Page 14 of Save Us
My heart clenches painfully. I’m longing to bridge the distance between us and give him a hug. And at the same time, I want to yell at him and to finally find out who manipulated those photos of me and Mr. Sutton and sent them to Lexie.
“Come in, bro,” says Alistair, and James walks into the room, taking off his coat and draping it loosely over his arm. I remember that gray coat. He was wearing it the day I introduced him to my parents. The memory brings a lump to my throat.
James comes to stand a little way away from us. He looks at me uncertainly. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I reply.
His nose wrinkles slightly, and he eyes the glass in my hand. “You both reek of whisky.”
“Your sense of smell is impressive, my friend,” says Alistair. “Ruby and I have been drinking our cares away.”
James has no reply to that statement. Instead, he nods toward the sofa, his eyebrows raised questioningly. I only hesitate a moment.
The euphoria I felt just now has evaporated, and the whisky has turned from a golden elixir stirring up my body into an almost unbearable burning in my stomach.
Kesh turns down the music as we sit. James puts his coat on the floor beside the sofa, leans back, and runs both hands over his face. He looks desperately tired as he turns his face to me and looks at me with dark eyes.
“I took those photos of you and Sutton,” he begins. “At the Back-to-School party last year. Before we knew each other.”
I nod.
“You knew about Lydia, and I didn’t know what you might do with that knowledge. I thought I needed leverage over you.”
“Knew what about Lydia?” Kesh asks with a frown.
James exhales deeply. “It wasn’t Ruby having an affair with Sutton.”
Alistair lowers the whisky bottle. “Lydia and Sutton?” he asks in disbelief. He must have at least double the amount of booze in his veins that I do, but he can put two and two together astonishingly quickly. “Seriously?”
“Is that why your dad flipped like that?” Keshav asks.
“Yeah.” A short pause. “That and the fact that Lydia’s pregnant.”
“James!” I exclaim, because he’s just blurted out her secret like that. But at the same instant, I realize that he would never have said that if Lydia hadn’t given him permission. She must have known that he’d be coming here to talk to us.
James puts his hand on mine and holds it tight. His thumb strokes gently over my skin. “Lydia asked me to tell you all,” he adds, turning to Alistair and Kesh. “Dad threw her out and sent her up to our aunt in Beckdale.” I feel his body tense.
“Fuck,” says Alistair. He holds the bottle out to James, who just shakes his head.
“How did he even find out?” Wren asks with a frown.
“Cyril.” James practically spits his name out.
My eyes dart up from our linked fingers in surprise. That’s news to me too. “What? When?”
“He saw Lydia with Sutton on Saturday. You can guess how he reacted, seeing that he’s never got over her. I went round to his to try to talk to him about it. And he stole my phone.” James shakes his head, like he can’t believe it himself. “I wanted to be there for him. And he threw it back in my face. He sent the photos to my dad, so thathewould get Sutton out of Lydia’s life.” He looks at me. “And you out of mine.”
So that’s what the Beaufort “B” on the envelope meant.
Mortimer Beaufort was the one responsible for the altered photos of Sutton and me, and he sent them to Lexington, to get rid of us both.
“Two birds with one stone,” I say hoarsely.
“I don’t believe it,” Wren murmurs. “Cyril can’t have sunk that low.”
“People are capable of all sorts of shit when they’re unlucky in love,” Keshav replies, his expression dark.
“What do we do now?” asks Alistair. “We can’t just let Lydia be sent away and Ruby be thrown out of school!”
