Chapter 16
Henry
No. No . . .
Not yet, please. It can’t be morning already, I’ve hardly slept twelve seconds, and I hate my alarm.
I hate it. I hate it for going off, because it’s so lovely and warm in this bed, and my body feels as heavy as lead.
I hate the fact that I’m going to have to get up in a moment, brush my teeth, and put on my PE kit.
Maybe it’ll rain and the morning run will be called off, maybe . . .
I realize too late that the alarm has stopped and that something’s moving beside me.
I really couldn’t care less. My head empties again, the quiet, it’s all so nice, and I jump as I hear someone knocking.
Much harder than normal, and it’s not Mr. Acevedo’s voice.
It’s a woman. I open my eyes fully and my blood runs cold.
“Time to get up, Emma.”
Shit . . . A strip of light falls into the room around the door. A moment later, it goes dark again as Emma pulls the duvet over me.
“Morning run in twenty minutes.” Ms. Barnett’s voice reaches me, muffled by the layers of fabric, and I don’t dare breathe. I feel Emma beside me, pushing herself up onto her elbows and nodding.
“Yes.” Her voice sounds rough, her warm, soft body is touching mine, her sleepshirt’s ridden up a little over her hips, and I bite my bottom lip, hard enough for it to hurt, but none of that’s any use as all my blood rushes between my legs.
Fuck, fuck, fuck . . . Think about the morning run, Bennington. Cold, drizzle, fog. Misery. Although not when Emma’s running beside me, getting those red cheeks, and her hair all frizzed up by the rain and . . . Fucking shit.
The door is shut again, and at that moment, Emma exhales audibly. I slide a little away from her and pray she didn’t feel anything. She pulls the duvet back slightly, and her eyes are still small and tired, but now there’s a hint of panic in them.
“Hi,” she whispers, and I want to kiss her. Her soft pink lips. That’s really all I want to do at this moment, and I can’t for so many different reasons.
“I should—” I begin.
Emma nods. “Yes,” she says at the same time, without looking away.
I want to run my hand through her pale-blond hair while she grabs hold of mine—and, God, what have we done?
Why did I forget I was here and that I’d been intending to slip back to my own room before half past six if at all possible?
So that nobody would notice where I was.
In the girls’ wing. In Emma’s bed. While Grace is at home, in her own bed, and holy shit, I’m so dead.
I straighten and something flickers in Emma’s eyes as I get to my feet. Her gaze runs over my body. She looks so little and vulnerable, and I have to go.
“Sorry,” I mumble and turn away.
My pulse is racing, but I’m in luck: I don’t bump into anyone.
The sky is overcast and gray. I just about make it across the courtyard to my wing before the first raindrops fall.
So much for the morning run. In a matter of seconds, the light drizzle turns into hammering rain, which drowns out my hurried footsteps on the stairs.
The noise of it still hasn’t stopped by the time I get up to my floor.
Just four more doors to my room. Just three, just two . . .
“Henry?”
I freeze.
No.
Shit.
I shut my eyes, take a deep breath, and then, in slow motion, I turn around.
Mr. Acevedo’s floor-length dressing gown trails behind him as he comes toward me. He pulls it around himself and eyes me critically. I can’t think of anyone who is less of a fan of early rising than our houseparent seems to be.
“Morning run’s off. Go back to bed,” he says, and relief floods through me.
“Yes, sir,” I mumble hastily. I’m about to turn away when he continues.
“Hold on a moment . . .” He comes a step closer. “Have you come from outside? Have you already been out running with your little friend from the west wing?”
I thank myself for having had the sense to put on running shoes, a hoodie, and joggers before I went over to Emma’s yesterday. I clear my throat. “Yes. It wasn’t raining till just now.”
“Got in just in time, then,” says Mr. Acevedo, pointing to my room. “Better go and have a shower.”
I nod and turn away.
Phew . . . I hardly dare breathe as I walk to my room. I’m just fishing my key out of my trouser pocket when the door next to mine opens.
Sinclair’s hair is sticking up all over the place. “Morning run’s canceled, isn’t it?” he asks hopefully, blinking at me. “Man, Henry,” he murmurs, and I eye him warningly. I don’t know how, but he’s seen right through me. His eyes are gleaming with a mixture of amusement and curiosity.
“Just don’t say a thing,” I hiss. Sinclair grins, and I stick my key into the lock. “And yes, the morning run’s off.”
“Hallelujah,” he mumbles, and as I step into my room, I’m a different person from the Henry who left it last night.
One who does crazy things without thinking.
Breaks the rules and cheats on his girlfriend.
Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? I slept in the same bed as Emma.
I was closer to her than I’ve ever been to anyone apart from Grace.
I didn’t kiss her, and nothing went any further, but I knew it wasn’t right.
I’m totally screwed, and as I have a hot shower, rage boils up inside me.
I’m angry with myself. Why did I do that?
I shouldn’t have slept at Emma’s. I shouldn’t even have gone to hers.
