The One and Only (7 page)

I started kissing her, my heart racing.

‘Wait.’ Eve wriggled away from me and pulled off her trainers. She sat down on the bed. ‘There’s something I’ve got to ask you.’

‘What?’ I lay down beside her and ran my finger down her face.

Please let it be a quick something
. . .

Eve bit her lip. ‘I just want to know if you went out with anyone while I was in Spain. I mean, I’d understand if you did, so you can be honest. I thought about that a lot too and though I hated the idea, I knew that I couldn’t blame you if you went on a date or something. Or even if you ended up kissing someone one evening.’ She looked away from me, at the flowery quilt on the bed. ‘I mean, I know after what I told Mum you must’ve thought I’d be away for a whole year . . . and I couldn’t expect you to stay in every night. And . . . well . . .’ She tailed off miserably.

My stomach twisted into a knot. I rolled away from her and lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. There was no way I could tell her about Hayley. Not after her saying all that about how losing her virginity was such a big deal. If she sounded miserable at the thought of a date or a kiss . . .

No. I couldn’t say anything. It would really hurt her.

Not to mention drastically reduce the chances of us actually getting to have sex.

But how was I going to lie to her?

As Ryan had once put it, I was the world’s worst liar.

Eve’s face appeared above me. ‘OK, you’re scaring me, Luke. How many girls did you go out with?’

I stared up at her.

Be honest. Be absolutely, literally, honest.

‘None,’ I said. ‘Not one. I didn’t chat up a single girl. I didn’t ask a single girl out. I didn’t even see anyone who I wanted to talk to. Well, maybe I talked to a few – but only because Ryan forced me to.’ I stopped before I ran off track into a lie. I cupped Eve’s face in my hands. ‘I thought about you all the time,’ I said. ‘I missed you every single day.’

That
was
the truth and I could see her believing it, her pale blue eyes soft in the low light seeping in from the corridor outside the room.

We kissed. A long, agonisingly sexy kiss. I was only focused on where she’d said we were going. On what she’d said we could do. I wanted it so much it was almost unbearable. My hands ran down her jumper then tugged at her jeans, fumbling with the button.

But Eve just sighed and turned round, snuggling backwards into my arms. ‘Luke?’ she murmured.

‘Yes?’ I said, softly, reaching down with my hands again.

She yawned. ‘I feel so safe with you.’

I blinked, confused by this change of tack. ‘What?’ I said.

I could feel Eve’s whole body shudder as she yawned again. ‘I’m so tired now that . . . that . . .’ She reached out for my hand and pulled my arm right across her, like I was a blanket, tucking her in. ‘This feels like home,’ she murmured sleepily.

My arm was now resting tantalisingly under her chest. I hugged her, gently trying to pull my hand free. Then I felt her relax – her hand releasing mine, her whole body softening back into me and onto the mattress.

‘Eve?’ I whispered.

Please don’t fall asleep.

‘Eve?’ I peered round at her face. Too late. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was soft and even.

I groaned out loud.
Don’t do this to me, Eve.

But she just lay there on top of the flowery quilt.

The frustration driving through me was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I wanted to thump something. Gritting my teeth I turned away and pounded at the pillow, then I sank down and stared longingly at Eve’s slender body. I could hear her breath getting deeper, taking her further and further away from me.

I think if it had been any other girl in the world I would have tried to shake her awake. Quite hard probably. But Eve looked so vulnerable – all curled up on the bed. I was seized by this fierce need to look after her. To protect her from anything bad that might happen.

I wrapped my arms back around her and buried my face in her hair.

Nothing and no one are taking you away again. Ever.

I couldn’t work out what the noise was. Some kind of banging or thumping. Like a hammer on a plank of wood. It was dragging me up from a deep sleep, forcing me to notice it. Forcing me to wake up.

Where was I? I was dimly aware I was lying down, holding something. Some
one
. Eve. The memory of her, of everything that had happened flooded through me.

The thudding sound was louder now, but I wasn’t focusing on it at all. For a few semi-conscious seconds I lay there, wrapped round her, enjoying the sensation of not being able to work out where I ended, where she began.

And then I realised that the noise wasn’t going away. That someone was outside, banging on the door.

