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 lethim 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’tbe 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?”
