Page 20 of Only ever you-Ana & Byron
Both close to him. Just in case.
She tried not to think too hard about that. Her first choices were Oxford or Leeds, and she had already received her acceptance.
Ana was halfway across the back field when she saw them. A group of boys, tucked behind the old supply shed near the perimeter fence.
Byron's silhouette was unmistakable, tall, relaxed, slouched with one hand in his hoodie pocket, the other holding a cigarette. Smoke curled into the air.
She was ready to give him hell for smoking again. Maybe flick it out of his mouth, call him a cretin. Something playful. Something them.
She stepped forward.
Then stopped.
Laughter.
"...Mate, no way. You proper did it?"
Another voice-someone she didn't recognize. Sharp, jeering, Byron's voice. So unmistakably his. That cocky drawl. The one he used with the lads, with strangers. Not with her.
Her stomach dropped, cold blooming in her chest. Instinct told her to stay still behind the hedge.
One of them chuckled. "Cathy owes you now. The prude's been deflowered."
There was a pause.
Then a different voice piped up, laughing, "Did she cry?"
"Oi, got a picture?" someone asked. "You've got that fancy phone, don't you?"
Ana didn't wait to hear more.
She backed away slowly. Her pulse was roaring in her ears, and every step felt heavier than the last. Her throat burned. Her hands clenched into painfully tight fists. The cold couldn't bite harder than this.
Ana's breath caught in her throat.
It felt like ice poured down her spine, chasing the warmth from her limbs. Her face burned, and her hands went numb.
A bet.
She backed away without thinking, her boots sinking into the wet grass. Then faster past the gate. Across the road. Down the hill where no one would see.
By the time she reached her street, her vision had blurred, but her feet somehow carried her home.
She couldn't cry yet.
Not until she was home. Not until she was face down in her pillow, muffling the sound from the world.
There was only the soft tang of salty tears in the air.
And the sound of a dream shattering into the smallest bits in the quietest and most final way possible.
A minute later, there was a tentative knock on her bedroom door. She had passed her Papa in her frantic bolt up the stairs, red-faced and trembling. Her Papa was never tentative.
"Ana..."
She couldn't answer. Couldn't let him see her like this.
The door creaked open anyway, just enough for her Papa to slip in. He stood there for a second, awkward in the pale sunlight filtering through the eyelet curtains. Then, he crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed without asking, the mattress dipping beneath his weight.
