But Elsie raised her voice to talk over me. ‘Some of us choose to put other people’s needs ahead of our own. I put my family before myself. Callum is incapable and, judging by what I’ve seen of you, you’re the same. Either you were raised by selfish arseholes or your parents must really hate you.’
That was enough. That was more than enough.
‘You’re the one who doesn’t know what she’s talking about,’ I yelled, the ability to moderate my volume completely out the window. ‘You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about me, or my family, and if you did, you’d feel fucking dreadful about what you just said. Or maybe you wouldn’t, I don’t know, the basic laws of common decency seemed to have passed you by entirely. Maybe Callum is selfish, maybe he didput his own wants and needs first, and you might not like that, your parents might not like that, but he’s the one who has to live his life, not you and not them.’
Panting for breath, I prepared for the final blow, Elsie practically swaying back and forth in front of me.Finish her, whispered a videogame voice in my head.
‘Stop complaining that Callum only thinks about himself when you’re just as bad. You don’t really care about Shiv or your dad, you’re pissed off because you thinktheydon’t care aboutyou. You’re angry because you believe they’ll choose your brother over you. That’s not his fault,hun. Take it up with them.’
Silence.
The entire town hall was utterly silent.
Joel and Rory stood still, cups of mulled wine held halfway up to their mouths. On the other side of the room, Derek, Lizzie and Shiv stared at us in various states of shock. What was happening? Why did I feel so out of control? Closing my eyes, I tracked the sensations in my body. An influx of adrenaline and cortisol left me light-headed as my amygdala shot off panic signals to the hypothalamus. I needed to breathe, I needed to calm down. I needed to apologise. I opened my eyes, not sure where to begin, but Elsie was no longer in front of me. A tall, barrel-chested body with auburn hair that fell in front of dark blue eyes stood between us, looking down at me.
‘Callum,’ I began, filtering through the millions of different apologies I needed to give.
But he didn’t give me time to even try. Grabbing my face with both hands, Callum pressed his lips to mine with hard and bruising pressure. He was kissing me. He was kissing me like he meant it.
‘Callum,’ I said his name again when we broke apart, barely breathing sound into the words, trapped in his gaze, my hands gripping his wrists as my legs weakened beneath me.
‘Caroline,’ he replied, brushing a strand of hair away from my face, he leaned down again, tilting my head backwards before our lips met again.
Caroline.
He was kissing Caroline, not Laura.
But my heart still swelled around the knife he plunged into it and as my mouth opened to his, the rest of the world vanished without a trace.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I came to, pulling away from Callum right as Shiv walked by. I pressed my lips together tightly, awash with shame, but she didn’t even look at me. Head held high, she grabbed hold of Elsie’s arm and dragged her out to the lobby.
‘OK, enough of this,’ Desi said loudly, punching me very hard in the arm. ‘No one wants to see that amount of PDA at a Christmas carol concert.’
‘Technically the carol concert is over,’ I heard Joel say. ‘And I’m fine with it.’
There was other chatter, people whispering, talking, but I was staring up at Callum, stunned into silence and barely able to stay upright. He looked right back at me, eyes boring into mine.
‘Mal’s waiting outside, everyone in the bloody car,’ Derek barked, words cutting through my lust-struck haze. ‘We’ll not be airing our dirty laundry in public.’
‘Two more minutes and they’d be airing more than their laundry,’ Rory said. ‘I’d say get a room but you’ve got one and it’s awful close to mine. MaybeI’ll go down to the cottage and stay with Mal and Fi tonight.’
‘Time to go,’ Desi sang with a big fake smile on her face as she rounded behind me and physically pushed me forward to hiss in my ear. ‘What the fucking fuck was that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied with an equally enormous, fake grin pasted on my face. ‘He kissed me, not the other way around.’
When we stepped out of the town hall, the ground was glittering, the beginning of a frost, the whole of Braewick white over.
‘As soon as we get back, we should get in the car and drive home,’ she said as Joel fell into step beside us. ‘Your work is done, I feel safe in saying you’ve been crossed off the McClay family Christmas list.’
‘It’s a ten-hour drive at best,’ Joel replied. ‘And we’re all three of us over the limit still. No one’s going anywhere tonight.’
‘First thing in the morning then.’ Desi’s glare softened when she saw the confusion on my face. ‘And she’s sleeping in our room with us. Where we can keep an eye on her.’
I didn’t say anything. I’d said enough.
‘I don’t know if I’ve got another day of this in me,’ she groaned. ‘I’m exhausted.’
