Chapter Forty-Three
LUCAS
Icould hear Aster singing for long minutes before he arrived.
‘I like Callum’s butt and I cannot lie. You pygmy goaties can’t deny. When Callum walks in wearing his flannel shirt and starts making bread-’ He gasped when he reached the top of one of the hills overlooking the loch. ‘Lukey.’
Someone unversed in the ways of Aster might have assumed he started talking when he was way out of a normal person’s hearing range because he’d gotten too used to living with a werewolf, but I knew better. Words tumbled over his lips as soon as he saw me because he wasn’t able to contain them.
‘I have so much to tell you. I haven’t seen you in literal days.
Day. Part of a day. Anyway; it’s been far too long and I have many things to share.
The most important of which being the sixty-nine myself and the gorgeous Callum Armstrong engaged in last night.
It was wond-’ He gasped again and broke into a run. ‘Lukey, Lukey, Lukey. What’s wrong?’
I couldn’t depend on Aster to not hurt me with his enthusiastic flailing or to not eat off my plate or to keep any of the details of his and Callum’s sex life to himself, but I could always and forever depend on his ability to switch from talking jolly nonsense to showering me with concern whenever I needed it.
Boy, did I need it.
I’d sat by the loch for hours. Goats sipping at the lapping water a minimum of a quarter of a loch away caused a persistent ache in my chest, but that wasn’t the reason I’d practically dehydrated myself with crying and had ignored Bonnie’s recent summons to lunch.
Since discovering that animals wouldn’t magically flock to me anymore, all I’d wanted to do was throw myself into Kit’s arms and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist until I stopped feeling less hollow and broken.
The problem was, I didn’t then envisage leaving Kit’s arms. Or doing so without a very good reason. I wanted to be with him and touch him and hear his every thought always.
That wasn’t normal. It was too much to ask of him. I couldn’t go back down to the village and face him until I’d found some miraculous way to contain all my wants.
Air punched out of my lungs when Aster launched himself at me. His arms wound around my neck and his legs squeezed my waist.
As brilliant as it was to have my best friend in my arms, there was a bit of me crying out for Kit. I wanted him here too. He would make it better.
‘Aster,’ I whispered into his freckled neck. ‘I need your help.’
‘Then you shall have it, old bestie of mine.’ Aster wiggled backwards until he was sat cross-legged on the loch’s shore in front of me, his knees knocking mine. He took my hands in his and pressed them together. ‘What’s wrong?’
I swallowed and looked beyond him at the water glittering in the bright August sunshine.
No way was I going to figure out how to be around Kit without wanting to ravage him at all times unless I had help, but that required sharing something I’d managed to keep to myself for a long time.
I’d thought telling Kit yesterday was the only time I’d have to air this, that if I liked kissing him then my problems would be solved.
All actually liking physical intimacy with someone had done was cause a whole load of other problems.
‘There’s something I’ve had going on that I’ve not told you,’ I started, then bit my lip.
Aster rubbed my hands between his. ‘Is it something to do with being a wolf? If I can’t help you, Callum will. I promise he’ll be super nice about it.’
‘I know he would be.’ As always, even a hint at complimenting his boyfriend made Aster beam. I veered away from blaming my current issues on being a wolf, as tempting as that might be. ‘It’s not a wolf thing though. It’s been a problem for way longer than that. Or, at least part of it has.’
‘Tell me from the start, Lukey,’ Aster encouraged. Anyone who ever tried to tell me he was a bad listener could do one.
I took a deep breath. ‘I’ve never felt attracted to anyone before Kit.’
I wasn’t looking at Aster directly, too embarrassed or ashamed or simply unwilling to watch pity and confusion play out on his face, but I couldn’t miss the way his brown eyes widened.
‘Never?’ He tilted his head to the side. ‘But you’ve had sex, yeah?’
I nodded, and Aster clasped my hands between his.
‘Why did you do that if you weren’t attracted to them?’ Even without looking right at him, I couldn’t mistake the panic lacing his words. It sparked in the air, popping with acid.
I closed my eyes. ‘I consented. I promise. I just maybe didn’t want to do it for the same reasons other people might.’
Aster bounced, the motion rocking my hands. ‘I can see you don’t like talking about this, but can you try to explain it to me?’
I wished I didn’t have to, but if Aster didn’t understand everything, then he wouldn’t be able to help me with the mess I’d gotten into with Kit.
I opened my eyes, and immediately swung my gaze down to our hands.
