SEBASTIAN
SEBASTIAN
The pounding of feet descending the stairs has Dobby spooked from his basket to my side, a soft growl thrumming through my leg as he presses protectively against me, floppy ears pricked.
“So, what, now I have my own room here?” Craig storms into the kitchen, yet again interrupting Ashleigh’s breakfast.
“Oh, good.” She drops her spoon in her bowl and swivels on the chair. “I’d started to worry the alarm wouldn’t wake you.”
I’m glad she doesn’t add that I’d been moments away from tromping upstairs to drag his sorry butt out of bed. Enough of my valuable time has been misspent already, waiting on him, but no doubt he’d take my impatience to be some further deliberate infraction upon his life. And it’s only for Ashleigh that I’m bothering at all. A glance over my shoulder finds him standing just inside the door, shoulders rigid. Dark shadows rim his blazing eyes. “Looking fresh this morning.”
He turns his sour look on me. “Least I haven’t been forced to wear someone else’s hand-me-downs today.”
Those clothes still haven’t been returned. I shift my attention back to the kitchen sink and the soaking pots I’ve busied myself with. My hands have a distinct issue with idleness. “If you want breakfast before we go, you best hurry up.”
“We? Go where?”
“College, Craig. It’s Friday, and Ashleigh’s of the mind that the world may very well end if you miss a class.”
Dobby relaxes, looking up at me as if expecting a treat for his diligent guard, and I hear Craig cross the room at my back. Then, there’s the screech of a chair’s legs dragging across the tiled floor. “And that involves you how exactly?”
“I asked him to take you in,” Ashleigh says.
The silence that follows her response draws my gaze back around. Craig’s staring across the wide table at Ashleigh while patting down his pockets and becoming noticeably irate. She’s holding his eye, looking no more ruffled by him than she ever seems to be about anything.
“Why?” He finally asks, giving up on his futile search for the car key that’s tucked away in my coat, hooked up several feet away from him by the back door. “I can…I can drive myself, Ash.”
“Not after the skin-full you had last night, you can’t,” she rebuffs him.
“I’m good.”
“You’re not.”
“Got to be kidding me!” Slamming a hand down on the tabletop, he bolts to his feet. The dog immediately retreats to his bed. “This is such bull. Why am I even here?”
“Well, Craig, you—”
“I am not your newest charity project.”
Now the humour falters in Ashleigh’s tone. “Sorry?”
“This is, what? Momma Bear’s halfway house for messed-up strays, yeah? You think I’d be a good fit for the display of saved souls in the lounge?”
“Wow!” It takes a lot to upset Ashleigh. The sharp pinch to her face is a clear warning of how dangerously close he’s come to overstepping. “Just. Wow.”
Seems, however, that Craig is fully intent on crossing that generous line. “I’m not one of Judy’s outcasts,” he shrugs, flicking a look to the kitchen door as if the mere mention of my aunt’s name might summon her. “And I don’t need shepherding into her freaky fold.”
The scourer is crushed in my fist, my spine stiffening.
“That’s not—” she starts, defensive.
“Then why am I even here ?”
I field this one. Reaching for the tea towel, I dry my soap-sodden hands and move, as calmly as I can manage, to properly face our ungracious guest. “Because you were beyond useless last night. Because you wouldn’t or couldn’t unlock your damn phone. And because Ashleigh refused to let me take you home, worried about landing you in more trouble after last time.”
His glower once again swings my way. But before he can deliver his next offence, Ashleigh’s scraping her chair back to stand.
“Giving help where it seems needed, Craig,” she says, “is just what good people do!” My eyes track her across the room. She doesn’t look at me as she passes, and just inside the door, she stops but doesn’t turn. “This halfway house for the unwanted — or whatever you called it — this is my home . Thanks to Judy. And yeah, no one here shares my blood, but that makes them no less my family.”
As she disappears into the hall, Craig at least has the decency to close his mouth and drop his head. I don’t feel the need to add anything to Ashleigh’s parting shot. I’m perfectly okay with letting his shame be her win.
