Page 34 of Save Me

“Cheesy pop all the way,” I reply with a defensive shrug, “plus stuff my parents listen to, I guess.”

“I’m shocked,” he declares.

“Really?”

“Nope!” He laughs at the same time as I roll my eyes over his teasing.

“I mostly listen to older stuff, very much influenced by Mal’s taste in music. He went and saw Live Aid in the eighties. Got to see U2, Queen, Dire Straits and Sting play live. How cool must that have been?”

“Old school, huh?” he asks, not taking his eyes off the road, but nodding along in approval.

“I liked Justin Timberlake once upon a time, though I wouldn’t cream my knickers over him or anything.” I instantly blush, realizing what I’ve just said out loud for all to hear, including the guy I’m crushing on even though I shouldn’t be.

“Cream your knickers?! I never dreamed I would hear you say such a thing!” he says as he throws his head back laughing. For the first time this week, I laugh along with him.

“Mal uses that expression all the time. Guess it’s rubbed off on me,” I explain while I continue to giggle.

“Who the hell is Mal? Some other creepy dude who’s sniffing around you?”

“Oh, Mal’s my father,” I tell him, which turns the atmosphere a little heavy again. “And before you ask, he stopped being ‘Dad’ over the summer, and no, I can’t talk about it. Sorry.”

“You gotta give me something, Moneypenny,” he sighs, before shaking his head. “There must be something you can give me. Why the fuck is Bodhi, of all people, your legal guardian?”

I pause before answering, silently contemplating all the ramifications of opening up to him. The main question being, can I really trust him? He saved my life, so how can I not trust him? Plus, look what happened with the one person who I thought I could rely on more than anyone else in the world.

Take a deep breath and jump, Beth!

“Ok,” I finally reply, though I’m still halfway through a deep breath that I began taking just to psyche myself up. “I can tell you why in a roundabout way, but you have to accept what I tell you and how I tell you. No trying to push me further!”

“Sure, now tell me before I lose my mind!” he says, with his eyes bulging and his hand making an explosive gesture beside his right ear. “You live in Pebble Drive, right?

I nod, confirming my address to him and feeling glad to have any little distraction to put this isn’t-she-a weirdo talk off. In all likelihood, he’s going to bolt as soon as everything’s laid out bare before him.

“Something happened over the summer, something fucked up, if you like,” I begin as I twiddle with my fingers. I take a moment’s breath while studying the state of my nails that have taken the hit for all my stress this summer. “We moved here a month or two before my seventeenth birthday, which was in April, and while I wasn’t at school, I hung out at the beach a lot. Bodhi noticed I was there pretty much every day and was always on my own, so I guess he took pity on me. He began talking to me and introduced me to Annie. I guess he thought she was a girl, and perhaps we’d get on more, and while we did, I still spent a lot of time chatting about everything and nothing with him. I just found him really easy to talk to, and maybe he felt the same about me. I don’t know, but he’d sit and talk to me for hours about surfing, the water, and whatever else struck him that day.”

“Did you see him naked?” He smirks as he continues looking out of the front windscreen.

“Course,” I reply with a shrug, like it’s a given, because with Bodhi, nudity is always a given. Xander chuckles to himself before scaring me half to death when he overtakes someone at top speed. By the time I get my breath back, I notice I’m staring at him like he’s truly nuts, even though he doesn’t appear at all fazed.

“Anyway,” I finally continue, huffing out a breath of relief over the fact that we’re both still alive, “a few months later, Oliver Lawrence is at my house, talking to my father. I come downstairs and say hello, offer them drinks, and so forth, before walking into the kitchen. A few minutes later, Oliver appears before me, but with my father very noticeably missing.”

I watch as Xander listens intently, his knuckles gripping the steering wheel with such force, his knuckles have now blanched white.

“He starts talking to me about how I feel about moving here, have I had a boyfriend, all polite chit chat. But then he suddenly tells me I’m beautiful.”

I shake my head as though I’m reliving the whole awkward conversation right here, in front of Xander. Meanwhile, his jaw is starting to tick, and he looks extremely aggravated over what he’s hearing.

“He found it interesting that I didn’t take his compliment easily but then asked me to come to my father’s office the following day. He told me he had a proposition for me.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to like what said proposition is, am I?” he says through clenched teeth, already shaking his head before I’ve even told him the best part.

“Probably not,” I reply with what sounds like shame. “Basically, he told me that Dad had joined in with a gambling game with them at some party around Oliver’s house. He got drunk and lost everything…and I mean, everything!”

“Fuck!” he gasps, which is a pretty standard response to such a story, one that was similar to mine. Though, I had little voice at the time and don’t remember putting it quite so eloquently.

“In short, a new deal was struck, and because I am still seventeen, he needed my legal guardian to co-sign it with me,” I explain, taking it back to facts and figures again, just like Oliver had sounded on that day in June. “I could have made it easy and just asked Mal to sign it, but I no longer see him as my father. And I certainly don’t want Mum knowing about all of this until she has to. The only other adult I knew that I could trust was Bodhi.” I smile because he truly is like a big teddy bear. “Of course, Oliver had the necessary contacts and influence to get the relevant paperwork put together quickly. He didn’t approve of Bodhi, but that was just an added bonus.”

“You signed a contract?” he asks with a deep-set frown, before stopping the car outside of my house and looking at me for further explanation. Too ashamed to say it out loud, I simply nod, to which his face morphs into one of utter horror. He looks so serious, it makes me squirm a little inside of my seat. The leather beneath squeaks and sticks to my skin where I am beginning to sweat under that penetrating stare of his.

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