Until Fountain Bridge by Samantha Young, now you can read online.
Chapter 1
It was always the same when you were looking for something in amongst a big pile of some things—the something you were after was at the bottom of that big pile of some things. I finally dropped the last box on the other side of the room and wiped a streak of sweat from my forehead.
When I’d moved in with Adam three months ago I’d promised him that all the boxes of junk that I put in his spare room would be sorted out and tidied away within a couple of weeks. I’d unfortunately reneged on that promise and wasn’t ashamed to say I was still leaning on my tumor scare to get me out of the admonishment that should have followed. I’d been diagnosed with my benign—and yet still terrifying—brain tumor eight months ago, a diagnosis that not only traumatized my family and friend, Joss, but had kicked Adam, my brother’s best friend, swiftly up the behind. He’d finally admitted to everyone he was in love with me, and we’d hardly spent a day apart since. Although our relationship had changed, we were still us and Adam tried not to treat me like I was made of glass. However, I’d noticed he let me away with things he wouldn’t have before—such as cluttering up his clutter-free, swanky duplex with all my rubbish—and I didn’t know if this was because of the scare or because we were a couple now and he was compromising.
I swooped down on the last box with a grunt of triumph and ripped off the packing tape.
Inside I found exactly what I was looking for and smiled. I’d already upended the box and sent my old diaries cascading across Adam’s hardwood floors before it occurred to me that upending a box of diaries might cause scratches. Wincing, I did this silly little dance over the falling journals as if this would somehow, magically, soften the impact of their rapid descent.
It didn’t.
I dropped to my knees and picked up the books, checking the floors. Nothing. Thank God.
Adam was an architect and that meant he liked his space a certain way, and he liked that space in pristine condition, especially when it cost him a fortune. Hardwood flooring wasn’t cheap. Adam had already changed his life for me, doing a three-sixty from the ultimate player to devoted boyfriend, from bachelor and proud clutter-free homeowner, to doting partner and proud owner of a stylish duplex covered in weird crap his quirky, overly-romantic girlfriend picked up in random places, including charity shops. He’d allowed me to put my stamp in every room, so damaging his floors wasn’t exactly a nice way to pay him back. I kissed the tips of my fingers and pressed them against the floor in a gesture of apology.
“Els, what was that noise? You okay?” Adam’s deep voice could be heard from across the hall. He was in his office working on his and Braden’s current project.
“Uh-huh,” I called back, flipping through the diaries to make sure I had every single one of them. I was so lost in what I was doing I didn’t hear Adam’s footsteps.
“What are you doing?” His voice was suddenly right above me and I jumped, startled, only to lose my balance, falling onto my bottom with an “oof.”
I heard him smother a snort and glared up at him. “I need to get you a bell.”
Ignoring me, Adam crouched down onto his haunches, his eyes taking in the diaries. As always when I studied him I got a little flutter in the pit of my stomach, and my skin tingled.
With his thick, dark hair and great body (honed from daily visits to the gym) Adam was a good-looking guy but the kind of good-looking that immediately transformed to hot when you started to talk to him. He had a toe-curling wicked smile, intelligent dark brown eyes that twinkled when he was interested in what you were saying, and a rich voice that took direct pathways to a woman’s erogenous zones. Those gorgeous eyes of his lifted to smile into mine. “I haven’t seen you with one of these in a while.”
“My diaries?” I nodded, trying to sort them into chronological order. “I stopped writing.”
“Why?”
“I stopped after we got together. There didn’t seem to be any point in them any more since they were basically just an outlet for my feelings for you.”
His lips quirked up at the corner. “Baby,” he murmured and reached over to tuck a length of short hair behind my ear. I frowned at the reminder my hair was short. Before the tumor, I had a head of long, pale blonde hair. I’d loved my hair, and I knew Adam had loved my hair.
But the surgeons had shaved a patch of it off my head to cut into my brain unobstructed. I’d covered the patch with a headscarf but had eventually stopped wearing them as the hair grew back out, and I allowed my mother to talk me into getting “a chic pixie cut”.
I was horrified when I walked out of the hair salon, and only somewhat appeased when Adam told me he thought my new hair was sexy and cute. I was completely appeased when Joss told me anything was better than a tumor.
She was right. If my tumor had taught me one thing about life it was to not sweat the small stuff. That didn’t mean it wasn’t damn annoying waiting for my hair to grow back in. At the moment it was barely to my chin.
“So why are you looking at these?” Adam asked, picking one up and absentmindedly flicking through it. I didn’t mind. I was a pretty open person anyway, but especially with Adam. I wasn’t embarrassed by anything I wrote. I trusted him with the very depths of who I was.
“For Joss,” I replied brightly, feeling giddy about the whole thing.
Last night, Joss and I had been hanging out at her and Braden’s flat—my old flat on Dublin Street—and she’d told me her manuscript was coming along nicely. Joss was American, a writer, and she’d come to Edinburgh to escape a tragic past. Her story broke my heart. When she was fourteen she’d lost her entire family in a car accident. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like for her. I just knew it had a left a deep mark.
I’d liked Joss immediately when I interviewed her to be my flatmate, but I’d known then there was something broken about her, and I’d decided I wanted to help somehow. She’d been pretty closed-off but when she started dating my big brother, Braden, I watched her slowly change. She said Braden and I both changed her, but really it was him. He’d helped her so much that she’d even begun to write a story based on her parent’s relationship. That was a huge step for her, and she’d told me last night she couldn’t believe how much she was enjoying writing it. It had given me an idea for her next project.
“Why for Joss?”
“Because inside these diaries is the history of us.” I grinned at him. “It’s a good romance story. I think it should be her next novel.”
I could see Adam was dying to laugh and I had no idea why so I ignored it. “Next romance novel?”
“Next as in follows the previous romance. The story about her parents is a romance.”
“Still, I’m pretty sure Joss wouldn’t classify herself as a romance writer. In fact, I’ve heard her say as much.”