Page 61 of Save Me

By the end of my story, they have very different expressions on their faces. Lin looks mainly skeptical. Ember, by contrast, has rested her chin on her hand and is smiling dreamily at me.

“This Beaufort boy sounds lovely,” she sighs.

“He is not!” Lin exclaims in disbelief. “There’s no way the bloke you were just talking about is James Beaufort.”

All I can do is shrug my shoulders. Looking back at it now, it feels unreal that he actually went so far as to protect me from his friends, but…he did. More than that. He took care of me. Got me dressed while acting like a gentleman. He held my hand when I told him about Dad.

Last night has changed things between us. I can feel it distinctly. My whole body tingles when I think about the way he looked at me and the touch of his fingers on my bare skin. The time my body shivered, and James thought I was still cold—which very much wasn’t the case. The way he held me as if I was made of thin, fragile glass.

“That’s exactly what I meant when I told you to be careful,” Lin says, shaking her head and bringing me back to the present.

“I know,” I mumble. I wish I could forget the way it felt when I went under the water.

“I can’t believe Cyril did that,” she continues. “When I see him, I’ll wring his neck.”

She looks so stunned and disappointed that, yet again, I wonder if Cyril is more to her than just a classmate. Whether there was something between them, and if so, what happened. She’s always shut down when the subject of her love life has come up.Maybe now is a good time to try again, cautiously—after all, I just opened up to her.

But Ember’s next words break off my train of thought.

“Lucky James was there.” Her eyes look as though they’re about to turn into little red hearts. “I can’t believe he actually carried you out of that party.In his arms!”

Me either. Especially when I think how cold and arrogant he was to me at the start. I can’t reconcile that version of him with the James who wrapped me up in heaps of towels and stroked my back until I stopped shaking. The James who messes with my head and haunted my dreams last night, with his warm hands on my bare skin.

Not good. Not good. Not. Good.

“If I didn’t have photographic proof, I wouldn’t believe it,” Lin says, staring back at the picture. “How can a guy be such an arsehole most of the time and then act like a knight in shining armor?”

“Seems like he realized that Cyril crossed the line with Ruby and stepped in. Which shows that he has a good heart,” Ember declares. She looks at me, and suddenly, something in her face changes. “Uh-oh.”

Lin looks up. “What?” When she sets eyes on me, she groans. “Ruby!”

Evidently, my emotional chaos is right there on my face. “I don’t know either, OK?” I say. “I can’t stand him, but…” I break off with a helpless shrug.

For a moment, Ember looks like she wants to say something more, but then she suddenly stands up. “We should check on the cookies.”

The three of us walk into the kitchen, which now smells delicious. As Ember and I get the cookies out of the oven, Lin arranges them symmetrically on a large plate. We then take them into theliving room, and she digs me abruptly in the ribs. “It’s OK to be attracted to someone even when you know they’re an idiot.”

I’d love to ask her if she’s speaking from experience. But Lin is so cagey about her personal life that I chicken out and just ask: “Do you think?”

She nods.

Of their own accord, my thoughts turn back to James. The back of my hand gets pins and needles where he was stroking it, and, at the memory of him getting undressed in front of me, a sensation of heat wells up in my belly.

“I still can’t believe it though. It had to be Beaufort. King of the bloody school,” Lin murmurs, dropping onto the sofa.

“Even I don’t know how it happened,” I admit, reaching for a cookie. It’s way too hot still, but I take a huge bite anyway, so as not to have to say anything more.

“If he really looked after you that well, then he’s all right by me,” Ember concedes, snapping up a cookie of her own. Then she puts her feet up on the coffee table, ankles crossed. “So, what are you going to do now? Have you two spoken since yesterday?”

I shake my head. “My only plan for today was to chill with my sister.”

Ember sits bolt upright, like a meerkat. “You have to text him!”

I shake my head, looking from her to Lin. “There’s nothing there, girls. We’re just…friends.” It sounds weird to call James a friend, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.

“Obviously. Message him now,” Lin insists, and I pull my phone from my jeans pocket with a sigh.

I briefly wonder what to say and then settle on the basics.

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