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‘Yeah.’ She wasn’t worried about the project in the slightest anymore. They’d found a way to mesh their interests together, and Aiden hadn’t once made fun of her more outlandish ideas, even when his were much more traditional. A reflection of his upbringing. What she was worried about was her time-keeping skills. Her concentration. Balancing her studies with working. Mastering the throwing wheel. She always fell short on something, and maybe she was just waiting for him to realise that.

‘Why did it bother you that Owen brought up your dad?’ she blurted suddenly.

He paused, his grip on her hand loosening. Like in the viewing room, storm clouds rolled across his features. ‘I hoped you hadn’t noticed that.’

There was an unrest beneath his smooth surface that she couldn’t quite read, and she didn’t like it. Didn’t like that, all along, she might have been wrong about him.

‘I notice everything.’ It was an attempt at a joke, but it didn’t make him laugh.

He frowned at a plate marked in royal blues as though the porcelain had personally offended him. ‘I just don’t like to talk about my dad.’

‘You don’t get on?’

He shook his head. ‘Not these days.’

‘Why?’

‘Y’know, you’re the only person who doesn’t give a shit about it.’ He shoved his hands in pockets, the distance between them leaving her cold. ‘Could we keep it that way?’

She shrugged, though really she was curious. Was Jonathan Whittaker not quite as wonderful as everyone thought?Shocker.

‘If that’s what you want.’ She went back to focusing on the display, ignoring the gnaw of concern still lingering. ‘You know, I think the penis I made on the throwing wheel would have been much more appreciated in Jingdezhen around 1506ad. Some of these pieces are quite phallic.’

Aiden’s laughter reverberated through the gallery, bouncing off the walls before landing somewhere deep in her core. She covered his mouth quickly, too aware that they might be found any moment. Her toes curled in her boots as she remembered how, not all that long ago, she’d elicited much different sounds from his throat. Both were aggravatingly sexy, but somehow, she almost preferred this. A near-empty museum,the clash of their present with the past. The two of them, alone, like they were the only ones left in the world.

He pulled her close as she lowered her hands, lips brushing the space between her brows as he whispered, ‘Juniper Hodgson, you are something else.’

She made to kiss him, tracing the seam of his lips with her tongue only for a loud shout to cleave them apart. ‘Oi! What are you two still doing here?’

They whipped around to find a uniformed security guard at the entrance, his middle-aged face wrinkled with distaste.

Aiden scratched the crown of his head. ‘Oh, has the museum closed already? I wondered why it was so quiet.’

Clearly, the guard found no humour in it, jabbing a thumb across his shoulder. ‘This is no place to frolic, you dirty pair. Get out. Now!’

They were escorted all the way out by the stern guard, the front entrance unlocked just for them. When they made it outside onto the stone steps, Juniper burst into laughter. Aiden braced her by the elbows as he cracked up, too.

‘Is something funny?’ someone said behind them.

Tilly stood on the path below, cars whizzing behind her. Her lips were pursed, expression stony.

‘Oh, god. Tilly…’

‘I don’t even want to know what you two have been doing.’

Aiden winced. ‘Time, er, got away from us. So much to see in there…’

‘Uh-huh. You were supposed to be my Owen buffer!’ she accused, dragging Juniper away from Aiden with a surprising amount of strength. ‘You two are officially the worst, but I’ll forgive you if you buy me pizza on the way home.’

Juniper linked arms with her and motioned for Aiden to follow. ‘It’s a deal.’

20

The next few weeks passed in a blur. Juniper felt as though she was dragging herself around, just trying to get through the day: work, class, repeat. The only escape was her project with Aiden. When they were in the workshop together, she could finally focus, sometimes so much so that they barely spoke as they sculpted and, later, painted together. He seemed not to mind, although she felt often his eyes on her, as though watching her work was the most interesting thing in the world to him.

She felt the same. Their stolen moments were the only time she felt alive, and she worried something was extremely wrong with that. Shelovedceramics. She loved art. She even loved learning. But the rest of it wasn’t nearly as wonderful as she’d imagined in her head. Theory essays and textbook pages seemed more difficult to wrap her head around than ever, if her brain would let her sit for long enough to engage with them before either getting preoccupied with something else or falling asleep from exhaustion. But with him, she had room to breathe. When she made a mistake with the clay, he was there to help her fix it, gentle words and touches pulling her out of her meltdowns just in time.A crack in the kiln wasn’t the end of the world anymore, and he replied to her three a.m. panic texts almost immediately. She’d been completely, devastatingly wrong, thinking he would ruin her chances of a decent grade. If anything, he’d be the reason she passed at all.

Now, she sat in front of her cloth-covered exhibit, wondering if what lay beneath the cream fabric was enough to pass this first semester. It was their final day before Christmas break, and her fingers were pink and numb from the bitter cold outside. The exhibition centre teemed with nervous energy as her classmates prepared their own displays and presentations before Chris and guests arrive. Tilly and Owen were straightening out a sculpture of a train carriage, whose surface had been etched with fine lines to look like stitches knitted from yarn. Luc and Amir had a gorgeous set of home décor that merged the picturesque skyline of Paris with the mesmerising silhouette of Peshawar. It seemed as though everyone had managed to come together to make brilliant things.