Free Behind Closed Doors by Elizabeth Haynes Page A

together, lying in bed.
    He was going to be her first. She had made that decision the same way she had made the decision to sneak out once Juliette was asleep – quite simply, really. She’d thought about it and thought about it all the way to there being no possible alternative. She wanted him, and she could already tell from the way he had looked at her, the way he’d smiled all the way up to his eyes, the way he’d tucked that strand of hair behind her ear with a hand that might just have been trembling with the force of his feelings for her, that he wanted her just as much.
    He was a boy, after all, so probably even more.
    She thought a lot about how it would feel and wondered if it would hurt. And whether her parents would be able to tell. She thought about where she was going to get a condom, in case he didn’t have one. Of course she couldn’t get one herself. He would have one, or she would send him off to a bar or pub and make him get one from the toilets. She wouldn’t do it without, of course.
    If her father found out – any of this, anything at all – she was dead. And of course, if she ended up pregnant, then he would find out. Her only chance was to not get pregnant.
    Nico. His dark eyes, his smile… she wondered about his family, where they were. If he was working to support them – working to keep them fed because something prevented them working themselves. Or he might be an orphan, someone who had struggled all the time he’d been growing up, living on his wits, taking whatever job came along.
    When they were married Scarlett would get a good job, as a translator or something like that – or she would be manager of a fashion shop in the market square, selling silks and furs to the tourists and telling them how fabulous they looked. Or she would write articles about being young and married and living in a foreign country, and sell them to the newspapers and magazines back in the UK. And her parents would read the articles and regret their behaviour towards her – and Cerys would read them and be insanely jealous of her new life with her handsome, gentle, caring husband.
    Juliette moved, stretched out an arm,
finally
turned out the bedside light. Scarlett, her back to her in the twin bed, held her breath and waited, listening to Juliette’s breathing.
    Now it was dark she realised how tired she was. Tired, and yet excited, so excited. It might happen tonight, after all, even though part of her was resolved to go no further than a kiss. Why rush? If he wanted her, if he wanted to be with her, he would wait. That was what she believed to be true: that her virginity was special and precious and not to be given to just anyone.
    That was what her dad always said, wasn’t it?
    Nico wasn’t just anyone. He was The One. She’d known him barely two days, talked to him for less than two hours, and yet she was as certain of it as she’d ever been about anything in her whole life. He would be the one to rescue her, to save her from the humiliating restrictions placed on her by her parents. In the darkness, her face turned to the blank white wall, she smiled and hugged herself.
    Well, then. She would kiss him. That much was decided. She would see how she felt after that. What if he put his hands on her? The thought of that made her stop for a moment and reconsider. For that was what it was, after all. That was where it started. He would want to touch her. And he would probably want her to touch him. That was the middle ground between a kiss and having sex, the ‘sexual contact’ made famous by the lie detector tests on
The Jeremy Kyle Show
.
    She knew all about that.
    Could she do it, with him? Could she actually bring herself to do something like that, through choice?
    Wait and see
, she thought.
Wait and see how it goes.
    Juliette was breathing deeply. She gave it another five minutes, counting down the snail’s pace minutes on the fluorescent minute hand on her wristwatch, and then, slowly, quietly,