Black Diamond. Havana Adams

the alleyway and she pulled her cardigan closed and gasped. Matt stood waiting for her. For a moment, Grace froze and then she kept her head down and ploughed forward. She hoped he would move. He didn’t.

      “Can you get out of my way, please.”

      “We need to talk,” Matt said, his voice little more than a whisper.

      “There’s nothing to say.” Grace sidestepped him. She felt his hand rise as though to prevent her passing him but then it dropped back down to his side.

      “Grace, please.” Unable to stop herself her eyes rose to his face and that was her mistake. Matt looked worn and tired and there were dark circles under his eyes. He looked desperate and utterly unlike her confident defender from Oxford. And Grace knew then that he had her. Slowly she turned around to fully face him.

      “What do you want from me?”

      “What you saw, who I am…” Matt began.

      “What about it?” Grace cut, in striving to hold onto the coldness that had settled in her heart.

      “They can’t find out. None of them can know.”

      “Who? The Gatsbies?” Matt winced as she uttered the name and made real his fears.

      “You know what they’re like at Newman. Someone assumed and I just went with it.”

      “Lucky you,” Grace snapped bitterly even as a small part of her applauded his audacity. He’d played The Gatsbies, was still playing them.

      “I just need to keep it up, till graduation, get a good job, use the connections… What’s so wrong with that?”

      “It’s one hell of a secret,” Grace said slowly.

      “Please don’t say anything,” Matt continued. Grace heard the pleading note in his voice. She saw the fear in his eyes and suddenly something shifted. For the first time in her life Grace felt the thrill of power.

      For the last three weeks of the summer Grace had nursed the secret like a precious stone. In the day, she forced it to the back of her mind, waited her tables, ran the gauntlet of the market nodding at Matt’s uncle. Sometimes, she would see Matt watching, fear and desperation still etched on his face. He was still waiting for her answer. Only at night, long after another tense dinner with The Pastor and her mother, only in the dark in her stuffy bedroom would she take the secret out, exposing it to the light of her scrutiny.

      The more she thought about it, the more Grace marvelled. Matt must be smart, really clever to have sustained his double life, to have been able to convince The Gatsbies. Another fact filled Grace with a frisson of excitement – only she knew Matt’s secret. In the moment before she closed her eyes, Grace smiled at the realisation that for once, she had something that Poppy or Laura did not have. For now at least, she had the real Matt.

      “What are we going to do?” Matt asked nervously. He’d looked surprised to see Grace lurking outside the pub on a Sunday morning.

      “What do you want me to do?” Grace asked, meeting Matt’s gaze head on. She no longer shied away from his gaze, no longer felt embarrassed to let him see her staring, that was the thing about power. Suddenly, for the first time power had shifted into her hands and it made Grace feel something that she had never felt before, it made her feel almost fearless.

      “Just don’t say anything, don’t throw me to the wolves…” Grace shook her head, weighing up her words, leaving Matt hanging.

      “You’ve been hanging with The Gatsbies for too long,” she finally said. “Why would I expose you?” Grace saw the relief flood through Matt. She saw the tension drain from him and his shoulders sagged.

      “You promise?” he asked.

      “’Course,” Grace replied. “I like knowing something that none of those bitches will ever know.”

      “I swear if there’s any way I can ever help you…” Matt trailed off. “Thank you,” he said.

      Grace nodded and was stunned as she felt Matt engulf her in a hug that took the breath out of her. For a moment Grace was frozen and then slowly she let her own arms move around Matt’s body. She allowed herself to squeeze him back and then suddenly he was pulling back away from her and Grace felt deflated, as though a shiny new trinket had been presented to her and then snatched away before she could fully explore its possibilities. Grace lowered her eyes to the ground to hide the yearning that had blasted through her.

      “I’ll see you back in Oxford then,” Matt said. “What’s your mobile number?” Reaching into her bag, Grace scrawled her number onto a piece of paper. She handed it to him and raised her eyes to meet his again. Matt had started to turn away and then he stopped. “I’m glad you know,” he said. “I know I can trust you.” And then he was gone, disappearing back into the pub.

      For several long minutes, Grace stood there, staring up at the pub signage that was gently swinging in the breeze, her heart soaring as she wondered what her second year at Oxford might bring.