No way should she be out alone this late at night. No way should she be here, in this shithole part of Brighton. I feel the anger, at some unknown parents who should be worried sick, parents who should have taught her more fucking sense.
A father who should be driving around looking for his daughter, who should be protecting her from pieces of shit like that fucking waster back there.
I ignore the twitch in my jaw. Push aside that feeling.
She needs a ride home. Just a ride home.
She’s not my problem, and she doesn’t want to be.
I close the door after her and she buckles up oblivious. She’s na?ve. Definitely na?ve.
But tonight she’s safe. With me.
I’ll keep her safe until I get her home.
She’s staring right at me as I take the driver’s side, still shivering, but she doesn’t look so scared now.
I wait until the mist clears from the windscreen. The wipers give a rhythmic thump from the other side of the glass.
“I can’t get in at home,” she says quietly. “Not without my key…”
“What about your parents?”
She looks at the floor. “My mum’s away.”
“And your dad?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Your mum left you all alone?”
She nods. “She normally does.”
My gut pangs. No dad.
I keep my voice steady. Warm and calm. “I can give you cash for a hotel. Take you wherever you need to go. Maybe a relative? An aunt or uncle? Neighbour?”
She’s shaking her head. “I don’t have… anyone…”
I feel the ache in my gut, stronger now. Me neither.
“You could call your phone, maybe she’ll answer?”
She looks so embarrassed, shaking her head. “I turned it off… to save battery… it hardly had any battery…”
“Do you know your friend’s number?”
Another shake of the head.
“How about Facebook? Social media?”
Her voice is so quiet. “Kelly Anne is um… she won’t… she’s with a guy, drunk…” She sighs. “She won’t even give me a second thought… not tonight…”
Isn’t that just the truth of it.
I put the car into gear. “Then you’d better stay with me until morning.”
She doesn’t even attempt to argue as I pull away.
Laine
I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know why I’m not scared. My breath is steady now, and the air in the car is warm enough that my wet clothes don’t feel so bad. My nerves are still on edge, I can feel them beneath the relief. The relief that I got away.
I stare at Nick, trying to figure out the guy who grabbed me in the rain and saved me. He saved me.
How could I ever be scared of a man who saved me?
He seems strong, Nick. He seems like the kind of man who could chase monsters away. His jaw is hard, and his nose looks like a Roman carving, and his hair is long enough to curl as it dries. He has heavy brows, serious eyes. He seems serious.
I feel safer than I’ve felt in a long, long time. Maybe I’m still drunk on tequila after all.
I feel so small and he feels so big.
“Don’t you want to know where we’re going?” he asks. His voice is nice. Deep. Strong, like the rest of him.
“Not really,” I say. “Is it far?”
“No.”
I shrug. “I don’t really know my way around. I wouldn’t know where we were if you told me, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“I guess not, Laine, no.”
I can’t stop staring at him.
“Your friend doesn’t sound like much of a friend.”
“She’s a crappy friend when she’s drunk.”
“That makes her a crappy friend, full stop.” He glances in my direction. “A friend like that isn’t worth having, Laine.”
And he’s right. I know he’s right. But she’s the only one I have. I don’t want to tell him that, but I think he probably knows. He looks like he’d know a lot of things. He’s a proper man. A serious man. A man who knows his way around the world.
“It’s my birthday,” I say. “My eighteenth. Yesterday. I didn’t even want to go out.”
“Eighteenth?” There’s surprise in his voice. I hear that surprise from people all the time.
“Yeah, my eighteenth.”
“I’m sure you’ve had much better birthday parties than this one.”
But I haven’t. They’re normally shit. I don’t want to tell him that either.
He turns into a petrol station and asks if I want anything. I don’t.
He tells me to wait right there. I do.
I lose sight of him inside, and the nerves flutter in my belly. I feel like a kid again, a stupid kid. Maybe it’s because I’m acting like one, buckled in tight in some stranger’s car, trusting everything will be alright because he saw off some guy who was about to steal my V card in exchange for a crappy half-smoked cigarette.
That’s what stupid kids do, right?
Stupid kids do stupid things.
I see him pay the cashier, I see him smile at her. He has a nice smile, the kind of smile that makes me feel like a silly girl with a crush. I’m sure I’d be crushing on a guy like Nick if I wasn’t in such a ridiculously crap situation right now. The cashier’s smiling right back, and I imagine he gets that a lot. You would if you were a guy who looked like him.
I pretend to be fiddling with my cardigan as he comes back to the car. He puts some bags in the back and slips back in without a word. I don’t try to make conversation. I don’t try to justify my stupid birthday decision-making processes.
We head out of Brighton. The roads turn to streets, and streets turn to lanes, and we’re at big wooden gates at the foot of an incline. They open as the car pulls up to them, slide right to the side to let us pass. Neat. The driveway is gravelled and opens up into a parking area, one of those nice ones where the gravel crunches under your feet. I bet it’s that fancy pink stuff in the light.
His house is big. Really big.
Nicholas Lynch must be rich. I mean it’s obvious he’s rich. The car. But I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking straight enough to think about it.
He turns off the ignition and gets out. Opens my door for me.
“Home sweet home,” he says. “I’ll take you to Newhaven in the morning, we’ll sort things out, Laine, don’t worry.”
I nod, and climb out. The gravel is the crunchy type, just like I thought. He grabs the bags from the back, and I look at the house. It’s a barn conversion. Big windows line the lower floor. He locks the car and leads me to the front entrance. It’s big and heavy with a wrought iron knocker. It creaks as he swings it open. I always wanted one of those when I was little – a big door knocker that would make a big thumping sound.
I’d have loved a house like this.
A proper home for a proper family.
I wonder if he has a family.
He gestures me inside and I feel awkward, my toes still squelchy from the rain. My pumps are soaked. I ditch them and go barefoot, and he doesn’t seem to care that my hair is dripping down my back and onto his posh wooden floor. He leads the way through to a kitchen. It’s huge and beamed and has one of those fancy range cookers, a granite island, too.
“What would you like to drink, Laine?”
“Just water, please.” My voice sounds weak.
He takes a bottle from the fridge, pours it into a glass. The nice mineral stuff. His fingers touch mine as he hands it over, and they are warm. Big.
“Thanks,” I say. “For rescuing me. That guy… he was…”