“What?” She gasps, faking shock. “Mr Slater, this seems like a personal request? Highly inappropriate.”
“Custom coaching, remember?” I pull her hand and begin to walk down the hall with her, but she digs her heels into the ground.
“Wait.”
I stop. “What?”
“I need a change of clothes for tonight.” She grins at me like I should know this.
“You look great,” I say. Which gives me another excuse to roll my eyes over her fantastic body, taking in the slope of her breasts, the tiny slither of midriff, and the little gap between her thighs that distributes some brain-blood to my cock. “Yep, looking good to me.”
She smiles, tilting her head at my obvious perusal. “It’s a party, Konnor. I need something else to wear.”
I release her hand. “Okay, you’ll still be the most beautiful girl at the party.”
Smooth fucker.
She beams at me and rushes back into her room. As she bounds off, I watch her jeans stretch around her incredible arse. Oh, how I want more than anything to peel them off her, bend her over, and see what that arse looks like pressed to my pelvis. I want her bad; my heart rate, imagination, and cock take every opportunity to remind me of that fact. It’s actually torturous, but if shewere only half as beautiful, I’d still be just as obsessed. That little girl made me feel like I was worth something, long after everyone else had forgotten me. It’s a complete bloody bonus that the girl I’ve been in love with for most of my life is the perfect mixture of classy, sexy, and sweet—an awesome bloody bonus.
Blesk skips out a few moments later with a bag over her shoulder and a sweet grin from ear to ear.
I grab her bag, sliding it off her shoulder, watching it drop her shirt strap to her arm, exposing her soft collarbone. I turn. Don’t think. Kiss the newly exposed skin of her shoulder.
She freezes.
I hang her bag over my shoulder. “Sorry.”
A blush hits her cheeks, and she pulls the strap back up. “Don’t be,” she whispers, feeding her fingers through mine. “Just wasn’t expecting that right then.”
“Good, 'cause I lied. I’m not really sorry.”
When I was nine—two days before she died and I lost her—we made a promise that was never realised. We wrote down three things on a piece of paper that we wanted to do together in our new lives: the kind of things children dream about when they have nothing but hope. When you are alone, when you spend hours looking into the darkness or fearing the man who is meant to protect you, your wishes become beautifully simple.
Promise #1: We will go on a Merry-Go-Round.
The trees at the entrance to the park tower overhead; I have to tip my head back to see where their branches end. Yellow flags hang from the limbs, fluttering in the wind. The maintenance staff must have spent years coaxing these branches into the shape of an arch, slowly waiting for the wood to grow into its current twisted canopy.
Liz’s hand is in mine as two kids barrel between us, water pistols raised, shrieking and squirting each other. They look about eight years old—I would have been in that basement at their age. I squeeze her hand.
She glances at me sideways. “Where are we going?”
I point toward the maze as more children whiz past. “In there.”
She laughs. Her smile is so beautiful that my heart feels too tight, in awe of those lips and the way they curve. She must have smiled hundreds of times since I knew her as a child, and I’m jealous of every single one I missed.
“Okay, let’s go,” she says, tugging me in.
I let her take the lead.
“Beat you to the centre!” she calls at the first grassy fork, then vanishes to the right.
I go left. The kids scatter in different directions. I sprint past a row of water fountains, dodge a goblin statue, and slam into a dead end. I push against the wall. It gives.
I remember this part… Through the gap, her giggle reaches me—close, maybe just over the hedge to my left. I walk for a moment. When I hear laughter, I break into a run…until I round a corner and stop.
The merry-go-round stands silent. Empty.
It’s as cool as I remember. Fantastical creatures—unicorns, archers, centaurs—each frozen mid-gallop. The surrounding hedges are dark green, shadowed under one another, but the carousel’s colours throw light across them as it turns.
