Free Killing You Softly by Lucy Carver

‘Hi, I love you . . . Sorry, what did you say? I missed that . . .
You’re breaking up . . . Hi, are you still there? Yes, I love you too.’
    Jack had spent his days swooping down the ski slopes in Colorado with a bunch of tennis-pro mates while I vegged out in Richmond with my aunt.
    ‘Next time you have to come with me,’ he whispered as finally we stopped hugging and stood back to stare into each other’s eyes. ‘At Easter, when I go to the tennis
academy in Spain, you have to be there with me, Alyssa. We’ll be together.’
    ‘Cool,’ I murmured.
    ‘Very,’ he agreed, leaning in for one more kiss.

chapter four
    Jack and I decided to catch a bus from Ainslee into the Bottoms then walk to St Jude’s from there.
    ‘We can just about make it back before it gets dark,’ I predicted as we stood waiting for a bus outside the train station. ‘And before it snows. That’s the
forecast.’
    ‘I’m used to snow,’ he reminded me. ‘They had twenty inches of it in Aspen on the day before I left, and twelve inches in Denver. The temperature was minus three for
seven days running.’
    ‘Centigrade or Fahrenheit?’ Can you believe it? Jack and I were discussing the weather when all I really wanted to do was get lost in his kisses.
    ‘Fahrenheit.’ He held my hand and we stood in line for the bus. The streets and the exterior of The Fleece were still festooned with lights, but the decorations felt jaded now.
    The bus came and we climbed on, and rode through the grey streets of Ainslee while Jack told me about the guys he’d met in Aspen – two young ski instructors who worked summers at
dude guest ranches, a Swedish girl training for the next Winter Olympics’ cross-country skiing event. ‘And what about you – how was Christmas, really?’
    ‘Lousy,’ I admitted’ then I kicked myself. Try not to sound needy – I read in an agony-aunt column that it makes alpha guys like Jack run a mile. So I decided to lighten
the mood. ‘You met Aunt Olivia at the end of last term – she’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. Anyway, I escaped into the West End as often as I could, went shoppings visited
galleries and everything.’
    ‘Cool.’ Jack rested his arm round my shoulder and leaned across to wipe the steamed-up window. I felt the warmth coming off his body, saw the smoothness of his tanned face.
‘Anyway, what else has been happening while I was away?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    Jack looked me in the eyes – this is the point when my knees wobble and my heart melts. ‘Yeah, right,’ he argued, ‘you’ve got something on your mind. Is it the
Facebook pics?’
    ‘No, they’re history,’ I fibbed, but I couldn’t quite brush it off. ‘If you really want to know, Hooper’s theory is that it was a version of revenge porn
– I mean, “I” wasn’t naked or anything. And when you took a close look they were obviously fake.’
    ‘But then you’d have to have a jealous ex boyfriend that you haven’t told me about,’ Jack pointed out. ‘That’s what revenge porn is all about.’
    I reached out to take his spare hand and rest it on my knee as the bus trundled over potholes along country lanes. ‘No jealous exes,’ I promised. Anyway, he knew that my sex life had
been practically non-existent before I’d come to St Jude’s.
    ‘What – were the guys at your last school blind?’ he joked.
    I smiled back. It was so good to be sitting next to him as the bus rattled along, swaying against him, holding his hand.
    ‘So how’s Gina?’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Your new roommate.’
    ‘Galina.’ It had only been four days since I’d got back to St Jude’s yet there was so much to catch up on. ‘Her daddy’s filthy rich and she designs and sells
bags to international fashion houses. What else do you need to know?’
    ‘Do you like her?’
    I thought for a while. ‘Actually, yes,’ I decided. ‘After a car-crash start, yeah, I do.’
    ‘I like it when you do that thing with your nose,’ he