Cyrus turned to her then, drawing a short breath, a flare of embarrassment heating his face. He looked down at his hands. Evie stared at him, trying not to smile. Seeing Cyrus blush and lost for words was a first.
He swallowed loudly. ‘Did we ever … er …’ He broke off, the blush growing deeper.
‘Did we ever what?’ Evie asked, confused.
‘You know,’ he said, jerking his head towards the notches.
Evie took a second to process. ‘No!’ she half-blurted, half-yelled.
‘Really?’ he asked, frowning hard at her as if he thought she might be lying, ‘because I …’
‘Really,’ she repeated more emphatically, jumping up off the bed.
He looked up at her, frowning still, his turquoise eyes darkening.
‘You didn’t like me much, did you?’ he asked.
She opened her mouth and then shut it again. ‘I didn’t not like you,’ she said with a sigh, sitting back down. ‘It’s just your ego kind of had its own solar system.’
‘Huh,’ he said, his eyes running over the bedposts. He smiled to himself a little ruefully. ‘But I was good, right?’
Evie’s mouth fell open. Did she need to make it any clearer that none of those notches was her? That they’d never slept together? How would she know if he was good or not? Though judging from Darcy’s thousand SMS messages and the squeals she emitted every time she saw him, she had to concede, grudgingly, that he probably was.
‘I mean at fighting,’ Cyrus added quickly, seeing her expression. ‘Was I good at fighting?’
He looked a little like a lost child and Evie had a sudden and unwanted urge to brush his dark-blonde hair back off his face. It was odd hearing Cyrus ask for reassurance. She was tempted to withhold her answer, as she would have done with the old Cyrus, to say something sarcastic just to annoy him. But she couldn’t, not when he was looking at her with such a stricken expression on his face.
‘Yeah,’ she said softly, ‘you were good. You saved my life. I never got to thank you.’
His eyes narrowed. He was looking at her again as if she was some kind of puzzle, or an object whose value he couldn’t quite work out. She wondered what he was thinking.
‘You’re welcome,’ he finally said. Then after a beat, ‘Do you know why I did it?’
Evie shook her head. ‘No. I’ve been wondering about it for all this time, wishing I could ask you. And now I get the chance, you don’t even remember.’ She shrugged helplessly.
The cheeky grin was back. ‘I thought maybe it was because we …’
‘No,’ she said, cutting him off again, at the same time trying to fight a smile, something she found herself doing more and more around him.
They sat in silence for a moment, Cyrus frowning at his lap as if trying to remember the night at the Bradbury and what his motivation might have been.
‘Just before you did it you told me that chivalry wasn’t dead,’ Evie said.
Cyrus looked up. ‘That’s kind of cool.’
‘And your last words were, I’ve led a charmed life.’
‘Shakespeare.’
Evie shot him a quizzical look. ‘You remember?’
‘No, I just know the quote. Macbeth, right? I bear a charmed life.’
She stared at him in amazement.
He shrugged. ‘I can remember random stuff like that – quotes and things I learnt at school. Like I remember my Spanish. I just can’t remember other stuff. The stuff that matters …’ He paused, scowling, ‘Like who I was.’
‘I can’t remember who I was either,’ Evie said after a pause, thinking of how much she’d changed in just a few short weeks. ‘I think that’s OK though. We change. People change. But the core of who you are stays the same. You’re still Cyrus. There are things you do which remind me of the old you.’
‘Like what?’ he asked.
‘Like the way you smile,’ she said turning to him, ‘and the way you walk.’ And the way you look at me like I’m some kind of prize, she added silently. Though the old Cyrus had looked at her as some kind of prize to conquer, or a steak he wouldn’t mind grilling and eating, and now he looked at her as if he couldn’t figure out if she was the loser’s prize or not. ‘And you still know how to fight,’ she added because he was still watching her, expectantly.
He didn’t speak for a while, his brow furrowed. Then he said, ‘You miss him.’