His Until Midnight by Nikki Logan Page B

demons?’
    She stared at him. ‘I’m sure you do. But doubting your worth is not one of them.’
    She wasn’t wrong. His ego had been described by the media as ‘robust’ and in the boardroom as ‘unspeakable’.
    ‘And can you, Audrey? Relate?’
    She stared out across the harbour to the towering giants on the other side. But her head nodded, just slightly. ‘When I got to upper school I’d gone from being the tubby, smart girl to the plain, smart girl. I didn’t mind that so much as long as it also came with “smart” because that was my identity, that was where I got my self-worth from. Academic excellence.’
    ‘I wish I’d known you then.’
    Her laugh grated. ‘Oh, no... The beautiful people and I didn’t move in the same hemisphere. You would never have even seen me then.’
    ‘That’s a big assumption to make.’ And kind of judgemental. Which wasn’t like her at all.
    She leaned forwards. ‘For the first two years of high school boys didn’t want to know me. I was invisible and I just got on with things, under the radar. And then one day I got...discovered. And that was the end of my cruise through school.’
    ‘What do you mean “discovered”?’
    ‘The same way species are discovered even though they’ve been there for centuries. I didn’t change my hair or get a makeover or tutor the captain of the football team. It wasn’t like the movies. One day I was invisible and the next—’ she shrugged ‘—there I was.’
    ‘In a good way?’
    She took a healthy swallow of her wine. ‘No. Not for me.’
    The pain at the back of her eyes troubled him. ‘What happened?’
    ‘Nothing. At first. They just watched me, wherever I went. Like they weren’t sure how to engage with me.’
    They... like a pack.
    ‘One of them asked me out to a movie once. Michael Hellier. I didn’t know how to say no kindly so I said yes and it was all over the school in minutes. They hunted me down, then, the girls from that group, and they slammed me against the bathroom wall and told me I was fishing outside of my swamp.’ She lifted her eyes. ‘But he’d asked me, I couldn’t just not turn up. So I went. I don’t even remember what film we saw because all I could think about the entire time I was with him was those girls. I convinced myself they were spying from the back row. I barely spoke to him and I didn’t even take off my coat even though I was sweating like crazy under it, and when he tried to put his arm around me I literally froze. I sat there, totally rigid for the entire movie, and the moment the credits rolled I stammered out my thanks and I ran out of the cinema.’
    Oliver sat silently, the whole, miserable story playing out in his mind, his anger bubbling up and up as it proceeded.
    She turned more fully towards him, eyes blazing. ‘I enjoyed it, Oliver. The attention of those boys. I enjoyed that none of them quite knew how to deal with me. I enjoyed being a puzzle in their eyes and I enjoyed how it made me feel. The shift in power. It felt like vindication forevery tease I’d endured as a kid. As if “ See! I am worthy .” I liked being visible. And I liked being sought after. I liked how fast my heart beat when I was near him because he was interested in me. And I totally played up to it.
    ‘But I earned what happened to me.’ She sighed. ‘And I earned every cruel nickname they gave me after that. I tried to play a game I wasn’t equipped for and I lost. I never made that mistake again. I never reached like that again. And after a while that starts to feel really normal. And so maybe something like that happened to your mother—’
    God, he’d totally forgotten they’d been talking about Marlene Harmer.
    ‘—something that taught her not to overreach.’
    Or hope? Or expect more from people?
    Or feel, maybe?
    He asked the first thing that came to him. The thing he’d always, secretly, wanted to know. ‘Is that why you chose Blake that day in the bar? Because some jerks