You Know He's A Keeper When He Quotes Bruno Mars

Chapter 8

"You've some arm there!" he exclaimed, shock in his eyes as he woke himself up.

"Could you really not have found a more gentle way of doing that?" Beth demanded, disgust in her face. I wasn't used to seeing such a negative expression on her.

Effy just shrugged. "That's the way I roll."

"Roll softer," Logan groaned, rubbing his cheek.

"Here," Beth said, putting a cup of coffee down on the locker beside the bed. "I figured you'd be awake by now." I picked up my cup and took a sip, remembering that Effy hated coffee because it gave you bad breath. "Will I go and make you a cup?" She asked, turning to Logan who was now wincing in pain. I sniggered at him and he grinned back at me.

Beth, not waiting for an answer, left to make another cup and Effy followed her, her tiny silk shorts pyjamas still on her. She wasn't any less confident that there was a boy around. She knew she looked sexy in the morning.

I put down my cup as Logan took his hand away from his cheek. There was a red mark from Effy's slap.

"Ouch, that looks pretty bad," I winced, sitting up and leaning across to him, ignoring the feeling that my body was in shut-down mode. I put out my hand and gingerly lay my fingers on the red marks. His cheek was burning.

"Please, I have a very high threshold for pain," he said, waving one hand as if it were nothing.

I laughed. "Don't lie to me just because you got hit by a girl."

He looked up at me shyly and I felt my heart sink a little. "Okay, you got me. I think she just killed my face."

I laughed again, pressing my cool palm against his cheek. His face went serious and he looked me straight in the eye. I started to forget what I was doing.

"It's nothing like what happened to you last night though," he said softly and I felt one of his hands encasing my other one and squeezing it gently.

I narrowed my eyes and tried to remember, but it was all black. "What happened last night?"

He squeezed my hand once more before letting it go. "Nothing, you just drank one too many."

I nodded and rolled my eyes, feeling my head pound against me. "I don't usually drink so much. I can't even remember anything."

"What's the last thing you remember?" he asked me, pushing my hand away and leaning forward so it felt more like he was taking care of me this time.

I thought back. "Oh! I remember someone hitting me with a ball . . . And I knew this guy! . . . He was the guy from the swimming pool, Stephen I think." I sat back on the bed and crossed my arms, proud I could remember something.

Logan's face seemed to harden when I mentioned his name. Then his eyes softened and filled with something that looked a lot like pity and he eyed me up and down. Maybe it was pity? But why? And then I remembered I was pissed last night. People do idiotic things when they're drunk.

"You bastard!" a voice shouted outside and our heads spun in the direction of the window, even though the sunlight hurt.

"You've some nerve showing up here! And the day after? You prick!"

The vocie was angry. I mean, really angry. As in about-to-turn-crazy-ninja-and-attack angry. And the voice was familiar too. It sounded like . . .

"Darren," Logan muttered and we looked at each other, before racing for the door and running down the steps leading up to the caravan, past her parents who watched flabbergasted as a young good looking boy that they hadn't seen coming in flashed past. Effy and Beth ran out after us.

"Darren! What is it?" Effy called over, but he ignored her, his glare fixed past us.

He was walking hurriedly down the road, his shoulders squared and his jaw clenched. We followed his stare to the end of the road where Stephen was walking down towards him, a similar expression on his face. He had a bruised eye, as if he'd been hit the night before.

A cold feeling washed over me at the sight of him and I couldn't explain why. It was as if I felt frozen and I couldn't move. I couldn't even open my mouth to talk.

"What did you say to me?" Stephen shouted.

"You know what I said. And I'm not gonna let you walk away with what you did. You're sick. SICK! How could you do that to a girl. To Ronnie?"

I felt Beth and Effy look at, confused. I was confused myself. I suddenly felt sick. And it wasn't the hangover.

"You're just like your dad you know," he spat. He was close to Steven now, squaring up to each other.

"Take that back, you prick! You don't know my father!" he spat back, his strong Liverpool accent slurring into itself.

Logan grabbed my hand again. I didn't need to look to know it was him.

"I hate when people fight. I hate violence. And this is over me," I murmured softly, and I knew he heard.

"You're just like him. Rape runs in the family; yeah? Well look where he is now!" Darren shouted.

It was like the whole atmosphere went from bad to worse. It was cold now, like everyone had been stabbed with an icycle as realisation dawned on everyone. It was like something was triggered, something clicked. Effy's jaw dropped, Beth gasped and I started to piece together last night. I felt Logan tense beside me and he dropped my hand again.

He looked at me first, as if saying sorry.

"Sometimes you deserve to be fought for," he said, and he leapt forward onto the road between them, clenched one hand into a fist and drew his arm back. I could only imagine the impact as he pounded his fist back into Stephen's face so he was down, falling back on the ground. Logan unclenched his hand and shook it out. Him and Darren looked down at him for a while, and then walked away, Logan pulling out his mobile on the way.

And then I remembered. I remembered everything.