Book People

Chapter Twenty-four

Leave him, C. I cannot bear him hurting you any more.

H

SEBASTIAN

Lisa’s Q&A went off without a hitch and afterwards I stand on the village hall stage, managing the queue of people who have come up to talk to her. She’s answering the stupidest questions with the patience of Job, and generally being a true professional. She’s been a great headliner for this festival and we’re very lucky to have her.

Not that I’m paying much attention to Lisa, because the majority of my attention is aimed squarely at the entrance to the foyer, where Kate is standing with her arsehole ex-boyfriend, aka Fuckface.

She called him an ‘old friend’, but I overheard what he said to her. He’s the man who manipulated her, who hurt her. Who made her, the most intelligent woman I’ve ever known, feel stupid. And now he wants her back. Even if I hadn’t overheard him telling her he loved her, I’d have known who he was and what he was after by the acquisitive look in his eyes. That look is not because he’s desperate for a signed copy of Colours .

It’s possessive. It’s what I feel myself whenever Kate is around.

The urge to punch someone has never been stronger and my smile as I usher the next person along to talk to Lisa is probably more feral than pleasant – the woman rears back like I’m about to take a bite out of her, so it’s more than probable, it’s certain – yet I can’t seem to control my face.

There’s acid sitting in my gut, courtesy of the rage that rushed through me the moment Kate introduced me to him. I shouldn’t be feeling this way about a woman. I never feel this way about anyone. I’ve never felt strongly enough about a person before to generate this kind of anger, yet here I am, wanting to plant my fist squarely in Jasper’s face, then fulfil my promise to kick him all the way back to London.

Kate, in her rainbow dress, is talking away earnestly to him while he’s staring at her like a dog with a bone. He might as well be drooling. I can’t stand it. I’m incandescent with fury at how he treated her, at how he made her feel, and now he’s back and he thinks he can just . . . what? Take her? Like she’s his property? Like he’s entitled to her somehow?

Fuck that.

The only thing he’s entitled to is me punching his head in.

She’d never take him back anyway. She has more taste than that and a hell of a lot more self-worth, no matter what she thinks about herself.

Also, she’s currently sleeping with me. Not that I have any claim on her either. This is casual. Casual sex. Casual conversation. Casual arguments. Casual making-up afterwards. Casual. Casual. Casual.

Yet no matter how often I say that stupid fucking word, nothing makes any difference to the intense burning in my gut. The ache, the anger, the need.

‘Uh . . . Sebastian?’ someone says.

‘What?’ I snarl, tearing my gaze from Kate and Fuckface to round on the person who dared to interrupt my internal ranting.

But it’s only Dan. He’s dressed up for the event – he’s even wearing a bloody tie, which he never does – and he gives me a concerned look. ‘You need to settle down, mate. You’re scaring the guests.’

He’s not wrong. There are only a couple of people waiting to see Lisa now, but they’re giving me apprehensive glances.

I swallow my rage and try to look pleasant, but I don’t think I succeed, because they take a few uncertain steps back before turning and leaving.

Bloody wonderful.

Without a word, Dan takes me by the elbow and urges me off the stage and over to the side of the hall, where presumably I won’t frighten the masses. I let him, because even I know I’m being ridiculous.

‘Okay, turn down the volume on the alpha werewolf vibes,’ Dan says mildly. ‘We want people coming back to Wychtree, not running for the hills.’

‘Alpha werewolf?’ I look at him. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

He shrugs. ‘Nothing. Just a book I picked up from Kate’s. But seriously. You look like you want to bite someone. Preferably the guy she’s talking to.’

‘It’s her ex,’ I say, watching them.

‘Oh, interesting. What’s he doing here, then?’

‘I overheard them talking. He wants her back.’

‘Ah,’ Dan says sagely. ‘Well, I wouldn’t punch him if I were you. Not the best look to have a brawl at a literary festival.’

