Chapter 25 #2
Being friend zoned was shit. He didn’t want a platonic marriage.
He wanted a physical one, a soul-deep spiritual one.
Something that involved feels and connections across multiple planes of existence.
Sadly, Luthor was right. He wanted her to himself.
Wanted to be able to give her all the things he’d promised without overstepping the mark.
He let her ramble on about the stupid shit the guys did, nodding appropriately. It was predictable stuff. Her complaints were the same ones that Elspeth had often made about how guys were nothing but smelly oversized toddlers.
He shifted, the bench suddenly far too hard against his arse. That ring on her finger was fuck ugly. Clearly the man had no taste.
“Want to go get a tattoo?”
“Huh?” She goggled at him, a grin stretching her lips. “Right now? Do you even have space for another one?”
Tons. Also, he had something specific in mind, something he’d been mulling since their handfasting.
The trinity ribbon symbolising their bond remained fastened around his wrist, but nineteen days on, it was starting to look rather grubby and frayed.
There was plenty bare skin to ink three bands and a symbolic knot around his wrist though, and he really wanted her present for the occasion.
“Where would we even go?”
It only took a minute for the internet to provide the answer. There were numerous choices all within a five-to-ten-minute walk.
And still they didn’t move.
“Are you mad at me?” she asked.
Where had that come from? “Never. Why the fuck would I be?”
She shuffled, so that she was sitting sideways, knees up against his legs. “Because this isn’t what you want, not really. Us being friends, I mean.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m mad at you.” He’d never be mad at her no matter how trying the situation was.
“I think you must be. At least a little.”
“I promise I’m not.”
“You must be, though. This isn’t what you hoped to get out of it when you stepped up and promised me all that stuff. Why did you even?”
“I’m not mad, Castle. Disappointed, maybe, that the really hot chick that I wed doesn’t want a happily ever after with me.
” As for why… Fate hadn’t landed the same red-hot goddess in his lap twice for no reason.
They were meant to be, clearly. The stars had aligned twice to make certain of it, and eventually she’d realise it.
Leastways, he hoped she would. The possibility that they’d instead wind up being star-crossed lovers was too horrid to contemplate. How lonely would that be?
“But you don’t love me. Paul, you don’t. We hardly know one another.”
He hushed her by pressing his ring-clad thumb against her lips.
“I’m not going to say it because I know you don’t want to hear it, but time has sod all to do with it.” Actually, he’d lied. He was going to say it. “I love you, Castle. Wholeheartedly. Undoubtedly. And I’m here for you.”
“Shit!” She scratched at her face, causing the skin to pinken.
“You don’t have to say it back.”
“Please. Stop.” She clapped both hands over her mouth.
Her eyes a little too shiny as she looked at him.
“Paul…” She remained contemplative a moment.
Avoiding his eyes but fixating on his mouth instead.
“I’m sorry. The timing is all wrong. I wanted you for so long after that first night.
I kept hoping you’d call, or you’d turn up.
If you had then, I’d have been…” She shook her head.
“I really wanted to be yours. I wanted the big strong man who’d saved me from myself, and been so fucking kind, and made me feel so wanted to come back and make everything right.
But he didn’t. You didn’t. I wanted you to call so much… ”
“I didn’t have your number,” he mouthed, while covering her hands clasped in her lap with one of his. With the thumb of the other hand, he rubbed away the tear that trickled down her cheek.
“It’s too late now. I moved on. I had to move on.
You understand that, right? God, if there was a way.
If I could rewind time or split myself in two, then…
Shit!” She pulled back, freeing herself from his touch.
“I shouldn’t be saying any of this stuff.
What good will it do either of us? It’s too late. I made other choices.”
She could unmake them.
“It’s too late.”
He didn’t agree, nor did he like to see her so agitated and be without a means of comforting her.
While every instinct told him to throw his arms around her and pull her close, to soothe her with his hands and lips, he knew that wouldn’t lessen the agony.
It wouldn’t be a magical fix. He wasn’t sure anything would. It’d probably make everything worse.
Fucking hell! Rejection was a bitter pill, and that’s what she was saying. You were too late.
He let his gaze drop to her lap, and her hands. The temptation to rip the ugly rock from her finger and throw it in the lake was near overwhelming. Perhaps intuiting his thoughts, she pushed her hands into the space between her thighs.
