“Because I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. I don’t know how to be. And I don’t know if I want to see the look of relief on your face when I tell you that I’m not pregnant and you have nothing to worry about anymore.”
Neither of us said anything for what felt like such a long time.
I was frozen in place at having said the words out loud.
He was still like a statue, unmoving in his analysis of me as his eyes scanned my body from head to foot and back again. His gaze lingered on my stomach before his eyes returned back to mine.
Say something, I wanted to beg him. Even if I don’t like what you have to say, say something. Anything.
“Thanks for letting me know,” he eventually muttered as he readjusted the weight on his feet and cleared his throat. It was his turn to look down now. Gone was the steely coolness of a guy that may as well have been a stranger. Here was the boy who looked as awkward as I felt.
“Thanks for letting me know?” I repeated quietly.
“Yes.”
“That’s it?”
He nodded, bringing his hand up to rub the back of his head. “I mean…” Clearing his throat once again, Alex gave up before he’d even truly begun to answer. His arms fell listlessly by his sides before he looked up at me with defeated eyes and shrugged. “I don’t know what else you want me to say, Nat.”
“How about ‘Thank God you’re okay,’ or maybe a ‘Gee, Nat, I appreciate how hard these last couple of weeks must have been for you,’ or, I dunno, how about some honesty? ‘Big fucking relief, huh? Now I don’t have to spend the next eighteen years of my life around you.’ Anything that doesn’t make you sound like a robot that hates me would be a start.”
“I don’t hate you.”
I scoffed in disbelief, feeling a small surge of anger rise up in me from somewhere unrecognisable. “You know, Alex. I don’t know how we got here, or what I did that was so wrong, but let me just cut through the barrier of awkward bullshit that’s somehow wedged its way between us. I’m not pregnant like you were worried I might be. I’m not going to put any of my troubles on your shoulders anymore. I’m no longer going to be running around to your house to try and get some arsehole out of your face when I think you’re in danger. That’s it. It’s all over. You can go. Go be with Bronwyn fucking Chamberlin if that's what you want. You’re free to live your life without me. It’s that simple. The only reason I’m telling you the news in person is because it seemed like the grown-up thing to do. I guess I was wrong, but what’s new these days?” I turned to walk away but was quickly caught in his grip as he clung to the top of my arm and spun me back around.
“It’s not that simple,” he growled through gritted teeth. My spine stiffened and my back arched as I instinctively tried to lean away from him.
“Alex...”
“You think you know it all, don't you?”
“Get off me,” I snapped.
“No. You wanted a reaction? Well you’ve fucking got one.”
“Let me go!”
“Shut up and listen.”
I froze instantly. My eyes were wide, filled with the unknown view of Alex Law as he glowered down on me. The hood on my jumper fell back, exposing my hair to him, and I watched as his focus shifted to it briefly before he stared back at me.
“I’m trying really fucking hard to stay calm here, Natalie. You have no idea. You’ve no idea how hard these last two weeks have been for me. You don’t think I know that it’s you who has had the real worry? I know I put that on you, but you have no idea what I want. And don’t you dare throw your preachy shit around about your actions being the grown up thing to do, because, believe me, you have no idea what being a grown up means.” Alex hissed in a breath, one that seemed to cause him pain as he flexed the muscles in his jaw and pulled me even closer. “Being a grown up means sacrificing what you want for the benefit of someone else. Being a grown up means putting your own shit aside because your shit isn’t the only thing that matters anymore. Other people matter. Other futures. Other lives. This isn’t even about me. Truth is, yeah, I’m fucking grateful you let me know in person. I’m grateful you found the courage to do and say what you’ve just done. You’ve always been so much braver than you know. I’m sorry that I had to let you do it alone and I apologise for making you hate me, but–”
“I don’t hate you,” I interrupted quickly.
He carried on, ignoring me completely. “But don’t presume to know how I feel or what I think. My actions don’t always match up with my thoughts.” And with that, he let me go swiftly, and I stumbled backwards, my breaths ragged.
We both stood still, glaring at one another in disbelief as our chests bounced up and down heavily. I had no idea what had just happened, but I knew I’d just seen a side of Alex Law that was more in line with his father than the other versions of him I thought I knew so well.
“What has happened to you, Alex?” I whispered.
“The same thing that ruins us all eventually.”
“And what’s that?”
“Grief.”
I frowned hard, unable to believe that one single word that had just fallen from his lips. Grief. The thing that I’d been drowning in before he’d come to save me was now the very thing he was claiming to have turned him into someone unrecognisable.
“Grief over who?”
“If you don’t know that already...” He stared at me with an emotion I had no name for. He looked lost, but determined. Angry but scared. Hard but fragile. And when he finally parted his lips and said his final words before he walked away from me, I knew they’d stay in my mind for the rest of my life. “Take care of yourself from now on, Natalie. You’ll do a better job than I ever did.”
Before I could find a way to move and follow him, he’d vanished completely and I was left alone in an empty park where we once lay together, talking about fantasies and all of our favourite things.
