I should have stayed in my sodding pyjamas.
The warm summer air is hot and sticky, but I shiver against it.
“Cookie, please wait.” His hand encircles my wrist, and he pulls me to a stop.
“What did you do?” I scream, spinning round. “What did you do, Owen?” I hit his chest; my hands balled up in little fists. The thud sounds in perfect time to my beating heart that’s in chaos.
“He fucking deserved it.”
“You’ve ruined it all.” I push against him and go to turn again.
“Ruined it all? No, I protected you.”
“I don’t need your fucking protection from the world, Owen. It’s not your job to protect me from life.”
“Life? That wasn’t fucking life, Lucy, that was sexual assault.”
I flinch at his harsh words.
“But I said yes,” I whisper. Shame washes over me. I can’t look at his face, so I drop my gaze and stare at his shoes, which have a blood speck on them. I wonder whose it is.
“I don’t fucking care,” he roars back at me. We’re toe to toe. His breath heaves out of his mouth, his jaw clenched. He runs his hands through his hair as the sound of sirens breaks through the tension that rolls off us. The tension that adds to the humidity and stickiness.
Thick, unbearable silence.
His fingers touch my chin and he tilts my head up so that I have no choice but to meet his eyes. “But what did he say to you to make you say yes?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. I know you,” he whispers quietly, his eyes boring into mine. “I know you, Lucy, and you wouldn’t have done that.” He shakes his head, eyes beseeching. “Tell me. Tell me right now, look me dead in the eye, and say what I did was wrong.”
I stare at him, the words on the tip of my tongue.
But I can’t say them, because it would be a lie.
Regardless of what I saw, and how I felt when I saw him being held back by Billy like he was an animal. Regardless of how I saw so much James in him in that moment, that it scared me more than I care to even admit or acknowledge.
But I’ve already broken a promise to him tonight, and I can’t lie to him.
Not again.
“I,”
“You can’t say the words, can you?”
“You can’t always protect me, Owen.”
“Whilst I’m around, that’s exactly what I promised to do.”
Billy rushes out the door and pushes Owen, his voice full of urgency. “You need to get the hell out of here. Someone’s called the police.”
“Good,” he spits, and I shake my head. “They deserve to rot in fucking jail for what they did.”
“Owen, please,” I beg him. Tonight has already ruined everything for me at school. My solace. I need to leave to salvage anything that may still be intact before it all comes tumbling down.
Billy looks at me. “Get him out of here.”
I nod, the sounds of wailing sirens getting closer as more and more people file out of Harry’s house into the front garden. The stares and whispers are already starting to build around us.
