Save the Last Dance by Fiona Harper Page B

ones for you? Too girly?’
    Finn drew breath, intending to give a lengthy, and completely fictional, account of why pink sweets would never threaten his masculinity; but then he saw her gaze sharpen with intelligence and he just gave up and nodded. That made her laugh even harder.
    â€˜I can relate to that,’ she said, sighing. ‘My whole childhood was a rhapsody in pink. Pink tights, pink shoes, pink leotards… It got to the point where I would positively avoid it unless I was in class or on stage.’
    He watched her as she trailed off and gazed into the fire. Pink was okay. Beautiful in a sunset or a rainforest flower. But life was made to be full of colour. Surely that amount of uniformity couldn’t be good for a soul?
    They really came from two different worlds, didn’t they? He was always on the move, always filling himself up with new experiences from one day to the next, and yet she had got where she was by staying. By doing the same thing over and over until she reached perfection. How did she do it without going stark raving mad?
    She leaned forward and rested her chin on her fist. ‘He must be really proud of you.’
    Finn sat down on the opposite end of the log. ‘Who?’
    She smiled gently. ‘Your grandfather.’
    He found he couldn’t look at the softness in those blue eyes any more and turned his attention back to the crackling logs. Why had he dropped that stick? He really needed to prod those logs with it and now he had nothing to hand.
    â€˜He died when I was fifteen.’
    She didn’t say anything for a moment, but Finn could feel her sympathy radiating towards him along the log. He knew she’d suffered worse, knew she’d understand, but he still didn’t want to share it with her. Letting her in meant he’d have to visit that place himself, and he’d boarded it up and marked it ‘no entry’ a long time ago.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she said.
    There it was. That beguiling compassion made into words. It made him feel as if a thousand spiders had just started climbing his legs.
    He stood up. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, not looking at her.
    She shouldn’t. He never did.
    Why buck the trend? He hadn’t thought to worry at all that Christmas they’d spent the whole week at Grandad’s. Hadn’t paid a lick of attention when his grandfather had hugged him goodbye and said, ‘See you in the summer’. On the next visit to Skye, only a few short months later, hiking boots and waterproofs had been traded for a dark suit and smart shoes. Wild heather and open skies had been replaced by wreaths and the claustrophobic stillness of a tiny chapel.
    He should have worried, though.
    He should have realised how much his only living grandparent had been an anchoring point for him throughout his childhood. Should have realised how set adrift he’d feel once the old man was gone.
    People thought the wilderness was empty. They were blind. It was full of life—plants, trees, creatures big enough to swallow you whole or so small they were almost invisible to the naked eye. Absent of human interference, yes, but not empty.
    No, emptiness was standing at a graveside and not even being able to look at the coffin because all you could see was the hole. All you could feel was the hole. Blackness so complete that it wiped out all life before it. That was emptiness.
    Not a place he ever planned on visiting again, thank goodness.
    Allegra stood up. For a moment he thought she was going to move closer and hug him. He was very glad when she didn’t.
    â€˜Some people leave big spaces when they go,’ she whispered, almost to herself rather than to him. ‘Shoes you can never—’
    She paused for a moment.
    â€˜Sorry. I meant holes you can never fill, no matter how hard you try.’
    Finn walked over to a bush and broke a decent-looking branch off it, then he stripped it of all