I felt myself turning red. “Hazel!”
“I just wanted to know what’s special about him.”
“Everything. He’s totally out of my league, just ridiculously smart and successful and beautiful.”
“Sounds like a bore.”
“No, he’s…he’s…” God, how did you explain Caspian Hart? “It’s like there’s all that and so much more, you know? Or I thought there was.” My eyes were stinging again. “He kept showing me…I kept seeing these glimpses. Behind the perfection. Of this…ordinary man, who was kind and funny and sexy and lonely and needed me and—”
And, shitshitshitfuckshit, I burst into tears.
I heard the thud of my bags as they hit the ground and then I was in Hazel’s arms. And, for some reason, that just made me cry even more.
“I’m getting snot on your shoulder,” I warned her in a damp, muffled sort of way.
“I think I’ll cope.”
Eventually I calmed down. Wiped my eyes and my nose.
Let Hazel gather up my things and lead me off the path to the top of this little rise where we sat down.
I took a deep breath. It was cold enough that the air felt almost sharp inside my lungs. Pure. Like I was the first person ever to breathe it.
Hugging my knees, I let the horizon fill my eyes. The rock-stippled grass rolled away into sand dunes. And then came the golden sweep of Oldshoremore Beach and beyond it the impossibly blue sea, the turquoise waves turning silver-tipped, like something from a Caribbean dream. Except, y’know, way up in the north of Scotland where sun was something that happened to other people.
Hazel nudged my shoulder. “Better?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I just feel like an idiot.”
“Isn’t that what being twenty is all about?”
“Being an idiot?”
“No.” She grinned, looking all impish and twinkly. “I meant, falling for unsuitable people. Breaking hearts and having your heart broken. Living the stories that are worth telling.”
It all sounded very nice in principle.
Except.
I sighed. “It wasn’t like that. It was messed up in this totally uncool way. I got caught up in this mirage of who I thought he was. And I kept stumbling after it, believing in it, like a complete dongle, and letting him hurt me over and over and over again.”
I felt her turn tense at my side. “Hurt you how?”
“Oh God, no,” I said hastily. “Not like that. He just made feel bad. I mean, sometimes he made me feel wonderful. And the rest of the time…completely worthless.” But, then, I would be to a man like that. Why had I ever believed otherwise? Why had he made me? And then burned me down.
“He did what?” She didn’t sound very much mollified.
Shit. The last thing I wanted was Hazel on a hate-tear. But how was I supposed to tell her what had happened, when I still didn’t fully understand it myself? Except for the rejection bit. That had come through loud and clear. “It was my own fault, really. I put myself in that position in the first place.”
“Nobody puts themself in a position to be badly treated. That’s all on him.”
“I don’t know.” I picked idly at the grass. “Maybe there’s something about me that made him do it.”
Hazel gave me a sharp look. “What is this? National Daft Day?”
“I just meant…like…after Mum—”
“Arden! Stop right there, before I find a bucket of cold water and dump it over your head.”
