Scandalous Love

18. | Riley

I stood in my en suite bathroom conjoint to my bedroom, getting ready to go out with James.

I'd taken my hair out of it's up-do and left it out to hang down past my shoulders. I changed out of my pink and white dress and instead wore my leather leggings with my matching jacket while I wore a tight black tube top underneath.

A lot of people only saw my girly side - the side of me that was all flowers and rainbows, dancing and singing. Not a lot of people saw this side of my personality and I didn't let a lot of people see it but with James, I won't hesitate to be myself around him.

I finish doing my make-up and I walk out of the bathroom where all the girls were asleep in their sleeping bags, snoring away with their bodies scattered around the floor.

I breathe in, nodding my head before shutting the bathroom door behind me. I grab the necessary equipment from out of the chest positioned at the end of my bed and then I begin to creep across the flooring with the heels of my black ankle boots touching the ground.

It's when I'm by the window ledge, about to crawl out, that the most irritating voice of them all calls me out. "Riley?"

I hesitate, breathing in and back out again before turning around to face Maya. She was sat up, glaring at me with her eye-mask resting on top of her head at this point. "Where are you going?" she scoffs. "And why are you dressed like someone out of Baby Driver?"

I roll my eyes at her, shaking my head. "I'm going to sit by the pond for a bit like I do every night. Why? Is something wrong?"

"It's past curfew," she informs me, like I wasn't already aware.

It causes me to roll my eyes at her once more before shaking my head at her. "I'm going to the graveyard to reconnect with my mother. You got a problem with that?" I ask her.

She goes silent then and I nod, knowing I had the last word. "That's what I thought," I mumble.

Without caring about where I was going for much longer, she lays herself back down inside her sleeping bag, acting like the last thirty seconds never happened, and then I exhale before slowly beginning to lower myself down.

I wasn't the one who sneaked out like this. I never did. It was James who crawled up here to see me, not the other way around. It was only thanks to the grip of my boots that I wasn't completely crashing down to the ground right now.

I continue to lower myself down until I'm just above the bushes. This would have been the stage where James would have had to jump but now that it was me doing it, it seemed like a much bigger jump than I had thought. The fact it was a rosebush didn't exactly help either. One wrong move and those thorns could easily pierce into my skin.

I take a deep breath and then jump backwards, letting go of the one misplaced brick in the wall but just as I'm almost sure I'm going to fall, I land in the arms of the one person I would be able to guess.

"I got you," he whispers into my hair, carefully setting me up straight.

I stir around in his arms to face him and then I smile, resting my hands on his chest before reaching up to press our lips together lightly.

"So what's the big surprise, misses?" he asks teasingly, making me smirk before linking my hand together with his, beginning to lead us away from the mansion as we ran through the open gardens.

I didn't lie when I told Maya I was going to the graveyard. Mum was buried in the grave right beside the stables and the stables were exactly where I was taking James.

"Horses," he mutters once we get there. I look back at him and nudge him in the ribs, making him chuckle as he glances back at me. "What are we doing with a bunch of horses, Ri?"