Читать онлайн «Losing Lila»
Автор Сара Алдерсон
HUNTING LILA
FATED
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2012 by Sarah Alderson
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Sarah Alderson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London
WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue copy for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-85707-197-2
E-BOOK ISBN: 978-0-85707-198-9
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
For Nichola and Vic, for always being there for me, even though we’re thousands of miles apart.
With love,
S x
Contents
1
2
3
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5
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Acknowledgements
1
I stared back at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My hair was loose, my eyes dark-circled. I looked pale and a little gaunt. Alex was standing behind me, bare-chested and in jeans, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders. The bruise on his cheek had faded and there was only the faintest trace of a scar running at an angle across his cheekbone up to his eye. He looked tired too. The strain of the last week was starting to show.
‘Just do it,’ I told him.
He looped my hair, twisting it up like a rope, then pressed the scissors against the nape of my neck and cut.
Blonde strands fell to the floor, but I kept my eyes on Alex, so focused on the job in hand. The only thing that was keeping me sane, keeping me from running straight back to California to find my mum and Jack, was him. Eight days zigzagging south over the border, trying to shake the Unit off our tail, had brought us here, to the sweltering heat of Mexico City, and this tiny hotel room.After Alex was done, he put the scissors down and bent to kiss my bare neck. I drew in a breath, goosebumps rippling down my spine, and gripped the edge of the basin tighter. Alex looked up, caught my eye in the mirror and gave me one of his half-smiles.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said.
I stared at myself in the mirror. My head felt lighter all of a sudden. My eyes were massive in the pale oval of my face. I had expected to look more like a child, but I looked older somehow. The angles of my face were sharper, my neck longer. It was as if I’d lost the last vestiges of childhood along with my hair. Alex dipped his head once more, tracing kisses slowly up my neck towards my jaw, his fingers running through my cropped hair. He turned me round and, holding my face, kissed me full on the lips.
