I couldn’t help turning. Adam jolted to a stop so suddenly, it was a miracle he didn’t sprain both ankles.
Running recreationally, without the threat of something terrible chasing you, seemed pointless to me. But Adam loved it. He jogged the length of the beach along the Cove most mornings, so seeing him there was no great surprise.
He ripped the headphones from his ears and swept his brow with the back of his hand. The thick scrub concealing the beach until the very end of the track had blinded him. The music blaring through his headphones had rendered him deaf. And the fact that he didn’t turn around and run straight back the way he’d come as soon as he saw us made him dumb.
“Ladies,” he said cautiously, his eyes darting between Jasmine and me and bypassing Lily altogether.
Jasmine gave him a limp wrist and a pouty look. “I’m glad we ran into you,” she said. “We haven’t seen you around much lately.”
He stared at her, focused and granitic. “Don’t lose too much sleep over it.”
I knew he couldn’t stand the Beautifuls, especially since I’d told him why they were so despicable but it was still shocking to hear him speak so rudely to them. Judging by their looks of horror, they weren’t expecting it either. Jasmine recovered quickly, clearing her throat and glancing down at Nancy while she pulled herself together. Adam took the opportunity to wink at me.
“You should come to our house sometime,” suggested Lily, leading me to wonder what planet she’d been on during the last few seconds of conversation.
“Yes, you should,” agreed Jasmine. “You too, Charli. You haven’t come to the vineyard in ages.”
A disgusted groan escaped me. “Never,” I muttered, slinging my bag over my shoulder and preparing to make my getaway.
Jasmine blocked my path. “You used to visit all the time. Remember?” Her mascara caked eyes narrowed. I hesitated too long, prompting her to continue. “The last time you came over was to see my brother…to give him his going-away present, if I remember correctly.”
“How embarrassing,” whispered Lily before bursting into a fit of giggles.
Adam’s promise of keeping quiet was not going to hold. His arms were folded tightly, and as hard as I tried to catch his eyes, his glare remained solely focused on Jasmine.
I pushed past Jasmine so forcefully that she stumbled in the sand, almost stepping on Nancy in the process. I’d only made it a few steps when Adam called my name. I turned around, praying I wouldn’t regret it.
“Are you going to leave me here with them?” The amusement in his voice put me at ease. “I couldn’t stand it.”
Both girls stood still, their expressions confused and disbelieving. The only movement came from Nancy, who was also trying to make a getaway by chewing through her pink diamante-encrusted lead.
“What’s the worst that could happen, Adam?” I teased.
“Please, Coccinelle,” he said, moving towards me. “I’d save you if you needed me to.”
“I know what that word means, Adam,” I said sourly. “I looked it up.”
When Adam spoke French, it was intoxicating. I never cared that I didn’t understand it. Alex called Gabrielle sweetheart. It was cringe-worthy and unoriginal, but it was her word, and to Gabrielle, no one said it better than Alex. Coccinelle was my word. It was the sweetest expression on earth – until I spent ten seconds translating it online.
“You did your research. I’m impressed.” He grinned victoriously.
“I’m not,” I snarled. “It’s not nice to call someone a piglet.”
Adam burst into hysterics, laughing so hard he clutched his stomach. The Beautifuls – obviously reading the humiliation on my face – began cackling like demons. I didn’t wait for him to compose himself. I turned to walk away, but he caught my hand, stopping me.
“Your translation skills need some work,” he said, still laughing.
I snatched my hand away, giving him a look that should have reduced him to ash. The Beautifuls suddenly went quiet, probably anticipating an argument.
“Coccinelle. Piglet,” I hissed.
“No. Cochonnet, piglet,” he corrected. “It doesn’t even sound similar.”
“Oh.” I looked at the ground.
“Are you mad?”
“Very,” I muttered, digging my feet into the cold sand.
“Too mad to rescue me from the clutches of the Beautifuls?”