Not until I register the soft tread of another pair of feet on the stairs a minute or so later do I disturb him into action. “Come on.”
He startles. “What?”
Rather than give an explanation I shouldn’t need to, I cross to the back door and lift my coat from its hook. After what he’s just said, there’s no way I’m letting Judy be subjected to his presence. With smug satisfaction, I retrieve his precious car key from the pocket, dangling it from a finger, and watch his cornflower blue eyes bug.
Dobby races out the back door before I’ve opened it more than a crack. “Here, boy,” I call, and in the time it takes me to put on one boot, he’s bounding around my feet, weaving through my legs.
“Oh, no. Not a chance!” Craig jolts me from fastening my second boot. I instantly secure the key inside my fist. He’s shaking his head. “The mutt isn’t getting a paw inside my car!”
Honestly, that idea hadn’t at any point even crossed my mind. But the look of pure horror on his face is simply too compelling to resist. “But Dobby loves a ride.”
His hand shoots out. “Give me my key.”
I smirk as I straighten, and then I saunter out the door, dog at my heel, without sparing him a further glance. “Best get a move on if you don’t want to be late. And some of us have actual proper work to get back to.”
The wind is no less fierce than yesterday, but the rain has thankfully stopped. I feel my tension ease a fraction — as it always does — in the fresh, crisp air.
“Bastian, no.” As anticipated, he’s wasted no time following me. “Roxy’s not animal friendly.”
Continuing around the side of the house to the front, where his shining black beauty is parked on the drive, I can’t deny my buzz of excitement as I open the door and climb in for another turn behind the wheel; it’s an exhilarating ride. A single pat to my knee, and the mutt jumps in on top of me as Craig draws up beside us. “ Roxy ,” I say in a tone thick with mocking, “is absolutely not the one with the issue here.”
“Okay, you’ve had your fun…”
A laugh almost escapes me when Dobby tramps over the centre console and makes himself comfortable in the passenger seat. “Looks like you’re riding back again.”
“Enough is enough, now. Please.”
“Compromise,” I relent, stretching an arm through the gap to pat the backseat. “Move.” As ever, my boy doesn’t need telling twice; he obediently shifts to settle behind me. Craig, on the other hand, doesn’t budge. I’m really not in the habit of repeating myself, so when the curl of my lip still fails to motivate him, I reach for the door and slam it shut on his next protest.
It’s only as the engine starts revving that Prince Pompous surrenders, dejectedly rounding the car to slump in beside me.
“I wouldn’t have done it, you know,” he says sullenly the instant his door closes us in together. A quick glance is darted over his shoulder at Dobby, and he appears at least a little reassured that the threat of dog defecation does not seem imminent. “Driven while drunk. I wouldn’t risk my car that way.”
I grit my teeth and say nothing, manoeuvring Roxy cautiously out the gates.
I continue to say nothing as I turn off the rickety farm road onto the main pass through Yoverton town. Craig switches on the radio, and I sense his glare finally slide from the side of my face to the window as we drive through a long stretch of empty moorland. He directs me into a parking space on the open and stately grounds of his elite college. I cut the engine, and he’s already halfway out of his open door when the words I’ve held back the entire trip get away from me, my eyes sliding across to him.
“You ever disrespect or hurt my family again, and I will not hold back.”
He’s snatching the keys from my hand the instant they’re offered. “Believe me, I don’t intend to see anything more of any of you.”
Shoving open the driver-side door, I get out and click my fingers. No sooner has Dobby joined me than he’s relieving himself on the tyre of the neighbouring Audi. Craig watches, his face amusingly aghast, but he’s swift to recover himself when he realises I’ve caught him on it.
“Wait.” A sudden frown creases his forehead as we each close our doors, and he locks the car. “How’re you planning on getting back?”
“You care?”
“I’m curious.”
With a pointed glance down at my legs and another click of my fingers, I turn and start walking. Dobby eagerly runs off a short way ahead.
“I was a dick this morning, I know,” he calls after me. “Tell Ash, please?”
“My pleasure.” The sooner I get away from this place and back on common soil, the better. Even the air here doesn’t feel free.