Page 37 of Forbidden Dark Vows

“I don’t understand.” I rumple my hair with my hand. This can’t be happening. Celia wouldn’t go to such extreme lengths to keep Ruby away from me, would she?

In my head, I replay her reaction when she came to the hospital, and again when she came home and discovered me in their den. She was undeniably angry. But I don’t understand why. I don’t understand what I have done to deserve her obvious dislike and mistrust.

She hasn’t even bothered to ask me how I feel about her daughter.

“It isn’t you.” Ruby shrugs her arms into her coat, hoists her backpack over her shoulders, and turns to face me.

“It sure feels like it is.”

“She’s…” Ruby hesitates, choosing her words carefully. “I don’t know, overprotective since my dad had his stroke.”

I nod. There’s something she isn’t telling me, but I’m not going to press it now.

Leaving the key on the desk in the room, I take one final look around, not to check we’ve left nothing behind, but to imprint the memories of our first night together on my brain.

In the corridor, Ruby heads in the opposite direction to the elevators and through a door marked STAFF ONLY. We take the stairs down to the ground floor and find ourselves in a large room lined with laundry bins. Through the wide fire exit door, and we’re at the back of the hotel, in a small yard with soddenweeds and mini mountains of mulch and trash collecting in the corners.

I hold Ruby’s hand, and we lose ourselves in the narrow, cobbled alleyways of Edinburgh once more.

13

RUBY

We climbto the top of Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano in Holyrood Park, and eat breakfast sitting on the frosty grass overlooking the city. The climb allows me to forget about my mom for a while. Harry doesn’t believe that she would report me as a missing person to the police, but he doesn’t understand the lengths she would go to, to get what she wants.

I didn’t truly understand either, until now.

What other explanation is there for the cops turning up at our hotel in another country and asking to speak to me?

I know that I must go home eventually and tell her how I feel about Harry, but not yet. I’m not ready to face her yet. I’m only sorry that my dad will be on the receiving end of her anger until I return. I’d bet every cent I’ve ever earned that she hasn’t told him she has involved the cops.

“Is this how it feels to be a fugitive?” Harry scrunches up the brown paper bag our breakfast came in and stuffs it into the side flap of his suitcase.

“It’s an adventure.” I shrug. “If she thinks I’m going to come running home with my tail between my legs, and tell her that she was right all along, she’s got another thing coming.”

Harry laughs and kisses me with his icy lips. Strange how kissing him already feels as natural as drawing breath. Walking away from him now would be like forgetting every book I’ve ever read. It would be like stepping onto the moon without an oxygen tank.

“She was right all along?” Harry furrows his brow.

“About me and you.” Guilt swirls around inside my stomach, and I wish I hadn’t drunk the cold coffee.

One day I’ll tell him about my mom’s plans for her only daughter, but not yet. Not here. Edinburgh has brought us together in a way that Chicago never could have. I feel like this will always be our city, the place where happy memories were given life, the city where we lost ourselves and found each other.

“She’ll understand when she sees how good we are together.” Harry peers out across the city.

In his eyes, it’s that simple. Two people fall in love, and the whole world claps as they set off into the sunset holding hands. He doesn’t know my mom.

“I’m not going back. Not yet.”

His smile lights up his face despite the bitterly cold wind at the top of the hill turning his lips blue. “Phew. I was sitting here trying to figure out how I could abduct you for real without getting caught.”

It’s my turn to laugh. “You only had to say. I’d have bought some rope and a blindfold myself.”

“Now there’s a thought.” His eyebrows dance comically. “Time to go. I can’t even feel my butt anymore.”

“Where to?”

“We’ll find the railway station and get on the first train out of the city, see where it takes us.”

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