Bet Your Life Read Online Free PDF

tucked up, snug in flannel pajamas and socks and with an extra blanket on top of the duvet, I started to feel warmer. Not better. Just warmer.
    I lay for a while thinking about Sebastian Dawson, more to distract myself from worrying about Will than for any other reason. Seb was the living definition of tall, dark, and handsome. Blue eyes, black hair, cheekbones that could cut glass. He was almost too good-looking, I had always thought. And he had plenty of arrogance to go with it. We went to the same school but he’d never bothered to speak to me. To be strictly accurate, I’d never bothered to speak to him, either. I wondered if I’d really seen what I thought I had seen—the marks on his wrist and the bruises like shadows on his skin. Dan was right: I should keep out of it. But I thought about it all the same, until I glanced at the clock on my bedside table and realized how late it was.
    I turned over, got comfortable, and completely failed to go to sleep.

 
    3
    “What happened to you last night?” Hugo demanded, his mouth full.
    “I was about to ask you the same thing.” I shuffled across the kitchen like a zombie questing for brains, arms outstretched. Tiredness meant I was running off my primordial brain. It could only cope with the basic necessities of life. At the moment, what I needed was heat, food, and caffeine. The ancient Aga had made the kitchen tropical when the rest of the house was definitely Arctic Circle territory. And by a lucky coincidence, it was also where I could get a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea.
    “A cure for all that ails you.” My uncle Jack grinned as he slid two rashers onto a plate and pushed it toward me. He was wearing an oversized apron that could have wrapped twice around his lanky frame. “Did you have a good time, Jess?”
    “The fireworks were pretty.” And that is all I can say for the evening … “I didn’t know it was such a big deal.”
    “Always,” Jack said. “It’s going to be a big week. Lots of people in town for half-term. There’s something on every night. Then the big display on Bonfire Night.”
    “What happens then?”
    “Boats.”
    It took me a second to realize that Hugo’s little brother, Tom, had answered me. I waited for him to go on, but he’d relapsed into his usual silence and was shoveling cereal into his mouth with the grace and finesse of a digger. I turned to Jack. “What about boats?”
    “Everyone who has a boat sails into the bay after dark, and at a given time they all light a torch.”
    “He means the old-fashioned kind. A flaming brand,” Hugo said. “Stupidly dangerous things.”
    “They make them by wrapping wooden batons in rags and dipping them in tar. You’ve probably seen them down on the quay.”
    “Oh, that’s what those are!” I had seen them stacked up, the ends sticky and black. “But there are hundreds of them.”
    “There’ll be hundreds of boats too. It’s pretty spectacular,” Jack said. “And everyone on shore starts their bonfires in response. There’s a total blackout in town—even the streetlamps are switched off, so the only light is from the bonfires. The whole bay and the hills around it are lit up. They’ve been doing it for centuries.”
    “It sounds like something Ella would love. I really want her to see Port Sentinel at its best.”
    “I prefer spring.” Jack scraped at the frying pan.
    “I can’t wait that long.”
    “Missing her?” he asked.
    “Just a bit.”
    “You’ve done well with settling in, Jess. Anyone would think you’d lived in Port Sentinel forever.”
    “I’m not so sure.”
    “Well, we’re happy to have you.” Jack was concentrating on the cooking, but I knew he meant it. “And Ella, if it comes to that. What time is she arriving?”
    “I think her train gets in at three.”
    “Damn. I can’t go and get her, I’m afraid. I’ve got a meeting.” Jack looked past me. “Hugo—”
    “Nope.”
    “Please.”
    “I have a life too. Just because I