‘Don’t play games with me,’ I said over my shoulder.
Adam fell into step beside me, but I kept looking straight ahead. ‘I’m not playing games with you. What I feel for you is real—and I don’t think you’re in any position to lecture me on game-playing, anyway.’
I spun around to face him. ‘That was different! I didn’t… They never meant…’ I couldn’t finish that sentence. Couldn’t tell him this was on a completely different level to my little bag of tricks. What I did was harmless fun. The games Adam was playing could really get someone hurt.
‘This isn’t going to work! We’re already fighting.’
He gave me a sharp look. ‘Don’t do this, Coreen. It can work…’
I shook my head and started backing away. ‘This is all too much. Twenty-four hours ago we were just good friends—best friends!—and now you’re asking me to decide my whole future. You’re asking too much!’
Adam shook his head. ‘I’m not asking for eternity! Just a chance.’
I could feel the tears collecting behind my eyes and I squashed my face up to deny them exit. ‘It’s already poisoning our friendship! And I need that from you. You’re the one person in my life I can—’
Trust.
Go on, Coreen. Say the word. It’s only a tiny one. It can’t be that hard.
I gulped. The tears were trying to find an alternative escape route—up my throat and down the back of my nose. I shook my head again, more vigorously this time.
‘I’m not sure this is what I want,’ was all I managed to mumble.
He tried to reach for me, but I stumbled further backwards, watching his jaw harden as I did so.
‘And I can’t keep pretending friendship is enough for me any more. I’ve lied to myself, and to you, for too long.’ His stare was fierce, then he puffed out a breath and ran a hand through his hair before looking at me again.
‘Maybe this has been too hot and fast and heavy. Maybe we do need to slow down.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘You want space? You’ve got it.’ As he spoke his voice softened and the irritation melted away. That was harder to deal with, to be honest. He looked into my eyes. ‘You know where I stand. Take some time to think about this—not just react to it—and when you know what you want, come and find me.’
He turned and walked off, his shoulders bunched, head low.
Me? I did what any self-respecting drama queen would do in my shoes. I ran in the opposite direction and didn’t stop until I was out in the sunshine again and the unhealthy silence of the woods was far behind me.
We gathered at three in the drawing room. I didn’t sit with Adam.
He didn’t sulk, as I would have done. He talked with the other murder-mystery guests, and engaged in the proceedings, but every now and then he’d look at me and I’d feel heavy inside. There was no condemnation or accusation in his eyes, no sense of pressure. It only made me feel worse, because I really felt like throwing a wobbly to shake the awful lethargy that had settled on me, and I had nothing whatsoever to use as a justifiable trigger.
The shabby detective was back, and he laid the case out for us, summarising his interviews and our own interrogations of each other. Each clue had been clearly tagged and laid on the long cherrywood coffee table in the centre of the room.
I listened with one ear, but inside my head I was involved in a similar process. Sorting. Labelling. Remembering. My memory seemed determined to dredge up all sorts of strange little details. I didn’t even recall storing them away, but there they were, all neatly labelled and catalogued, just like the detective’s evidence…
The way Adam had always watched out for me and stood up for me, even when I’d still been in primary school. The way he was faithful and loyal now we were all grown up, despite my shenanigans. That playful glint in his eye when we argued, as if he enjoyed even that just because it was me he was sparring with. The way that playfulness had hardened into danger last night on the terrace.
After the general memories came the specifics. Thick and fast.
The bleakness in his eyes as he’d stood on his doorstep and listened to my apology after that fateful party. The squaring of his shoulders the first time he’d met Nicholas. The way he always inhaled deeply when he hugged me, as if he couldn’t help himself breathing in my scent.
They were fragments, really. Nothing more than that. But when I pieced them together there was only one conclusion I could come to.
Adam loved me. Had done so for a long time. And I’m not sure either of us had really known.
I sat there on the sofa, staring at the plastic gun on the coffee table and trying to work out what that meant, how I felt about it. But I was numb. Overloaded. Terrified.
The others were asking questions of each other, bandying theories around and knocking each other’s clever arguments to the floor with new insights, but I didn’t hear any of it. My memory had cranked into gear again, and this time the images being flung in my direction, the sounds and words, all related to me.
My face lighting up every time I saw him, no matter how glum I’d been before he walked in the door. The way he made me feel as if I could do anything, be anything. His hand my only anchor at my mum’s funeral, as we’d watched four strangers in black carry her into the chapel. I’d squeezed it so hard it had creaked for days afterwards.
I’d needed him then, more than I could express or even comprehend. But I’d never had to articulate those feelings. In fact I’d never had to ask him for anything that I’d really needed. Oh, I might have begged and wheedled and sulked to get him to agree to something I wanted, but that wasn’t the same thing. He’d always been there, ready with what I needed—like the takeaways. I’d just been too blind to see that what I really wanted, what I really needed, was him.
My gaze flew to his face. He was laughing with Izzi about some ridiculous theory she’d just put forward, his grin wide and his dimples creasing deep in his cheeks, and suddenly I felt as if I were falling. Not a gentle floating, but being dragged by gravity so fast it sucked the breath from my lungs, the words from my mouth. I felt clammy and twitchy, shivery and cold.
And then I hit the bottom of whatever I’d been falling down. But instead of it ending with a nasty, messy splat there was an explosion of warmth and light. It rushed outwards from my ribcage until pins and needles stabbed my fingers and toes, until the roots of my hair tingled to attention.
Finally the polka-dots fell from my eyes.
I stood up shakily, my mouth working, my eyes wide. A couple of people stopped talking and stared at me.
‘It’s you,’ I said to Adam across the room. ‘It was you all along.’
He broke off mid-sentence and our gazes snagged and held.
There was a reedy voice to my left. The detective. ‘Are you making a formal accusation?’ he asked.
I nodded dumbly. How could I deny it?
He was the one. The cupcake of my dreams.
I was in love with my best friend.
I was in love with Adam Conrad.
CHAPTER TEN
Fever
Coreen’s Confessions
No.