Page 40 of Save Me

James pauses and looks at me, his eyes sparkling. “Does that interest you?”

“To be honest, yes,” I admit, not breaking eye contact. “I mean, waterbeds are pretty solid, or so I’ve heard. Not that easy to break.”

“It wasn’t a waterbed, just an ordinary one.”

I give a dry gulp. There’s something in James’s eyes I’ve never seen before. Something dark, heavy, that makes my belly tingle.

“How dull,” I croak, my voice betraying the lie.

I don’t want to imagine James having sex.

I really don’t.

But now I can’t stop wondering what he must have been doing to break his bed. And what he looked like at the time. He showed me a flash of skin when he undressed in front of me. I know he’s ripped. And I’ve seen how well he can move playing lacrosse. I bet he makes the women in his bed pretty happy.

At this moment, I’m glad of the ice cream in my hands. I wish I could dunk my face in it to cool down.

“Rumors are mostly untrue or only have a little bit of truth in them.” His knowing grin makes me afraid that he knows exactly what I was just thinking, in every detail.

I decide it’s time to conclude the subject of waterbeds. “Well, that makes me glad there are no rumors about me.”

James puts his tub back in the fridge and the spoon on the bar. Then he leans back in his seat and looks thoughtfully at me. “I tried to find out about you after the business with Lydia.”

“I don’t think I want to know what people say about me,” I say quietly.

“Most of them didn’t know who you were. And anything they did say wasn’t bad.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Seriously?”

James nods. “That’s why I was so suspicious of you. Anyone with that good a reputation must have a dark secret somewhere.”

I pull a face. “I have no dark secrets.”

“Of course not.” His expression is amused as he leans forward. “Come on, Ruby. Tell me something that no one else at school knows about you.”

I shake my head on autopilot. No way am I playing this game. “You tell me something that no one knows about you.”

I expect him to protest, but he actually seems to be thinking about it.

“If I don’t get into Oxford, my father will kill me.” He says it casually, as if he’s long come to terms with that fact. But his eyes tell a different story.

“Because he went there?” I ask cautiously.

“Both my parents did. And theirs before them.”

I always envied James and his friends for their backgrounds, which give them the best chance of getting into the best unis. But now I realize there’s another side to that. So much pressure. And it helps me understand the way James reacted at the study group a bit better. My words must have really hurt.

“I’ve wanted to go to Oxford since I was little,” I say after a while. I suddenly feel like it’s OK to trust him with this part of me. He just did, and it helped me get a handle on him a bit. We’ve done nothing but fight since we first met. It can’t do any harm if we try to clear up some of the prejudices we have about each other. “My parents always encouraged me, even if they knew it might just stay a dream. I always got good marks, but there’s more to getting into Oxford than that. But then they heard about scholarships to Maxton Hall and applied for me. We didn’t expect me to get one, but I must have made a good impression at the interview. Now I feel like it’s not just a pipe dream, and I swore I’d do everything I could to make it to Oxford. I want to make my parents proud. And myself.”

James says nothing for a moment. He looks at me, and the sudden intensity in his blue-green eyes sends a shiver down my spine. “How long have you been at the school?”

“Two years.”

He mumbles.

“What?” I ask.

He shrugs vaguely. “I’m just wondering how I never noticed you before.”

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