Why do I constantly feel the need to be with her?
I’m spending way too much time with her. And I don’t want to change that.
I groan with frustration, and that’s got nothing to do with the water having suddenly gone cold.
Emma
Henry cancels our next training session, and in the end, I’m grateful to him for that.
On Friday, I only see him at mealtimes and in lessons, with enough other people around us that I don’t have to speak to him.
There are only stolen glances and hasty looking away when the other person notices.
And I hate that I let things get so complicated between us.
Although I have to admit that they were complicated right from the start.
From the moment I stepped into the arrivals hall in Edinburgh and realized that Grace was his girlfriend.
I saw him and knew that this thing would blow up around my ears.
Because I wanted him. Because I wanted Henry Harold Bennington, regardless of what that meant.
Ha, and here we are now, and I still want him.
But I’m not allowed to want him. Even after he got a hard-on lying next to me half asleep and I couldn’t think about anything else all the next day.
But apparently, we’re acting like that never happened.
Like I didn’t feel it or something. The weight of his warm body, the heat of him, right next to my skin, and—No.
I have to stop this. Maybe I just imagined it.
And even if I didn’t, men sometimes just get them.
It had nothing to do with me. I shouldn’t read anything into this.
There won’t be any Henry and Emma. There’s only Henry and Grace.
He can’t skive off the regular morning run now that it’s Tuesday.
I spent the weekend alone. On Monday, we only saw each other in class and avoided each other the rest of the time.
I expect him to join Tori and Sinclair and take the shortcut, but he doesn’t.
Henry’s eyes flick back and forward between me and the others a few times, and then he jogs through the gate beside me.
We don’t speak to each other. I run faster than normal, at a pace that tires even me after a few minutes, but Henry keeps up.
I don’t know if I should be irritated or proud.
Only a few weeks ago, I’d have shaken him off a long way back.
The ground is muddy, the sky heavy with clouds. Henry’s chest is rising rapidly and laboriously, and I want to tell him to clench his fingers into loose fists, not to be so tense in the shoulders. But I don’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say eventually, once we’ve overtaken a small group of people and we’re on our own. “Last week . . . I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You didn’t bother me,” Henry replies. “It was just . . . I don’t think I should have come round so late.”
He shouldn’t come round at all.
“It wasn’t fair to Grace,” he says, and I wish we could go back to his fitness level when we first started training, when he could barely string three sentences together.
It would save me from having to have this conversation.
But I can’t always run away every time anything gets complicated.
“And the walls in this place have ears—eyes too. There’s so much gossip. I wouldn’t want her to hear rumors.”
“Me either,” I say at once.
I hate this conversation. It’s the opposite of how we’ve spoken to each other before.
“We should stop this.” The words are out before I’ve even thought them through. Henry opens his mouth, but I don’t let him speak. “Running together. I don’t think it was a good idea. Besides, you’re in much better shape now.”
“Rugby was yesterday,” says Henry, and I wonder if he was even listening to me. Then I remember. It must have been the deadline to earn a place on the team.
“I’m in.”
“Really?” I blurt. I can’t help the pleasure in my voice. “That’s—” My tone is much more detached as I go on. “I’m glad for you, congratulations.”
“Yes . . .” Henry hesitates. “Thank you.”
“All this training is over anyway, then.” I hate that there’s this tiny edge to my voice. The slight disappointment, which Henry can hear, I’m sure of that.
“No,” he says. “Mr. Cormack says he’ll give me a chance, but I have to keep working at it, to be better by the time we have our first match. He won’t play me until then, he says.”
I understand. It’s only if Henry actually gets onto the pitch in person for an important match, if he’s not just on the bench, that this will all have paid off for him.
“Oh.” I give him a little sideways glance.
At that moment, he looks at me too, and I notice, yet again, how different the green of his eyes can be.
Outside, in daylight, they’re so pale that they’re almost blue.
Last week, in the dim light of my room, it was much darker.
Forest green, moss green—dark, almost-black green.
“Do you think we could keep on running together?” he asks straight out.
I have one job: Turn him down, keep it friendly but firm. But . . . Just now, he hinted in a roundabout way that we shouldn’t be seen together so much. This latest question sounds like the exact opposite. “Are you sure that would be a good idea?”
Henry pauses. “Yes, I mean . . . we’re just good friends, aren’t we?”
Tch, and here I make my mistake. I nod. Even though we both know that that’s ridiculous.
Because just friends don’t wake up with a throbbing between their legs when they’ve had another dream about the other person holding them in their sleep.
But if we can’t be just friends, we can’t be anything.
We’d be classmates who avoid each other.
And I couldn’t bear that. Besides, it would be pretty difficult.
This isn’t just school; it’s where I live.
I see him from morning to evening. In class, at meals, just after getting up and at midnight parties.
It’s impossible, so I’ve got to pull myself together.
We can act like adults around each other.
Like friends. And friends help each other out. Without ulterior motives.
“We are,” I tell him.