‘You told me how you started noticing people when we were younger. Feeling attracted to them. You talked about this pull towards them. How you loved all these little things about them. You noticed their hair and hands and a thousand other things.’ My shoulders slumped. ‘Before Kit, I’d never had that.’
Aster’s fingers tapped across my knuckles. ‘You didn’t tell me.’
I tried to pretend his voice wasn’t small and hurt, that the air between us wasn’t swirling with the salt of my sadness and his combined.
‘I didn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t understand why everyone else seemed to feel this thing that didn’t happen for me.
’ I frowned. ‘I wondered if maybe I was a late bloomer. If maybe I needed to kiss people or have sex to make it happen. But it didn’t work. ’
I screwed up my face and barrelled on. ‘You talked about asexuality once, but it didn’t feel right for me.
Everything you said fit; I didn’t feel what apparently so many other people did, but the label didn’t feel right.
I could sense it, somehow, that I could do it.
I could feel all that stuff. I just didn’t know how though, or when it would happen. ’
‘It happened with Kit?’ Aster nudged.
‘Yeah.’ I bit my lip. ‘It’s not right though.’
The salty edge to the air had faded, the truths I was laying bare before Aster healing any hurt that I’d kept this from him for so long.
He bounced again. When I finally looked at his face, his expression was similar to all the times I’d admitted I’d sent my dad money again.
Like Aster wanted to fight me, but only because he didn’t want to see me hurt.
‘What do you mean, that it’s not right?’ His thin eyebrows lowered. ‘Does Kit not like you back? Because I can explain to him that he’s lucky to have you crushing on him. That you’re a freaking ten. That he should–’
‘Aster.’ A reluctant smile had crept over my face during his rant, but it shattered like paper-thin glass. ‘He’s not the problem. It’s me.’
Aster released one of my hands to poke me square in the chest. ‘Absolutely not true. I will not hear it. There’s nothing wrong with you.
’ He prodded again. ‘You tell me what’s happened.
’ Another painful poke. ‘And then I’ll tell you again that you’re wrong and that everything about you is brilliant. ’
Everyone should have a best friend like Aster. Even when he was giving me a bruise on my chest that would fade in minutes but still bloody hurt, he was unfailingly and always on my side. Even when I wasn’t.
I slumped and he lowered his hand to cup around mine again. ‘I love you,’ I said.
Aster squeezed my hands. ‘Man, I love you so much more. You don’t even know. It’s boundless.’
It was good to know he felt that kind of love for me; love that wouldn’t change no matter what secrets I kept or weirdness I unveiled.
‘I think because I’ve not felt this before, I’m doing it wrong.’ I kept my eyes on his face this time. I needed to know exactly when his expression changed, exactly when I walked off the path of normalcy and onto one of taking everything an ordinary person felt and multiplying it like wild rabbits.
‘I was worried when I went down to the village,’ I continued.
I wouldn’t tell Aster about finding Kit crying in my bed, but there was enough to share without adding that.
‘On the day of the storm, Kit had asked that morning if he could kiss me. I didn’t think I wanted him to.
That’s what I assumed, since everyone else I’d kissed before had been so underwhelming. ’
‘You weren’t sure though?’
I scrunched my nose. ‘I don’t know. In that moment, I didn’t want to kiss him. But I also maybe did? It was a morbid kind of curiosity. Like, if I couldn’t like kissing someone as kind and lovely as Kit, who was I going to enjoy it with, right?’
Aster nodded. ‘The logic tracks. You didn’t kiss him then, though?’
‘No. I left. And then the storm happened. And everything after.’
‘Ah.’ Aster’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. ‘How Kit acted while you were in the mountains is making a whole lot more sense now.’
‘What did he do?’ I asked, ravenous for any detail.
Aster grinned. ‘He wanted to know how you were doing all the time. Like, he messaged me constantly. I reckon if I’d set up a camera so he could monitor your progress, that wouldn’t have been enough.’
Despite the worry binding my chest, my heart lifted at hearing how much Kit cared. It gave me hope that even if I couldn’t stop being a weirdo, he might be patient with me.
‘What happened when you saw him again?’ Aster prompted.
Despite the level of detail Aster shared about his sexual adventures, I didn’t want to do the same. What had happened between me and Kit was special. Just for us. Aster would always be the kind of person who used words to express his wonder, but I would do it more quietly.
‘We kissed,’ I said. ‘And did other stuff.’
Other life changing, beautiful stuff.
Aster bounced several times, then abruptly stopped. ‘You enjoyed it all, right?’