The Road Trip: The heart-warming new novel from the author of The Flatshare and The Switch by Beth O'Leary (books to read now TXT) 📕

I turn towards the door.

He pushes it closed, over my shoulder, his body against my back.

‘This has been such a long time coming,’ he says in my ear. ‘Hasn’t it?’

There’s a cold sort of dread in my stomach. He’s right, I knew this was coming. What else had I expected? I feel like I’m slipping, or perhaps like I already slipped and now I’m falling, fingernails grasping for something to hold.

His lips are on my neck. I can feel desire, quiet and low, but above that I feel desperate disgust. At him? Myself?

I know when he pulls me back against him, against his hardness. I don’t want this. Fuck. I can’t do this, the thought makes me feel sick, the wetness of his mouth on my neck is like a tarantula across the skin.

‘No,’ I say.

I say no.

Dylan

Luke calls me around seven, and he tells me that my father is cheating on my mother.

I sit, slowly, on the edge of the sofa. For a long while I say nothing at all.

‘Dyl?’ Luke says. ‘Dyl, I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been dreading this phone call.’

I feel like my head is full of whiteness; I’m not exactly surprised, but it’s horrifying, like being told you’re not who you think you are at all.

‘She knows?’ I manage.

‘I told her before I told you. I thought – I guess I thought she should know first. She was totally in denial. I couldn’t convince her.’

I’m only half listening – a sudden rage is rising up my body, freezing hot, like ice burn. I’m so rarely angry that I hardly know how to hold the feeling: it seems to have found its way into my throat, my ears, the little capillaries spreading through my lungs.

‘I don’t think she’ll ever leave him, you know,’ Luke says. ‘She just didn’t want to hear it.’

A message comes through from Marcus; I check it abstractedly, hardly seeing it at first.

You need to come to Addie’s school. She’s there with Etienne, and . . . it doesn’t look good.

The picture comes next. Through the window, the warm glow of the office inside, with the two of them sitting side by side, drinking wine out of tumblers, his hand resting on her upper thigh.

‘Luke?’ I say. My voice is strangled. ‘I have to go.’

I press the off button to turn the screen black, then sit with the phone cradled between my hands, staring down, heart big and sick in my chest. The phrase seeing red has never meant anything to me before, but now I understand. I saw the image for less than a second but it’s drawn on the inside of my eyelids like sparklers in the night.

Eventually, after those long, stifling seconds of stillness, I grab my coat and pull on my shoes – so slow, so mundane, as if my world isn’t ending – and I run for the car.

Addie

He nips me with his teeth.

I turn in the cage of his arms. It’s worse. He pushes up my skirt, hand running up my thigh, pulling my leg so that the muscle along the back of my thigh wrenches with a shot of pain, and I’m bunching my fists now, trying to turn my head aside, and I’m clear, I couldn’t be clearer. I’m pushing his chest. I’m talking, I think – Stop it, please – and our teeth clatter, a dull thud inside my head as he keeps pushing his lips down on mine.

‘I know you want this,’ he tells me. ‘Don’t you?’

It’s a sound outside that makes him turn his head aside for a moment. We can’t see the window from here; he takes half a step back, then pauses, unsure. I remember something from long past. Self-defence classes in school, maybe. The fist that was pushing at his chest unravels and I grab his shoulder while he’s unsteady and my skirt is already up around my thighs so I can bring my knee up hard between his legs and watch him fold over, letting out a noise like an animal and – finally, as I sob – letting me go.

I run. The door isn’t locked. As I sprint down the corridor to the back exit, through the staffroom, I feel bone-cold with the fear that he’s locked up the school, but he hasn’t. He wasn’t afraid I’d run. He knew I wanted it, he’d said.

I run all the way home. At least ten kilometres. My feet bleed. When I take my shoes off inside the flat I flinch when I see them. I’m shaking so hard I can’t use my fingers properly. I sit on the floor and weep like I’ll never stop crying. I claw at my skin. I dig my fingernails into my arms. I remember all the times I smiled at him when he smiled at me.

Dylan

I get there just as Etienne is coming out of the building; he turns, carefully locking up behind him.

‘That’s him,’ Marcus says, suddenly at my shoulder. ‘There. That’s him.’

I know. I saw the photo. That split second of the image on the screen was more than enough for me to memorise every line of that bastard’s face.

I run at him. Marcus calls to me – he sounds surprised. He’s been drinking, and he isn’t fast enough to catch me. My fist hits Etienne’s jaw just as he turns. There’s a hot pain in my knuckle, a jarring shock in my elbow. He doubles over.

‘What the—’

‘What the fuck were you doing with my girlfriend?’ I say, realising with shame that I’m crying.

Etienne looks up at me, eyes wide. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he says.

‘No? Looked pretty cosy to me,’ Marcus says.

Etienne looks at him quickly, eyes narrowing. He stays low, crouched. I keep my fists bunched at my sides and wish I wasn’t sniffling and shaking like a child.

‘She’s . . . intense,’ Etienne says. ‘She’s been coming on to me all