“When did you get engaged?” he asked.
She raised her shoulders. “Not that long ago. Start of the summer.” Her teeth raked her lower lip. “I guess it was pretty soon after Nash and I met, but lots of things changed fast what with the guys getting signed.”
The way her shoulders rose as she spoke, and she curled herself into a smaller space said a lot about how defensive she was about it.
People had obviously had opinions. They’d probably suggested all sorts of mean reasons why she’d insisted on him giving her a ring right on the cusp of hitting the big time.
“Didn’t the rest of the band approve?”
“No. They were delighted for us.”
“Right.” He nodded. “You seem close with them.”
“Yeah.” Genuine warmth lit up her eyes again. “They’re good friends. The best of friends. They’ve looked out for me. Been there for me. Continue to be there for me. I love them all to bits. Never want to be without them.”
“So, Nash introduced you?”
Yes, he was digging. He was genuinely curious about her life between the time of their first meeting and now. Things had obviously changed, and not just in terms of her relationship status.
“Kind of. I guess. Not really. We all met at the same time, but the guys are a unit, what with being a band and all.”
Was that what was keeping her with Nash? Belief that she’d lose the rest of her friends if the pair of them parted? He guessed it didn’t help that the buggers had employed her, too, so there were multiple strings to cut to walk away.
“So, how did you meet?”
She sighed. “Can we walk?”
“Castle, is there something about your meeting that’s—”
“There was this guy in Valencia. The site manager on the fruit farm we were all working at. He kept pestering me, and then there was an issue with stuff going missing and he thought… Someone said they’d seen me with some of it, so he…”
He risked a rebuke and curled his hand around hers. She let him. Even allowed him to lace their fingers together.
“Nash and the guys…mostly Lee and Balin. They interceded. The guy… He wasn’t very nice.
He kept threatening me. Saying that if I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d have me arrested.
All I kept thinking was who would take care of the cats?
” Another tear tracked down her cheek. She hastily brushed it away.
“I don’t know why I get so wound up about it still.
Nothing happened, and I met the guys. They kept me safe after that. It was like having five brothers.”
“Brothers, not boyfriends?” He didn’t much care for the idea of them all vying for her attention, bad enough that he had to put up with one of them making a prior claim.
“Brothers,” she confirmed. “Except way better than my real ones.” She made a face. “They were there for me, but I wasn’t shagging them all, or anything. Although, I guess it wasn’t entirely platonic either. We all shared beds.”
Yeah, he definitely hadn’t needed that factoid occupying space in his head. It was bad enough reconciling his feelings with the notion that she was intimate with Nash. Her plus four, wait… “Five?”
“Five,” she confirmed. “Nash, Lee, Balin, Jez and Jez’s ex-boyfriend, Rune. Actually, six, on the occasions Lee’s kid brother Austen was around.”
“They realise that you did take the stuff?”
She jerked her head to look at him. “I’m not a thief.”
“Chill Castle, I know. You’re just magnetic.” He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “You only steal buses.”
“You mean hearts, right?” she countered, giving him a playful shove.
He was prepared to give her that one.
She rested her head against the top of his arm. “Also, please don’t say that too loud. I don’t want to wind up in trouble. I’ve never told anyone about that, or about anything that happened that night.”
“Me neither.”
It seemed he’d surprised her, given the way she was peering up at him with a furrow in her brow. “You haven’t? How come?”
Once or twice, he’d come close to saying something, especially in the six months immediately succeeding Bertha Bus’s drowning, but something had always held him back. He liked having a secret…keeping her to himself.
“If your band don’t know that it was me, then they must think that you—”
“Drowned Bertha. Yeah.” He grinned. He’d taken and continued to take oceans of stick for that. “Don’t you go telling them otherwise. You’ll destroy my reputation.”
“Your reputation for what?”
“Being a mad bastard.” He pulled out his sunglasses and perched them on his nose. “Still want to walk?”
She nodded.
He noted how twitchy she’d become if she was confined to one place too long, the way her fingers would beat a nervous tattoo against the side of her thigh.
Recognised it as a precursor to the hand wandering that happened when her anxiety truly kicked in.
“Tell me what happened after you left that morning.”
“I went to the vet. Then home. Realised sharpish that I couldn’t stay there with the cats, so I moved out.”