Jade - Chapter 17 - Now

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'Jade,' he says, his hands gently caressing mine. I dream I'm in my family home wrapped in a purple duvet surrounded by One Direction posters and Blue is beside me, warming me on this frosty morning, telling me that he's bunked school so we can spend time together whilst my mother is in the shop.

When I open my eyes, I'm hit by the severe cold in the room. Was it Adrian I dreamt of? Or Blue? It's too cold to think straight. Even with the heaters pumping out streams of tepid air, my breaths are still visible in a cloud where the zip of my coat prods the underside of my chin. 

Dreaming of Blue makes complete sense. That was the way it would have been, had it not been for the incident out on the Heath that fateful day.

'Jade,' Blue says again. His hands really are around mine. I focus and scramble back a few inches, pulling my hands away as the web of slumber lifts.

His smell is cool and familiar, and my cheeks radiate heat. The strange feelings in my dream take a moment to disperse until the sieve is empty and all that is left are the bare holes and stark realisation of the garage makeshift cell I'm in.

'We need to go.' He urges me up off the floor. His tone is clipped, a reminder it's not the old Blue anymore. No love, no compassion, not even friendship; no longer the one who would fight the other kids away to save the last seat on the bus for me.

Snow still curls under the bottom of the shutter where the slices of light have turned a dull grey. Shadows have appeared beside the boxes in the room.

I want to trust him.

I do. 

He leads me down the corridor into the hospital, past the operating theatre, examination rooms and through a large atrium lobby that smells musty. Holding my arm not my hand confuses me. I'm still his captive.

Outside, the snow has started to melt at the edges. When we pass over a gutter, the gush of water from deep below fills the empty street. Although it feels minus ten, it's probably not.

'What is this place? Where are we?' I say, as we walk beneath a graffiti-covered, partly dismembered sign saying Slough General Hospital, 'Oh.' We cross a deserted roundabout junction, which appears to be part of the hospital complex. 'Why's it so quiet?'

'Got closed down along with all the others after the election,' he says, nodding up at the sign. Though his cheeks are flushed, his expression is staid. 'Privatisation, one of Seaford's great ideas.'

'You never did like politics.'

Blue just doesn't like to be told what to do.

We approach a tall Victorian building not entirely dissimilar to the boarding house part of my old school, with stained glass windows, peaked gothic architraves and brick columns running up the sides of the building. Adrian boarded at Harrow for a short spell, after each of his mother's surgical procedures. It probably looked similar.

At the door, Blue taps in a code on a security pad that releases the lock with a short beep.

'Probably be council housing within a year,' he mutters, heading for the stairs. We climb two floors and then cross to the back of the building, where leaded windows overlook frothy white countryside.

Snow was a source of pleasure when it ground the bus service to a halt and closed school, allowing us to sled through the parks all day. Now I see it as a trap, a pathway of footsteps they will follow me by, once I escape.

Blue pauses to open a door on the right, which I imagine to contain more stairs that will lead down and out the back of the building. Instead, a single bed is pushed up to the wall, overlapping a shabby rug. In the corner there's a kitchenette with kettle and microwave and a small bathroom complete with cast iron tub.

'Your room?' I ask, staring at him, incredulously.

He thrusts his hands into his jeans pockets, head dipped.

'I thought you were getting me out!' I say. 'I thought you were saving me.'

'I am saving you,' he mutters, 'just not in the way you think.'

'Are you kidding me? Like you were trying to save me when your friend Ridley was attacking me in my bedroom? Or when you locked me in that icy garage out there? Or when you left me all alone on the Heath?'

His eyes grow wide. I can't believe I said it. For a moment I think he will speak, but then he closes his mouth, his face glowing red all the way to his hairline.

'I was saved,' I utter. Adrian's smile and those green notes seem so futile now. I long for them. I long for the feeling his support gave me.

'Ridley was looking for the incision scar on your stomach,' is all he can manage, his gaze reduced to a pin spot of brown leaching out from the dull cord carpet.

'Blue?'

He ignores me to lean down and pull a ready-made sandwich from the top drawer of a small wooden desk, which he unwraps and lays on the desk. He pushes it towards the end of the desk where I am supposed to take it.

'Look at me,' I say. 'What happened to you?'

'What happened to me?' A dark cloud brews across his face. 'What happened to you? You had everything laid out for you on a plate. Smart. Popular. Public-school education. Your iD tag was ten out of ten. You ought to have been planning for some work experience in the city now or applying for jobs.'

'Circumstances changed things!' I point to my round stomach.

'I bet you haven't seen your friends since your bridal shower, probably didn't even pick your own wedding dress, and I'll guarantee you haven't made a decision of your own since you got with him!'

And there it is again, the venom undeservedly directed at Adrian, who doesn't possess a vindictive bone in his body. For someone who didn't know it was me in Richmond House, I'm surprised Blue knows about my wedding. I pull my engagement ring finger into my palm so the diamond drops from sight.

'You were starting a degree in medicine from Oxford University.' I say. 'See what happened to that! So don't you talk to me about dreams, David Azure, because you shattered my dreams all on your own, and it was Adrian who was there to pick up the pieces, who got down on one knee, who stayed by my side even when the going got tough. He was the one who saved me. Not you. Not here in this godforsaken place!

'Where's the guy who would bring me clippings every time the name Jade was printed in the paper and would phone me ten times before bed just to be the last one to say goodnight? Where is that person now?'

I shift back to the side of the room by the bed, forcing back tears that sting my eyes. His face passes through a range of emotions: sadness, anger and a measure of sorrow. He remembers. He has to remember.

'That boy is gone,' he says eventually, his eyes darkening until his gaze is hard. He stands, scrunches the sandwich's wrapper in his hands and dunks it into the mesh wire bin in the far corner as he passes. 'Now get some sleep.'


Thanks for reading Chapter Seventeen of Sever. The next chapter is now LIVE!

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CAST LIST (so far)

Jade Lively - Lilly Collins (the protagonist)

Blue - Liam Hemsworth (the protagonist / anti-hero and Jade's ex-boyfriend)

Terrence Ridley - Mackenzie Crook (one of the pirates from Pirates of the Caribbean)

Belinda - Lindsay Lohan (fellow kidnappee)

Adrian Lively - Alex Pettyfer (Jade's husband)

Marcus Lively - William Fichtner aka Alex from Prison Break (Adrian's father)

Mikey Drosner - Jack Black (Blue's lawyer)

Detective Pike - Viola Davis (Blue's prosecutor)

Prime Minister Christopher Seaford - Gary Oldman

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