Page 109 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

I tried to laugh but my mouth was broken.

Her own grin faded. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

Oh God, I was going to be sick. “I’ve…I’ve done something horrendously fucked up.”

“Well”—her mouth tightened into a resolute line—“you tell me what’s happened and we’ll figure out how to get it sorted.”

There was something profoundly terrible just then in being trusted. And trusted absolutely. It was like I’d been given this precious thing, and I hadn’t even noticed it was mine, and then I’d woken up one day and stood on it. “It’s not…I don’t…I don’t need help. I just don’t know how to say…how to say it.”

“Listen.” She’d gone a bit pale. “There’s nothing you could say we couldn’t deal with. And there’s nothing you could do you couldn’t come back from.”

The part of me that was just a snake-eating-its-own-tail of guilt wasn’t sure that was true. But Hazel had never lied to me. Never evaded. Never held anything back. “Can we sit down? Even though it’s freezing?”

Hazel nodded and we stepped off the road, crunching over the fields to some exposed scarp, where we plonked ourselves. While Hazel was digging her rainbow mittens out of her pockets and putting them on, I stared blankly at the landscape—the frost-limned grass fading into the flat silver sheen of the loch and the sky.

Come on. I could do this. Ihadto do this. I sucked in a lungful of air so cold it scraped my throat raw. “The thing is, my dad found me and—”

“Oh my God.” Hazel exploded off the rock. “That shameless bastard. I’m going to kill him.”

“We went for coffee, okay?”

She spun back round. “Wait. You what?”

“He said he wanted to get to know me—I mean obviously he didn’t—but I fell for it.” The words, which I’d been worried wouldn’t come at all, came stampeding out like panicked wildebeests. “And he fucked with my head and nicked my phone and he was coming after Mum. But he’s not anymore and there’s some divorce papers she can sign if she wants to and I know I did a really bad and stupid thing and Mum needs to know but I can’t bear the thought of it.”

There was the longest silence. And believe me, nowhere could do silence as deeply and purely as Kinlochbervie in the middle of winter.

“Hazel…” I said in the smallest voice. “Please don’t—”

Except I couldn’t finish. I didn’t know what I was trying to say. Please don’t hate me as much as I hate myself right now?

She ran her fingers through her hair. “Fucking hell, Arden. I’m not sure whether to shake you or hug you.”

“I’d rather you hugged me.”

“Of course I’m going to bloody well hug you.”

She held out her arms and I launched into them, not quite crying but probably only because I was all teared out. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“I know you are, love. I know.”

Eventually, I was all right to be let go of again. I sat back down, wiping my nose classily with my sleeve. “I get that I fucked up. Likereallyfucked up.”

“Honestly”—she jammed her hands into her pockets—“I don’t quite understand what I’m feeling just at the moment.”

That sounded bad. That sounded super bad. I tried to say something but I only managed a horrified gulp.

“I mean, when you were little and I’d tell youdon’t run into the plate glass doororwait until the bus has gone by before you cross the roadorlet Rabbie lift the pan of boiling water from the stove, you listened to me. Admittedly, not all the time, but enough that you didn’t die. And now part of me is wondering…didn’t you see the door, didn’t you believe the bus was coming, did you think the water wasn’t hot? Did I not make you understand?”

Oh no. No. No. No. “It’s not your fault,” I cried. “It was me. All me.”

At this, her shoulders went back. “Well, that’s not true either, is it? That man is a manipulative son of a prick, and there’s no getting away from it. I just wish you’d…”

“Listened,” I finished for her.

“Yes.” She gathered the wings of her coat and dropped into place beside me. “And no. Because then you wouldn’t be you, and that would be even worse.”

“Are you sure? Being less of an idiot sounds like an improvement to me.”