Page 79 of Save Me

“So.” My voice is trembling with rage. I don’t know myself. I’m always calm, never this churned up, never out of control. Since when do I act like this? Since when can’t I take a rational approach to things, like I used to?

Since James came into my life.That’s the answer. I’ve only been like this since I’ve known him.

He doesn’t speak. I wait for him to show any kind of reaction, but he doesn’t.

“Could you take that thing off maybe?” I ask, pointing to his helmet.

He sighs with annoyance but does as I request. His hair is sweaty and messed up, his cheeks are red. Now that he’s standing in front of me, I can see that his mouth is wounded. He looks like he’s been in a fight. Cautiously, I lift my hand—it happens entirely on autopilot—to touch him, but he flinches back. I clench my fist, then drop my hand again, discouraged.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask, angrily.

His face is entirely emotionless as he looks at me. “Why would anything be wrong?”

I’m sure my cheeks are just as red as his, but only because he makes me absolutely furious. “You’re acting like an arsehole, that’s what’s wrong.”

His eyebrows contract, low over his eyes. “Am I?”

“Stop being such an idiot and tell me why you’re ignoring me,” I insist, more quietly but no less firmly.

He still doesn’t speak, just looks at me as though this conversation is boring him to death. I take a step toward him.

“Was this all part of your plan?” I ask him. “Were you just so nice to me so that you could get back to training?”

He gives a snort that sounds almost like a laugh, but suddenly,he can’t meet my eyes. Instead, he stares at the ground, at the spot where our toes are almost touching.

“In case I have to remind you, you kissed meafterI let you off the events team. So by that point, it really wasn’t necessary.”

He still isn’t replying.

“Why are you acting like this?” I ask him, hating myself for the way my voice is shaking. “Is it because of your dad? Did he do something?”

James looks up, and now my anger seems to be reflected in his eyes. “If it makes you feel any better, feel free to think that.”

It feels like he’s thumped me in the chest. “Youkissedme. Not the other way around. You didn’t need to do that if you were going to be this ashamed of it afterward.”

The frown deepens on his forehead. “Don’t read so much into it. You gave me something, I was pleased. End of conversation.”

“You were pleased—end of conversation?” I repeat in disbelief. It’s hard to accept that the boy standing in front of me now is the same one who kissed me on the stairs on Saturday. That it was his tongue that parted my lips, his touch that made me go weak at the knees.

Now he simply shrugs his shoulders.

“For God’s sake, James, what’s wrong with you?” I mutter, shaking my head.

Despite my anger, I can’t help wondering what happened to his mouth. Who he was fighting. Whether there was any way I could have stopped it.

“You could have just told me that the kiss was a mistake,” I say, as calmly as possible.

“Fine, then I’ll tell you that now,” he replies coolly. “We had a nice time, but now things need to get back to the old days.”

I can’t believe he actually just said that. I feel like I don’t know the script anymore. Something is really wrong here, but I can’t stop it going off track. It feels like an unstoppable avalanche, sweeping away everything in its path.

“You don’t have to destroy our friendship in this mean way just because your friends said something or your parents are guilt-tripping you, you know?”

He smiles, but it’s more of a grimace, nothing like the way he’s looked at me in recent weeks. I barely recognize him. “It’s like you’re obsessed with controlling everything around you, correcting every mistake you find in other people—but it doesn’t work like that, Ruby. This has nothing to do with my friends or my family. This is me.” He lays the palm of his hand on his chest protector. “Horrible and twisted and wrong. It’s time you faced up to that idea.”

The anger fades away and despair takes its place. It’s the same feeling that washed over me at the party when I imagined having to say goodbye to him. But it’s deeper this time, and much more painful. Because he’s saying goodbye to me, and it seems final.

I give it one last try, lifting my hand and laying it on his cheek. I stroke his skin gently with my thumb. “You are not horrible or twisted or wrong.”

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