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Tamara wrapped her arms around herself, staring straight ahead. “Mum keeps our certificates locked up.”
I frowned. “Your brother is younger?”
“He’s a few years older,” Tamara said. “He’s… well, I guess he’s got his own issues getting started in life.”
We slipped behind the screen of the trees and my motivation to work on this problem right this minute started slipping too. I wasn’t as much of a fucking idiot as I looked, though. Tamara was giving me a challenge, trying to figure out what I was worth. If I wanted what I wanted, I’d probably better come through with something.
Maybe I should be bothered by this thing, but no, I got it. I couldn’t be surprised she wasn’t that trusting.
“You need to get a copy of your certificate. Best case, your father’s name is right there on it. It’ll tell you if you’ve had a name change you don’t remember.”
Tamara put her back up against a tree so she was hidden from the rest of the school. “Can I do that? Just order a copy?”
“You’ll have to have some documentation to prove who you are. Student ID, a few other things. I can help you with the details.” I’d had to work out a lot of these things for myself because my mother didn’t really want to do anything for me any more. How to seek legal advice if I needed to. Getting myself to court. Knowing where all my details were on short notice. “Then you can take them in to the place where you make your application.”
“I don’t even know how I’d get there.” Tamara turned her face up to the canopy of leaves above her. “My brother drives me everywhere, obviously I can’t ask him.”
“I’ll drive you.” I said it without thinking about how it would sound to her, so I was a little surprised when her head turned sharply to me.
“I… um… I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “I’ll tell you what you need to get, and you can come out with me tomorrow. Get your application in, then I’ll take you…” I definitely hadn’t thought this through. I wasn’t taking her to my place, my mum might actually flip her shit and try to ‘expose’ me. And it sounded like hers was an even worse prospect. “We’ll go somewhere nice.”
I wasn’t sure if she got that I was trying to get her really on her own—I wouldn’t say she was stupid, but she definitely seemed a bit disconnected from reality. Well, I would make sure we were on the same page once we got into a situation where that mattered.
“Oh,” she spoke up, just as she was starting to fucking relax a bit too. “It costs money, doesn’t it? I don’t have a job any more, I’m not going to be able to pay—”
I coudn’t be fucked dealing with this any more. I stepped up close to her, enjoying the way she tensed up as my shadow fell over her, and put my hands on her shoulders, holding on a bit har
der than I really needed.
“Just be ready to come with me tomorrow,” I told her. “I’ll sort out the rest.”
She bristled under my hands. “I’m not letting you pay for—”
“It’s a loan,” I snapped in her face, which shut her up pretty nicely. “No interest, no time limit. I just expect you to pay me back when you can.” I had plenty of money from my weekend job stacking shelves at the local supermarket—not as much as when they’d been giving me late evening shifts on checkout, but apparently they didn’t like to give customer-facing work to guys who had hurt their girlfriends, and my mum had to blab to them for some reason when I missed a shift to deal with legal stuff. Well, I hadn’t been going out very much lately, anyway. For a while, every time I went out I’d end up running into Julia, and that would obviously fuck everything up.
Tamara’s head was turning left and right, taking in my hands squeezing her shoulders. “I know why that set you off so much,” I said. “You’re thinking about Lucas and all the fucking shit he’s bought Callie, wondering if maybe I’m the same.”
The way she was nibbling on her lip made me pretty sure I was right. “Well, I don’t have that sort of money, so you’re safe. I’m going to want to be paid back sooner or later.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to—”
I shut her up with a kiss. Hard, so she had to struggle not to melt in my grasp. She wanted to, she didn’t want to. Her fingers tried to dig into my arms without managing to get a grip.
I wanted to press against her harder, show her how much I liked being close to her like that. But I knew she would probably fire up if I pushed too hard too soon, and we only had a few minutes before class would interrupt us. I wasn’t afraid to make her angry. I looked forward to it. But I needed to make sure I left her in the right place.
I let myself taste her a little longer, and then pulled back. She stopped her scrabbling and just stared up at me, her lips quivering.
“Make sure you don’t have other plans after school tomorrow,” I told her, and I didn’t let myself look back when I walked away. If I’d seen her reacting, if it was like it had really affected her, then I was going to have problems for the rest of the day.
Chapter Nine: Tamara
I was already shaking when I finally emerged from my hiding place near the toilet block, confident I would find Steven easily now the school was clearing.
Ryan had given me a whole lot of attitude the night before when I told him I didn’t need him to pick me up the next day. “Since when do you not need a ride somewhere? You’re not going to take the bus, are you?”
“I’ve got a friend dropping me off later,” I said, which I hoped was true.
