Page 21 of Vying Girls (Girls of Hazelhurst #2)

I watch the retreating creature, unable to believe the size of it. Holy shit. So they do exist. Didn’t even know you could get black ones. It looks like a literal hound from hell.

Tearing my eyes away, I look Nic over. ‘Are you okay? Blakely said that Damien—’

She stalks past me into the wind. It’s been raining for a while now. Far too close to the edge for my comfort, she gulps in the wet, cold air, looking formidable in that cloak.

‘How would you even know that?’ she all but groans.

I join her at the cliff edge, peeking down at the black, frothing waters. Without drawing her eye, I take a hold of the black fabric of her cloak. ‘I spoke to Tommy.’

She tosses her head, clearly upset with that. Tearing herself from my grasp, she grabs her stuff from the mouth of the tunnel, throwing mine at me too.

I hold my breath as she approaches the ledge. I’ve no doubt she’s as agile as me, but she’s in a state right now, wild energy billowing from her in waves.

She turns to face me. ‘You first.’

‘Why?’

She doesn’t answer, just waits.

If it was Elly or Haz, I would think they were being chivalrous. I have no idea what Nic’s game is.

Readjusting my hockey stick, I step onto the ledge, hands reaching for the holds. My feet are so cold they’re numb. I stamp them a couple of times. This suddenly seems a lot more precarious than it first had.

I shuffle across slowly, too slowly for Nic who’s already pushing into my side, both now sharing a handhold.

‘Nic. ’

I close my eyes, spitting rainwater from my mouth. I’m freaking out a bit. My fingers are as numb as my toes, the waves are so loud, and Nic’s looming over me like some kind of sleep paralysis demon.

‘Keep going.’

I shake my head. I just need a minute.

But she can’t even give me that, instead extending an arm and pulling me round so I face the water instead.

I scream as I slip on the slick rock. ‘Nic!’

She holds me to the wall with her body, placing her feet either side of mine. My hockey stick digs in painfully as I scrabble above for the holds.

My heart’s racing maddeningly as I look up into her face, blinking away rain. She stares at me with a disturbing intensity, like she might kiss me, or punch me, or toss me off the ledge into the sea. Never, in all the months she’s been tormenting me, has she looked like this.

‘What did Tommy tell you?’

‘That…Damien used to…rape you.’ I lower my eyes, the words so raw and ugly. ‘That they all knew and did nothing to stop it.’

There’s no reaction. Can’t be sure she’s even breathing. There’re only those dead eyes boring into me.

‘Nic,’ I breathe, carefully releasing my hands to cup her cheeks. For once I’m warmer than she is. ‘I am so, so sorry that happened to you.’

‘You’re sorry?’ She smiles, some twisted, horrible thing. Taking my hands, she curls them back around the holds, one at a time. ‘Tilda, you’re as complicit as he is.’

I frown, shivering at the feel of cold metal. ‘What?’

Instead of answering, she moves both hands to my throat, skimming her thumbs along the column of it.

Her eyes are focussed there and not on the way she now holds onto nothing, not the deathly drop right behind her.

I don’t think she even notices when she sways backwards, saved only by my hand grabbing her.

‘Nic, please. Hold on. You’re scaring me.’

‘Same,’ she whispers, the corners of her mouth ticking up.

She’s still watching the movements of her thumbs, heedless of the wind and the rain and how fucking cold it is.

Ignoring the tingles from the feel of hands around my throat, I hit my head on the cliff wall, about to properly lose it. ‘Can we just get off this fucking ledge?!’

‘Thinking about it.’

Still anchored on my throat, she looks down, regarding the water with an almost painful yearning.

No. Fuck that. She doesn’t just get to check out. Not when I’ve just found her again.

Feeling as crazy as her now, I throw my arms around her waist, holding her tight.

Gasping, she slams her hands back onto the holds. ‘Tilda! Jesus.’

‘Go on,’ I goad, squeezing her so hard I hope it hurts. ‘Fucking do it. But you take me with you. Where you go, I go. Forever. That was our final spell, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah. One you didn’t honour.’

I blink at her in disbelief. ‘Yeah, because I found your dad’s fucking stash of—’

The words die in my throat when she slams me into the wall to swing across me, shimmying along the edge and onto the other side. There, she turns back, eyes more haunted than I’ve ever seen them.

Clinging to the handholds again, I wait for her to bolt. She’s thinking about it, I can tell, some internal war raging.

Instead, she sets her jaw and reaches out a hand.

That reluctant kindness again. It used to confuse me, but now it’s clear as day. She’s remembering what we once were. It’s still inside her somewhere. I vow here and now to pry it out, to show it to the sun and force it back to life.

I inch across and take her hand, relieved to be off this death trap.

She pulls me a little too hard and I stumble. She peers down at me as I find purchase on her arms. There’s little of that life in her eyes now. It’s like she’s sleepwalking.

I pull drenched hair away from my face, not wanting to lose sight of her. ‘I know you still feel it.’

‘Feel what?’

I toss out my arms. ‘Everything.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ She turns away from me. ‘I don’t feel fucking shit.’