Hunting Lila (3 page)

Jack laughed. ‘Contrary to popular opinion, sis, Alex and I are not joined at the hip. Alex lives five minutes away. He has a very cool bachelor pad on the oceanfront.’

My heart rebounded back into my chest. Bachelor pad? Of course. It was absurd that Alex
wouldn’t
be dating girls. He was beautiful, and yes, I was blinded by bias, but it was still an indisputable fact. By anyone. Together, he and Jack had cornered the market in good looks and charisma. When I was about ten I’d had to watch in silent agony as Alex dated a few girls – all older than me, all able to fill a bra – and it had almost killed me to watch. But in the fantasy world I’d created in my mind since leaving, Alex lived in a woman-free vacuum. It was the only way I’d kept myself sane. Now the words ‘bachelor’ and ‘pad’ were being bandied around and my mind was erasing that carefully crafted fantasy and redrawing it with images of hot tubs and women in bikinis.

Breathe
, I reminded myself.
This is Alex. Not Jack.
Alex, who always played the cool, collected one to Jack’s extrovert. He’d never been one to chase the girls, he was the one who always apologised to them when Jack forgot their names. He would hang back, watching silently with one blond eyebrow raised whenever Jack went in for the kill. And even if he
did have
a bachelor pad, it didn’t mean he was entertaining streams of women every night, or even any night.

Yeah, keep clutching at those straws, Lila.

‘You hungry? Thirsty?’ Jack asked.

I certainly wasn’t hungry now. My stomach was in knots. I shook my head.

Jack led me through into the hallway, where he stopped in front of a small white box on the wall by the front door.

‘This is the alarm,’ he said, flicking open the box. Inside was a space-age-looking row of blinking lights and a touchpad with both letters and numbers on it.

‘The code is 121205,’ he said. ‘You need to set the alarm when you’re in the house, not just when you go out. If something sets it off when you’re inside, the whole place will lock down. You won’t be able to get out. Just hang tight and wait for me or the police.’

I stared at him in silence for a few seconds. I hadn’t taken in the instructions, just the code. It was the date of my mother’s death. Jack ignored my expression and snapped the box shut. I understood the paranoia. Dad had installed an alarm on the house in London too. But having an alarm hadn’t helped Mum.

Jack picked up my bag which he’d dumped at the bottom of the stairs and waved me forwards, up them. I went first, pausing on the landing, not sure which door to take.

Jack edged past me to the door at the end of the short corridor. He opened it and let me go first into what was going to be my bedroom for the next however many days he let me stay. It was nice and simple. A single bed, a dresser with a spiky cactus in a red pot on top and a blue comfy chair wedged in the corner – another relic from our previous lives. The window looked out over the back garden. I could definitely make this room my home forever.

‘It’s great. Thanks,’ I said, turning towards him. It was kind of awkward, him not knowing why I was there. Me not telling, him not asking.

He put my bag on the chair and said, ‘Do you want to have a sleep? You could probably use it. I’ve got a few things to do this afternoon. You sleep. When you wake up, we’ll have dinner and talk.’

Yeah, there, he’d said it,
Talk.
Guess I knew it was coming. I had a few more hours to think up something to tell him. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was coming up for 3.30 p.m. Sleep was seeming like a very good idea indeed, especially when I looked again at the bed.

‘OK, sounds like a plan,’ I agreed.

I looked at him then walked over to where he was standing by the door. I stopped a few inches away from him and let my head fall against his chest. He brought his arms around me as I mumbled into his T-shirt, ‘Thanks.’

‘Hey, no problem,’ he said softly. I felt his lips press against the top of my head and then he left.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and kicked off my shoes, then fell backwards onto the cool sheets. It felt so inviting but my skin was tacky and glazed from travel and I needed a shower more than I needed to sleep. I groaned and sat back up, glancing around for my bag. It hovered off the chair, unzipped itself and moved towards me. With a shock I realised what I was doing and let it fall to the floor with a thud.

‘Lila? You OK?’ Jack yelled from downstairs.

‘Er, yeah, fine, just dropped my bag,’ I called back.

