Page 7 of Save You (Maxton Hall #2)

Ruby

On Wednesday, I go back to school. I missed more than a week and now I’m reaping the consequences.

Lin brought me her notes over the weekend, but I still struggle to follow the lessons.

I’m asked a couple of questions in history but can’t answer them sensibly.

I stare in embarrassment at my planner, but Mr. Sutton barely seems to notice.

He looks like he’s miles away, not really with it at all.

I wonder if he’s thinking about Lydia as much as I am about James.

By the end of the morning, I’m knackered. I’d like to head to the library to do more reading for my next lessons, but my stomach is rumbling too loudly for me to skip lunch.

On the way to the dining hall, Lin hooks her arm into mine. “Are you OK?” she asks, giving me a sideways glance.

“I’m never missing another day ever again,” I grumble as we walk toward the dining hall together. “It’s the worst feeling in the world not to know what the teachers want from you.”

Lin strokes my arm. “You did fine. You’ll be caught up again by next week, I’m sure of it.”

“Hmm,” I say as we turn the corner. “But it was still…”

I stop dead.

We’re in Maxton Hall’s main hall. To my right are the stairs down to the cellar.

The stairs where James first kissed me.

The memory of his hand on the back of my neck and his lips pressed onto mine floods over me without warning.

It plays out like a film before my inner eye: his mouth gliding over mine, his hands holding me tight, his self-assured movement making me weak at the knees, when suddenly my face starts to change—it melts and blurs into someone else’s entirely.

It’s not me in James’s arms now, it’s Elaine he’s kissing so passionately.

I feel it like a punch in the belly, and it’s a major effort not to crumple.

Then someone barges into me from the side—and I’m back at Maxton Hall. I no longer see the kiss, just the empty cellar steps and people moving toward the dining hall. The cramping pain in my stomach has ebbed away too.

I take a deep breath. School today has been nothing but one long roller-coaster ride.

Every time I rise up and reach the top, I think everything’s back to normal and I’m going to get through this—then, suddenly, I see something that reminds me of James and I’m plunged back into the depths, into a vortex of pain.

“Ruby?” Lin says beside me. Judging by her worried face, this isn’t the first time she’s spoken to me in the last few minutes. “Are you OK?”

I force a smile onto my face and nod.

Lin frowns but doesn’t ask questions. Instead, she does what she’s been doing all morning—she distracts me.

On the way to the dining hall, she tells me about the new Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata manga series, which she’s been devouring.

She’s so fired up about it that I immediately pull out my bullet journal and make a note of the titles on my reading list.

Once we’ve finished our lunch, we take back our trays.

There’s a girl leaning on the wall next to the tray station.

I don’t know her. She’s talking to a boy, but at the sight of me, she goes quiet.

Her eyes widen and she nudges him in the ribs—not exactly subtly either. I try to ignore the pair of them.

“Aren’t you the girl who got thrown in the pool at Cyril Vega’s party?” she asks, coming a step closer.

Her words make me flinch. That bloody pool is bound up with so many horrible memories that I wish I could get it lobotomized out of my brain.

I don’t answer, just wait for my turn to put my tray down and get out of here.

“And then James Beaufort carried you out. You know people are saying you’re his secret girlfriend? Is that true?” she continues.

It feels like the walls are slowly but surely closing in on me. They’re going to crush me any second now.

“If she was his girlfriend, she’d be at the funeral, wouldn’t she?” the guy says, just loudly enough that I can hear him.

“Yeah, but that’s why it’s a secret , isn’t it. Maybe he doesn’t want anyone to know. He’s got enough dirty little secrets, you know.”

There’s a loud crash.

I’ve dropped my tray.

There’s debris everywhere at my feet. I stare at a couple of peas as they roll across the floor but can’t even manage to pick them up. My body is rooted to the spot.

“Stop talking bollocks,” a deep voice sounds beside me.

The next moment, there’s an arm around my shoulder and somebody’s escorting me out of the dining hall.

I can dimly hear Lin’s voice behind me, calling something out, but the person just walks on, leading me out into the stairwell.

Only then does their arm leave my shoulder as they turn to face me.

My eyes travel up past the beige trousers and dark blue blazer, up to the face of… Keshav Patel.

