Page 42 of Save Me (Maxton Hall #1)

She nods. “It wasn’t much, just kind words, sympathy, but right then, they meant the world to me.

” A slight smile plays around her lips. “After that, we started messaging each other regularly. We talked about all kinds of stuff; told each other things we’d never told anyone else.

He wrote to me about Oxford and the competitive atmosphere, the pressure that was starting to get to him.

I told him about my broken heart and my fears for the future.

We gave each other hope. I never gave him my real name, obviously, and I didn’t know his either.

But the things I shared with him felt more real than anything else in my life. ”

“That’s insane.”

She nods again. “I know.”

“Then what?” I ask.

“Six months later, we talked for the first time. On the phone. For five hours. My ear hurt all night because I’d pressed it to the phone so hard. After that, we kept on calling.”

I remember the night of Ruby’s birthday and the eternity we’d talked for. I left Wren’s party and came home just so I could keep listening to her voice.

“So that’s why you kept chucking me out of your room,” I say with a grin. “And eventually you met in person?”

“It was over a year until I dared meet up with Graham. We went for coffee once he’d finished his degree.”

“And when did you…get together?” I ask, realizing as I say it that I sound like I’m in year seven.

Lydia flushes. “We were never really a couple, but we spent a lot of the summer holidays together.” She clears her throat.

“When Graham got a training post at Maxton Hall, he broke up with me. Right away. He said we could still be friends online, but no more than that.” Her eyes start to glitter suspiciously.

“I was OK with that, you know? Better than losing him completely. At the end of the school year, his placement was coming to an end, so I started to hope again. But we were back to square one in the middle of the summer when he got a permanent job there after all. The same heartache as before. But this time he didn’t even want to message me.

He cut me right out of his life because he said that was better for both of us. ”

I think for a moment about everything she’s just told me. “So what happened at the start of term?” I ask. “The day Ruby saw you together?”

She gulps. “Some kind of slipup.”

I nod slowly. I knew Sutton meant more to Lydia than just a nice way to pass the time. She’d been too upset in the last few weeks and leaped to his defense too quickly if I made any remark about him. But I’d had no idea that they’d known each other for two years. Or that it had been that serious.

“Just one more year, then maybe you could…” I don’t even know what I’m trying to suggest. Even once Lydia’s left Maxton Hall, a relationship with her ex-teacher would shatter her reputation forever. I can just imagine what our parents would say to that.

“I’m not stupid, James. I know that Graham and I have no chance.” She pulls her hand away and reaches for the crisps as if she hadn’t just confessed her deepest secret to me. She shoves a handful into her mouth, eyes fixed on her duvet case.

It hurts to see her like this. And it hurts even more that I can’t help her. Because she’s right. There’s no future for her and Sutton, any more than there is for Ruby and me.

“Thank you for telling me,” I say in the end.

Lydia swallows the crisps and takes a big swig from her water bottle. “Maybe one day you can tell me about Ruby.”

The pressure on my chest, which had slowly faded as she spoke, is suddenly back. I ignore Lydia’s searching gaze and pull the next question sheet off the pile. “There’s nothing to tell.”

I hear Lydia’s sigh as if it’s from miles away.

The words on the paper blur with the memory of Ruby walking toward me over the sports grounds and the mean words I hurled at her.

It keeps replaying on a grisly loop in my mind’s eye until I stop even trying to concentrate on the question and just stare at the wall.

The TSA goes well. Everyone in my family is so certain I’ll have passed that I don’t even want to think about what will happen if I don’t.

The week after that, we have one of the last meetings of the Oxford study group.

Ruby sits with Lin at the far end of the room.

She still won’t look at me but doesn’t give any indication of anything having happened between us either.

She acts just the same as ever, running rings around us with her sharp-witted arguments and once even manages to leave the tutor speechless.

It’s hard for me not to watch her the entire time. Bloody hard. The moment she opens her mouth, I hang on to her every word, and I feel the urge to kiss her lips.

At times like this, I conjure up the image of my father and remember the back of his hand hitting my cheek and the pain that throbbed in my jaw for days.

It wasn’t the first time he’d hit me. It’s not like he does it all the time, but often enough—especially when he thinks I’m not living up to the family name.

It hurts that Ruby doesn’t measure up to his standards, but I have to live with it. I was born into a family that I can’t cut myself off from, however much I’d love to. I’ll go to Oxford, and I’ll inherit Beaufort’s.

It’s time to accept that and stop feeling sorry for myself.

“Let’s have a look at the second question. James, would you like to share your thoughts with us, please?” Pippa asks. I have no idea what she was just saying. The only word that got through to me was my own name.

“Not really,” I reply, leaning back in my chair. To be honest, all I really want to do is go home. And to be entirely honest, all I want is Ruby, and that’s not an option.

It’s like torture to have her sitting in this room, not looking at me.

She was the only thing that motivated me.

Now there’s just lacrosse. Nothing else matters.