I finally looked up. “Oh, fine,” I grumbled, sounding inconvenienced. “But let’s not make a habit of it, okay?”
We left the Tate sisters standing. The view of the beach disappeared the minute we entered the trail. Strangely enough, all thoughts of the Beautifuls did too.
13. Gift
There had been method in Adam’s madness. He’d given the Beautifuls enough information to keep them guessing, but not enough to keep them talking. Not only had they not bothered me for days, they’d changed tack completely and begun ignoring me.
“How long do you think they can keep it up?” asked Nicole on the way to Biology class.
I smirked, partly because of her comment but mostly because her hair was a garish shade of red. “Nic, did you voluntarily do that to yourself?” I asked, pointing to her hair.
“You don’t like it?” she asked, fluffing it with her fingertips.
“It looks like something bled all over your head.”
“I know,” she said wistfully. “I’m going to change it this afternoon.”
I would have been sobbing in a corner somewhere if my hair looked that awful. Nicole saw it as an inconvenience rather than a tragedy. It was amazing she had any hair at all considering the hours she spent in her mother’s salon torturing it. Other than turning a progressively darker shade of blonde as I got older, my hair hadn’t changed much since I was a kid. Even the style had remained the same.
“You have a lot of time on your hands lately, huh?”
“I don’t mind.” She smiled reassuringly but I still felt a twinge of guilt. “Besides, four more weeks of staying out of trouble sounds like a good thing.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, slow on the uptake.
“I’ve realised that I don’t get in to nearly as much trouble when you’re not around,” she explained, grinning impishly. “When Adam goes home, things will go back to normal.”
Nicole’s words rang in my ears for hours. I had always known he was here temporarily, but having her put a time frame to it was like being sucker punched. I’d gone from feeling like I’d just found Adam to the much darker place of having to prepare to let him go.
I wasted no time in getting out of class at the end of the day. It wasn’t until I got near the car park that I began to worry that he might not be there. Standing around waiting for him meant dealing with at least one of the Beautifuls. He’d picked me up every afternoon for weeks. The covert operation was executed flawlessly each day; but now I was tired of it. He never complained but I’m sure it grated on him too.
I saw the little blue Festiva immediately. I’d picked the wrong day to get out early. Jasmine Tate stood leaning on the car while she waited for Lily.
Jasmine had worked in Carol Lawson’s hairdressing salon since leaving school the year before. It was unusual for her to be here. I wondered if she’d been fired and made a mental note to ask Nicole later.
Thankfully she didn’t speak, but the icy lock her eyes had on me as I walked across the car park was unnerving enough. The Audi peeled into the car park not a minute too soon, and I quickened my pace.
Until that moment, I’d been confident of making a clean getaway. All hope disappeared the minute I saw Lily and Lisa walking across the car park, eyes firmly on Adam’s car.
Lisa tapped her arm and pointed at me. “I knew it!” yelled Lily. Even if she had been capable of showing some decorum, she was too far away to berate me discreetly. “You are messing around with him.” Her tone was angry, as if I’d stolen something from her and was refusing to give it back.
They stop
ped walking as I passed them, probably expecting me to stop and explain myself. It could also have been because it was a better vantage point than Jasmine’s car.
Adam had the sense to stay in his car until the last minute. He met me with a smile bright enough to remind me that I had no reason to hide anything. Without a second of hesitation I dropped my bag and threw my arms around him. My feet left the ground as his arms tightened around my waist. We were eye to eye and my lips easily found his.
“Hello,” he said, choking out the word as soon as I released his lips from mine. Loosening his grip on my waist, he lowered me to the ground.
“I’m not hiding any more. No more wasting time.”
A grin swept his face. “I’m glad you feel that way,” he murmured. He glanced in the direction of Lily and Lisa. I didn’t bother turning, their poses wouldn’t have changed much in the ten seconds since I’d passed them. I think the smile he gave was designed to be reassuring. “We should go. I’m getting nervous. They seem to have expanded their pack.”