I have to blink a few times before I realize that it’s really him standing there. His black hair is tied in a neat bun at the nape of his neck and he’s stroking back a stray strand. Then he turns his dark brown, almost black eyes on me.

“Are you all right?” he asks quietly.

I think I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve heard Keshav speak. He’s definitely the quietest of James’s friends. I’ve kind of got a bit of an idea what Alistair, Cyril, and Wren are like, but he’s still a closed book to me.

“Yeah,” I croak in the end, then clear my throat.

I look around and see where we are. This is where I had my first real encounter with James, under the stairs, away from prying eyes.

This is where he tried to bribe me and I threw his stupid money back in his face.

I can’t help wondering whether everything at this bloody school is always going to remind me of him from now on.

“Good,” Keshav says. Just like that, he turns, puts his hands in his pockets, and walks away. I watch him until he’s out of sight. Less than thirty seconds later, Lin hurries out of the dining hall, her face angry as she looks around for me.

“I’m here, Lin,” I say, stepping out from under the stairs.

“I told them what I thought of them,” she growls, coming toward me. “Utter idiots. What did Keshav want?”

I wrinkle my brow and look in the direction he disappeared. “I have no idea.”

The first thing on the to-do list for the events meeting this afternoon is wrapping up the Secret Santa gifts. Over the last couple of weeks, people have been dropping off little presents to us, which then traditionally get handed out in homeroom on the last day before the Christmas holidays.

Normally I love making up parcels of letters and sweets and putting them in bags so that kids in the lower school can take them from class to class. But this time, even the Christmas music we’re playing can’t lift the mood.

That’s probably because an above average number of the letters are addressed to the Beauforts, and we can’t decide what we ought to do with them.

James and Lydia haven’t come back to school, so we can’t give these to them in person, and I doubt that they’d appreciate having them sent to them at home.

I wish I could just ask the two of them whether or not they want the letters.

But that’s not an option, so the team votes on it and agrees to hold on to them for the time being.

Apart from anything else, we don’t know what’s in them.

Somebody might have gone in for a sick joke.

For the rest of the meeting, I keep catching myself staring at the empty chair where James sat when he was serving his punishment with us.

Apparently, everything really is going to remind me of him now, even though I’d love to just forget our time together.

Whenever I think of him, it feels as though someone’s pushed a hand through my rib cage, wrapped their fingers around my heart, and squeezed hard.

I’m so very angry with him.

How could he do that to me?

How?

Just the thought of letting anyone else get as close to me as he did makes me sick, but he didn’t hesitate to kiss somebody else.

And the worst thing is, I’m not only angry with James, I also feel sorrow and sympathy for him. He’s lost his mum, and every time I’m filled with white-hot rage toward him, I feel guilty. But I know that I don’t have any reason to.

It’s not fair, and it’s tiring, and by the time I get home, I’m totally worn out by the war all these contradictory emotions are waging inside me.

The school day has robbed me of all my energy, and I can’t even muster up a cheerful facade for my family.

Since Mum found out about Cordelia Beaufort dying, she’s treated me like a fragile eggshell.

I haven’t told her what happened between James and me, but like all mothers, she has an instinctive understanding of certain things. Like when your daughter is heartbroken.

I’m glad when I can finally fall into bed at night.

But despite my exhaustion, I spend over an hour tossing and turning.

There’s nothing to distract me here. There’s nothing left to do, nothing that can force its way between me and my thoughts of James.

I lay an arm over my face and screw up my eyes.

I want to summon up the darkness, but all I can see is his face.

His hint of a mocking smile, the lively glint in his eyes, the beautiful curve of his lips.

I swear, throw off the duvet, and stand up. It’s so cold that I get goose bumps down my arms as I walk over to my desk and grab my laptop. I head back to bed and pull the covers right up. I jam a pillow behind my back, open the laptop, and go to my browser.

It feels almost like I’m doing something illegal as I type the letters into the search box.

J-a-m-e-s-B-e-a-u-f-o-r-t

Enter.

1,930,760 hits in 0.5 seconds.

Oh wow.

At the top of the screen are image results. Pictures of James in tailored Beaufort suits, of James playing golf with his father and his father’s friends. They make him look respectable. Dressed to kill, like he’s got the world at his feet.