***
In the usual afterschool bolt for the door, even Lily didn’t hang back. I dragged my feet, taking longer than usual to pack my books away. By the time I reached the car park, it was all but deserted, and that was a good thing. Adam had managed to slip under the radar again, avoiding Lily, Lisa and anyone else vying for his attention.
“Two days in a row. I’m impressed,” I mocked.
Adam took my bag and slung it on the back seat. “Did you think I’d be a no-show?”
“I knew you’d be here,” I said confidently.
“Do you have any idea what you want to do today?” He brushed my hair off my shoulder.
“We could go back to my house, check out the north wing,” I joked.
“Or I could take you to my house,” he suggested.
I slid into the car and used the time it took him to walk around to the other side to work out how to reply.
“Gabrielle’s house?” My tone gave me away and he laughed.
“Sure, why not?”
“Well, I’m not sure what she’s told you but I’m not exactly her favourite person.” That was putting it mildly.
“She told me a few things,” he admitted. I looked at him through narrowed eyes, apprehensive but too curious not to know more.
“Like what?”
“She told me about the last French assignment you submitted.” His grin was wide.
I’d worked particularly hard on that assignment. The essay presented beautifully. It was grammatically correct – and written entirely in German. I knew even less German than French, but translating it on the Internet took no time at all. Needless to say, Mademoiselle Décarie failed me, and Alex barely spoke to me for three days.
“I’d had a bad week,” I explained.
Adam’s laugh was infectious. I smiled just long enough to let him know I wasn’t upset.
“Do you always put so much effort into being bad?” he asked. “Imagine if you used your powers for good.”
“I’d be passing French and your cousin would be looking for a new archenemy.”
“Why do you hate her so much?”
“I don’t hate her,” I explained. Hate was too strong a word. “We’ve just never gotten along.”
“Aren’t you worried about failing?”
“French is the only subject I’m failing. France does not rate highly on the list of places I want to visit. Why would I possibly need to be fluent in the language?” I asked gruffly.
“There are plenty of reasons to learn the language.”
“Name one.”
“Well, you might meet a charming French beau and fall desperately in love with him. You’d never be able to truly tell him how you feel because he wouldn’t understand you.”
“I’d teach him English,” I reasoned, making him laugh.
“Well, I hope for your sake you’re a better teacher than you are student.”
“Yeah, well, technically you’re French and you already speak English.”
It was too much to hope that he didn’t hear my remark. I sank in the seat and watched him from the corner of my eye.
“Mademoiselle Blake.” His voice was low and deliberately slow. “Are you desperately in love with me?”
“Not desperately,” I muttered.
“I guess we’ll have to work on that then,” he replied, grinning like he’d won something.
When he turned south onto the main road, I knew he was serious about taking me to Gabrielle’s house. Dread washed over me. “Ah, I really don’t want to do this today. I think I’m going to have to ease into that one.”
“I thought you were braver than that, Charli,” he said, glancing briefly at me.
“I didn’t expect to need bravery today. I was concentrating on cute and witty.”
Adam laughed. “So where will we go? You’re going to have to help me out. I’m new in town.”
I leaned towards the window, looking up at the sky. It was dark and overcast but not raining. “Well, the weather seems to be holding. We’ll go to the beach.” I gave directions, leading him to the outskirts of the south side of town. Past the turnoff to Gabrielle’s house a small road deviated off the highway, poorly marked – another secret place. The Audi hummed to a stop as we pulled up at the rusted gate blocking the track. Beyond stood a row of seven little shacks, dotted along the beach like children’s cubby houses.
“Who lives here?” he asked.
“No one. They’re fishing shacks,” I explained. “People use them in the summer as holiday homes.”
Most of the shacks were owned by locals. The rent they commanded over the summer months was phenomenal considering they were in such a poor state of repair. Tiny, two-room weatherboard houses with million-dollar views across the Cove.
We got out of the car and a large clump of brown clay fell at my feet.
“You should really wash your car,” I teased, stamping to remove the muddy mess from my shoes. “Rental companies don’t take kindly to people abusing their vehicles.”
Adam slung his arm loosely around my shoulder as we walked to the gate. “It’s not a rental car.”
“You borrowed it?”
“I bought it, Charli. I’m here for a couple of months.” His tone implied it was no big deal.
I overlooked the fact that he’d changed his mind about leaving early. My focus was entirely on the extravagance of buying an Audi to use on an eight-week holiday. “It’s a very expensive car,” I said, choking out my words.
He looked embarrassed. “It will still be a very expensive car when I sell it in a couple of months.”
“Well, you might want to wash it first,” I teased. Adam’s arm slipped from my shoulders. I stopped and turned to face him. He avoided my gaze. “Are you a real life prince, Adam Décarie?”
When he smiled his whole face brightened. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
“If you were a rich prince, that would explain the car.”
“No, Charli.”
“The boss of a giant French drug cartel?” He rolled his eyes “No; no, you’re right. Gabrielle would be the boss. You’d be her right-hand man. She’d make a much better tyrant.”
“Her aide-de-camp,” he said, scrambling my brain with his seductive accent.
“What does that mean?”
“If you paid more attention in French, you’d know,” he pointed out.
