by Nikki Ashton
“I hope so, if only for her family’s sake.” Sarah rested her head on my shoulder. “I can’t believe he persuaded her to dress like me.”
I shuddered. “It’s fucking sick. I also can’t believe she sneaked out in the middle of the night to see him. Her mum and dad must be devastated that they didn’t hear her.”
Sarah nodded. “He’s a monster no doubt about it. Do you think Ellis realises what he did by bringing him here?”
“I hope so, because even if Glen did kill Mackenna, Ellis is responsible too.”
My jaw ticked as I thought about my ex best friend and not one ounce of my thoughts had any sympathy for him. The fact that Tyler and Kirk had dropped him as well would hopefully make him realise he’d done something unforgivable.
“Alannah said Miss Davies has suspended him,” Sarah said as she played with the pocket on my flannel shirt.
“Yeah, Tyler told me. Someone told her about his part in it all.”
“Who?” Sarah’s head shot up and a cute frown furrowed her brow.
I grinned. “It was anonymous but put it this way, it was flashed on every PC in the school along with some CCTV footage of him setting fire to books in the school dining room last year.”
“Oh my God,” Sarah squeaked. “That was Ellis? Alannah told me about it on my first day.”
“Yep that was Ellis. I didn’t realise Kirk had saved the footage, but now Miss Davies has seen it he’s been suspended while she investigates. It looks like he’ll be expelled.”
She looked at me warily. “Aren’t you worried you’ll be implicated?”
“How do you know I was?” I asked, unable to help the smirk.
She rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you worried you’ll be implicated?”
I laughed that she’d not answered my question but repeated her own to put her point across.
“No, Kirk has definitely deleted any other CCTV and while he’s a fucking twat, Ellis isn’t a grass.”
“But Kirk is and that’s fine?” Sarah said with a knowing smile.
I shrugged and then playfully nipped at her neck, glad that I was finally able to feel and smell her again. Our time apart had been fucking shit and I never wanted to experience it again.
“What about you and Kirk by the way?” Sarah asked when I pulled away. “Are you back to normal?”
I blew out a breath as I considered her question. It was difficult because he’d done things that I couldn’t forgive him for, but at least he’d owned them, unlike Ellis.
“Him and Tyler are off to Uni soon, so maybe it’s time to step back. Time moves on and things change, so perhaps our friendship should too. All the stuff with Kirk made me reassess things and now Ellis, so maybe we shouldn’t be friends. Maybe I’m too much of a bad influence on them and for me to change I need to move on from them.”
Sarah pulled away from me and pinned her gaze to mine. “You could all change together,” she said softly. “They’ve been really supportive this last couple of days. Tyler even called me to check I was okay and whether you were okay when they weren’t around.”
As she cupped my cheek, I leaned into her touch and savoured her again as I tried not to think of what alternative day I might have been living in if I hadn’t got into the bungalow when I did.
“I’m not going to try for Uni this year,” I told her, wanting to change the subject. “I talked to Roger last night and we agreed that it’s probably better to have a year out.”
Sarah’s eyes brightened with excitement. “You are?”
“Yep, so I thought maybe we could work for a couple of months during the summer, save some money and then go travelling.”
“Together?”
She looked surprised, which in turn surprised me.
“Of course, together. Who else would I go with?”
“I just… I wasn’t sure how… are you serious about me?”
I couldn’t help bursting out laughing. The girl who I’d crowned my dad with a wok for and then punched until I broke his nose and fractured his cheek bone, wanted to know if I was serious about her.
“Am I serious about you?” I breathed out. “Well, I thought I was going to die when I heard you screaming for me. If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed him for you. I can’t imagine ever being with anyone else. You’re all I think about every minute of every fucking day. So, am I serious about you?” Rubbing my nose against Sarah’s, I exhaled slowly, wanting my voice to be steady as I said the next words. “I love you more than I ever thought possible. Although we’re only young, I know that I will love you until my last breath. You are my eternal sunshine.”
Sarah’s hand clasped her shirt over her heart and a small sigh came from her slightly parted lips.
“You do?” she asked, her voice quiet and unsure.
“I do.”
She gave me the most beautiful smile and with both her hands cupping my face she gave me the words back.
“I love you too, so much. You are all I think of every minute of every day. You are the only person I can imagine being with. I will love you until my last breath. You are my eternal light.”
I had so much I wanted to do and say to Sarah in that moment, but it could wait because we had more time than I could ever imagine and firstly I wanted to give her the surprises. I kissed her lightly on the cheek and then lifted her to sit her on the bed.
With Sarah’s back against the headboard, I shifted to kneel in front of her.
“Okay,” I said as she looked at me quizzically. “I have two surprises for you.”
“Okay.” She frowned and looked so fucking cute I almost jumped her.
“First this one.” I reached into my jeans’ pocket and pulled out a flat, square, black box and handed it to her.
“Adam, you shouldn’t have bought me anything.”
“I wanted to, call it a late Valentine’s gift.”
She blushed and rolled her eyes. “I have one for you but have a feeling it’s not going to be as good as this.”
“Open it and see.”