‘Luke. Eva. Get up.’ It was Alejandro. There was something desperate about his voice.

Eve stirred slightly, moving against me.

The thumping on the door started again.

Reluctantly I disentangled my arms from hers and staggered out of bed and across the room. It was still dark outside.

I pulled open the door. Alejandro was standing there, a look of total terror on his face, his bag in his hand.

‘Jonno,’ he hissed. ‘Here. Now. Downstairs. Come on.’

I stared at him, suddenly wide awake.

‘Here?’ I gasped.

Eve’s father’s here?

Alejandro gritted his teeth, barging past me into the room. He raced over to Eve on the bed and shook her roughly. ‘Get up.’ He picked up her trainers from the floor. ‘We can get out down the fire escape.’

Eve blinked sleepily up at him. ‘What?’

‘Your dad,’ I said, tugging on my jeans. ‘He’s here.’

Eve sat bolt upright, her eyes wide. ‘No. How . . .?’

I shoved her sweater into her arms. ‘Come on.’

As I turned round I met Alejandro’s eyes. ‘He’ll kill us,’ I said.

‘
Yo se
.’Alejandro opened the door. ‘I know.’

‘Jesus. Oh God, Luke.’ Eve scrambled into her jumper, then raced across the room and picked up her bag.

‘Eve,’ I said. ‘Hurry up.’

‘I need this,’ she said, clutching the bag.

‘Let’s go.’Alejandro whispered.

Holding my shoes in one hand and our jackets in the other, I followed him out onto the corridor. Eve crept beside me.

The unmistakable sound of Jonno’s voice roared up from the lobby downstairs. ‘I don’t care how early it is. She’s my bloody daughter. I know they’re here – the man at the car-hire place told me he recommended you. For God’s sake, I can see the sodding hire car outside.’

‘Oh, God,’ Eve whimpered.

I grabbed her wrist and pulled her down the corridor towards Alejandro and the fire escape. I glanced at her as Alejandro pushed open the fire door.
Jesus.
Her whole body was shaking.

I had time to feel a stab of pure hatred for Jonno before the door scraped loudly open and we were running down the iron steps outside.

How dare he terrorise her like this?

It was freezing outside and still completely dark. My breath misted in the air. The steps and the dark, tarmac ground were icy cold under my bare feet.

We were at the side of the building. The hire car was in the car park at the front. To reach it we just had to run round an ivy-clad brick wall. Eve pulled her arm out of my grip as we raced along. I looked over my shoulder. She was standing still, rummaging for something in her bag. She took out her pencil case, then hoisted her bag back on her shoulder.

‘Eve,’ I ran back, grabbing her arm again. ‘What the hell are you
doing
?’

Alejandro had reached the wall. He peered round it, then beckoned us forwards.

I ran, heart racing, dragging Eve behind me. She was now fumbling in her pencil case. I could hear her pulling things out and them dropping on the ground. I glanced round as we reached the wall. A trail of paintbrushes and pencils led from Eve back to the fire escape. What the hell was she doing?

Eve removed something small and silvery from the case.

‘They can see the hire car from the reception,’Alejandro whispered. ‘We have to run.’

I looked across to the car park. All the cars were parked neatly apart from a large blue Mercedes which had been left at an angle in front of the hotel’s main entrance.

It was obviously the car Jonno had just arrived in.

Alejandro’s hired white Ford Mondeo was only three parking spaces away from it. I gulped, turning back to Eve.

‘Ready?’

She nodded.

‘Now.’

We raced across the car park. As we passed the Mercedes I felt Eve wrench her arm away from me again. I turned round. She was bending down, jabbing the silvery thing from her bag at the car tyre.

‘What the . . . ?’

I bent down, trying to pull her away. Then I realised what she was doing.

The silvery object was some sort of art knife. She’d used one like it all the time when she was working on her GCSE coursework last year. She was jabbing it against the tyre, but her hands were shaking so much it kept glancing off the rubber.

‘It won’t go in,’ she said, desperately.

I put my hand on hers. ‘Give it to me.’

She released the knife into my hand. I drew back and stabbed it with all my strength into the tyre.

I could hear Alejandro opening the door of our hire car a few metres away.

‘Go and get in the car,’ I whispered.