NINETEEN
Anger. That was what had taken over. The feeling was electrifying as I pulled down the sleeves of my hoodie and curled my hands inside them. I was trying to calm down. I was trying to control that claustrophobic tightening of my chest. This felt like rage, even though I wasn’t certain how that was meant to actually feel. Sure, I’d been angry before in my life. I’d thrown the odd tantrum here and there as a child. I’d sulked when I’d been told I wasn’t allowed to go wherever Elizabeth had gone on her nights out clubbing with her friends. I’d even felt angry for a while after her death. But this…
This was something new entirely.
It was anger mixed with a loss of control. No matter how many times I tried to replay the conversation over and over in my head, I couldn’t make sense of it.
“You’ll do a better job than I ever did.”
Was that all I ever was to him? A child he had to babysit?
Had it all been an illusion all along? No was my immediate answer. No, it hadn’t. I knew that he’d felt for me what I felt for him. Even if it had only been during that night in the summerhouse, I still knew. But it was hard to remain so certain when everything I loved was walking away in the other direction, after cutting me out of his life completely.
Then there was the other question that was burning scars into my brain. Where had Bronwyn Chamberlin come from? Why was she out with him when I’d never even seen the two of them talking in the school corridors before now? That was the one thing that didn’t make sense to me, and as I began to march forward with a heavy step, my annoyance etched on every inch of my face, the frustration, and the injustice of it all only seemed to grow. It was choking me, making me blind to everything – even to Sammy who was shouting my name from somewhere behind me, over and over again.
“Nat, wait, please!” she pleaded a final time before her wheezing breath became a permanent feature beside me. She attempted to pull my body around to face her, but I was having none of it. I was too busy going nowhere in particular. “Natalie.” She gasped. “Talk to me. Tell me what just happe
ned.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I ground out. “Go back to the gang, Sam. I’m good.”
“You’re no more good than Alex is. What the hell is happening to you two?”
“Alex is an arsehole.”
“Since when?” she pushed out, her breaths coming fast and heavy after her obvious mad dash to catch me.
“Since about ten minutes ago. Maybe he has been all along. Who knows?” I stopped dead in my tracks, pausing as my scrutiny of the ground got more intense and my thoughts continued to leap over one another in complete confusion.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?” I snapped, looking up into her eyes and raising my brows. “What if I didn’t know him at all? That Alex I just spoke to back there wasn’t the Alex I’ve known all these months. Trust me. He couldn’t be further from the guy I…”
“Handed your cherry over to?”
“I want that cherry back!” I demanded, quickly glancing over my shoulder to shoot daggers at the virginity-thief who wasn’t even there anymore, before I focused on Sammy again. “If I could take it back, I would.”
“Of course you would.”
“I hate him.”
“Careful. I’m starting to smell bullshit in the air.”
I wanted to argue with her, but that little pocket of Alex that had invaded my soul began to throb in my fingers and toes, reminding me of the love I did still have for him, no matter how much I pretended to despise the guy.
“Just for one day,” I begged her quietly, “could you please not do the mind reading shit? Or at least keep what you really see to yourself. I need to feel this madness, Sam. I need to feel it flow through me so I can keep walking away, because if I falter for just one second, I’ll end up chasing after him. I can’t do that. He doesn’t want me. I can’t give any more. I’m in danger of looking even more pathetic than I already do.”
Tilting her head to the side, she studied me carefully before choosing her next words. “So what?” she whispered. “Since when have you cared what anyone else thinks or how people perceive you? You’re not that girl, Nat.”
“I don’t know who I am,” I admitted through a sigh, bringing my hands up to scrub at my face before I growled into my palms. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes again, and I was doing my absolute best not to let them fall. Sniffing them back, I dropped my hands like they were made of lead and looked over her shoulder. “I can’t believe what I’m turning into. It isn’t meant to be this hard.”
“Honey,” Sammy sang, “this is exactly what it’s meant to be like. Loving someone is hard.”
“Says who?”
“All the best love songs. All the best books.”
“But, we’re only seven-fucking-teen.”
“And going through all our firsts. You think there’s just some door you walk through at eighteen that suddenly gives you all the answers on how to be an adult and deal with this stuff? Not even close. We are who we are. We’re all winging this growing up shit. The only way we really learn is by going through it all. The happy, the sad, the hurt, the pain.”
“The loss?” I offered in a resigned whisper.
“The loss.”
“I don’t want to lose him.”
“I don’t want you to lose him, either. What exactly did he say to you when you told him you weren’t pregnant?”
“He said ‘thanks for letting me know’ and then I erupted like some raging fishwife.”
“Ooh,” she hissed, scrunching up her face.
“It wasn’t my finest hour, I’ll admit.”
“What did you want him to say?”
“I didn’t want any words from him. I just wanted him to hold me like he used to.”
Admitting that truth left a bitter taste on my tongue. I didn’t want to be bitter. I wanted to think good things whenever I thought about Alex, only my head and heart were currently in a battle where one of them was trying to save common sense, while the other was trying to kill it with a medieval spear.
“I’m sorry,” Sammy offered.
