Page 123 of The Bargain

“Forever?” I repeat, trying to keep the grin from blossoming on my face. “It needs to be studied—that ambition of yours.”

“You don’t like my ambition?” he asks, and he’s also trying to stop a smile from tugging on his lips, but he’s not winning that fight, and his hands are already reaching for me, fingers brushing up and down my arms almost like he doesn’t realise he’s doing it, sending shivers up my spine.

“I like it.” My voice comes out husky. “I like it a lot.” And because his hands are now rising to my shoulders, gliding delicately over my collarbones, my neck, I admit the truth. “I like everything about you, actually.”

“That’s good,” he whispers. “Because I love everything about you, too.”

“Love?” I swallow. “It’s not a competition, you know.”

“But if it was, I’d win.” He speaks with his lips inches from mine, so close I can almost taste his words, the sweetness of them. “No shiny trophy for you this time.”

“First match, maybe,” I concede. “The competition’s just beginning.”

He grins. “Thought you said it’s not a competition?”

“You made it one.” I grin right back. “And you know I don’t like losing.”

“That means you’re saying yes, love?”

“To winning?”

“To going out with me.”

“Yes.”

And then my arms are around his neck, and he’s lifting me up against him, and we’re kissing, soft then hard then hungry. Behind us, I hear little cheers and a loud, pointed “Ew!” in Ophelia’s voice. I turn to throw her a glare, Elias’s mouth trailing against my cheek, only to see the twins covering Ophelia’s eyes and Dad laughing as he pulls all three of them away, my trophy shining under his arm.

When I turn back to Elias, the expression on his face is so achingly familiar, I can’t help asking him the question that’s been haunting me ever since I last saw him.

“What were you going to say, that day? In Spearcrest, when Mrs Kendall was dragging me away? You never finished your sentence.”

He cups my face carefully in his fingers, smiles, amused and rueful all at once.

“You already know what I was going to say.”

“Maybe I’m wrong.”

“When have you ever been wrong?”

“Too many times to count.” I touch my fingertips to his lips. “So say it.”

“I love you.” He catches his breath. “I was going to say I love you. I was scared you might not wait for me. I wanted to ask you to. I might’ve begged, if Kendall and North hadn’t meddled.” He lets out a soft, sheepish laugh. “Maybe it’s a good thing they did.” And then his eyes rise up to meet mine, and this time, they’re not sheepish. They’re dark and bright and ferocious, just like him. “I love you.”

And, well, he was right: I did already know. But it still feels good to hear it. It feels good to say it back, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” Like a mantra against pain and sadness. Like a plea to the wide, waiting universe. Like a promise whispered against his mouth. And then I kiss him again, I kiss him breathlessly under the wide-open blue sky, that depthless cosmic blue that will always make me think of Elias.

The End

Epilogue

Elias

For three years, I’ve been imagining how I’d celebrate finally completing my scholarship and getting accepted into one of the hardest doctoral programmes in the world. The fantasy’s taken many shapes over the years: a massive party with all my Harvard friends, colleagues, the Brotherhood. A crashing blow-out, drinking myself to pitch-black oblivion. Taking Dess to Paris, spinning her around the dance floor of a fancy Parisian club.

But actually, on the day in question, I end up wanting only one thing.

It’s late on a Friday night. Cambridge is dipped in a pink sunset, with the buzz of end-of-academic-year festivity drifting through the streets. Music spilling out of bars and apartments, groups of girls in sparkly dresses sipping pre-drinks in the windows of cheap restaurants. Tipsy students in May Ball black tie wandering to the river in chatty, stumbling clusters. Tired professors, finally free from the shackles of wrangling undergrads and marking papers, are pouring out of the various campus buildings in groups, dumping book boxes in the backs of their cars or swapping bottles of cheap champagne—their measly reward for dragging their students kicking and screaming through the academic year.

I’ve not slept a full night for the past three weeks. The problem with being a star student in a small elite class of only eleven equally stellar students is that there’s no hiding. No coasting. The best is the bare minimum—exceptional is what’s expected.