I leaned forward expectantly, hoping that she loved the gift. I was sure she would but couldn’t help holding my breath as she flipped up the lid.
“Adam,” she breathed out. “It’s gorgeous.”
Bright eyes looked down at the two-coloured gold necklace in the shape of a sun. The pendant and chain were both delicate but were everything I needed to say about how strong I thought she was.
“It’s real gold, the jeweller in town made it for me,” I said feeling nervous and hoping she realised it wasn’t some cheap piece of jewellery I’d bought without a thought from some website. I’d had to borrow money from Roger for it a couple of weeks back, before everything went tits up between us, but I was so glad I had. The engraving had been a recent addition when I’d picked it up the day before.
“Adam that’s so thoughtful. Thank you.”
“Look on the back.” I swallowed, hoping that I hadn’t got everything totally wrong about us.
Sarah turned the pendant over and gave a quiet whimper. When she looked up at me, I knew I’d been right to have the words, ‘You are my sunshine, only ever you, love Adam’ engraved on the back
“I love you, so much. Thank you.”
She launched herself at me, with the box still clutched in her hand she kissed me long and hard, but I pulled away so that I could show her the second surprise.
“Wait, there’s something else.”
“Hurry up then,” Sarah huffed making me laugh.
“Sit back.” I steadied her with my hands on her shoulders and then when I thought she was watching carefully I started to unbutton my shirt.
“Woah, you said I had another surprise first.” Sarah’s eyes went wide and her fingers went to the hem of her t-shirt.
“Hang on,” I playfully smacked her hands. “I do. Just wait. Surprise first, orgasms later.”
As I undid the first three buttons, Sarah’s breathing got faster and as if it had a direct line to it,
my dick it started to get harder. I just hoped she liked this surprise too, otherwise the pole in my boxers would be totally wasted.
When I finally had all the buttons undone, I pulled off my shirt and waited. Her cry of excitement was instant. Yet again I’d hit the fucking jackpot with my ability of giving the best surprises.
Sarah reached forward and with her fingertip, traced the pattern of the eternity symbol. Even though my eyes were watching her face, I’d stared at the tattoo in the mirror enough to know that when she stopped tracing and licked her bottom lip, she’d reached my name. I knew she would stop at hers and I was right, but this time she captured her lip with her teeth and sent all sorts of messages to my dick.
“You like it?” I asked.
Sarah’s eyes were bright with unshed tears as she looked up at me and smiled.
“I love it. It’s absolutely perfect.”
Instantly, our lips found each other, and with passion and a fierce, fiery love, we kissed away our worries. The heaviness I’d been carrying for thirteen years had lifted and I finally had someone who loved me for who I was. Someone who could see past the armour of hatred and vitriol and who knew that underneath I was just an ordinary boy who craved the love of an incredible girl.
Epilogue
Thirteen Years Later
Sarah
There are times in your life when you have to look back on everything that went before and be thankful for them, the good and the bad, because they are what got you to that place. Your happy place, your contented place, the place you were meant to be. Today was that time for me. As I watched Adam help our son to kick a football, while our daughter watched on with pouty pink lips, I had never been more grateful for the reasons I’d had to move to Maddison Edge.
They’d been hard and painful, but they’d given him to me. The broken boy with a heart that had been hidden by doubt, insecurity and resentment was gone and in his place was a great man. A man who loved me with all his heart and who adored his children whose names had been added to his eternity tattoo.
Ethan was six now and had been into football for around a year and loved nothing more than doing penalty shoot outs with his dad. Adam usually let him win, but there were some occasions when he couldn’t help the competitive side of his nature. Those usually ended with Ethan vowing to beat him next time – he certainly was his father’s son. As for Paige our four-year-old, well she was the image of her aunt Lori and unfortunately had her talent for dance too. My skills must have skipped a generation because that girl was a whirling dervish of uncoordinated mess. She had an awful lot of enthusiasm, but that was where her aptitude for dance ended.
I sighed contentedly as I watched them and when Adam left the kids to play and walked over to me, I ached with need for him. At thirty-one he was even more handsome than the boy I’d met at seventeen. His body was more muscular than that of the lean teenage football player and his features more defined, not to mention the things he could do in the bedroom with the power of that amazing bum behind him.
“Hey gorgeous,” he said softly as he pulled me into his arms. “You think we have a future Premier League star on our hands?”
I watched as Ethan kicked the ball into the five-a-side nets and nodded. “Yeah, he’s had a great teacher though, so of course.”
Adam leaned down and kissed me, his tongue urging my mouth to open, not that it needed much encouragement.
“Never gets old,” he sighed when we finally pulled apart.
“Good, because after all this time I need to make sure I keep you interested.” I grinned and squeezed his bum.
“Oh, you do, you can be sure of that.” His smile was cocky and secretive evidently thinking of the night before when the kids had stayed over with my mum and my stepdad Pete. Let’s just say we’d made the most of every surface in our new house. A house that we’d arrived at through some hard, mostly happy but always love filled times.
