again, being able to touch him, run my hands up and down his arms, feel him pressing tightly against me, knowing this is where we belong. I know we’re back together now, back to being a couple; that Jase has fought his demons and discovered that what he feels about me is more important than what our families did in the past.
And I make a silent promise to him: that I’ll never bring it up, never reproach him with it. What his father did is not his fault, and if we’re going to have a chance of staying together, I have to show him that I truly believe that.
Jase is kissing my neck now, and I’m stroking his hair, making the sort of noises that would really embarrass me if I heard them coming from someone else. But I don’t care. There’s no one around; we’re alone here, in this strange, bare landscape, clinging to each other as if we’d die if we weren’t touching. And I’m letting go. It feels almost as it did when I thought I was plummeting down the ragged stone quarry, arms outstretched frantically, knowing nothing would break my fall.
I’m falling now just as hard. Just as fast, just as deep. Letting go just as much. Falling into Jase, as he’s falling into me.
“Do you realize”—I gasp against his head—“this is the first time we’ve ever been really alone like this? I mean, without having to worry about my aunt or your dad catching us?”
Jase bites my neck lightly and looks up at me, his eyes now gleaming gold with happiness and excitement.
“Yeah,” he says dryly. “Typical of us that it’s in the middle of a freezing stone quarry with half the gravel in Scotland sticking into my bum! Couldn’t we have picked some cozy place with, I dunno, comfy seats and central heating?”
It’s true: Jase and I do seem doomed to make out in uncomfortable locations. Even when he and I spent a night together in my bedroom back at Wakefield Hall, we were squashed together on my single mattress, pulled off the bed onto the floor, having to keep very quiet because of Aunt Gwen sleeping next door, and Jase had to climb out the window at dawn.
“There’s been much too much drama,” I say, squishing down in his lap so I can kiss his neck in return. “You know what I’d love? A really boring, normal, bog-standard life.”
“No chance of that, babe,” Jase says, sighing in pleasure as I slip my hands under his jacket and sweater, pulling up his T-shirt to touch his bare skin. “I think drama’s always going to follow you round.”
“It never used to,” I say, running my hands up his chest. “I was Little Miss Boring for sixteen whole years.”
“Well”—Jase starts to pull up my own layers of clothing, sending pulses of electricity up and down my spine—“I’d say you’re definitely making up for that now.…”
And then he yelps with surprise as my jacket buzzes under his eager fingers.
“It’s my phone—sorry.” I drag it out of my jacket pocket and answer it, my conscience suddenly poking me with sharp sticks. “Taylor!” I start apologetically, but she’s far ahead of me.
“Scarlett! I was
freaking out
!” she yells. “Where
are
you? Callum said you went for a pee and never came back, but he’s acting sort of weird so I thought there was more to it, but he said no, you really did just go for a pee, so I said why wasn’t he worried that you hadn’t come back, and he said maybe you went off to listen to some music or came to find us, which sounded
totally
lame—like, why wouldn’t he have worried? And I—”
You can tell that Taylor’s in amazing shape; she’s got such good lung capacity that she doesn’t even pause for breath during that rant.
“I’m with Jase!” I say loudly, cutting through her stream of consciousness by main force.