“Don’t be. What’s done is done. He can move on to Bronwyn and I can go back to my life.”
“You think the two of them are together?”
I held my hand up and closed my eyes, sucking in a huge bout of oxygen as I tried to clear my thoughts of that particular mental image altogether. “I can’t even think about that right now.”
We both stood in silence for a while. It was only when I felt her shiver beside me that I turned to face her and began to rub the top of her arm. “You should go back to everyone else.”
“No way. I’m not leaving you. Not like this.”
“Yes, you are. You have to. Your friends are waiting and, honestly, I’m better off by myself tonight. These last few weeks have been so weird. The waiting and not knowing, all the sleepless nights, it’s all finally come to an end.”
“Don’t act like you’re as chipper as a chipmunk right now, missy. I see right through you.”
I huffed out a laugh, releasing her from my hold before I pushed both hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “I know you do. I’m not trying to hide anything at all. I just…”
“Want to be alone?”
My single nod and tired smile said all I needed to say. As much as I loved her, I felt like I had to find a way to get my shit together. All this anxiety and feeling like I was drowning in emotion was something I’d never allowed myself to get stuck in before. Sammy was right. This wasn’t who I was. Alex had opened me up and set me free for the first time in my entire life, but in doing so, he’d made me vulnerable. I wasn’t sure I could be that new version of myself without him by my side to guide me. Which meant only one thing.
It was time to retreat again.
After over ten minutes of reassurances, Sammy reluctantly began to listen to reason and walk away, but not without looking back over her shoulder a million times.
I didn’t hang around, but my journey home began slowly. It was the kind of walking that felt more like I was shuffling as my body curled in on itself and tried to hide its embarrassment.
All I could see was the disgust in his eyes. All I could feel was the throbbing of my arm where he had held me tightly. All I could hear were his nonsensical words on an endless loop.
Frustrated and losing patience, I eventually picked up my pace and began tearing down the streets. It was only when I made a sudden turn that I was stopped in my tracks as I slammed into a tower of muscle I hadn’t expected to be there.
“Shit,” I blurted out as I struggled to stay standing, my body flying backwards as my careless feet fought to find their balance.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” a voice cried out in front of me as a pair of hands gripped hold of my arms and pulled me back up to a stand.
I was just about to bow my head in embarrassment and mutter an apology, but all those plans went to Hell the moment he decided to speak again.
“There you are,” he sang out.
“Marcus?” I squeaked as I tried to pull away and straighten myself up.
“That’s me.”
I wanted the ground to open and swallow me up as I gawped at him, but it never did. “Sorry about that. I, umm…” I pointed to his chest like an idiot as the heat rose to my cheeks.
“Don’t be sorry. You just made my job a whole lot easier. I should be thanking you. I probably would be, too, but the big toe you just stood on is holding me back.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled again as I cringed, blinking rapidly as his words sank in. “And... What do you mean, your job?”
Marcus ran a hand through his dark curls and smirked. “Oops. Loose lips sink ships.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was meant to be meeting the kid sister for a beer, only I got a text about ten minutes ago asking me to take a different route to the pub. A longer route.”
“Why?” I scowled, unable to connect the dots. I wasn’t really listening to what he was saying. I was watching him as he scanned
my body from head to toe a dozen times without trying to hide what he was doing in any way whatsoever.
“Something about her being worried about her best friend getting home safely, and me being the knight in shining armour that was to rescue said best friend and take her back on my trusty steed. Only I don’t have a steed.” He paused, thumbing over his shoulder. “But I can give a mean piggy back.”
My face fell in time with my sagging shoulders. “Please tell me Sammy did not send you to check up on me.”
“You make it sound so seedy. Or do I mean sneaky?”
“You mean sneaky. Which it is,” I said, trying to hold back the very weak smile that was trying to break free because of his carefree attitude to life.
“Opinions are allowed to vary on those kinds of specifics.”
“Oh yeah? And what would you call it?”
Placing a hand on the chest of his pale blue shirt, Marcus pretended to flutter his eyelashes. “I would say it’s very caring of my sister. Supportive. Loyal. I would also say it’s very gallant of me.”
“Gallant?” I chuckled softly, rocking back on my heels and folding my arms over my chest. “Have you been watching The Tudors before you came out?”
“No. A Knight’s Tale. Heath Ledger was the dude.”
“I like that film.” I smiled.
“See. We’re connected. Like soul mates.”
I flinched at the mention of soul mates, even though I knew he was joking. Alex’s face flickered through my mind again, and the hook he’d lodged into my heart was being pulled in the same direction as he was, reeling me in once again. I didn’t have time to hope that Marcus hadn’t seen the longing wash over my face. Before I could correct myself, he’d inhaled sharply and was wearing that look that made me feel like he could see right through me with very little effort.
“I overplayed my hand didn’t I?” he asked quietly. “Sorry. I see a girl smiling and my automatic response is to try and make her smile even more.”
“I’m fine,” I lied through a grimace.
“Sammy said something about some guy giving you the boot and you being seven shades of mortified.”
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