In Harmony (Fenbrook Academy #2)(6)
Author: Helena Newbury

“Rock n’ roll,” he said, with an extravagant gesture. “That’s Connor Locke. Too wild for you?”

“You could use a little taming, Connor Locke,” I said without thinking.

He leaned over me. “You going to be the one to tame me?”

I flushed, unable to think of a comeback, and cursed myself for talking to him. Then it got worse.

“Have you recovered from this morning?” he asked.

I blushed, which wasn’t the signal I wanted to send at all.

“What happened this morning?” asked Jasmine with forced casualness.

“I had Karen flat on her back,” Connor told them.

“That’s not….” I trailed off, unsure how to explain, and feeling myself going redder by the second.

“Don’t you remember?” asked Connor. “At one point, we were like this.” And he squatted down right in front of me, his face about an inch from mine. I didn’t have a choice—I had to focus on his eyes, those beautiful, blue-gray jewels. They were….

There was no other word for it. They were twinkling at me. I’d have known he was grinning even if the rest of his face was hidden. There was an openness there, an honesty I’d never seen in anyone. Everything for Connor was simple and easy. He didn’t have a care in the world.

The opposite of me, I thought bitterly.

I opened my mouth to deliver a witty putdown. My mouth actually formed the first vowel, but I didn’t seem to have any breath. I just stared at him for another second, and a wave of heat rushed through me. I’m too angry, I reasoned. He’s got me too angry to even speak.

Connor straightened up. “Nothing? Really?” He clapped a hand to his chest. “She doesn’t call, she doesn’t send me flowers….”

Natasha, Clarissa and Jasmine all giggled. The traitors.

“I’ll see you in class,” Connor told me. Then he pointed at me theatrically. “Be careful! I might not be there to save you, next time!”

I hadn’t thought I could blush any more than I already was, but I felt it happen. Half the bar was looking at us. Then Connor clapped an arm around one of his drinking buddies and they stumbled off across the room.

I could feel the other girls all looking at me, and took a long drink of my Pretty Woman to buy some time.

“I fell over,” I said. “He caught me. It was sort of his fault anyway. That’s it.”

Jasmine glanced at Natasha. “Natasha fell off a stage, once, and that worked out.”

“He’s not—are you kidding?” I stared at her. “He’s an idiot! He’s drunk half the time, he’s loud, he’s arrogant….”

“He has those eyes,” countered Natasha quietly.

“You’re taken,” Jasmine told her.

“And that voice. I love that accent,” said Clarissa.

“You too,” said Jasmine.

“He’s about to flunk out! He doesn’t even bother coming to class most of the time!” I told them.

Jasmine pretended to catch her breath. “Oh no! And I pick my boyfriends by their GPA!”

“He’s completely squandered his opportunity! They gave him a scholarship and he’s just wasted it on…on…girls and booze!”

Jasmine frowned. “For a guy you hardly know, you seem very knowledgeable about him.”

I realized the others were all staring at me. She’s right. What do I care?

I swallowed. “No, I just—”

Jasmine snapped her fingers. “When we were at your place, you were in the shower for like three years. Were you thinking about him?”

“No!” I almost shouted. How could she know? How could she possibly know?!

Jasmine was beaming, delighted. “You were! I was sitting out there waiting for you—well, and making a sandwich—and you were in there flicking the bean—”

“No!”

“—thinking about Connor Locke!”

“No! Really!”

Jasmine collapsed into giggles. “Relax! I know you weren’t.” She shook her head. “You’re so easy to wind up, sometimes.”

Everyone laughed, and I let my breath out, smiling nervously. OK, fine. She hadn’t guessed. Not that there was anything to guess. I mean, I’d been thinking about him in the shower, but not in that way.

“How’s Neil?” I asked Clarissa, to throw some of the heat off me.

“Great.” Only she said it too quickly, and in a not-great way. We all turned towards her. “No, seriously, it’s fine. Better than fine. It’s just—”

“He wants a threesome?” asked Jasmine.

“He—WHAT?!”

“He wants another woman to join you. Or—God, another man? Is it a biker?” Jasmine clutched Natasha’s arm. “Is it Darrell?”

“No! Where did you get threesome from? No, nothing like that. He’s just…Neil.”

We waited.

Clarissa stared at her drink. “It’s just…when it started, it just sort of…worked. I mean, I don’t know why it worked, exactly, but it did. He had this…hold over me.”

“And now he doesn’t?” asked Natasha quietly.

“Oh, no, God, he does,” said Clarissa. “That hasn’t changed. He just has to say something in my ear and—” She reddened. “That works fine. But I keep wondering if that’s all we have. I mean…”—she looked around at us—“…we’re very different.”

“Opposites attract,” I said carefully.

