At First Sight Hannah Sunderland (free e books to read online txt) 📖

We both laughed and I was filled with the same kind of foolish, simple joy that fills you in your teenage years when you’re doing something stupid with someone you have a crush on.

‘What time is it?’ he asked abruptly.

I checked my phone and was shocked to see how late it had got. ‘It’s eight forty-five.’

‘Damn it, I’d better get goin’,’ he said and something inside me deflated. He pushed himself up and I followed, my feet slipping as I padded over the cushions in sock-covered feet. I met him on solid flooring and readjusted my loose jumper from where it had ridden up in all the wrong places.

‘Hey, what’s that?’ He gestured to the top of my shoulder blade where the small greyish black blades of a wind turbine tattoo poked out from under my clothes.

‘Oh, that,’ I said, pulling my hair over my opposite shoulder and tugging the back of my jumper down a little. I turned to the side so it could be seen more clearly, about the size of a fifty-pence piece, the bottom of it disappearing into waves. ‘I’d always wanted a tattoo but couldn’t think of anything to get and then one day when my mum came back from one of her work trips, we both went and got the same tattoo, so that we will always be linked, no matter how far apart we are.’

I looked over my shoulder as he raised a hand and ran his fingers over the skin of my tattoo. I closed my eyes and exhaled a shaky breath as his thumb moved in gentle circles and I felt goose bumps over every inch of my skin. ‘Do you … erm … d-do you have any?’

‘Huh?’ he said quietly, not really listening.

‘T-tattoos? Do you have any?’

‘No, I don’t.’ His voice seemed far away. ‘I’m glad that we’re, you know, friends again.’

‘Me too.’

But we were not friends. I didn’t lie in bed at night thinking about friends like I did about Charlie. I didn’t go over every word I’d said to them, slapping my pillow with frustrated hands when I remembered a moment where I’d embarrassed myself. My breathing became heavy as I turned around to face him and I looked at his lips, surrounded by stubble that was on the verge of becoming a beard. He moved a little closer. He was so close that I could smell the sweet scent of gummy bears on his breath and I wondered if he’d taste like them too, when his lips finally reached mine. He moved closer still, the heat of his body radiating out to mine through the unforgivably cold air of this big old house. His hand moved up to my face and a tender fingertip ran along the line of my jaw. I closed my eyes and almost shivered at the touch and when I opened my eyes again, I found him even closer than he had been before.

I prepared myself for what I imagined would be an end-credits kiss, the big one that happens to swelling orchestral music and where doves take off and circle above us as the camera pans out and fades to black, a cheerful pop song taking over from the orchestra as the names roll by. I could practically hear the conductor readying the ensemble as Charlie looked down at my lips.

This was going to be it. A second chance at the moment he’d screwed up before.

He moved closer, his lips barely an inch from mine and then, just as my eyes fell closed, he stopped.

‘I’ll … erm …’ He cleared his throat and stepped away, so very far away. The conductor in my brain threw his baton in frustration, the orchestra disassembling in disappointment. He stepped away, grabbed his shoes from by the door and left, disappearing once again.

Chapter Eight

My mum had always been a fan of those who-done-it murder mystery adaptations that always come on around Christmas, where you spend the whole time trying to work out who it is that killed old Viscount Mulberry with the cyanide in the parlour. I wasn’t ever much of a fan of those; I didn’t have the patience for them. So, the real-life, walking (but not so much talking) mystery, otherwise known as Charlie Stone, was proving to be one of the most frustrating people I had ever attempted to wrap my head around. It had been thirteen days now, almost an entire two weeks, since Charlie and I had shared a moment of pure, erotica-level sexual tension, quickly followed by a hurried, wordless goodbye. Almost two weeks since he took his second chance and used it to sexually frustrate me once more with almost kisses and I hadn’t heard a peep from him since.

Meanwhile, I’d been going through the full spectrum of emotions. Denial, waiting up for an hour or two after he left to see if he might come back and explain himself. Anger, where I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, seething with a concentrated fury that I hadn’t felt in years. Bargaining, sitting between calls at work and thinking that maybe there was a reason for his running away. That was where I was stuck right now, coming up with endless excuses and reasons why. Maybe he’d suddenly found himself feeling ill or remembered he’d left the stove on. Maybe something had happened with Carrick and he’d had to go home to Ireland? I’d worried that he hadn’t taken my number down right, that he’d missed a digit or that the phone masts were down, but we usually got bulletins about problems with the phone lines at work and I hadn’t heard of any recently.

I then went back to the much more believable theory of him being married. I could think of no reason more fitting for the guilty look that’d arrived on his face after the first of the two