I grit my teeth. ‘He deserves to be punched. He was emotionally abusive and hurt her.’

‘Ah,’ Dan says.

‘It’s not about her,’ I insist. ‘He needs to learn that he can’t treat anyone that way, let alone her.’

‘Right,’ Dan says. ‘I mean, if it was only that he’s an abusive tosser, then yeah, have at. I’d want to get in a kick myself. But you look like you want to actually kill him for her.’

‘Nonsense,’ I snap. ‘The relationship Kate and I have is casual.’

‘Uh huh.’ There’s a world of scepticism in his tone.

I don’t like it and glower at him. ‘What?’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Bas, but I’m not sure you can do casual.’

I stiffen. ‘Bullshit. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’ve been doing nothing but casual for the past two weeks.’

‘Yeah, but a casual relationship doesn’t usually include punching people.’

A muscle flicks in my jaw. ‘He hurt her, Dan. Do you really think I’m going to stand idly by and let him do it again?’

‘No, I’m only saying that your reaction is a little . . . intense.’

I’m barely listening to him, because I’ve gone back to staring at Kate and Fuckface.

She puts a hand on his arm and he puts his over the top. He’s a prick. I hate him. I want to punch his stupid face and then strangle him with his tie. Not enough to do serious damage, but enough to make sure he goes yelping back to London with his tail between his legs.

‘You should tell her,’ Dan says.

‘Tell her what?’

‘That you have feelings for her.’

‘I don’t,’ I lie. ‘It’s just sex, nothing more.’

Fuckface is touching her shoulder lightly. I want to break his fingers. He manipulated her, he made her feel stupid, he hurt her, and now he has the gall to come here. Does he think she’ll fall into his arms? Does he really think he can take her away from me?

Then a jagged shard of doubt pierces my rage.

It’s arrogance to think that I have the higher ground here. That I’m so much better than him, when I’ve hurt her, too, with my insistence on casual. When I know she wants more and that I can’t give it to her.

How can I? The history of the Blackwoods is what it is, and I might not be a gambler or a drunk, but I’m a difficult man. I’m reserved and aloof and I don’t like people. I prefer my connections with books. Kate deserves better than that.

She deserves better than me.

Except . . . I want to be there for her.

I’ve never had a relationship before, not one, and that’s because I’ve never wanted one. Caring is hard work and complicated, and after Mum died and Dad left, I’ve been happy with easy and simple, yet . . .

I want to know what it’s like to have her make-up in my bathroom, her clothes in my wardrobe. I want to know what it’s like to share a living space with her. To cook dinner with her. To come home after work with her and have a glass of wine as we talk about our day. To argue over how to stack the dishwasher or whose turn it is to clean the loo. To laugh over a private joke that only she and I understand.

I don’t have that, yet suddenly I want it. I want it badly.

Except . . . I can’t. Not if I want her to be happy too.

‘I don’t think it’s just the sex, Bas,’ Dan says. ‘You’re always talking about her. In fact, you never bloody shut up about her.’

‘It’s casual,’ I repeat, and I know I’ve said the word too many times, because now it sounds meaningless. Hollow. ‘You know I don’t do relationships.’

‘Right,’ says Dan. ‘But you’re lying to yourself, mate.’

I turn sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

He gives me a long-suffering look. ‘Bas, you’re in love with her. You’ve been in love with her for at least the last month.’

Utter horror goes through me.

Love. I’m not in love. Why would I be? When love is the very last thing in the world I want? Love is hard. Love is difficult. Love has destroyed the men in my family and I want no part of it. I never have.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I say, with as much emphasis as I can. ‘I’m not in fucking love, Daniel.’

‘Sure. Just like you don’t care at all if Kate’s horrible ex-boyfriend is here, possibly wanting to get back with her.’

He’s being a prick and I shouldn’t rise to the bait, because I’ll only reveal myself. I have never been one to protest too much. Yet now all I can think about is Fuckface and how he hurt her, and how he wants her back, and no matter how much I believe a leopard can’t change his spots, maybe he has.