I knelt on the floor, breathing loudly. I had to get this under control. No more using my ability, for anything. That was the rule. I absolutely had to stick to it if I wanted to avoid any more eyeball incidents. Or worse. I had to concentrate. I’d pretty much managed it at school and when I was around people. It was just being tired that made it harder to control. Tiredness and having a knife held to my throat.

I reached into my bag, feeling for my wash things and a clean T-shirt. It felt weird. I was using muscles I hadn’t used in a while. I was going to have to get used to that.

I sat on the edge of the bed, feeling dazed from jet lag but buzzing like a high voltage power line had been connected to me while I was asleep. I had been woken up by voices from downstairs; one was Jack – I could hear him laughing and joking around. The other was softer, deeper, and I would recognise it anywhere, even in my sleep. It had broken through my dreams and nudged me into consciousness. Alex.

The room was gloomy, it was dusk outside. I twisted around to look at the clock. It was 7.30 p.m. but it felt like I’d only been asleep for ten minutes. The jet lag was messing with my body, but not half as much as that voice downstairs was. My heart was racing, I could feel my cheeks starting to burn. I glanced at the light switch and narrowed my eyes – the light flickered on, then straightaway off. I got up, frowning at myself, and flicked the switch by hand.

A part of me, a big part of me, wanted to bound out of the room and down the stairs right that second. The need to see him was suddenly overwhelming. It felt like I’d been stuck at the bottom of the ocean for the last three years, surviving on one mouthful of air, and now I could see the surface, or an oxygen tank, only a few feet away. But bed hair and a wrinkled T-shirt was not a good look and vanity got the better of me. A few more minutes wouldn’t kill, whereas Alex looking at me and thinking I looked like the inside of a used sick bag would.

What to wear, though? I’d not been thinking all that straight when I’d packed and consequently discovered a random assortment of clothing in the drawers. I seemed to have covered all bases though, I noted, apart from skiing. I pulled out an electric blue silk dress. I wasn’t sure what scenario would arise where I was going to need that but hey, you never knew. There was also a school shirt, which I scrunched up and fired at the bin. I didn’t need any reminders of where I should be right now. In the end I pulled on some jeans and replaced the T-shirt I’d worn in bed with a purple vest.

I turned to look in the mirror above the dresser. My hair was all over the place, I’d gone to bed with it wet and was now doing a good impression of a blonde Alice Cooper. I smoothed it flat, hacking a brush through the ends to get the tangles out. I leaned closer to the mirror. I didn’t normally bother with make-up, but tonight I really needed to make an impression. A little bit of mascara, maybe some lip balm. I didn’t need any blusher, that was for sure. I cast my eyes around the dresser, searching for my make-up bag. It was nowhere in sight. I let out a groan. Great. Just great. On the one day I needed to look amazing, to look older, my make-up bag was five thousand miles away.

I reappraised my reflection in something of a panic. Yesterday I’d looked like a dead thing, now I looked very, very alive. Almost too alive – like I was on something. Which, I supposed, I sort of was. There was nothing I could do about that, unfortunately. I brushed my hair behind my ears and bit my lips to make them redder, hoping to take the focus away from my burning cheeks.

I took a deep breath, then another. I could do this.

I made it to the top of the stairs and gripped the banister with all my might. How was it I could make inanimate objects do my bidding but couldn’t get my own legs to obey? I took the first step and the voices in the kitchen cut off in mid-sentence. I felt like an actor about to walk out on stage in front of the world, without knowing the words or even having read the script. I could hear the sound of chairs scraping back so I picked up my pace, wanting to make it to the bottom before they could. I took the next steps two at a time. I caught sight of the top of Alex’s head and inhaled fast, my heart rate skyrocketing. I missed my footing on the next step and went tumbling forwards. In the split second before I hit the wall all I could think was that this wasn’t exactly the reunion I’d fantasised about in my head every hour of every day for the last three years.

