“There was indeed a Christmas dance.”

“Oh. Please tell me you didn’t end up with a bucket of pig’s blood poured on your head.”

Arthur stared at me.

“Sorry.” I made a zipping motion over my lips. Nodded at him to continue.

He shook his head. “I was not Carrie in this situation.” I gave him a very silent thumbs-up, then he cocked his head to one side. “Although, come to think of it, perhaps I was. To a degree. Though no bodily fluids were dumped at any point.”

I rolled my hand for him to get on with it. This was like being in a movie where you knew the main character didn’t make it to the end but you’re not quite sure how that came to be so you’re waiting for the proverbial ax to fall or shoe to drop or, in this case, heart to break and it was torture.

“At the dance were Cory Goedert and a group of his mates. They attended Jarrow with me and they enjoyed making my life . . . difficult.” His eyes darkened and despite his efforts, I heard the underlying pain this caused him. A flurry of awful possibilities caused my stomach to clench.

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” I said quietly.

That earned a small but sincere smile. “Thank you,” he murmured. “My situation with them was made even more difficult because . . .” His jaw hardened. “. . . Cory was dating Astrid the whole time.”

“No!”

“Mmmm. It gets worse.”

My hand went over my eyes.

“He delighted in informing me that he was the one who’d been sending me the flirty text messages and also the one who invited me to the Christmas Dance. Not Astrid.”

God. The mortification he must have felt when he learned. I had a mad urge to fly to England, find this Cory asshole, and . . . I wasn’t sure exactly what, but it would be epic. And Astrid, too.

Which raised another question.

“Did she know what was going on?”

“I never fully found out. She knew some of it, I could tell as much by her expression.”

“That’s awful.” I shook my head. “But wait. How did you get kicked out of Jarrow?”

“At the dance, Cory and his pack surrounded me when I went to speak with Astrid. I was sorely outnumbered and, frankly, I was . . . unnerved. And incredibly angry. Not at Astrid, I wasn’t thinking like that. But at what had happened, what was happening. Cory came at me and I—” He closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped. “I hit him first. Broke his nose. But that wasn’t what caused all the problems. Well, not by itself.” Arthur’s eyes grew pained. “Cory went flying back, into Astrid.” I gasped and my hand went to my mouth. “She wound up with a black eye.”

“Oh, Arthur.”