All the Little Things by Sarah Lawton (the best books to read txt) 📕

‘Rachel, look at me. Look at me right now. Breathe with me, Rachel, please.’ I looked at him and he was pursing his lips and taking slow, deep, exaggerated breaths which I copied, just to humour him but actually I needed them, and I stopped shaking and I tried not to cry. He held my gaze with his pretty eyes.

‘How did you know how to do that?’

‘Family issues.’ He didn’t elaborate.

‘Thank you. I’m so sorry. I’m fine now, honestly. I’m glad you came over,’ and I realised I meant it. His collected, still presence was far more soothing than the wine or the drawing was. He smelt faintly of salt and I thought of the sea rushing over the shore. I was jittery still, but I wasn’t going to break.

He used his fingers and thumbs to gently knead the muscles above my collarbones. He ran his fingers over my shoulders and back up to my neck. A thumb came to a stop over my still hammering pulse and pressed gently. His eyes darkened and his lips moved but no words came out.

Starting to feel more than slightly uncomfortable I pulled away and turned back to my picture. Alex followed my gaze. He dropped his hands.

I suddenly saw, with a dawning horror and huge embarrassment, that I had drawn the faery prince with his face: slashing eyebrows, ocean eyes, full lips, a shock of dark, silky hair. It was quite clearly him. It was only then that I realised that the reason I was so angry at my inability to draw Vivian’s face on Arabella was because I hadn’t drawn her face at all.

I’d drawn mine.

I turned around, and pushed past him out of the studio.

‘I think you should go now, Alex. I’m completely fine and I have a lot on today,’ I shouted over my shoulder as I ran into the house, away from him, away from the sudden, shocking, creeping slick of want that swept through my body. He was a teenage boy, what the fuck was wrong with me? I was weak with it.

I got into the house and I ran up the stairs and I stood in my room, gasping, my hands in my hair. I couldn’t pull any air into my lungs. I was such an idiot! Where had this even come from? I tried to brush it off, scrape it away, but it was like drowning in oil. No desire, or desire suppressed for years, had caused a storm of need in me that was almost impossible to bear. I wanted something for me, just once, for me and not Vivian. I wanted him.

And then, inevitably, I turned around and I went back down the stairs, back out into the garden where he stood, waiting for me. Cool, clever hands reached out to my shoulders again, fingertips smoothing, and I reached up to him, the nerves in my fingertips rejoicing in the feel of his skin, his hair. I looked up into his perfect face, and his sea-glass eyes, and I pulled his mouth down onto mine and I was lost.

Vivian

I get to Molly’s a bit late, and I have a leaf in my hair. She plucks it out and raises one eyebrow at me; which is annoying on so many levels, not limited to the fact I can’t do that.

‘What have you been up to, bitchy?’ she asks me, with a twisty smirk on her face. She looks pissed off, but I decide that I don’t care because I am feeling completely awesome after my afternoon with Alex, although I’m starting to wish I’d just gone home so I could relive it over and over. But I guess that, in theory, I should be here – if not with her, then with my other friends who need my ‘support’, or whatever.

‘Serena and Tilly aren’t coming,’ says Molly. ‘Tilly didn’t feel up to it, so Serena has gone there instead.’

Oh.

‘I wasn’t sure if you were going to come or not. I did call you.’

‘I left my phone at home.’ I knew I should have gone back and got it but I hadn’t wanted to ruin my morning by potentially having to speak to my mother. It’s bad enough I’m here with this traitor.

‘All day? Have you not been back to get it? Where have you been? What have you been up to, Vivvy? Why are you being so mysterious?’

Her blue eyes are flickering all over me now, needling, and I feel like she can see right through me. She pulls me into the house. I can smell pizza cooking and my stomach gurgles loudly.

‘Been working up an appetite, Viv? I think you should go have a quick shower before we eat. You stink.’

I don’t stink, but I obey orders, then return to the kitchen where she grabs a tea towel and manoeuvres the pizza out the oven. She slices it with a pizza roller – I wish we had one of those – and she plonks it down on the table. She’s already got out ketchup and mayo, which she proceeds to squirt all over her half.

‘I have no idea how you are so skinny,’ I tell her, sitting down next to her and picking up a slice. I try and eat it too quickly and the hot sauce burns the roof of my mouth, right behind my teeth. It will blister, I know, and I will have a tender raw patch for the next few days.

‘Ow.’

‘You should blow on it first, Vivvy,’ Molly snipes at me. ‘I thought you were getting good at blowing?’

I decide to ignore this, though I do blow on the pizza.

We eat the rest without talking, and then Molly gets up to get us drinks. I can hear her poking around in the utility room, then she goes into the loo. On a whim I slide her phone toward me over the counter and tap in her passcode. There are no messages from Alex, but