I turned around. Jasmine, who was still leaning on the open car door, was scowling at me, and Lily and Lisa, still in the same spot, had arms folded with matching pouts on their faces. Soon, everyone in town was going to know about us, and unbelievably, I didn’t care.
But old habits die hard, which probably explained why we spent the rest of the afternoon in Gabrielle’s shed – or boathouse as Adam now jokingly referred to it. He was keen to show me the progress he’d made, and I had to admit it was impressive. In little over a week he’d already scraped a good few layers of paint off.
“So what do you think?” he asked, reminding me of a keyed-up child.
I paid more attention to him than the boat. His paint spattered jeans looked old and battered but I remembered him wearing them before he started playing with paint. The faded blue jeans looked old and distressed in all the right places then too, and I didn’t doubt that he’d paid a fortune for the privilege. Clearly his family were wealthy. He was extremely well travelled, impeccably dressed (even with the paint stains) and considered buying an Audi A6 to drive around in for eight weeks no big deal.
“Charlotte,” he said, reminding me that I hadn’t answered him.
“I think you’ll be finished in no time,” I said, embarrassed that he’d caught me staring.
Adam ran his hand along the boat in a long sweeping motion, openly proud of his progress. “I hope so. It would be a shame to have to leave her half finished.”
“What are you planning to do with her when you leave?”
Adam reached for my hands, pulling me in to him. “I thought you could sell it, bump up your travel kitty a little.”
I leaned back. “If that boat is Huon, it’s worth thousands of dollars,” I pointed out.
“I’m not going to just leave it to rot for another fifty years, Charli,” he reasoned. “It’s not like I’ll be coming back for it.”
His words unintentionally cut me to the quick. My reply didn’t come easily. “No, I guess not.”
“I hope it is worth thousands,” he mused. “You and Nicole could go anywhere you wanted.”
New York is where I want to go! I silently screamed. Why didn’t he know that?
Either the internal screaming didn’t show on my face or Adam ignored it.
“Alex mentioned that Norm Davis knows a lot about boats,” he said. “I’ve asked him to come and appraise it for me.”
I escaped the circle of his arms with a sharp shove. I paced the shed, trying my best to appear unaffected by the dark thoughts in my head.
“Have I said something wrong?”
“No, no of course not,” I mumbled. “It’s a very generous gesture.”
“It’s just a boat, Charli.”
“How can you give her up so easily? You’ve put so much in to it.” My voice was shaky, doing little to disguise the fact that I wasn’t talking about the boat any more.
“It’s just a boat,” he repeated.
I feared I had become a poster child for idiocy, repeating mistakes of old. Falling head over heels for a boy who was never going to stay with me wasn’t a good idea the first time round. Allowing myself to fall even further a second time, knowing from the beginning that it wasn’t going to work out was nothing less than soul destroying.
“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed, smoothing the front of my coat with my hands as if that was all I needed to do to pull myself together.
“We’re talking about the boat. If you’d like to discuss things about Pipers Cove that I am going to have trouble leaving behind, please feel free.”
“I know what – ”
He cut me off. “Here comes the heavy head. You don’t know what I’m thinking, Charlotte. You can’t possibly know how many nights I’ve lain awake trying to figure out a way around this.”
Perhaps regretting the outburst, he looked to the floor, unable to maintain eye contact.
“What did you come up with?” I asked.
Leaning down, he kissed my forehead. It wasn’t the usual heart stopping, lingering touch. I felt pitied – until I leaned back and noticed that his eyes looked just as stricken as I felt.
“I’m not selfish enough to ask you to come with me. Who am I to do that?” he whispered. “You dream bigger than anyone I’ve ever met. I could never ask you to give it all up for me. New York is not for you. Not yet anyway.”
“I think I belong with you.”
