A Bird in Flight | ✔︎

Chapter nineteen: Opening up

Ensley

I PULL MY KNEES TO my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs as I stare off the edge of the rocks, across the startling blue water and beyond the fortress of green. The wind blows leaves across my ankles, whipping my auburn hair around my face. It's been six days since we arrived and I admit I don't know how I'm going to go home after high-roading it out there without telling anyone.

"You know, it's just occurred to me that we've never had an actual date," Callan says from behind me, interrupting my thoughts. Handing me a packet of chips, he sinks onto the rocks beside me.

"That's kinda sad," I admit, biting back a laugh.

"I know." He smirks. "So how about we make this a date?"

I glance at him, a smile on my lips. "What happens if I want our first date to be as cliché as possible? You know, the couple who go to the movies and they share a popcorn and accidentally touch hands and it's both awkward and romantic at the same time"

Callan snorts. "I don't do cliché. Plus we have no popcorn and the TV is shit."

I pretend to pout. "Oh come on! I thought you would do anything for your girl!"

He lifts an eyebrow. "How about we get to know each other? Maybe like why there is a stash of pills in your bedside table? Or maybe we could start with simpler questions, like what's your favourite colour?"

I feel myself shrink away from him as I realise I've been caught. At least he isn't going ballistic on me, like my mother would if she could discover my dark secret: That I am a mirror image of my father. "I like blue," I tell him, avoiding eye contact.

"Do you like swimming?" he asks suddenly.

"What? Why?" I demand, half-relived of out abrupt change in conversation and half-afraid of the odd question.

I shriek in protest as he scoops me up in his muscular arms and tosses me into the icy water, laughing his dumb ass off as I emerge, gasping and spluttering.

"You dick!" I howl, shrugging my jacket off and pitifully throwing it against the rocks with sharp smack, unsuccessfully trying to splash him, Callan just bellows out another laugh and struggles to remove his shirt from his sling.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I yell, my eyes zoning in on his prominent abs and the scars crisscrossing his white skin. His still bruised and beaten from his last encounter with his father and the belt marks still appear raw and painful.

"Swimming," he replies innocently, yanking down his shorts and stepping out from them with a seductive wink.

"You idiot, you have a sling!"

"So? Since when does that stop me from doing what I want? I don't play by the rules, Ensley, I play the rules themselves." And with that poetic sentence, he throws himself into the water with an almightily splash, drenching me.

"Aah!" Callan cries out in pain at the water's impact on his broken arm. I can't help it; I burst out laughing chanting, "I told you so! I told you so!"

He rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue out at me, a smirk playing of his lips as he splashes water on me. "You should become a teacher, Enz. Like fucking Mr. Toad."