Page 135 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
“Yeah.”
Why isn’t he leaving? Any other lad would be running for the hills. He saw his girlfriend kissing her ex-boyfriend? What will it take? A live sex show from Arthur and I? My goodness. I honestly don't feel bad about cheating on him now.
Or is he just me in school?
Is this what I was like?
Fuck.
I feel sick now.
Let me go, Digby, please. I love you enough to not want you to end up like how I am now.
Well, shit. Now I just feel sorry for him.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “We’re okay.”
He frowns. “Yeah?”
Put myself in his lap, kiss him. “Yeah.”
“I do really love you, Phoebs. Like a lot. Never felt this way about anyone before,” he tells me, his voice low and husky, his breath warm against the shell of my ear.
I lean back, cup his face. “I know.”
He tugs the back of my bikini top, lifts it over my head and then we have sex in the spare bedroom he slept in last night andit feels like the early days and I’m reminded of those times as he comes down on top of me.
I don’t think of Arthur once.
But the bubble is popped when I go downstairs later that afternoon and see everyone sitting around on the sofas. All their heads turn to look at me as I go down the stairs and I know it must be something bad.
You know when you can feel it. Almost as though it’s in the air that your entire world is about to come crashing down?
Yeah.
“Where’s Dicky?” George asks.
“In the shower,” I say slowly. “Are you hosting an intervention I know nothing about?”
I lock eyes with Arthur because of course I do. It doesn’t matter where we are or what the situation is, our eyes are like magnets.
“Sit down,” George tells me in his serious voice.
I do as he says and wait. Spencer looks fine, Athena looks a little shaken, the boys appear to be okay?
George leans forward, elbows on his knees and looks at me, straight faced, deadly serious. I feel my heart start to speed up.
“You been on your phone today?”
I shake my head.
He nods slowly, slides his phone out from the pocket of his trunks. “I don’t wanna be the one to—”
I snatch his phone out of his hand before he can finish and there it is.
Me. Showering. Outside. Naked. With Arthur watching me.
I didn’t tell you about it because it seemed insignificant but it was the other morning, when no one else was awake and it was my favourite time of day. I could tell it was going to be a nicesunrise so I got up early, went down to my private beach and had a shower while I watched the ocean turn pink.
