Page 86 of Pervade London
“Nothing since?”
“No.”
“Who beat you up the night I met you?”
“We had a scuffle. I left.” Xavier stepped forward and wrapped me in his arms. “What can I tell you to make you feel safe?”
“How do we leave?”
He held me at arm’s length. “We have to see this through.”
“How do we survive him?”
“I need to earn your trust back.”
Easing away, I let him know it was too late.
“Did you see my favorite tree?”
Blinking up at him, I realized what he was saying. “In Great Missenden?”
He nodded.
“I thought of you in that garden,” I admitted.
“I’d hide in that tree-house with novels I’d found in my dad’s library. He had a thing for sci-fi. I wanted to be just like him. Anything he read I wanted to read.”
I gave a shrug. Him letting me in now felt like a wasted effort.
“What about you?” He kissed the top of my head. “Tell me something I don’t know about you. That if we’d spent more time together, I’d have found out.”
“What’s the point?”
“There’s a chance for us.”
My gaze met his, tendrils of happiness trying to ensnare me. “Promise.”
“I promise.”
The room swirled and I replayed his words while holding onto this chance he was offering.
“I have a thing for dinosaurs,” I whispered.
“Impress me with something I don’t know about the world two hundred and forty-five million years ago.”
“No.”
“Humor me.”
“The chicken is the closet known modern relative to the T-Rex.” I pointed to the eggs. “You’re about to tuck into a dinosaur’s relative.”
He broke into a smile. “I love you so much, Em.”
“Love you, too,” I said, blushing. “You knew that about dinosaurs already, didn’t you?”
He grinned, and said, “Congrats, by the way.”
I peered up at him. “You heard I got through the first audition at the London Symphony?”
