“I—I’m sorry,” I whispered into his chest.
“Ara? You. Have. Nothing to be sorry for.”
“But I—”
“No.” He shook his head against the top of mine. “I won’t let you say that word anymore; not for anything.”
I tugged a little to make him loosen his grip, then looked up at him. “Why didn’t you just tell me you knew about my mom?”
He smiled, breathing out through his nose. “Would you have wanted me to know? Would you still have been my friend?” It was a rhetorical question; we both knew the answer.
“So, what am I to you now? I mean, why would you still be friends with me now that you know all of this? Am I some damsel project to you or something? Do you think you can save me?”
David shook his head. “No, Ara. It was never about that.”
“Okay, so, what do you want from me; if my dad hasn’t sent you in as his informant, then what do you want with me?”
“Informant?” He looked down at me. “Is that what you thought?”
“It makes sense. From the first moment we met, you acted like we knew each other—like we were already friends. I just…I wondered why you were so interested, when, you know, I’m no super model. I don’t really have anything to offer you.”
“You have more than you think, Ara.” He exhaled, rocking his jaw. “Okay, at the risk of sounding creepy, I’m going to tell you why I was so…overeager when you first came to school.”
“Creepy? You weren’t stalking me, were you?”
“Ha! No, I wasn’t. But I had seen you several times.”
“When?”
“The first time was about a month ago—guess it was the day you arrived. I was on the football field doing laps for practice and I passed your house—saw this sweet little thing in a yellow dress, just standing there looking up at the blue sky. And I stopped running.”
I pictured it for a second; David on the field, me by the car, watching Dad get the suitcases from the trunk, and Vicki standing on the porch steps, covering her mouth, trying not to cry, and so badly, I knew, wanting to run out and hug me. But she didn’t. And I was glad for that, because I’d have pushed her away.
“My first thought was how unusual it was to see a girl in a dress like that. And I just thought you looked so pretty, so innocent and…when I looked a bit closer, I realised that you looked sad. And something in me felt tight.” He touched his chest, rubbing it. “I hadn’t really felt that before.” He laughed a little; I smiled. “I just wanted to make you okay. And I hoped I’d get a chance to meet you. I knew that was Mr Thompson’s house, so I figured you were his daughter.”
“So you asked him about me?”
He smiled, his lips spreading wide over his teeth. “Uh, no. I didn’t have the guts. I uh—I actually set it up. I guess I set him up to have to tell me about you.”
“How?”
“He was running football practice one afternoon, and you were out in the backyard. I asked your dad if that girl on the swing at his house was related to him. And he told me you were his daughter. And I told him you were beautiful.”
“Suck up.”
He laughed. “I waited so long for you to come to school, Ara. When you finally did, and I finally saw you up close, I’m sorry—” he touched his chest, grinning, “—but, I actually couldn’t believe how beautiful you were and I—” He stopped, closing his eyes.
“You?”
“I instantly fell in love with you.”
My heart stopped beating, slipping through each of my internal organs until it hit my feet.
David laughed lightly, tucking my hair behind my ear. “You’re going to be okay, you know. We’ll get through this. Together.”
“Together?”
“Yeah.”
I snuggled into his chest, wrapping my arms all the way around him. “I like the way that sounds.”
“Me too,” he said, and in his arms I stood, with my eyes closed and the tranquillity of love keeping my heart beating, while each breath I took unlinked my soul from the binds of my shadowed past. I never wanted to go back to before. I wanted this embrace to last forever—to stay here in his arms where all of my troubles didn’t seem so absolute and the world didn’t seem so cruel. There was something about the way he held me that made me feel safe—made me realise, as wholly as I knew myself, that the empty feeling I’d suffered so long could only have been cured by this moment—by David, who came into my life as just a boy, and turned out to be a knight.
Chapter Nine
David closed the front door and we both looked up the dark staircase to the sound of a piano.
“That’s weird,” I said. “We don’t even have a piano.”
He smiled. “I’ll wait here.”
“By yourself?”
His smile softened. “Something tells me you might need a minute.”
“Why?” I frowned.
“Ara?” Dad called down from his room. “Is that you?”
“Uh, yeah. I just came back to get changed.”
“Come in here first, please.”
I looked at David, who took a step back, offering the stairway. “I’ll just be a sec.”
“I’ll be right here.”
Each step I took felt like my last; I was sure Dad had a massive lecture waiting behind his bedroom door on why we don’t sneak out of school with strange boys, but as I pushed his door open and saw him sitting on the end of his bed, my heart felt heavy. “Dad?”
He turned his face from the cradle of his hands. “Come in. Close the door.”
“Where’s Vicki and Sam?”
“Family pizza night.”
“Oh yeah. Sorry.” I stopped. “I forgot about pizza night.”
“It’s fine, honey.” He patted the bed; I sat down next to him.
“Why didn’t you go, Dad?”
He gave me a look that suggested the obvious. “My daughter ran away from school today—crying. I wanted to be here when you got home.”
“I’m sorry about that, Dad.” I twiddled my thumbs.
“Ara-Rose, you don’t need to be sorry.” He rubbed my back. “I’m just glad someone was there for you.”
“Yeah.” Dad’s soft smile infected my heart, making me grin, too. “David kind of forced a deep and meaningful confession out of me.”