My eyes closed involuntarily to avoid the collision and I braced myself. I hit something good and hard but it wasn’t a wall. I opened one eye slowly, peeking to see. Alex was holding me by the top of my arms where he’d caught me. I’d crashed right into his chest. My hands were splayed against him. He rocked back on his heels, not letting go of me. I was thinking I had to move my hands but, much like my legs earlier, they wouldn’t obey. Here he was, literally at my fingertips; I had dreamed about that – though there had been fewer clothes in my dream – for a long time now. I could feel the muscles of his chest and, yep, they lived up to the fantasy. My head barely came up to the height of his shoulders. I just wanted to rest it there and not move but Jack was getting into my peripheral vision and I didn’t want him to see the look of dazed delight that was surely on my face. I straightened up, pulling away abruptly. Alex let go of me. I drew in a breath. He was even more beautiful than I had remembered. His tanned face and ice-blue eyes made my stomach lurch violently I grabbed the banister with one hand to stop myself from falling again. That would be bad.

‘Lila. It’s good to see you.’ Alex chuckled.

I smiled back ruefully.

‘Hey, you too,’ I garbled, as the power of coherent speech momentarily deserted me.

‘Do I get a proper hug?’ he said, and he opened his arms wide.

I stepped into them. It felt familiar, warm and, truth be told, unexpectedly painful too. Not physically, but his closeness, the headrush of familiar scent and touch, brought back so many memories from before, it was like someone had turned a television right by my head from silent to full volume.

‘Been a long time – you’re looking well,’ Alex said, as we walked through into the kitchen.

He pulled out a chair for me and I sat while he rested, long and lean, against the kitchen counter. Jack turned back to the stove where something was cooking.

‘So, what’s the deal then?’ Alex said. ‘Why the escape to southern California? London not rocking enough for a teenage girl, so you’ve got to check out the entertainment factor of a military town?’

Maybe Jack had put him up to it. I doubted it though. Alex never did anything he didn’t want to.

‘Kind of, something like that,’ I muttered. I didn’t want to answer any questions right now. I just wanted to enjoy the moment. To which end I shrugged off the teenage comment. I was back with the two people in the world who I loved most. I felt complete. And happier than I’d been in a good long time.

‘So, when’s Sara getting here?’ Alex said to Jack.

Well, that didn’t last long. I felt the smile melt off my face, my ribcage start to crack. Who was Sara?

‘She’s working. She said she’d see us tomorrow,’ Jack answered over his shoulder.

‘That’s a shame. She’s looking forward to meeting you, Lila. You’re going to love her,’ Alex said in my direction.

That did it. My heart skidded to a stop. Alex had a girlfriend and he’d used her name and the word ‘love’ in the same sentence.

‘The woman who tamed Jack,’ Alex continued. ‘I have to hand it to her, she’s done something no other woman has been able to.’

I shook my head and felt my heart start to beat once more. ‘I don’t get it. What are you saying?’ I turned to Jack. ‘You –
you
have a girlfriend?’

Jack, to my knowledge – which clearly had great big supernova-sized holes in it – was about as likely a candidate for boyfriendhood as I was for getting the attendance award this year at school. Flings, flirtations, one-night dalliances, but Jack usually ran screaming from commitment. Or maybe not. Maybe in the last three years I really had stopped knowing him.

‘Yep, little sis, I do have a girlfriend,’ he said.

My jaw fell open. I stood up and hopped onto the counter next to the stove so I could look directly at Jack. ‘I want details.’

‘Her name is Sara. Get the mustard.’ He turned, holding a sizzling pan towards the table.

‘Sara who? I don’t know where you keep the mustard. Don’t change the subject.’

Alex moved to my side of the stove and stretched over me to open the cupboard behind my head. I had to duck slightly to avoid the door. As I leaned out of the way, I brushed up against his outstretched arm. My thoughts suddenly detoured as my heart accelerated. The cupboard banged behind me and Alex turned to hand the mustard to Jack. In the second his head was in profile to me, I burnt every single detail of him into my mind like it was photo paper and he was the sun.

He was so close I would only have had to move my face an inch or two forwards to press my lips against his neck. I resisted the urge to trace the shadow of stubble along his jawline to the hollow of his chin. His dark blond hair had been recently crew-cut – I could tell by the thin white line that traced his hairline at the nape of his neck, which stood out against his tan. There was a crease by his eyes that looked suspiciously like the beginnings of a laughter line. I felt a pang of jealousy that someone else was making him laugh, getting to hear him laugh. I was entirely pathetic, I realised that.