Chapter 12 #3
His eyes open. His pupils are large, swallowing the color of his irises.
He takes another bite of his energy bar as I continue to rub his arms. He doesn’t pull away.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the temperature inside the blanket warms up. The small flicker of heat growing between us feels mystical, something I don’t want to focus on in case it turns out to be an illusion.
Toby’s shivers subside into the occasional tremor as I work my hands over his arms. His skin begins to lose its icy pallor, a hint of color returning to his flesh.
He leans into my touch, his head drooping forward, his chin nearly resting on his chest.
“Feeling better?” I ask, my voice coming out husky.
Toby snaps his head up. He’s so close that even in the dimness, I can see the flecks of green in his hazel irises.
A shiver runs through me, but I know it’s not from the cold.
The air between us feels thick, filled with tension.
When Toby finally speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper over the noise of the water. “Thank you.”
I’m at a loss for words. Having Toby’s eyes this close to me, fixed on me, seems to have stolen my ability to speak.
I have to swallow twice before I can reply.
“Well, I don’t believe Oliver Hartwell would speak to me again if you perished out here, and given I’m going to be the next prime minister, that could make any interactions with the royal family rather awkward,” I finally manage to say.
The words feel inadequate, a flimsy attempt at deflection.
Toby arches an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me that saving me was simply politically pragmatic?”
“Also, I calculate my survival chances increase if I’m not alone out here.”
“Oh, you were being prudent as well.” Toby nods.
“Yes. I’m being prudent.”
Toby eases away from me slightly, and I try not to mourn the loss of his shoulder pressed against mine.
He shifts his weight, the movement causing the blanket to slip from his shoulder, exposing a sliver of skin that draws my eyes like a magnet before he tugs it back into place.
He clears his throat. “How do you know so much about this kind of survival stuff, anyway?”
“Because I was sent to a sadistic boarding school where they believed the way to turn us into men was to push us past our physical limits.” The words fall out without me having a chance to filter them.
He blinks those beautiful eyes. “Your boarding school was sadistic?”
Memories of Dentworth clog my brain. Shivering in the cold of predawn as we were forced to do press-ups on a frozen lawn.
Rubbing Cedric’s feet to try to get circulation back while he whimpered with pain, knowing that if anyone heard his cries, he would be subjected to a public shaming our headmaster, Angus Pritchard, specialized in.
“Yes,” I say. I can see Toby is expecting more words, waiting for me to wrap the truth in sarcasm, but I can’t.
Yes, Dentworth was sadistic. There is nothing more to say. It was sadistic in a way I will never forget. It was sadistic in a way that is branded into my flesh, into my soul.
Toby’s gaze is on me, and he’s so close I cannot escape him. I’m suddenly acutely aware our hips are still touching, the tantalizing brush of his bare flesh against mine. I drop my eyes away from his penetrating stare, but my gaze falls to his mouth, which is just as bad.
Toby’s luscious, generous lips are regaining their normal color now, pinking up temptingly.
His breath hitches.
I raise my gaze back to his, which is a mistake because, judging from Toby’s expression, I haven’t been able to mask my thoughts completely.
A movement out of the corner of my eye catches my attention, and I rip my gaze from Toby’s to shuffle forward, peering through the curtain of the waterfall’s spray, where I can just make out the far bank through the mist.
And now my pulse is racing for a very different reason.
A figure on the opposite bank is holding a dog on a lead, staring down at the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. Another figure dressed in black joins him, pointing further downstream.
Bollocks.
If they find no trace of us downstream, will they give up? Or will they simply retrace their steps back upstream, looking for any signs of us?
Toby has stiffened next to me.
“If they see us, we’re done for,” he whispers in my ear.
He’s right.
We’re cowering at the back of the overhang in the shade while they are in weak sunshine that has broken through the clouds. But if they move further up the bank and manage to catch a glimpse of us through the screen of water, we have nowhere to run.
Fear overtakes my stomach.
I’d aimed for safety, but have I simply led us into a trap?
Surely, I can come up with a plan to escape this predicament. But my brain is currently drawing a blank.
Toby leans in close so I can hear his voice. “The only way they’re going to stop hunting us is when we’re dead. So let’s give them what they want.”
I swallow. “I thought that was the scenario we were working to avoid, actually.”
“We don’t have to die,” Toby says. “We just have to get them to think we’re dead.”