Maybe he really is a better man, maybe he’s changed, and maybe he’ll convince her to go back to him. He might. And she might, too, mightn’t she? I don’t know what she wants and I don’t know how she feels, because we haven’t talked about it.

Something inside me plummets, but I ignore it. Hard.

‘Even if he has changed, she won’t want to go back to him,’ I say, mostly for my own benefit, even as my brain is going flat-out on a mouse wheel, around and around, jealous and angry and desperate all at the same time. ‘She’s too intelligent for that. But it’s her decision, so if she does, I won’t stop her.’

‘Of course you won’t.’

‘Have you ever been in love, Daniel?’ I growl.

He screws his face up, thinking. ‘Once. With Carole.’

‘The school secretary? When you were six?’

He shrugs. ‘She was kind to me.’

‘My point being that you’re talking through a hole in your head.’

‘Fair. But I know you, Bas. You’ve never been like this with another woman in your entire life.’

‘I’m not listening.’

‘What would be so wrong with admitting it?’ he asks, persistent as a fucking mosquito. ‘She feels pretty strongly for you.’

Does she? Does she really? She wants casual too, that’s what she said.

‘If I felt it,’ I say, ‘I’d admit it.’

‘No you wouldn’t,’ he scoffs. ‘You’re about as emotionally open as a potato.’

I stay silent a moment, resenting like hell being compared to a potato, all the while struggling with the cascade of feelings inside me. We don’t admit what we feel, the Blackwood men. We keep it properly repressed.

Fuck. Maybe Dan’s got a point about the potato.

‘I can’t,’ I say eventually, every word feeling like it’s been dragged from the pits of hell. ‘Love is the . . . very last thing in the world that I want.’

Dan gives a gusty sigh. ‘I suppose that’s fair too. It’s not as if you’ve had great relationship role models in your life.’

‘The Blackwood men are flawed. We’re addicts and we fail those we love and—’

‘Yes, yes,’ he says impatiently. ‘You’ve sung that song before. But have you ever thought that maybe your dad and granddad weren’t so much flawed as not very emotionally aware? And didn’t know how to deal with their feelings?’

It was not, actually, something that I’d ever thought about. ‘No,’ I say in a gritty voice, because now I am thinking about it, and, again, he’s got a point. Dad finding solace for his grief in the bottle. Granddad turning to the horses to deal with his fury about his father.

‘You should,’ Dan says. ‘Because you’re not any different. You come across as cool as a cucumber and everything under control, but underneath you’re one giant exposed nerve and you always have been.’

I do not like this analysis. Not one bit.

‘So?’ I demand sullenly. ‘Stop comparing me to vegetables.’

Dan shakes his head. ‘So, you feel stuff, but you tell yourself you don’t. You convince yourself you don’t, because feeling stuff, and caring about it, actually fucking hurts.’

He’s not wrong there. It does.

I glance over at my pretty rainbow girl once again, standing with Fuckface, and he’s still holding her hand.

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I snarl.

He notices the direction of my stare. ‘Bloody hell, mate,’ he mutters. ‘Stop acting like Mount Vesuvius about to erupt and do us both a favour. Go and talk to her. Tell her how you feel. And try to do so without being a dick about it.’

Kate and Fuckface are now walking towards the door, still talking.

I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to tell her how I feel. I want to keep chasing the lie I’ve built this little castle of casual on: that I don’t care about her, that our relationship could end today and I’d be fine.

But I won’t be fine, and I have to admit it. I have to own it. And it’s probably too late for me to end it with her without earning myself a mortal wound, yet I have to. I can’t live in this constant state of ‘casual’, and any other kind of relationship is out of the question.

All or nothing, and I’ve decided on nothing.

It’s easier that way.

‘Fine,’ I say to Dan. ‘I’ll tell her.’