Adam released me and began pacing around the shed as if he was looking for an escape route. “You don’t know where you belong. That’s the whole point.”
“So that’s it then?” I asked throwing up my hands in defeat. “I crash and you don’t even stumble?”
He turned back to face me and gave a half-smile, as if amused by my theatrics. “I stumbled and fell hard, Charli, the minute I met you.” He thumped his heart with his palm. “We found each other once; what makes you think we won’t find each other again?”
“I might get lost. The world is a huge place.”
He laughed humourlessly. “When you’re done conquering the world, I’m going to be there, ready to pick up right where we left off…if you’ll still have me.”
“Nothing will change. I’m always going to want you,” I replied, finally speaking with enough strength to sound like I actually meant it.
“I’m counting on it, Charli.”
I closed my eyes, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t as hopeless as it seemed. We were both in exactly the right place, for now. I was prepared to endure the pain of an unhappy ending, as long as he was with me at that moment.
***
The dreaded fallout happened sooner than I anticipated. Like any good bully, Jasmine waited until I was alone. Adam hadn’t seen her when we arrived at the café. If he had, there’s no way I would have been left on my own.
Jasmine ambushed me before I even made it to the steps. The silent treatment had given way to her usual form of insult.
“Some things never change, do they?” she hissed.
“Nope. Some things never do,” I smugly agreed.
She tottered over to me. Already taller than me, she was downright menacing in heels. Her perfume was practically chemical warfare. “You should be really careful, Charli. You wouldn’t want to make a name for yourself...again,” she warned.
“I don’t think I’m that important, Jasmine. I feel sorry for you if I’m the best you’ve got to talk about.” I took a step back from her to regain some personal space.
A sly smile crept across her face and I wondered if she was going to lurch forward and rip my throat out. As I turned, she grabbed my arm. I snatched it away and took a step back, out of reach.
“You have no idea what’s coming,” she said menacingly.
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Do your worst.” My tone was intentionally blasé. I refused to think about what her worst entailed. I was certain I’d seen it before.
It took great effort to appear apathetic as I walke
d into the café, leaving the chief Beautiful high and dry outside. My heart thumped so hard I could feel it in my toes. Alex stood at the counter, glancing up to smile at me before turning his attention back to the day’s takings.
“Are you okay?” he asked, making me wonder if I looked like I was about to throw up.
I stood with my back against the door as if I was barricading us in, not completely sure that Jasmine wasn’t about to storm the building. “Never better,”
“Jasmine’s still out there, huh?” He already knew the answer.
“How did you guess?”
He chuckled, only half paying attention as he reconciled the till. “She’s been out there for ages, waiting for you presumably. What have you done to upset her this time?”
“What makes you think she’s upset?” I tried to sound innocent but he saw through me, as always.
“Charli, her mood is dark enough to steal sunlight.”
“She found out about the whole Adam thing,” I explained, trying to appear nonchalant.
His head snapped up and I suddenly had his undivided attention.
“What Adam thing?” he pressed, walking around the counter.
I whispered as if we weren’t alone in the room. “The Adam-and-Charli thing.”
He nudged me out of the way of the door so he could bolt it. I couldn’t understand what he mumbled under his breath and I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to.
14. Jailbreak
Every one of the thirty-two days since Adam had nearly mown me down in the car park had slipped by much too quickly.
School was an annoying commitment that bit hard into my social schedule.
“Miss Blake,” said Gabrielle, too loudly. Both of her hands slammed down on my desk, snapping me back to reality.
“Yes?”
“Am I keeping you from something?”
Being the sister of the love of her life wasn’t exactly working to my advantage. There had been an unlikely truce forged between us in the weeks since I’d discovered her relationship with Alex. Out of school we were friendly. She was supportive of my relationship with Adam, managing to talk my pigheaded brother around on several occasions when it came to me pleading for more freedom. During school hours she rode me just as hard as she always had.