Before we both went to Uni, we took a gap year, travelling for six months of it after taking two jobs each for the previous five to pay for it. After that we went to London. Adam studied at UCL for a combined honours degree in maths and history, and that was where he stayed to do a post graduate course in education, once he realised that he wanted to be a teacher. I went to Kingston University and gained a BA Honours degree in dance, teaching dance and choreography. Then after we both graduated, we decided to stay in the capital. We rented an apartment in Shoreditch not far from the high school where Adam eventually taught and the community college where I’d held dance classes and had done for the extra year it had taken Adam to complete his PGCE. And, while it wasn’t a palace, we loved it and were happy there.
Then, on my twenty-fourth birthday Adam surprised me with the most beautiful and simple proposal. My back was to his chest, with his arms wrapped around me as we watched the fountain display from the pavement outside the Bellagio hotel and, as Tiesto’s Footprints played, he whispered into my ear how much he loved me and then slipped a stunning pear-shaped diamond ring into my hand. Obviously, I said yes, as long as we could do it while we were in Vegas. My dad wasn’t around to give me away and even though I was close to Roger and Pete, my mum’s new husband, it didn’t seem right to ask anyone else. We married two days later in The Chapel of the Flowers. I wore a white sundress and Adam wore shorts and a white shirt, rolled at the sleeves to show his sexy forearms and it was perfect. My mum cried when we called to tell her, but she understood. All we had ever needed was each other and that would never change.
Then, on Adam’s twenty-fifth birthday, I surprised him by announcing I was pregnant. We hadn’t been trying but we both agreed it was a gift from my dad and I’d never seen Adam more excited or happy. So, although I never did get to work as a dancer in film or TV I didn’t care. What I had was so much more than anything else I might once have wished for.
Now though we were back in Maddison Edge after twelve years, ready for Adam to take up his dual role as History and Maths teacher at Maddison High. When the vacancy came up it hadn’t been a difficult decision for him to apply, we were ready to come home; ready to leave the hustle of London behind. The kids were an age where moving didn’t really matter to them, Ethan made friends easily and Paige thundered through life without a care, and as for me I could teach dance anywhere and had constantly been in touch with Clarice, who offered me my old Street Dance slots back, so it was all good.
It was also the right thing to come back for Adam because his Mum was ill. It was the second time she’d had breast cancer, but things didn’t look too good this time around and while they still didn’t have much of a relationship, he wanted to at least try and give her some peace before she died. He had never got past the fact she hadn’t reported Joshua, or Glen as he’d been then, or what Eric had done to him right under her nose. I understood his anger, but Elouise was a weak woman and always had been and only really ever cared about herself. She and I weren’t close and never would be, but I respected her as the grandmother of my children, which she was great at, but that was as far as it went. Admittedly she’d expressed her regret over the years about her poor parenting, but it really was too little too late as far as Adam was concerned.
As for Glen Hudson, he didn’t fare well in prison. He was immediately targeted for the nature of his crimes and spent a great deal of time in solitary confinement, according to his solicitor. We only found out that much detail because Adam got his wish; Glen got shanked during lunch one day, just eighteen months into his sentence. Apparently, he was too mouthy for some people’s taste. When he died Adam didn’t shed a single tear, in fact when we found out, my gorgeous, broken boy toasted the man who’d done it with a bottle of the beer he’d once seen his dad drink. It was his way of metaphorically spitting on his grave.
As for Adam and Roger, well they had a lot of love and respect for each other. Adam realised over time how much his stepdad loved him and Lori. Roger had been the one who’d kept the family together when Elouise was so apathetic about her r
ole as a mother. He was the father figure Adam could finally look up to. Although Roger and Elouise divorced when Lori reached sixteen, Adam always introduced him as his dad. Roger was the first person Adam went to when he needed advice and before we came back Adam spoke to him every week on the phone.
Lori still lived in Maddison Edge too, she hadn’t gone to university but had a job working as an administrator for a construction company and loved it. She split her time between Elouise and Roger, although mostly her mum since she’d been ill. Word was though that she was pretty serious with her boyfriend, Elliot, who happened to be Tyler’s younger cousin, so Adam had already had a ‘friendly’ word. Whatever happened between them though, Lori was beyond excited to have her big brother back in town, especially as he came bringing two little cherubs whom she adored.
As for Tyler, well Adam had reconnected with him and Kirk over the years of school reunions and visits home, but Ellis was never around. We’d heard that he was living in Spain working as a DJ, but no one was actually sure, or actually cared. Kirk ran a successful IT company in Manchester, but still lived in Maddison Edge with his wife Ali and their twin boys Teddy and Theo, while Tyler was the PE teacher and football coach at Maddison High, so he was going to be one of Adam’s new colleagues. I’d met his girlfriend a couple of times and she was really sweet, so hopefully we could have a few dinners together and continue to build bridges.
“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” I asked. “All those rowdy boys you’ve got to keep in line and hormonal girls who’ll be flirting with you.”
He laughed and dropped a kiss to my forehead. “Nope. I ruled this school remember I’ll tell them a few stories that will keep them in line.”
“Adam,” I cried. “You can’t. Mr Monroe will sack you before you’ve even got started.”
“He won’t, he’s on my wavelength.” He winked at me and I knew then he was joking.
