Page 59 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
He goes to speak, but stops himself and gives me a helpless nod instead.
Something’s wrong. He’s pacing and rubbing his hands together as though he’s cold, even though it’s early June and the morning sun is catching the light of Ever After Street’s roof tiles and making them sparkle, and his frustration is already building at the struggle to get words out.
‘Are you okay? You look like you’ve been awake half the night.’
‘That’s good then, because I’ve been awakeallthe night.’
‘Oh, Witt. Why?’
‘I need to tell you somet—’ His voice cuts off and he does that head shake thing he does when there’s no option but to give up on a sentence.
‘Do you want to come in?’ I push the door open and step aside for him to duck in too before letting it close again. Maybe getting inside and away from any neighbours who might be watching will help.
I flick the lights on and go behind the counter. ‘Want a cuppa?’
He shakes his head as he comes over to the counter. ‘I need to talk to you.’
This doesn’t sound good. Has he finally figured out who I am? Why is he nervous? I would’ve expected him to be angry, but not nervous.
‘Sorry, Sade.’ He makes a few attempts at speaking again, but stops every time. ‘I’m het-upandovertired; the stammer is getting the better of me.’
He shakes his hands out with a noise of frustration, and I reach over and catch one of them and keep hold of it while I walk round to his side of the counter. ‘Whatever’s wrong, take your time. It’s just you and me, there’s no rush.’
I meet his eyes and up close, I can see the lack of sleep making itself a physical presence. There are dark circles under them and the lines around them look particularly pinched.
He pushes his hand through his hair and picks up my water bottle and takes a sip.
‘C’mere.’ I reach up and pull him into a hug. I tug his head down to my shoulder and rub my hands over the arch of his back where he’s having to bend to reach me. ‘Close your eyes. Relax. Breathe. We’ve got all the time in the world.’
His arms tighten around me and pull me closer, and his lips drop a kiss on my shoulder, and I feel him letting out long breaths and trying to force himself into calming down, and I’m starting to getreallyworried now. It’s the first time I’ve seen him this agitated, and I can’t work out what it’s about.
‘I can’t do it, Sade,’ he eventually mumbles into my shoulder.
At first I think he means he can’t say whatever he’s trying to say, but then his hand leaves my hip, and without breaking the hug, he reaches for something in his pocket, something that jangles, and then feels around blindly until he can get hold of my hand and tug it down to press something cold and metal into my palm. My fingers close around… a key? Some kind of big, ornamental key. I raise my hand until I can squint at it over his head. It looks like the key he used to unlock the castle gate when we were there the other day.
He must be able to feel my face screw up in confusion. ‘I can’t go through with it. I can’t sell the castle. You love it so much, and I lo—’
The sentence breaks and I let out a disbelieving laugh. He hasn’t lifted his head from my shoulder, but I pull his hair back like it will somehow let me see his face. ‘It’s a wonderful thought, but you can’t do that. You don’t have that kind of permission, do you? And you can’t lose your job because of me. If it’s not you, they’ll just get someone else…’
‘You’ve made me love it again. You’ve made me see the good in it, and… Sadie, I’m not—’
‘Oh my God, this isgenius!’ No one haseverhad such bad timing as my aunt, who chooses that moment to burst through the shop door with the understated volume of a jumbo jet thundering in to land.
Witt and I dive apart as though we’ve been caught doing something unthinkable.
She’s waving around the shoe. My eyes flick to the window. The shoe is still on the display plinth. Oh, hell’s bells. She’s waving around theothershoe. My shoe. From my bedside drawer.
‘Sadie! I’m so impressed! Why didn’t you tell me this was all part of a grand plan?’ She holds it aloft, shaking it at the ceiling like it’s some great victory.
Witt looks at her in confusion. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Oh, I think you know full well, Mr Prince Charming indeed!’
His eyes flick between the shoe in her hand and the one in the window too. ‘No offence, Ebony, but I know you weren’t the woman I danced with at the ball.’
Oh, hell’sbloodybells. This can’t go on any longer. I have to be honest with him, and I have to be honest with himnow. ‘Witt…’
Now it’s me who feels like I can’t get a sentence out without choking on it. This is not how I wanted him to find out. It was supposed to be quiet, private, just the two of us, not with my aunt watching on. Ebony is enough to make a stone nervous, and I don’t know how to get the words out, but I do know I have to do it before she blunders in with something sharp, cutting, or untrue.
