Page 108 of The Rest is History
Because they don’t get it. I’m not being stupid. I’m being noble, for fuck’s sake. I love this woman, and I won’t let her throw away the family she wants because she fell for the wrong guy.
She’ll make the most incredible mother one day. God, it makes my heart hurt just thinking about her, pregnant and radiant. Nursing. Cooing over her little ones, those huge eyes shining with joy.
No way will I give her the opportunity to make the wrong choice.
CHAPTER 39
Elodie
Istand stiffly as my class files into the hall for assembly. Not sure it’s possible for a person to be more tense than I am right now. The kids sit in year group order, with Year Seven at the front, and the teachers sit along the sides of the hall, next to their classes.
Which means all the Year Ten teachers will sit together.
Which means I will have Charlie within a metre of me in a matter of moments.
Shit.
I avoided any sight of him all day yesterday, but I’m on constant high alert, and it’s exhausting. School has become a minefield. I take my seat, and Zara sits next to me. Her cheery demeanour is a comfort, even if it’s forced.
And then it’s happening—the moment I’ve been dreading. Charlie’s class is filing in, and he’s standing next to me, and then taking a seat on my other side, andfuuuck.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
This man, who consumed my dreams for weeks and has caused me an unfathomable amount of pain for the past couple of days, lowers himself down next to me, and I can smell him. So help me God, his scent wafts over me and it steals the breathfrom my lungs, because his proximity makes the grief hit me like a sledgehammer.
I sit ramrod straight, hoping hard that what little of my granola pot I got down this morning doesn’t make a reappearance. And then, because I can sense Charlie’s eyes on me, I do what may just be the bravest thing I’ve ever done.
I turn my head and look at him.
Oh, crap. Shouldn’t have done that. For some reason, I’ve got it into my head that he’s been going about his business, cold and sociopathic as you like. That I’m already dead to him.
But this is worse. Because those gorgeous baby blues are twin pools of pain, and that pain radiates outwards, presumably recognising its reflection in my face.
He’s just staring, his eyes darting over my face.
‘Hi,’ I whisper.
I watch his lips move.
‘Hi.’
And there’s nothing more to say. No point in either of us askinghow are youor any such nonsense. So I mentally suck up the view a little more before turning my face, if not my attention, to the stage where Phil is wrestling with the slides on the big screen.
Fifteen minutes of tortured bliss, or blissful torture, follow. I’m not sure which, but it’s like being injected with crack while having your toenails ripped out. Because my bare upper arm (really should have thought that through) brushes the linen of Charlie’s shirt throughout, and I enter some sort of limbo where I sit there and focus only on those few inches of our bodies. On the connection. The heat. Dear Lord, the heat pumping from this guy’s skin. I cling to the sensation like a drowning person clings to a piece of driftwood.
The Wednesday before half term, we sat exactly like this, except that we both had our hands resting on the chair seat, andCharlie brushed my pinky finger with his over and over again in the middle of a room of oblivious people.
Let’s just say I didn’t think my pinky was an erogenous zone before, but after the last assembly I stood corrected.
When Phil has wrapped up—I have no idea what he’s been saying for the past quarter of an hour—I stand to guide my class out, and Charlie whispershave a good day.
I respond with a faint snigger, because that’s got to be the most pointless nicety ever uttered in the history of mankind.
I’m chilling on the grass with Zara at lunch when my phone goes. When I say chilling, I mean exhaustively replaying every second of assembly in my head.
It’s my sister. She never calls me at school.
‘Is Olive okay?’ I gasp as I answer.