‘EVE!’

Jonno’s yell echoed towards us from inside the hotel.

Eve turned and vanished.

I stabbed at the tyre again, making the hole bigger.

Yes.

Air hissed out.

I sprang to my feet and ran to the hired car. Alejandro was revving the engine. Reversing out of the parking space.

‘EVE!’

Jonno sounded so close. I couldn’t help but look round. He was there, right by the entrance to the hotel. His broad frame looked bigger than I remembered as he rushed towards me, his face twisted with fury.

I yanked open the back door of the moving car and hurled myself into the back seat. I slammed the door shut as Alejandro screeched away down the gravel drive.

Eve was curled up in a ball on the seat beside me, her hands over her ears.

I turned round just in time to see Jonno thumping the bonnet of the blue Mercedes.

‘Is he coming?’Alejandro asked nervously as we pulled onto the road.

‘No,’ I gasped. ‘But I bet he makes the hotel let him use their car or . . .’

‘. . . or calls the police,’Alejandro said, grimly. ‘
Hijo de puta
.’ He slammed his hands onto the steering wheel and pressed his foot down on the accelerator. The car zoomed even faster down the narrow country road. I checked the dashboard. We were driving at seventy miles an hour and the speedometer was rising.

Jesus.
‘We have to dump the car,’ I said. ‘Alejandro. Where can we leave it that won’t get you into trouble?’

I glanced anxiously out of the rear window again. There was still no sign of Jonno.

‘There’s another car-hire place in Taunton,’ Alejandro said as we swung onto the virtually empty motorway. ‘I used it before, with my dad. We can leave this car. Get a new one. Get to George’s house as fast as we can.’

He slowed down slightly from the ninety miles an hour we’d been travelling at. His shoulders relaxed.

I glanced at Eve. She was still curled up in a little ball. I reached across and put my arm round her, scooping her up against my side. She was shaking uncontrollably, her hands over her face.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Hey. Great idea with the knife. It worked too.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry you two are in the middle of this.’

‘Shhh.’ I hugged her harder. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘No.’Alejandro twisted round, grinning. ‘No your fault your father is a total MANIAC.’

Even Eve managed a weak laugh at that. I rubbed her arm and squeezed her to me, gradually feeling the shaking subside.

‘It’s all right,’ I kept saying. ‘It’s gonna be all right.’

But in my heart I couldn’t see how it could possibly be all right. Where was Eve going to go? What was she going to do? She could hardly stay with Alejandro’s friend for ever. And what was she going to do for money?

I didn’t even want to think about what was going to happen when . . .
if
. . . Jonno finally caught up with us. With me.

The sky was starting to lighten as we reached Taunton. Alejandro found a place to leave the Ford Mondeo. Then we walked over to a different car hire company and hired a green Volvo. Alejandro bribed the desk clerk not to tell anyone we’d been there.

We set off again for Cornwall, stopping only for a few minutes at a motorway café. I bought some toast and coffee for us all and Alejandro and I leaned against the car, eating, while Eve went inside to use the bathroom.

‘This is no a good situation,’ Alejandro said to me in a low voice. ‘I was thinking the police would be after us. But now I realise they won’t. Eva is sixteen, nearly seventeen. Her life is no in danger. She has called her mother and said she is OK. The police will no bother with her.’

‘But that’s good, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That means we’ve only got Jonno to worry about.’

Alejandro made a face. ‘Exactly. Maybe if the other authorities are involved, Jonno will be made to see he is stupid. Doing a bad thing for Eva. But this way . . .’ He sighed. ‘Eva will no go home to her mother now. She is alone.’

‘No she isn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m with her.’

‘For how long?’ Alejandro glanced sideways at me. ‘I know you like her. But you are only sixteen. You are at school. You have a life. A family. There is your mother and the little baby. Can you give all that up? All that security? Just for Eva?’

I stared at him. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d do anything for her.’

Alejandro shook his head. ‘Is that you talking or your head full of sex?’

We watched Eve walking towards us.

‘Just please be careful,’ Alejandro said. ‘For her. For yourself.’

He strolled away, into the service station, as Eve came up.

‘D’you want some toast and coffee?’ I said, offering her a polystyrene cup.