Something about the way Niall carried himself told her it wasn’t the bedroom. This wasn’t about sex. It was about so much more. What exactly, she didn’t know. And honestly, the anticipation of whatever it was charged her tip to toe.
Across the landing and along the corridor they padded. Niall stopped outside his old bedroom. The room where they had their first time.
He opened the door. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be two seconds.’ Moments later, he returned holding something.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, but he held it down by his leg out of sight.
‘You’ll find out soon enough. C’mon.’ He slipped his fingers between hers again and began walking. Stopping outside his mum’s romance library, he pushed the dooropen, stepped aside and motioned for Carli to enter. She walked past him and stopped.
‘What is this Niall?’
‘It’s a romance library.’
‘I know that but…’
‘Just get inside,’ he said. ‘So I can shut the door.’
Carli’s whole body pulsed. Niall’s voice was loaded with intent. She’d never heard him so assertive and there were times she’d seen him pretty sure of himself. But that was the cocksure assertion of a teenager. This was the rock-solid definitiveness of a man.
Niall shut the door, clunked the key in the lock. In the past, the door had only ever been locked when they needed privacy. Like when things got heated. They’d closed the curtains on days like that. Niall didn’t seem interested in closing any curtains today.
‘Carli.’ He came towards her. She wasn’t scared of him, not remotely, but somehow she found herself backing up towards the bookshelf, the one with the filthiest books of them all. And he’d called her Carli. Niall never called her Carli. It was always Cass. Always.
‘What?’
He was so close now. She could smell the intent of him, feel the fire she’d ignited in him, and sense how hard his heart was beating.
‘You know what this is?’ Niall held up a book the size of a school jotter.
‘It’s a jotter? With, um,’ she squinted, ‘Rabbie Burns on it.’
‘Aye, right so far. Do you remember that day I stole a jotter from Mr Davidson’s desk and replaced it with one of those books?’ He nodded to the bookshelf behind her.
‘Yeah.’ Carli remembered all too well. She’d neverlaughed so hard in her life as she had when Niall told her what he’d done that day and when he’d done impressions of Mr Davidson at home readingThe Maltese Prince’s Stubborn Virgin Brideto his wife.
‘Well, this was the jotter. I brought it home and do you know what I did with it?’
‘Um… no.’ Where was this leading? Niall’s jaw was set like it held the answer and she would have to wait and find out.
‘I’ll tell you. I printed off stupid fucking pictures of Rabbie Burns and stuck them on the front. Then, because I was a lovesick wee laddie, I spent time when I should’ve been doing homework, copying poems into this book. And I did it for you. Do you know why?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I loved you, Cass. I loved you so much.’
Carli blinked back the salty sting of tears and pressed her lips together, as if that would hold the remotest sway in stemming the emotion.
‘I was going to give it to you to take to Australia, but then I hadn’t finished it, so I decided I’d send it to you, but then things went tits up. But I never threw it away. It’s been up there in a drawer the whole time, along with your letters, and letters I never sent to you and all those leather bracelets.’ Niall held up his wrist and Carli saw that he was wearing a leather bracelet like the one she’d made for him. He must have put it on in the bedroom.
‘What is all this?’ she whispered.
‘What is all this?’ Niall slapped the jotter into his palm. ‘This…’ he said, taking a step towards her, ‘is “Ae fond kiss, and then we sever”. Right? That’s what you think I want, isn’t it?’
‘Niall, come on. It’s not about what I think you want, it’s about what you need.’
‘Okay, but how about you letmedecide whatIneed, Carli? What I can cope with.’
Her heart thundered at his calling her by her name again.
