‘It was a school trip,' I started, suppressing a shudder at the memory. ‘They took the entire class to the Lake District to camp overnight. It was wet and cold and there were bugseverywhere.’ God, it was horrendous. Camping was my idea of a nightmare. You slept on cold, bumpy ground in a tent that wasn’t suitable protection from the elements or animals who wanted to eat you, and you did all of this when you could sleep on a mattress inside with central heating. It made no sense.
‘They had a few tents set up, and we were in one with a group of girls who were?—’
‘Right cows,’ Fallon finished off bluntly. Oliver’s arms tightened around her. ‘They kept making comments about me in the tent, knowing I could hear them,’ she carried on and the same flash of anger I felt boiling in my blood at those girls for body-shaming her, flared to life in Oliver’s eyes. His mouth opened, no doubt to spew some derisive comments towards the nonexistent pre-teen girls in his head. Before he could, Fallon placed a hand on his arm.
‘They quickly regretted it, so you don’t need to go allOliverabout it,’ she teased. His lips fell into a pout.
George squeezed my thigh. I tried really hard not to focus on the heat that lingered there after he withdrew his touch.
‘What did you do?’ He tilted his head, looking down at me.
A slow grin spread across my face. I placed a hand on my chest. ‘Whome? I was a perfect angel.’ My eyelashes fluttered, the picture of innocence. George grinned, his arms flexing around my waist, pressing me tighter against his hard stomach, that was oddly comfortable.
Fallon barked out a laugh. ‘Yeah, perfect angel.’
When three sets of eyes stared at me expectantly, I gave in. ‘To put this in perspective, those girls were really horrible, and the teacher put us all in a tent together, knowing how fucking mean they were in an effort tobond.’
Fallon made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat.Oliver booped her gently on the nose, eyes darting back to me, waiting to hear the rest of the story.
‘And after several hours of them being little twats,’ I continued. ‘They fell asleep. So I grabbed all of their bags filled with clothes and makeup, because that’s obviously what you bring camping.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘And threw all of them in the lake.’
George choked out a laugh. Oliver’s lips pressed together, head nodding in grudging respect.
Fallon arched her brow, smiling. ‘If only that was the end of the story.’
Heaving a sigh, I continued. ‘I’d been collecting all the different types of bugs I could find on the trip, because they were cool and I wanted to bring them home to show Mum.’ Thinking of doing that now nearly made me laugh.
Mum would probably toss the entire lot in a saucepan in the hopes it conjured some demon. Back then, before she started getting into the witchy stuff, she loved seeing all the things I collected. We’d build snail farms together, and spider sanctuaries—which was really just piling leaves into a box and then wondering why they kept escaping. I swallowed down the rush of emotion that clawed up my throat.
‘I had a jar of slugs and I emptied the lot into the girls' sleeping bags,' I said proudly. ‘Long story short, everyone woke up at three am to the screams and I got suspended and banned from all future school trips.’
The vibration of George’s laugh rippled through my body.
‘And the two of you were perfect angels at school, I’m sure,’ I said, turning the tables.
‘We were,’ Oliver piped. ‘I definitely never got suspended.’
I scoffed. ‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Inever got suspended.’ His gaze flicked over my head.Gasping, I tilted my head back. George’s jaw ticked as he glared at his brother before his eyes darted back to mine.
‘You’re not the only one who got in trouble for revenge, sweetheart.’
I grinned. ‘Tell me more.’
‘When we were in primary school, kids had a habit of sticking his head down the toilet.’
Fallon barked out a laugh. Oliver sniffed indignantly. ‘I was a really cute kid. They were jealous.’
Sighing, George carried on, ‘I found him coming out of the toilet, soaking wet, and I’m gonna bring you back down to earth, man, you looked like a wet rat.’
Oliver looked like he wanted to disagree but at the look George gave him he just shrugged.
‘What did you do?’ I poked George’s hand, needing to hear the rest of the story.
He took hold of my fingers, threading them together with his. ‘Found the main ring leader of the group of fuckers who were bullying him, grabbed him by the neck and threw him up against the wall, smashing his glasses and fracturing his wrist.’
I might not be in a dark romance book, but picturing that definitely had the cogs in my brain whirring to life.