I began walking again and Adam followed, as he did whenever I led him into the great unknown.
“I’m guessing you don’t have a key for the gate?” he asked, as if he knew the answer.
“If they really wanted us to stay out, the gate would be twenty feet high with barbed wire at the top,” I reasoned.
He shook his head. “I can’t argue with logic like that.”
Before I knew what was happening, he scooped me off my feet, effortlessly lowering me to the sandy ground on the other side of the gate.
“You look nervous Monsieur Décarie,” I purred in my hopeless French accent. “Is this your first break and enter?”
“I get the impression it isn’t yours.” He arched an eyebrow suggestively.
“The harder the access, the sweeter the find,” I quipped.
We made our way down the sandy track, past the shacks to the open beach. The sky was foreboding, threatening rain, and the wind squalled relentlessly. The stretch of beach near the shacks didn’t have the protection of the cliffs further around the Cove, but it was quiet and deserted.
He drew in a deep breath. “The air is so clean here.”
“I know. It’s ironic really,” I replied, brushing my wind-lashed hair off my face. “Sometimes I find it hard to breathe.”
Reading between the lines was something Adam was becoming very good at. “And breaking rules makes breathing easier?”
“It keeps things interesting,” I replied. “Small town girls lead small town lives, Adam. Jumping a few gates now and then is good for the soul.”
“I doubt there’s very much about you that’s small town,” he said dryly.
“I’m biding my time until my real life kicks in.”
“How will you know when that happens?”
“It will be when I no longer have a list of things I’ve never done,” I explained, still fighting the wind for control of my hair.
Our stroll slowed to a stop and I wondered if I’d said something wrong. Adam took a step back. “I’d like to see that list sometime,” he said, seemingly preoccupied as he wandered away. He leaned down and picked up a long stringy reed, twirling it around his fingers. “Turn around,” he instructed. He combed his fingers through my hair and managed to fashion a loose ponytail, securing it with the reed.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, feeling behind my head to check his handiwork – which, remarkably, seemed to be holding better than Nicole’s effort a few days earlier. I felt his hand on my shoulder and turned back to face him.
Adam swept his hand slowly across my forehead. “I wish I could trust what I’m feeling right now,” he murmured.
His doubt punched through me. Of course he couldn’t trust it. It was unfair to think he could overlook how awful I was to him in the beginning. I stepped away, giving him the space I was sure he needed.
“I want us to be friends, Adam.” It felt like the blackest kind of lie but I was convinced it was what he wanted to hear.
“I don’t want to be your friend, Charli.” The words seemed to hitch in his throat.
I folded my arms across my chest like a shield, worried that the broken parts of my heart would fall at his feet enabling him to stomp on them some more. “All of this defies logic. I can’t explain any of it.”
I wondered if I had misinterpreted things. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” I replied, admitting defeat.
“Explaining it may incite a terrible case of flee-itis,” he warned, smiling just enough to make me think it wasn’t all bad.
“Try,” I pressed.
His arms dropped to his sides before he reached out to me, taking my face in his hands. “There aren’t words for this,” he murmured, frowning.
“You speak two languages. You can’t string something together?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, without one ounce of sincerity. “I’ll try.”
I watched his mouth open as if he was going to speak, but no sound came out. Instead, he lunged forward, reclaiming my face in his hands.
I tasted the salty ocean air on his lips as they crushed against mine, hard at first, then scaling back to a light touch that sent a hot rush through my body. The warmth of his hands on my face remained long after he moved them, trailing down my arms as he reached for my hands. He rested his forehead on mine. “I wished for you,” he whispered, so quietly that I struggled to hear.
“What did that feel like? I’ve never made a wish in my life.” My voice was as shaky as my words were stupid.
“Everybody wishes for something, Charli.”
I put just enough space between us to be able to look at him. “Not me. I’ve saved them all up. Birthday candles, shooting stars, stray eyelashes...ladybugs. I’ve saved them all up. I figure I’m owed hundreds of wishes now.”
Both of his hands moved to cradle my face, locking my eyes to his. “You’re a complicated girl.”
I turned away to break his hold on me. “I am. I’m like a great big jigsaw puzzle, with a few missing pieces.”
“Which pieces are missing?”
“All the important ones unfortunately, courage being the main omission.”
“You don’t think you’re courageous?” he asked, reaching for my hand and pulling me back to his side as we continued our stroll.
“Not when it counts. If I had been braver, I wouldn’t have let you go on that first day. I would have been sickly sweet and enchanting, making it impossible for you to doubt that you’d come here for any other reason than me.”
Adam stopped walking, jerking me to a stop. “So why do you think we were destined to meet, Charli?” His tone made it sound like it was the most important question on earth.
I shrugged. “I’ve never claimed to know the reasons. Maybe you’ve got my missing pieces.”
He patted himself down, pretending to check his pockets. “Perhaps they’re in my other coat,” he teased, making me giggle.
The afternoon passed in a blur. Daylight in the Cove during winter faded quickly. Overcast days led to the blackest of nights, and trying to find our way back to the car on a moonless night would not have been anywhere near as romantic as it sounded.
“I should get you home,” he breathed, perhaps realising this.
“You should,” I agreed, very reluctantly.