Page 78 of Save You

“Does this mean you’re going to be a bit less unbearable now?”Alistair asks, looking at our hands again.

James lifts his free hand to stick his middle finger up at his friend.Then he turns to me.“See you later.”

It sounds more like a question than a statement, so I nod.

“Later,” he whispers, stroking the back of my hand with his thumb.The tiny motion sends shivers through my whole body.

“See you later.”

He lets go of my hand and walks toward the classroom he and his mates are in next.Cyril and Alistair follow, and I watch them until James glances back and smiles at me over his shoulder.I need to get to my own lesson, but I’m rooted to the spot.

When I think how things started between us, I can’t believe we’re now holding hands at school, in full view of anyone and everyone.

But it feels good.

More than that: It feels right.

“Everywhere I turned today,” Lin says in the afternoon, as she drops onto a chair in the little circle we’ve been arranging for the last fifteen minutes, “you and James were all anyone could talk about.”

I glance hastily at the door, but it’s still shut.We’ve got the group room to ourselves.“Seriously?”

Lin nods.“When I went to the dining hall for a coffee at break time, pretty much everyone was talking about you.”

Her words make me feel kind of uneasy, but I decide not to let them faze me.It was obvious that I’d lose my cloak of invisibility if I walked around Maxton Hall hand in hand with James Beaufort.Anyway, so much has changed since the start of the year that I don’t really care whether people are talking about me or not anymore.Or not much, at least.

“I’m dying of curiosity here, by the way,” Lin adds.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I say.“But even I don’t really know what happened.He turned up at my house yesterday, and…” I allow myself a tiny smile.“It was nice.”

“Did you talk?About everything?”

I nod.“Yes.It was so hard.And I don’t think we can act like nothing happened.But…” I take a long breath in and out again.“Even so, I have some kind of hope that we can get through it.”

It’s definitely not true that everything between James and me is fine again now.Too much has happened, and I’m too scared of him hurting me again.But yesterday, I just felt happy—and I want to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible.

Lin sighs.“That sounds good.I’m really happy for you, Ruby.”

Her wistful tone takes me by surprise.But then I remember that Lin went to the pub with the others on Friday so that she could talk to Cyril.All at once, I feel guilty.There was so much going on that I totally forgot to ask her about it on Saturday.

“Do you have any news?”I ask cautiously.

Lin presses her lips together.For a moment, it looks like she’s going to change the subject, but she suddenly exhales with a sigh.“Yeah.The news is that, as of now, I can officially focus one hundred percent on my exams.”

I look sympathetically at her.“What happened?”

She shrugs.“Cyril dumped me.”

I breathe in sharply.“Shit.”

“It’s what I thought.He’s in love with Lydia,” she goes on.“And he hopes the two of them might have a chance.”

“Did he say that?”I ask in disbelief.

She nods, slowly.“Pretty much, yeah.”

“I’m so sorry, Lin.If I can do anything to help…”

“No, but thank you.I think it’s good that he’s finally told me.Otherwise, I’d probably still have been chasing after him when we got to Oxford, messing up my fresh start there.I just read too much into stuff.”