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That was just bodies and skin and mouths. It was good and then it was over, and she wouldn’t have to think. She never regretted what she walked away from because she knew the alternative to walking. The alternative was staying, the way her mum stayed. The way her dad stayed. And then you held those positions until you were empty. Until you’d given up on and forgotten the idea that life could be anything but that.
And she wouldn’t do that to herself.
Walking had always been easy before. But she’d never had to walk away from Rufus. If she’d met him out in the real world—the one with passable roads and mobile phone coverage, she would have seen the danger right off. She would never have allowed herself the luxury of kissing him. But this wasn’t the real world. This was a snowbound winter fairy tale that she’d be driving away from just as soon as the tyres on her rental car could handle the Yorkshire snow, and their paths would never cross again.
She would kiss him goodbye, and delete his number, and block him on Instagram and forget everything that happened here. She glanced at the photo again. But she wasn’t sure how she was ever meant to forget that someone had once looked at her like that.
But that was the only plan she had, so she was going to have to go with it.
Her phone rang as she was looking at the screen, and she broke away from Rufus with a start.
‘I... We... It’s Lara,’ she said, looking at the screen. ‘She’s video calling.’
She answered the call, too flustered to think about what else she should do, as Rufus ducked away from her so she wasn’t left with trying to explain to Lara why they were sitting far closer than was reasonable for two people who hadn’t just had their tongues in each other’s mouths.
‘Hey, Jess. What’re you up to?’ Lara asked. ‘I loved the snowy pictures. Why did you stop? Did something happen to distract you there in your isolated manor with no outside interference? I can’t imagine what that might be.’
Jess felt colour rising to her cheeks and wished she had the ability to hide her feelings from Lara. But her best friend had known her too long and too well to risk it.
‘I knew it!’ Lara cried, and Jess glanced behind her to make sure that Rufus was out of earshot.
‘I don’t know what you think you know, Lara, but you’re wrong. There’s nothing going on here.’
‘Right. I don’t believe you for a second. Just try and fit some more photography in around your extracurriculars, will you? I’m sending you a list of shots that I need. Get them to me as soon as possible. We are building some momentum here and it’s killing me that I’m not there to do this myself. Whatever it is that you’re not telling me, you can get back to it when I’ve got my content.’
Jess tried to hide a smile, not wanting to give away any more than she already had.
‘One,’ she said, rolling her eyes at the phone, ‘I’m not up to anything. Two, we sent you photos this morning. Photos I froze my fingers off and got snow in my hair for. Three, stop being a drama queen. Send me the list and we’ll get to work. Because there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing right now.’
‘Good. Send them over as soon as you can. And if you get into anything really extracurricular then be sure to keep those to yourselves. I’m not sure that either I or my followers could cope with that.’
‘Get your mind out of the gutter, Lara,’ she said with an affectionate smile. ‘I’m hanging up now. Goodbye.’
‘I take it we’ve got more work to do,’ Rufus said, coming up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist as soon as the coast was clear.
‘Apparently we’ve been slacking. She wants more content. Lots more.’
‘Sounded as though she might have wanted to know what we’ve been up to instead.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to tell her. We kissed. We agreed to walk away when we leave here. It’s hardly the fairy-tale stuff her imagination is probably cooking up. Look, this is private, and I want to keep it that way. I don’t want this thing to become something that generates clicks, you know. I want to keep it just between us.’
He turned her round in his arms, brushed his lips against hers.
‘Which is why I’m so glad we’re the only people here right now.’ She let herself sink into the kiss, drowning in the heat and the size of him as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, until his warmth and weight and bulk were all around her. Until her phone buzzed in her pocket, a message from Lara, no doubt, reminding her that she was on to her, expecting her to drop her extracurriculars—as she put it—and concentrate on content. She dragged herself away from Rufus, immediately missing the warmth of him.
‘Me too. Really. But Lara is not going to leave this alone, so we had better get it over with.’
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and scanned down the list. There were requests for various flatlays. Fine, she knew what she was doing with those: they were an Instagram staple. She just needed some props, a pretty surface to lay them on, good lighting and a steady hand to take a shot directly from above. But the full Christmas dinner would have to wait until tomorrow.
‘Looks like we’re going to be busy,’ Rufus said, reading over her shoulder.
‘This isn’t exactly what I had planned for the rest of the day,’ she said, in a snit. That eyebrow rose higher.
‘You had plans? I want to hear them.’
She smiled as she raised her eyes to meet his. ‘Who said they involved you?’
He let out a sound that could only be described as a growl as he dragged her back close, knocking her phone to the ground.
