Secrets | Watty Awards Winner 2013

Chapter 17

“Are you sure that’s everything you’re going to bring?” Will raises his eyebrows at me as I throw my duffel bag into the back seat of the silver sedan. I ignore him and slide into the front seat.

Will shrugs lightly at my lack of response and climbs into the driver’s seat. As we each clip our seatbelts in, my phone vibrates in my pocket. I don’t have to check to see who it is. This is the sixth time Ollie has called in the past ten minutes.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

I glance down at my fingers gripping the seatbelt. My knuckles have gone white with how tightly I have been twisting the material in my fingers.

"Yeah, I'm fine." My voice wavers a little but holds steady.

“Here. One step at a time.” Will leans over so that our breaths mix. He is so close that I can feel the heat radiating off his body. His gaze burns into my retinas as his arms reach past me and pull the seat belt. Slowly, he pulls it across me and clips it in, his fingers brushing the sides of my arms with feather-light touches. When he touches my hands, I resist the urge to pull away. I don't want this road trip to start with a fight.

“You’ll be okay.” Will’s voice is barely a hoarse whisper. “You always are."

Warmth floods through my body at the implicated double meaning of his words. Will raises his fingertips and traces the side of my cheek.

This time, I don't hesitate to pull away. "We don't have time for this,” I say, my words coming out harsher than I'd intended them to be. "We're not friends. My dad is paying you to be so stop playing games and acting like you really care about me. Because you don't." I fix Will with a hard stare, feeling a lot more confident at the end of my monologue than I'd felt at the beginning.

Will's expression hardens for a moment and becomes guarded. I can almost physically see his walls being raised. But almost as swiftly as they rise, they fall and his eyes soften. "You're more than just a paycheck to me." He smiles wryly. "I wasn't going to say it so blatantly but I'd also thought that you'd have figured that out by now." He breaks his stare and without another word, begins to pull out of the parking lot.

I feel my hands grow clammy as I make a concerted effort to look at anything and everything but Will. It's one thing to assume that a boy likes you, but it's a whole other thing when he openly confesses his feelings. I feel as I if I'm trapped in between a rock and a hard place and I don't know what to do.

Slowly, I let my thoughts drift to safer areas- like this morning's events before Will decided to throw a spanner into the works. We had snuck out of the house this morning before the maids had woken up. Will had pre-arranged for this car to be left in this parking lot and he had had to hot-wire it because he’d lost the keys.

My phone vibrates again and I jump, frowning as I pull the phone out of my pocket. In a flash, I see Ollie’s face flashing on my phone screen. It"s a photo which we’d taken at the carnival a few days ago. We had our arms slung around each other’s necks with goofy smiles on our face. Our eyes glow with excitement and our cheeks are flushed with having just gone on the roller-coaster.

It seems like a lifetime ago.  

“You should probably pick that up,” Will says, interrupting my thoughts. I glance over at him distractedly, almost not noticing the crease between his brows.

“I know.” I stare at my phone as if it is an alien. A thousand questions swirl in my brain so fast that my head hurts. Should I tell Ollie that I've located my mother? Should I invite him to come with us? But wouldn't that just put one of the few people left in this world that I care about I'm danger?