“Yes, but do they stick?” Clarissa asked.

***

I’d said I’d only stay for one drink, but it was two before I persuaded Jasmine that I was serious about going. I wanted to put her in a cab back to her place—I figured I could quietly pay the cabbie in advance.

Jasmine, Dan and I left Clarissa and Natasha choosing drinks and braved the freezing wind outside. It was blasting straight down the long street that Flicker was on, numbing our exposed faces, so it was a relief when we turned into an alley. We planned to cut through to a busier street where we’d be more likely to find a cab. Dan was lagging some way behind Jasmine and me because he had his wallet out, trying to figure out if he had enough money left for his cab fare. There wasn’t a lot of light in the alley, and he was using his iPhone to count the bills, the screen glow lighting up his face.

“You think they’ll be okay?” asked Jasmine.

“Clarissa and Neil?”

“Mmm. It has always been about sex, with them.”

I thought about it. A relationship based entirely on sex was about as far from my personal experience as it was possible to get. I glanced around while I thought—it was that sort of alley. “I don’t know. I—Where’s Dan?”

He wasn’t behind us. He wasn’t anywhere. Then I saw a flicker of light—the glowing screen of his phone, reflecting off the brickwork in a side alley near where I’d last seen him.

Jasmine and I looked at each other, and then Jasmine ran towards the side alley. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head, and I grabbed for her hand but just missed it. I hesitated for a split second and then ran after her.

She stopped at the mouth of the side alley and I managed to grab her arm to stop her going any further. Dan was halfway down, backed up against a wall by a bigger guy who was holding something against his throat. It was only when it caught the light that I realized it was a knife.

“Shit,” whispered Jasmine. We both hovered there, unsure of what to do. Scream? Try to help? Would that stop him stabbing Dan, or make him do it?

“Hey!” yelled Jasmine, her voice breaking as she said it. The guy didn’t even look round. Dan handed over his phone and wallet and started to take off his watch.

I pulled my own phone out and dialed 911. My brain kept freezing and I had to think about each digit.

Dan almost dropped his watch as he handed it over. The guy grabbed his shirt and ran him towards the opposite wall, pushing him hard when he was halfway across. I winced as I saw Dan bounce off the bricks. It looked like he managed to slow himself a little by putting his arm out, but he still whacked his forehead and folded to the ground.

I screamed his name and ran into the side alley, only to realize the mugger was running straight towards me. I screwed my eyes shut as we passed, waiting to feel the knife slide between my ribs, or feel myself hurled into the brickwork—

But he ran straight past and was gone. I knelt beside Dan. He had his eyes open but looked groggy, blood trickling from his forehead.

A voice from my phone asked what my emergency was and, in a small, scared voice, I told it.

***

About five minutes later, the police arrived. We had Dan sitting up against the wall—he’d thrown up, but otherwise seemed okay. Jasmine had called Clarissa and Natasha and they’d raced over from Flicker. We were all standing around offering words of support to make up for the fact that we were essentially useless.

Blue and red lights filled the alley and we heard car doors slamming. Two cops strode in: the first was in his fifties, with gray eyebrows fatter than my finger; the other looked no older than us—he could have been one of Fenbrook’s actors, in a borrowed police uniform.

“Paramedics are right behind us,” the young one said. “Who was here? Who saw it?” He stopped beside Clarissa and Natasha. “Were you here?”

“No,” they both said in unison.

“I was here,” said Jasmine.

The young cop looked at her and froze for a moment. In itself, that wasn’t unusual—Jasmine had that effect on men. But this seemed like something more, like he was entranced. At last, he nodded. “Okay. I have a couple of questions, while it’s still fresh in your mind.”

I figured I should step forward and say that I was a witness too, but as I did I saw the look Jasmine was giving the officer. I recognized that look. And it dawned on me that the cop was quite well built, and good looking, if you went for the clean-cut look. Oh! She wanted to give him her statement…and probably her phone number.

As they talked, the paramedics arrived and started shining lights in Dan’s eyes and asking him to follow fingers. I half-listened to what the cop was asking Jasmine.

“So you were walking together when it happened?”

“I was sort of leading the way. He was checking his wallet, to see if he had enough money. I think that’s why he got jumped,” Jasmine told him.

The cop looked at Dan. “And I’m right in thinking he’s not your husband or boyfriend?”

I saw Jasmine smirk at that idea. “That’s right.”

“Okay. So the two of you were just about to, ah….”

Jasmine looked blank.

The cop tried again. “You were—you know—just about to….”

Jasmine frowned, bemused. I realized what was going on in the cop’s head, but I was too late to stop him.

The cop sighed. “He was jumped as the two of you were about to complete your business?”

There was total silence for a second.

“WHAT?!” asked Jasmine, horrified.