Not even parties with my friends can distract me from how pointless everything in my life feels at the moment.

The time until my exams is ticking away faster, and I just don’t know if I can hold it all together.

How I can stop my existence from feeling this superfluous.

“If you are invited for an interview, you have to have an answer prepared for every question,” Pippa says sternly, making an encouraging gesture.

I pick up the paper so that I can read the italicized text better.

When, if ever, is forgiveness wrong?

I look at the question. Ten seconds pass.

Another ten, then my silence gets uncomfortable, and someone clears their throat.

A cold shiver runs up my arms and down my spine.

The paper in my hands is getting heavier and heavier, and after a while, I have to put it down on the table.

It feels as though I’m swallowing cement, but my mouth is empty.

Apart from my useless tongue, which is incapable of forming words.

“Forgiveness generally follows a harmful act,” says Ruby’s voice suddenly. “But forgiving someone for the pain they’ve caused you doesn’t make it just go away. As long as you can still feel the pain, forgiveness is wrong.”

I look up. Ruby’s face is blank as she looks at me, and I wish I could stretch my hands out to her. There are only a few yards between us, but the distance feels so unbridgeable that it’s hard to breathe.

Pull yourself the fuck together, Beaufort.

“If you forgive people too easily, they get the feeling they can do whatever they like. That means that the anger of the person who had something bad done to them is the punishment for the guilty person, who desperately wants to be forgiven,” Lin adds.

Yes, Ruby’s anger feels like a punishment that I deserve. But I still wish she wouldn’t spend the rest of the school year hating me. She should be looking forward to getting to live her dream in Oxford.

If anyone deserves that, it’s her.

“Forgiveness can never be wrong,” I retort quietly. Something flashes in Ruby’s piercing green eyes. “Forgiveness is a sign of greatness and strength. If you spend years losing yourself in anger and destroying yourself, then you’re no better than the person who did you wrong.”

Ruby gives a scornful snort. “Only a person who’s always doing other people wrong could say that.”

“Isn’t there a saying? ‘Forgive but don’t forget’?

” Alistair looks around the room, and Keshav and Wren mumble agreement.

“You can forgive someone for what they did, but that doesn’t mean the thing didn’t happen.

Forgiveness is necessary to draw a line under a thing.

Forgetting can take a long time, or never happen at all, and that’s OK.

Forgiveness helps you to let go and move on. ”

Lydia straightens up beside me. “That sounds like you can forgive someone with a click of your fingers, and forgetting is the only difficult part. But you shouldn’t forgive everything that’s done to you. If it’s really bad, you can’t set yourself free just like that.”

“That’s what I think too,” says Ruby. “If you forgive too quickly, that means you don’t take yourself seriously and push your own pain aside too casually.

Which is self-sabotaging behavior. It takes time to recognize when you have to let go, that’s true, but it’s wrong to see the decision to forgive just as a simple means to an end. ”

“Maybe we could make a distinction between healthy and unhealthy forgiveness,” Lydia suggests, and Ruby nods.

“Unhealthy forgiveness comes too fast and means there might be circumstances where you let yourself get hurt again. But healthy forgiveness has to come after time to think. In that case, you respect yourself enough not to let yourself be treated badly again.”

“But forgiveness isn’t the same as reconciliation,” muses Wren, who’s sitting next to Lydia.

I lean forward slightly to see him. He’s got his hands linked behind his head and is slumped deep in his chair.

“If the original meaning of forgiveness is letting go of anger, it’s intended more for the victim than for the perpetrator, so they can decide for themselves the measure by which they forgive. ”

“But there are unforgivable crimes.” Kesh spoke quietly. Everyone turns to him, but he’s crossed his arms and looks like that’s all he wants to say.

“Can you expand on that a little, Keshav?” Pippa asks encouragingly.

“I mean murder and stuff like that—I think it’s totally OK if the victim’s family don’t forgive. I mean, why should they?”

The nape of my neck tingles slightly, and I glance almost imperceptibly back at Ruby. Her eyes meet mine, and the pins and needles strengthen. There are two tables between us, and all that space, but I want to jump across the gap, take her face in my hands, and kiss her again.

“But that brings us back to individual moral standards. Everyone’s threshold for what they consider unforgivable is different,” says Lydia.

Kesh is replying, but I’m not listening.

In Ruby’s eyes, I can see exactly where her moral threshold is set.

The things I said to her are unforgivable.

Her lips are set into a hard line, and there are dark circles under her eyes, which must be my fault.

She will never forgive me, and even though I knew we had no future together, it’s only in this moment that I grasp what that really means.

I will never have the chance to touch her again.

I’ll never truly talk to her again. Laugh with her. Kiss her.

The realization shakes me to the core. It’s as though a deep black hole has opened up beneath me, and I’m falling into it. Falling and falling and falling.

I try with all my might to take deep, even breaths, while the rest of the discussion rushes on around me. Just like everything else.