‘Amy, wait—’ Sam was right behind her. She didn’t just hear his words, shefeltthem, warm on the back of her neck. His hands settled lightly on her shoulders, turning her around to face him.
She didn’t want to look at him. She was too furious, too mixed up, too weak-kneed. Just as she resolved to shake him off and run for it, she felt his fingertips on her face. He lifted it gently, tilting her jaw. His dark eyes locked with hers, large, bright blue and glassy with tears, then scanned her features, seeming to take in every freckle, quirk and flaw.
Was he going to kiss her?
She was suddenly, acutely aware that she would definitelylethim kiss her. In truth, she felt seized by a powerful desire to stand on her tiptoes, press herself against him andmakehim kiss her.
Then his thumbs were brushing at the damp tear tracks beneath her eyes. She leaned into the touch, feeling all the tenderness of it, desperately wanting to lose herself in it. They were both breathing hard.
As if it were too much effort to hold himself upright any longer, Sam let his shoulders loosen and lowered his face towards Amy’s.
She felt a rush of wanting him so strong that it drowned out every other feeling. Her lips parted in anticipation, in readiness to ignore all reason and follow this elementary, instinctive desire for him wherever it might lead.
She rose up on her toes to meet him, then felt frustration twist in her chest as he simply allowed his forehead to settle against hers. Her gaze lingered on his perfect, ridiculous, infuriating mouth. The air between them tasted sharp and clean, the cool crispness of wine undercut by something sweeter.Him.
Sam sighed, and it was a rough, almost broken sound that made Amy’s skin tingle.
He swiped again at her wet cheeks. Weirdly, she was still weeping.
‘Don’t cry, Amy,’ Sam murmured, the soft movement of his lips disturbing the air between their mouths. ‘I can’t stand to see you cry.’
It was the wrong thing to say.
With a jolt that was almost physically painful, she remembered the burning humiliation– and then the sheer misery– of waiting for him to reach out to her after Hari’s death. Too right, he couldn’t stand to see her cry.
She recalled how stupid and worthless she’d felt at the realisation that his interest in her had been so shallow and short-lived; that it probably always would have been, with or without Hari’s accident. She remembered how furious she’d been with herself for briefly believing someone like Sam– a storybook-style hero, the handsome prince from a fairy tale– could really fall for a short, stroppy, bookish girl with a breeze-block-sized chip on her shoulder.
As she twisted away from him, his eyes widened in surprise. He stepped back, embarrassed, then stepped forward again, awkward and indecisive.
‘Amy, I—’
‘No,’ she said, shakily. ‘No. It’s too late to try and be there for me now. I need to leave.’
In fact, her whole body hummed with the need to stay.
Forcibly, she recalled the devastated look on Barbara’s face on the day she’d discovered her home was to be sold. She considered Jed: landlord at the Old Oak for as long as Amy had been alive, now facing eviction so Sam’s parents could keep living in their dilapidated relic of a house. And for all Barbara’s protestations, as far as Amy could tell Sam had done nothing about any of it.
‘This,’ Amy muttered grimly, gesturing at the space between them, ‘can’t happen.’
‘Amy,’ Sam said, ‘please can we talk, there are things I want to—’
‘No,’ she insisted. She held both hands up to him in a ‘don’t shoot’ gesture. ‘All we ever need to talk about is this festival. Getting it set up and then over with. That’s it.’
He frowned at her, but for what felt like the thousandth time today chose not to argue. ‘If that’s what you want.’
Amy nodded curtly. She wanted so many things in this moment, most of which made no sense whatsoever. Butthiswas what had to be done– it was a reassertion of the smart, self-preserving practicality she’d spent a lifetime cultivating. It was a return to normality, to an existence where avid teenage crushes lived in their proper place: the past.
‘It is,’ she said, backing further away from him towards the door.
Sam scrubbed his hands over his face, like he was trying to wake himself from an especially disorientating dream. When he looked at her, his eyes were harder than she’d seen them in weeks: shuttered, as though she was no longer permitted access to whatever truths they might reveal.
‘Whatever you say,’ he said bitterly.
Amy couldn’t decide whether he sounded dismissive, angry or hurt– but as she made her way back through Rowton Hall’s winding corridors and out through its magnificent entrance, she told herself it didn’t matter anyway.
Chapter 19
As June became July, Rowton-in-Arden was bathed in the sort of summer sunshine that felt like a fresh gift every morning. Villagers tended their blooming gardens as if they were longed-for children, petrified at the prospect of a hosepipe ban. The grassy banks either side of the stream yellowed and wilted. Every evening’s air was barbecue-scented, and the Old Oak did a roaring trade, its beer garden constantly full of locals and visitors enjoying chilled drinks in the hot sun.
